Discord has become a defacto platform for online native communities, in the same way many of us treated IRC. It's really the same atmosphere, any of you old nerds yearning for the IRC golden years should try and find a discord server to join.
If we're still on IRC then we mostly would clearly have an objection to using discord for the very many legitimate reasons to object to it, such as the mass data collection, phone number requirements for many users, lack of control / selfhosting capability, or just general requirement to use (very heavy) nonlibre software to access it.
Yes, the open source privacy crowd is a big chunk, but there were just as many social communities. Don't you remember the olden days of sex channels and all their drama? The roleplay, alt history, sci-fi, and just general random niche hobbies that populated the IRC landscape. IRC was, above all, a social space, it just so happens that many of these communities died or migrated to discord over time. Those that remain are those who are most attached to privacy/open source/etc, all the rest are gone.
> I believe that his intentions are malicious, and that he should under no circumstances gain control over the network, nor access to its user data.
Just from the first "explainer" I remember (https://gist.github.com/joepie91/df80d8d36cd9d1bde46ba018af4...)
Discord is just treated as the sum repository of all for way too many people.
The barrier of entry of asking and answering questions on a Discord is very low. Setting up a forum, that's needs a bit of effort, not to mention hosting, and on-going headache of spam and liability.
I mean, I'm really interested in Audio Description, but there is no forum for discussing the nuts and bolts, issues, research, advocacy etc. Conversely there are AD groups on Twitter, Facebook, Linkd In, Discord and a few more besides.
On IRC of course, you got X amount of history when you logged on, and that was what you worked with. It does feel a lot more ephemeral, more like a real conversation.
For contrast I've gotten a lot of use out of it for connecting with various topic focused communities and I've seen people do neat things with it. The python server manages to offer an awful lot of surprisingly high quality tutoring, all things considered, and a big part of it is through the automation they've built in via bots. Oh! And I found a server focused on electronics when I was looking for help repairing a damaged TV that had knowledge resources the likes of which I rarely see anymore.
In all that I never felt like the experience was hampered by discord's association with gaming. Honestly it felt like a chat client that wanted to be used - if you want to start using IRC as a newb today you first have to pay obeisance and perform the ritual stumbling through. Discord doesn't (or did not as of a few years ago) even need an account to get started, just type a handle and go.
Nah, web-based clients like The Lounge (https://thelounge.chat/) or Convos (https://convos.chat/) provide a very similar user experience to Discord or Slack.
> The python server manages to offer an awful lot of surprisingly high quality tutoring, all things considered, and a big part of it is through the automation they've built in via bots
So did/does IRC.
I am mostly talking about the communities themselves, there are not many truly large everyone-in-a-room chat networks with diverse and modern topics. Yeah IRC is still there, but I am in it for the people, and the people are on discord at the moment. They'll probably move when Discord fucks up, but that doesn't change the conversations I have today.
Ruled… and hopefully not returning too soon.
Here is the option though… we ignore the titans above us, the ones that desperately need us. See some of them fall; and hopefully they shrink small enough were we aren’t craning our necks so much.
Or, we continue to pretend that everything is fine and keep praying and sacrificing (printing money) and pretend that will just keep working.
ZIRP was a mistake. Better to rip the bandaid off now.
But… for what it’s worth, I think it will lead to war. Actual war, not this proxy stuff. We’re too far in and owe China too much. There needs to be some debt reset because “paying it off” isn’t a thing.
I am not saying Discord is better, or you should move. More like, if you gave up IRC decades ago, but want to try some new communities, discord chats are close enough to be fun.
I signed up for the trial and hop into a direct call. The other participant shared his screen, and the video looks like hot garbage. High fidelity options buried behind notices that the other user needs Nitro.
If I pay for the service, my UX should improve. It did not. No thanks.
This poses a problem as the amount of shots is quite large... We have a channel where users post their shots, and the bot basically harvests the links of the shots which have a high amount of votes. So currently no re-hosting of images occurs.
I can image tho why Discord does this. Our gallery is likely not visited a lot, but I can imagine high profile files pulled from discord channels like pirated software/malware etc. are a big problem. The route to the server / channel where the files are coming from isn't known, only to discord