Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes' • Hacker News Board

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#211

Post by samstave » Thu, Jun 22, 2023, 5:12 PM UTC

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #193

imtringued wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is actually it. Discord was the first app that could hold a candle to Mumble and it did everything in the browser without having to install a client or run a server. I don't understand the people who don't understand Discord's value proposition. When it was coming out it had basically no competitors. It was obvious as early as 2016 how popular discord will become. It is only now after the pandemic that the compe…

> I don't understand the people who don't understand Discord's value proposition. I think they fall into one of three buckets: 1. They have an extremely strong hatred for Electron and let that hatred overcome any actual thought about the product. 2. They're trying to use Discord for something it's not designed to be. Discord is not a replacement for Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, or any other social media. It is primaril…

4. They, like me, feel the need to engage in various communities less-and-less as they get older. After spending 30+ years sitting in front of a computer I find the need to engage in a "community" far less than when I was young and my Ego had more Vigor.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#212

Post by OkayPhysicist » Thu, Jun 22, 2023, 5:14 PM UTC

ajwilson wrote: post #68

KronisLV wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their app isn't buggy, is easy to use, voice chat and screen sharing just work, and it's extremely easy to onboard yourself -- you don't even need to create an account immediately. It think that Discord is generally good at what it does, except that I never could quite get the screen sharing working - there would never be audio from any software/game that I would be running, no matter what I tried. But a lot of it…

There's a strange 'feature' of Discord where if you share your whole screen, audio is not transmitted. If you share the specific application, audio will be transmitted. I'm not sure why it works like this. It's documented on their website under the 'How do I screen share with Go Live?' section: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/360040816151-G...

Discord captures audio at the application level by inserting a DLL with a hook on the relevant system calls. This works remarkably well, all things considered, but it does have a couple side effects, notably the fact that if you're not streaming at the application level, audio doesn't work (they could probably work around this if they wanted to, but it's basically a natural consequence), and the fact that some applications will become unstable or crash when being streamed. It also requires every anticheat ever to whitelist Discord's DLL.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#213

Post by mjevans » Thu, Jun 22, 2023, 5:16 PM UTC

JamesLeonis wrote: post #121

pxue wrote: post #21

I'm so confused by the love of discord. Maybe I'm dating myself but Can someone explain to me why it's better than traditional forum plus some VoIP like teamspeak?

> Maybe I'm dating myself I'm almost 40, so I think I can explain this. Discord is turn-key community infrastructure for users and moderators. Bespoke solutions have more incidental complexities compared to Discord with regard to hanging out with others and playing games. This initial gravity is what is pulling in the rest of the Internet communities. VoIP is not easy to set up and use in the best circumstances, and…

Reminder, look to what's happening on Reddit and elsewhere now for what will happen when any service has cornered the market. Even if the current owners say things will never happen, eventually deep enough pockets in search of profit will buy them out and seek that profit.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#214

Post by OkayPhysicist » Thu, Jun 22, 2023, 5:17 PM UTC

raxxorraxor wrote: post #62

Filligree wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. Their app isn't buggy, is easy to use, voice chat and screen sharing just work , and it's extremely easy to onboard yourself -- you don't even need to create an account immediately. Love it or hate it, let's not pretend it's lik…

The UI is optmized for the usual ADHD kid on cocaine that really needs every stimuli maximized. The text density is attrocious. I guess they want to copy the Twitch model with microtransactions. Of course that would conflict again with making content actually discoverable. It is nice for chat, but not really for information exchange. I do think that many communities are making a mistake if they solely rely on it.

