RealCodingOtaku

Beside from Discord not being open-source and forcing me to disclose my personal information to them when I log in through some glorified proxy, using discord to engage with the community is a bad idea.

Here are my reasons to use alternatives (of course, I have no say in what you should use).

1. A centralized platform like discord can kill your community engagement plan whenever they want (you own nothing, and they don't owe you anything).

2. You don't really get a "closed community" as they collect your messages in plain text[1]

3. There are better alternatives that won't spy on you and has better accessibility[2][3][4]

If the alternatives make one think that no one uses them, it is because the projects are promoting discord in the first place.

If more FOSS projects start using an alternative (matrix, for example), more users will be hesitant to use discord.

I have more reasons, like Discord community usually end up in less meaningful discussion, have significantly less searchability, and visibility than a forum has -- but they are not really a big problem in a closed community.

And if the project wants a place to have civilized discussion, engagement, and visibility, it is far easier and better to host a forum like discourse[5] than using a chat based system.

[1] https://discord.com/privacy#3

[2] https://sourcehut.org/blog/2021-11-29-announcing-the-chat.sr...

[3] https://matrix.org/ (is much more reliable than in the past)

[4] https://zulip.com/

[5] https://www.discourse.org/ (a forum)

Being a member does not give anyone the authority to define a standard. One can propose and vote.

Take the recent example for instance, Web Standards Body W3C rejects Google’s ad targeting proposal[0]

Browser market share calculation is always dodgy[1].

[0] https://tittlepress.com/tech/2238586/

[1] https://www.sitepoint.com/how-browser-market-share-is-calcul...

Also, "Goanna (Pale Moon), a fork of an old version of Gecko. At 0% market share and always at risk of not catching up with the newest web standards that Google invents".

Google don't make web standards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_standards

It is impossible for one to ensure that the same code is running on the server.

Do not upload plaintext personal-anything to a stranger's computer.

These things should be run locally, in your own system, after pulling the repo, verifying, and building it yourself.

In case someone didn't know, Figma is being acquired buy Adobe. This post will not stay up for long.

https://www.figma.com/blog/a-new-collaboration-with-adobe/

Many in the comment section told that they are using TrueCaller to avoid spam/robot calls.

In my personal experience, I found that not creating a TrueCaller account itself avoids having spam calls. I tried this by getting a new number years ago. I do get some spams, but from some services that I am using/has used a few months ago, and they want me to get back in (looking at you, ACT fibernet).

Anyway, it's okay to not use such an app for blocking contacts, most modern smartphones has blocking functionality, and some Free/Libre apps has ways to block a number range and works offline without ads. They are more than sufficient for most of us, use them instead.

But as the article said, not having proper legislation is the root cause of this problem, from how many services running in India can you delete your account (not unsubscribe/delete app, but delete “account” with personal information) from? Yeah, think about it.