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Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

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

#301

Post by bbradley406 »

ravenstine wrote: post #44
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…

Discord is better than forums for casual chatting and sharing memes. As far as acting as a repo of frequently asked questions to be left open for information to be amended and appended, forums are far superior to Discord. It's surprising that there are people who think Discord is better in every way when, to me, it's clearly not true. I wonder how many of those Discord-type users actually grew up with the chat rooms…

Of course it depends on those running the server and moderating, but most of the larger Discord "servers" I've joined have extensive information as pinned messages.

I did grow up with PHP forums, but they feel a bit clunky now. I'm sure a well-made one with a more modern stack and new features could be superior to Discord for text discussion though.

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

#302

Post by anticensor »

RadiozRadioz wrote: post #225
xattt wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m wrong. My friend group has a Discord server, which I assumed my buddy was self-hosting (like Mastadon). I hadn’t used Discord in the past and was really surprised to keep seeing promos for Boosts and stuff.

I don't blame you for the confusion. Their usage of the term "server" is extremely misleading. Should have called them "guilds" or something like they do in their API.

If you actually want to self-host Discord, Spacebar Chat is a third party reimplementation of the Discord protocol for self-hosting https://github.com/spacebarchat/server

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

#303

Post by jjulius »

noirbot wrote: post #286
jjulius wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm just not seeing how this new feature is obviously worse for users where we have to "take it little by little until it's too late". You're acting like Discord is removing features and doing clearly malicious things that we're all just tolerating. Huh? In my first response to you I said, "I'd argue that the improvement for the users is just a byproduct in Discord's eyes". I've never said that this particular move…

Sure, but the long-horizon pessimism is back to what I was saying re: isn't that just being pessimistic about capitalism writ large? I don't think that's a wrong position to take, but it doesn't feel healthy or helpful to look at every banal or even positive thing a company does and immediately jump to "but because of capitalism, they're probably going to ruin it all later on." There's no decision you can't make that…

>Sure, but the long-horizon pessimism is back to what I was saying re: isn't that just being pessimistic about capitalism writ large?

I tend to think that, yeah, more often than not, capitalism ruins good things. The only difference is...

>... it doesn't feel healthy or helpful to look at every banal or even positive thing a company does and immediately jump to "but because of capitalism, they're probably going to ruin it all later on."

... I don't do that for every company all the time as some kind of "blanket take". I take it on a case-by-case/circumstantial basis and, in this instance, Discord's current situation (VC-backed tech company taking losses for user growth but will ofc need to profit at some point) makes it, in my eyes, a stronger candidate for the enshittification path than many companies.

>... at some point it feels like texting your friends every morning with "another day closer to dying." It's not wrong, but why do you feel it's important to bring up?

Because I initially commented only taking issue with someone's use of the word "just" when they said this was "just Discord making it easier to set things up and manage" - "just" is disingenuous because it's obvious that Discord would like (needs?) some of that money.

It would only be the equivalent of waking up and texting my friends if I were to have made my own freestanding comment that said, "Hey everyone, this is enshittification!". I didn't do that - I only used that word once you responded to me and prompted me to expand on my thoughts.

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

#304

Post by jjulius »

noirbot wrote: post #287
jjulius wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm really confused by your attitude that a company giving out a quality free service is some kind of abusive orphanage owner giving out slop to kids here. All I am is pessimistic about Discord in the long-run, as it tries to become profitable, but thanks for putting words in my mouth. I'm very aware of the pessimistic part of my approach to the world and how it shapes my view, and perhaps could even be clouding my…

I'm not putting words in your mouth - you literally referenced Oliver Twist as an analogy for the user's relationship with Discord with us begging for more slop. > 'Please, sir,' replied Oliver, 'I want some more.' > The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head with the ladle; pinioned him in his arm; and shrieked aloud for the beadle. I suppose I'm defensive of Discord because I think they have and are generally acting…

>I'm not putting words in your mouth...

I mean, you are. Literally. I never said Discord was the equivalent of an abusive orphanage owner, and I even explicitly highlighted that this does, in fact, benefit the user. Not only that, but I also did not "literally" reference Oliver Twist, and it feels weird for you to say that I "literally" referenced it when the quote you posted is quite literally not the quote I posted. My quote was, genuinely literally, an Animal House reference[0]. But perhaps I'm being pedantic.

Perhaps I should've been a bit more clear, in that the sentiment I was trying to convey with that quote/comment was more generalized. It's great that we have tools like Discord and others, but if we find that these tools have to become bastardized and user-hostile in order to be financially viable long-term, should they even exist?

