Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 515 posts

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#281

Post by shadowofneptune »

dyeje wrote: post #170
etempleton wrote: post #127

I just don’t see what Discord’s path towards profitability is. Are they going to try to start an online store again? Sell enough Nitro subs? I think they are playing hard ball for a better acquisition deal, but they risk being irrelevant before ever getting a better deal.

People build communities on Discord. They should monetize that.

Absolutely, I have considered when moderating servers that if they placed more advanced moderation features, the kind you'd see in forum software, behind a paywall, it'd be the only thing I'd consider paying for.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#282

Post by steveklabnik »

brundolf wrote: post #181
xyhopguy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'discord professional' seems like pretty low hanging fruit and an obvious upgrade over slack + zoom

It would risk chasing off their core market, even if it were just a branding pivot

The removed the Gamer branding by default a long time ago now.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#283

Post by Rebelgecko »

dharmab wrote: post #239
xboxnolifes wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, though discord recently has put out updates to improve audio quality in those instances. That being said, I would argue that any voice chat with more than 10, maybe 20, active people talking is going to be nearly unusable. Not due to audio quality.

Teamspeak supports plugins so an entire server of 100s of people only hear the players in-game that they are actively working with. It turns this ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dM3HqNFox8 ) into this ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Znv6Cf4IKgE ).

One of the really underrated features of ACRE is that it lets you force audio to only play on left/right ear. In Arma, if I'm talking to a character directly in front of me while while listening to 2 radio channels that have people shouting in mono, it all turns into a muddled mess of sound. If I have someone directly in front of me, one radio only going into my left ear, and one radio only going into my right ear, my brain can handle conversations without feeling too overloaded.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#284

Post by superkuh »

ripdog wrote: post #186
superkuh wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The employees and their contractors and related at Discord corporate can see your IP address too and much more. Luckily it won't be Microsoft owning it as they could correlate against their software empire too. But Discord does have significant profit motive to collect information about you. In fact, their entire proprietary protocol, client, and restriction of clients is based around ensuring this.

He wasn't talking about mass data collection used to sell advertising, he was talking about a the admin of a server with maybe a dozen users having access to his IP, which potentially could be used for DDOS or geolocation. The kind of 'data collection' which could have visible impacts upon his life.

And I am saying that there are human people working at companies too. The only difference is that if they cause you indirect harm their legal liability is abstracted enough you can't do anything.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#285

Post by hyperpl »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #275
sbagel wrote: post #228

Discord does not give users a choice to opt-out of their wildly invasive data collection methods including logging executables running on your system while the desktop client is open, not just games. This data alone is very valuable. Comment from a 2019 support thread "I am pretty flabbergasted that people aren't making a bigger deal of this than they are. Discord actively monitors your executables, but the larger co…

Why would you install the desktop app? Isn't it Electron anyways, so aren't you basically running the same thing as you would in the browser, except now you've replaced the exceptionally well sandboxed, trusted browser with an outdated, unsandboxed browser and have given an app that doesn't need this access to your entire system?

Not sure why this is downvoted (if that's what the light gray represents). I wouldn't install any Electron app when an app works equally well within a browser like Firefox, doubly so in my case considering my Firefox is running in firejail already.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#286

Post by remram »

O_H_E wrote: post #226
fish45 wrote: post #77

Speaking as an 18 y.o. doing my first year college online, I wouldn't have made it through quarantine without Discord. I've a server with my high school friends and since Discord lowers the barrier to join a voice call so much it's super chill to just hop in a channel when doing homework or playing a game or whatever else, and anyone else who's free can join. I really wish there were competition, but there's nothing…

I [and household] are now in a similar situation. At first, students got to use what they were already use to, but when the pandemic got painful and everybody flooded to online, thing went crazy. Discord is freaking enormous in that area rn. Servers for High school classes, university cohorts (ie. CS'24), university programs (ie. Electrical Engineering), There is even a course I am taking at uni where we have an offi…

One thing that would probably be welcome is some builtin support for threads.

On the Python discord for example, there is a system of help channels which get assigned to the first person talking in it and returned to the pool after 30min of inactivity or once the problem has been solved. A bot keeps a few channels in a "free" pool, marks some as "occupied", and moves the surplus to a "dormant" section for UX purposes. Newcomers often get confused and ask questions in already-occupied channels, etc.

Bots make this possible but it's never as good as the threading that exists in Slack or Zulip. I'm sure any sizeable organization (like a University) is running into this as well.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#287

Post by ognarb »

steveklabnik wrote: post #278
Jonovono wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you feel is missing from Discord?

For me: per server avatars and/or usernames. Or even some sort of straight-up multi-account support. Being able to choose a display name upon joining a server, rather than after, would be a great start.

You can have a peer room username and avatar in Matrix. It's just a very hidden feature.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#288

Post by nkrisc »

fish45 wrote: post #77

Speaking as an 18 y.o. doing my first year college online, I wouldn't have made it through quarantine without Discord. I've a server with my high school friends and since Discord lowers the barrier to join a voice call so much it's super chill to just hop in a channel when doing homework or playing a game or whatever else, and anyone else who's free can join. I really wish there were competition, but there's nothing…

Teamspeak and Ventrilo were used similarly back in the 00s. I was part of different gaming communities and people would hang out in channels and hop in and out. The only difference was we had to use forums for chatting and posting images.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#289

Post by paulryanrogers »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #272
upofadown wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't Mumble be closer to the described use case?

Not really. Discord has both text and voice (and IIRC video) chat. Mumble is voice only, and the UX is... dated.

Second this. Recently setup Mumble server and it's clearly meant for non-visual use because of its gaming roots. Which is good when you want TTS with chat but annoying to learn and navigate. I suspect it's primary use case is push to talk voice communicate in games.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#290

Post by jbm »

curiousgal wrote: post #9
donkarma wrote: post #3

Considering the state of Teams they really needed Discord for their amazing technology of actually being semi responsive

Been using Teams for school for two years now and have zero complaints.

Been using Teams for 6 months, it's awful.

Being asked to log into another Teams instance, for example, results in baffling issues; I had to switch to the web version and that only works sometimes.

Turn off a VPN? Be prepared to suddenly, without warning, have a 10-15 minute period where people are messaging you and you don't get any of them. (I am talking about Teams instances that do not depend on you being behind a VPN, more on THOSE after)

Video conferences are terrible. I keep getting invites without the Teams URL attached because of UI issues, and worse, there are situations where I can't even access the URL I am given.

Low quality Enterprise security teams often ruin Teams installs. For some customers I work with, I am not even able to upload an image to a group chat. (Not a meme mind you; screen shots). "Sure that's the price of a locked down / professional service" you may say, but for some obscene reason, I am able to use Giphy in these chats.

And many other miscellaneous issues (degraded experience on Firefox, authentication headaches w/ AD Azure, etc..)

As far as I am concerned, this is MSFT's fault since they sold a product that can be configured into complete uselessness for its purpose (sharing information).

(Disclaimer: I own MSFT stock and generally like their direction but the execution for this and Azure DevOps is seriously lacking)

Post reply on HN