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Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

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Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#341
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…

Maybe in 2019 it was different but you can disable almost all of it in settings. https://i.judge.sh/caring/Derpy/Discord_AsIcI0l9B8.png

These options do not disable executable logging. That information is still collected with all data collections options disabled.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#342
post #339
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

okay oldie... when I was in high school if you wanted to talk to your friends while playing games with them you both needed a second phone line, so your 56k modems could use the other line to play Doom

Why would you subject yourself to that? Just have them come over and help you carry your heavy tower and even heavier CRT to LAN at their house, even if it’s a mile away (me and friends literally did this in Fremont, CA - though I believe it might have been a bit less than a mile)

I hosted a LAN party for my friends because I wanted to practice setting up a small network. It’s funny to think that was once semi-challenging.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#343
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'd make a fortune by providing Discord as an in-game communications solution/integration for commonly used game engines such as Unreal/Lumberyard. Make it free up to 1000 concurrent users, then $x/MAU at plateaus /w reduced rates + $ for extras such as white labeling. The current in-game Discord overlay is an end-user 'hack' by comparison. Games/applications are notorious for limited/locked-in communication syste…

> commonly used game engines such as Unreal/Lumberyard This is just such a bizarre statement. To exclude Unity while including Lumberyard in the condition of "commonly used game engines" makes zero sense. Unity is well known to be one of the most used game engines. Lumberyard in contrast has (according to wikipedia) has a single released game.

Honestly forgot about Unity - it wasn't a jab, been a long day!

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#344
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has trouble with UI design and it only got worse. Think about the "help" buttons that are on win system preferences, instead of directing you to the option they send you to google or bing. It's ridiculous.

UI design? Teams has no UI design, but haphazardly aranged buttons that are hard to spot. I can't describe how bad of experience it is to use. How does a corp that actively pushes their users/clients into using Teams makes no UX effort.

I hoped that getting vaccinated would make me love microsoft more, but the teams UI is just so bad.

Not to mention the pain that is moving between office 365 apps.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#345
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The voice chat rooms reminds me exactly of this program called Ventrillo or “vent” as we used to call it back when I was in high school. I’m officially old! https://www.ventrilo.com/

okay oldie... when I was in high school if you wanted to talk to your friends while playing games with them you both needed a second phone line, so your 56k modems could use the other line to play Doom

When I was in high school if you wanted to talk to your friends you'd meet at a parking lot and do burnouts.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#346

As a 30 something, I have been using Discord for a few years now. Like many long-term users, I started out being a member of gaming-affiliated servers and now, I am a member of numerous technology and cryptocurrency/blockchain related servers as well as gaming (but not primarily). Many of the big Twitch streamers have Discord servers and special roles for paid subscribers as do many content creators on Youtube (espec…

Teams is surprising OK compared to WebEx or Skype or Facetime these days. I ever run Teams on my Mac just fine. So I guess YMMV but it's been fine. Discord hasn't grabbed me (but I can't play any video games without getting motion sickness so there's that).

Teams is one of those "Good Enough" at most things suites from MS... It's not the best at anything it does, but in aggregate does more than most of the others. It's also already paid for by Office365 subs in many businesses, so kind of a no brainer to use it.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#347
post #70

So what is Discord's path to profitability? They tried selling video games and closed the store not too long after launching it. Nitro/Server Boosts definitely don't come close to the cost of operation.

I'm pretty sure their "path to profitability" is actually intimately related to the fact that it is free to use.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Try using Teams for school and work with different user accounts - and contrast that with the experience on e.g. Slack where different places managed by different organizations just work.

This is where some of the alternative electron wrappers become useful. I agree that it's pretty bad. Not fun at all when you accidentally join an external chat under your work account.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#349
post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe in 2019 it was different but you can disable almost all of it in settings. https://i.judge.sh/caring/Derpy/Discord_AsIcI0l9B8.png

These options do not disable executable logging. That information is still collected with all data collections options disabled.

I think you misunderstood what's sent to their servers in that case - see my other reply[0]. Now you might still consider this spyware (the EFF did classify this sort of scanning as spyware in 2005 [1]) but it looks like this is the status quo for anything that's not a game store to do running game detection.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26884448

1: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2005/10/new-gaming-feature-spy...

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#350
post #2

What about Discord besides network effect makes it a desirable holding? Do they have any technological advantage?

The UX and featureset of Discord is impressive. The UX in particular is superior to Slack, Teams, or any other modern chat application I've used. I'd like to move my group to Matrix, but Element (fka Riot.im) is nowhere near as polished or user-friendly as Discord.

My company is chugging the team’s koolaid, and there are tons of problems, but its integration with Sharepoint and onedrive will be hard to match. We’re not even supposed to keep any file locally anymore, everything in onedrive or Sharepoint, since Microsoft gives unlimited storage in our plan. All outlook meetings automatically have a teams link. Discord is better across the board in what it can do, but MS has a stranglehold on business because of excel and outlook. Teams is a throw in for MS and it’s hard to beat free.

I used to prefer trello to what ms offers for project management, but then you’re leaking your data and documents outside of the ms system which weakens security. This didn’t used to be a problem because MS was equally as suspicious.

However, most companies no longer want their own in house IT solutions and will just take everything that ms offers, and hand all data to ms.

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