>It's grating to feel like you've found somewhere that's doing better than average, and then constantly have people show up and go "yea, but everyone else sucks and it'll probably be bad anyway."

I can see how that can get pretty annoying, but given what we've seen happen to so many tech companies, can you really blame people for having that sentiment? For being burned in a similar manner enough times that we're not really willing to go all-in for a company that has all the signs that it could very easily/likely head down that path? Nobody's trying to stop you from using it, and if it benefits you, go for it. Like I was trying to allude to in my previous comment - fuck what some random chud deep in the HN comments (that's me!) thinks about it. You dig it, that's awesome, go enjoy it! I don't want to ruin it for you, but, if we're having a conversation about this sort of thing then I'm gonna speak my mind.

>It's also that it's not actionable.

Sure it is. It's a reminder to proceed with caution if you're going to use the product. Use it, but don't become so dependent on it that you're lost if the rug gets pulled out from underneath you.

But like I said in a separate comment, I'd be more than happy to eat my hat down the line if it turns out my pessimism is wrong.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jyz8PTWReWo

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

#305

Post by kingaillas »

ravenstine wrote: post #44
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…

Discord is better than forums for casual chatting and sharing memes. As far as acting as a repo of frequently asked questions to be left open for information to be amended and appended, forums are far superior to Discord. It's surprising that there are people who think Discord is better in every way when, to me, it's clearly not true. I wonder how many of those Discord-type users actually grew up with the chat rooms…

I'm old enough to remember anonymous ftp to grab the FAQ text file for various games, typically including a walkthroughs (e.g. the kind of thing now aggregated on sites like gamefaqs: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/msx/918088-final-fantasy/faqs/...)

So I grew up with chat rooms/forums/bbses... and am currently an avid Discord user.

Why? Well the needs of some gaming communities have evolved and Discord solves those problems. I'm in various guilds in an MMO and Discord provides EASY screen sharing, EASY voice comms, lets users with privileges run small apps (typically used to allow voting on a topic, e.g. what raid shall we do, or allow simple registration, e.g. for the raid we voted on we need X tanks Y healers Z dps so click and sign up). There are fancier bots that grab in-game info and show it, letting you check on info without logging into the game, and so on.

I don't see any of this being handled well via chat rooms, forums, etc. In fact I would go so far as to be your counter-example of someone that grew up with all the old stuff and now thinks Discord is in fact a massive improvement, and not just superficially.

Meme sharing is also important since these days, the absolutely dominant way to get two kinds of info across to players quickly (good builds for your chosen character, and simple animated gifs to show fight positioning) are images. Lots of players also make build/fight video guides, but that's a longer investment in time over a simple animated gif showing where to stand and where to move. Nobody (rounded for simplification) reads text guides, in fact some info like how the group has to handle a boss fight, would be difficult to write a text guide for. You know the old saying about how a picture is worth a thousand words?

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

#307

Post by CatWChainsaw »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #202
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…

> you don't even need to create an account immediately Huh? It's extremely aggressive about accounts. This thing literally requires a phone number. Can't even create pseudonymous accounts.

The worst part is that they have some sort of FAQ that asks "what if I don't have a phone/don't want to use my phone number" and Discord's official answer is use someone else's. And although I've never been burned by this, I've seen plenty of anecdotes where changing the phone number in account settings can mess up access to the account, or someone can't make their own account with their own phone number because a friend used that number previously.

To me, that's proof that they want phone numbers for mining purposes more than verification ones.

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

#308

Post by detourdog »

dcow wrote: post #127
didntcheck wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's frustrating is that single sign-on and federated identity is a well, well solved problem, yet we barely use it. Outside of B2B setups, the best we get is "sign in with {Google,Facebook,Apple}". No thanks. And the even more frustrating part is knowing that those logins are implemented with OAuth or OpenID, yet arbitrarily limited to a few megacorps

I also pine for a world where I can put in my own IDP url and login anywhere. But you have to admit that the UX of such a flow is hard to solve for the general user which is why we have crummy “log in with X” buttons.

I got a standalone access controller for my building that uses LDAP for accounts. I have it pointed a 10.6.8 server that resolves to id.cogs.com on my internal network. Long ago I had an OD server acting as the backed for OpenID and all of that pointed to id.cogs.com. I'm trying to recreate that set-up again now. Considering how long Apple has been rolling out Apple ID and they are only now at the point where they may trust the users with their own key-server I think demonstrates that.

When it works it's magic and when broken might as well give up. A backup can always save you depending on the timestamp.

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