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Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

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Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#371
post #335

Discord is easy to use which is why its so popular. Install, pick a name and go. I don't even remember creating an account, just typing in a nick name. Even on Void Linux Musl you can install it via flatpack, scan the qr code and you're logged in with all your servers and channels already there. You couldn't setup an IRC client that fast. My great gripe? No 3rd party clients. It's also massively bloated for my need o…

Technically there are third party clients, they just break tos and can get you banned if you're not careful. Ripcord has a lot of cool features, I just wish I could risk using it.

That's just it, they're so hostile they ban people for trying to use their service. Plus their API changes often enough to make it an annoying game cat and mouse for the devs. There are two discord clients for plan 9, both at one point worked, both are now abandoned. It's not at all worth it.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#372
post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't matter to me that half of the loading messages weren't funny. I could tell from the moment I opened the app that they understood who I was and why I was there. I was there to have fun, and they got me. Now they have started the journey to be all things to all people, and I will not be surprised if they end up as nothing to anyone.

You had fun because of a little bit of stupid jokes during loading? Did that define your experience, or was you experience defined by what you did inside of discord after the loading screen had passed? Why is all this bullshit important to people? Dumb gifs, emoticons everywhere, wannabe cute gamey jokes. If you get invited to a whine tasting party with a bunch of boring stuck up people, but there is a kids-ball-pool…

> Why is all this bullshit important to people?

For the same reason some people will prefer Chuck-E-Cheese vs. a more conventional family restaurant with broader appeal.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#373
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a few examples, for someone who's never used Discord?

https://i.imgur.com/dy13lcm.png The entire app was full of crap like this - it's not funny or quirky, it's practically baby talk.

At least they didn't reference tendies

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#374

Discord is easy to use which is why its so popular. Install, pick a name and go. I don't even remember creating an account, just typing in a nick name. Even on Void Linux Musl you can install it via flatpack, scan the qr code and you're logged in with all your servers and channels already there. You couldn't setup an IRC client that fast. My great gripe? No 3rd party clients. It's also massively bloated for my need o…

> You couldn't setup an IRC client that fast. You can't today, there's no reason you eventually couldn't.

I know there are some attempts to fix those issues in IRC but at this point I'd rather Matrix as it already exists, works, open, is not user hostile (e.g. banned for using an alt client), and bridges to IRC and XMMP.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#375

Discord is easy to use which is why its so popular. Install, pick a name and go. I don't even remember creating an account, just typing in a nick name. Even on Void Linux Musl you can install it via flatpack, scan the qr code and you're logged in with all your servers and channels already there. You couldn't setup an IRC client that fast. My great gripe? No 3rd party clients. It's also massively bloated for my need o…

While discord supports text, the entire purpose of discord from a gaming perspective is voice chat, screen sharing and bot/server automation for players.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some things that could help: - Worker representation on company boards. Meaning that those who work on the product at an everyday level gain influence over the overall direction of the company. - Progressive taxation of corporations to bias our economy towards small companies that are more likely to care about their users, and to encourage more competitive markets. - Regulation to enforce interoperability and/or the…

Those are all interesting and viable proposition, but I would not say they have any relation to the “shareholder model” as you called it in your first post I responded to. All of those proposals, and shareholders, seem like they can co exist.

It's not shareholders that I have a problem with, it's giving shareholders exclusive control of companies. They may seem like small tweaks, but you end up with a very different model.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#377
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What alternatives are there? Worker representation on boards is one example. Imagine if the board of public companies was 50% shareholders and 50% workers. > The most profitable public companies seem to invest quite heavily in long term investments and have long term planning. This does not seem to square with your statement. The most profitable companies yes, but not necessarily the ones making the most money for…

Workers have their own interests that are not necessarily aligned with those of the users/society, such as support working hours only from nine to five on business days, higher pensions and fewer new hires, more job security. If you really want to align the interests of the company with those of the users, you need something like a cooperative where the users are also the shareholders and you have to buy a membership…

I don't want to align the interests of the company with users. I want to align them with society. And I think it's worth noting that members of society are not just users but also workers.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#378
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What alternatives are there? Worker representation on boards is one example. Imagine if the board of public companies was 50% shareholders and 50% workers. > The most profitable public companies seem to invest quite heavily in long term investments and have long term planning. This does not seem to square with your statement. The most profitable companies yes, but not necessarily the ones making the most money for…

> Worker representation on boards is one example. Imagine if the board of public companies was 50% shareholders and 50% workers. You are free to found a company with such a board structure. You are also free to either bootstrap it or crowdsource the necessary capital for it.

I'm also free to give all of my money away to the poor, but that's not going to help solve poverty in any major way because my influence on society as an individual is limited. There can be a much greater benefit in coercing everyone to follow a rule that isn't realised by allowing individuals to choose something.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#379

Discord is easy to use which is why its so popular. Install, pick a name and go. I don't even remember creating an account, just typing in a nick name. Even on Void Linux Musl you can install it via flatpack, scan the qr code and you're logged in with all your servers and channels already there. You couldn't setup an IRC client that fast. My great gripe? No 3rd party clients. It's also massively bloated for my need o…

> Discord is easy to use which is why its so popular.

I found this phrasing subjective because I don't find it easier to use. I tried Discord Web, Desktop & mobile, frankly they are not easier to use for me. I found it confusing because I suddenly need to have a role assigned to me. For that, I have to go through loops and hopping on subchannels to get myself a role for me to be able to have a conversation. One server that have like 5 different subchannel and I have to go through each of them to get a role. After trying to get figure out how to get that for half hour, I gave up. Simply too much work for trying to ask for a help. Discord is not designed AND substitution for general forums. I seen several game developers/publishers trying to tell their Steam users to go on Discord for any issues, requests, anything. I found that convoluted because Discord is not easier to use for first timer and plus there is Steam forum for this.

One thing I can't do in Discord (Slack & Signal included as well) is that I can't have multiple chat windows in my desktop like we can do in Trillan, Pidgin, AIM, ICQ, etc. My work is using Slack and it is a pain in the ass to go back and forth with various channel than having multiple windows for easier access. I prefer Slack over Discord because Slack don't make it complicated when it come to channels.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#380

I have a bad feeling about this. Discord essentially does one thing really well. I don't want to see it go down the way of so many chat platforms trying to be everything and becoming a bloated mess. Recently, they replaced the fun, gamery loading messages with something more "formal". Now it does it's one thing slightly less well. The first of many casualties, no doubt. It makes me despair of business models which re…

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