You can adjust the density of text as a setting. Most people I know use the maximum density option, just like most people use Discord's dark mode. At that level, I don't think you'd want the text much more dense.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#215

Post by HelloMcFly » Thu, Jun 22, 2023, 5:18 PM UTC

mjevans wrote: post #210

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand the people who don't understand Discord's value proposition. I think they fall into one of three buckets: 1. They have an extremely strong hatred for Electron and let that hatred overcome any actual thought about the product. 2. They're trying to use Discord for something it's not designed to be. Discord is not a replacement for Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, or any other social media. It is primaril…

0. They know the value of CHOICE and demand an open protocol that anyone can create a client or server for so that communities can maintain OWNERSHIP over their data and ensure there isn't a single point of failure / man in the middle.

That's a reason to critique Discord, but not a reason to not understand the value proposition that enabled widespread adoption.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#216

Post by dontupvoteme » Thu, Jun 22, 2023, 5:19 PM UTC

IE6 wrote: post #78

serf wrote: post #3

I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. People compared the loss of what.cd to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. While I do think that was an exaggeration at the time, I worry about the loss of effort and 'thought-power' when the discord walls get even taller th…

> I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. Completely anecdotal, but IMHO their app just works and it works well. For instance I used to play an MMO using discord and we had ~72 people in voice chat at any given time and it was flawless (some of our members were 80+ year…

FWIW we used to do 72 people EQ1 raids fine with vent. Although i think someone was paying 5-10$/month for it. Often another 20-30 in some other channels as well.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#217

Post by wmeredith » Thu, Jun 22, 2023, 5:21 PM UTC

Filligree wrote: post #6

serf wrote: post #3

I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. People compared the loss of what.cd to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. While I do think that was an exaggeration at the time, I worry about the loss of effort and 'thought-power' when the discord walls get even taller th…

> I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. Their app isn't buggy, is easy to use, voice chat and screen sharing just work , and it's extremely easy to onboard yourself -- you don't even need to create an account immediately. Love it or hate it, let's not pretend it's lik…

I've been building and designing software interfaces for two decades, and I think Discord's app has a shitty UX. Saying it is easy to use is a statement I find laughable at first, but it makes me wonder: compared to what? CLI apps?

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#218

Post by OkayPhysicist » Thu, Jun 22, 2023, 5:22 PM UTC

pndy wrote: post #97

bovermyer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better than Teamspeak, yes. Better than IRC? Eh, I guess so. But let's chat about that "better than forums" supposition. - Forums are easy for search engines to index - Old threads on forums are easily discoverable - Forums have good threading in general - Individual forums are completely independent of each other (if one goes down, the others don't care) - It's easy to have completely different identities on differe…

The only thing counting in favor of discord is the ability to use as many servers as you like with a single account, while you might face forums where links in the posts gets visible only if you register an account. I don't recall seeing any discord server so far that would lock posted content from their users. Tho there are servers that request you to agree on terms and go thru some simple verification to prove that…

It's actually capped at 99, unless they changed it since the time I bumped into that limit.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#219

Post by dhkk » Thu, Jun 22, 2023, 5:23 PM UTC

serf wrote: post #3

I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. People compared the loss of what.cd to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. While I do think that was an exaggeration at the time, I worry about the loss of effort and 'thought-power' when the discord walls get even taller th…

Because it beat the pants off ventrilo, teamspeak and IRC

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#220

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Thu, Jun 22, 2023, 5:23 PM UTC

mjevans wrote: post #210

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand the people who don't understand Discord's value proposition. I think they fall into one of three buckets: 1. They have an extremely strong hatred for Electron and let that hatred overcome any actual thought about the product. 2. They're trying to use Discord for something it's not designed to be. Discord is not a replacement for Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, or any other social media. It is primaril…

0. They know the value of CHOICE and demand an open protocol that anyone can create a client or server for so that communities can maintain OWNERSHIP over their data and ensure there isn't a single point of failure / man in the middle.

As stated elsewhere in the comments, decentralization is a bug, not a feature, to most people. It adds a layer of complexity that non-technical people either can't or just don't want to deal with.

Though you do highlight "CHOICE" here, so maybe the answer is a set of servers hosted by Discord as we do now, with the option of self-hosting a server.