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So Long, Twitter and Reddit

andrewkelley.me

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Re: So Long, Twitter and Reddit

#61

Post by RaisingSpear »

seanhunter wrote: post #34
RaisingSpear wrote: post #22

> Discord has been decent for a while. I suspect enshittification will commence soon Discord was enshittified years ago. It's just that nothing really changed recently, unlike Twitter/Reddit, so it's not making the news. You've got a platform that's completely inaccessible without an account. Acquiring an account often requires handing over a mobile number. And Discord can then ban you arbitrarily, despite never post…

Goodness knows you can validly critise discord for any number of reasons but the time taken to log in on an untrusted device isn't really one that resonates with me. I have done this recently and the process took all of 5 seconds. Here's the process if you have a phone and want to do it fast: 1. Click login on discord on the untrusted device. It shows a qr code next to the credentials box. 2. Log in on phone (which f…

Good to know. I refuse to let a bunch of things touch my phone (Discord doesn't exactly have a stellar privacy record), so have never tried, but for those that don't care so much about privacy, it sounds reasonable.

But hopefully you can at least understand how unnecessarily convoluted Discord makes the process if you don't have or want to use a phone.

Re: So Long, Twitter and Reddit

#62

Post by bytefactory »

SubGenius wrote: post #10

> Discord has been decent for a while. I suspect enshittification will commence soon, so we should be on the lookout for an alternative over the next five years. For folks who want to move their communities to a publicly accessible Matrix server, I'm building Shpong [0]. Heavy WIP obviously. The trend of moving to closed-off spaces is bad for the open web. I'm hoping we're able to reverse it, despite everyone wanting…

This looks amazing! I'm somebody who quite enjoyed the Discord interface, although I don't use it much. I'm glad you're building something like this, it'll definitely scratch the need for an open alternative to Discord.

I completely agree about the trend of closed-off spaces being terrible. I'm heartened by the number of open-source and open platforms that have picked up the mantle.

Re: So Long, Twitter and Reddit

#63

Post by sundvor »

kemayo wrote: post #6

> Discord has been decent for a while. I suspect enshittification will commence soon, so we should be on the lookout for an alternative over the next five years. Discord's fine for what it is, but it's also a fundamentally different thing than social media or forums or a support-site. Projects that try to funnel everything onto Discord are (a) losing anyone who thinks joining an 800 person chatroom doesn't sound fun,…

I manage a Discord server for a few friends, topics are gaming related (DCS World primarily, but also Star Citizen and iRacing) - could easily be other hobbies.

I have structured the channels to support the learning journey that DCS is.

I absolutely love it, so incredibly useful. It's very easy to share resources, pictures - anything. The voice chat is also superb, just hop into a fixed hangout channel that anyone can join. I'll often just go into one early in the night, so that my friends (all over the world) can see me and hop on if they want.

I have joined server vendor specific discord servers, as well as racing league ones. The fact that they are invitation based is perfect.

Furthermore the scan on screen QR code with phone to sign in on desktop merits special mention, another massive usability win.

I specifically love how siloed it is or can be. Sure there is a lot of fluff they're putting in (game stuff in the message editor etc) which I just ignore; I can only hope they never change this core design and turn it into way more than it is now.

(Have been using it heavily since 2020, but started before then - fwiw. It absolutely helped me get through some of the strictest lock downs in the western world. Oh and I'm in my fifties, been on computers since the Vic20. I pay for Premium, and also for my early teenage son who uses it with his friends).

Re: So Long, Twitter and Reddit

#64

Post by edejong »

judge2020 wrote: post #52
robobro wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss IRC, man... a Discord guild is a poor man's IRC server... a Matrix homeserver is a rich man's IRC server...

a Discord guild is a poor man's IRC server.. that natively supports emojis, stickers, embeds, non-ip-leaking voice chat, screenshare with audio, rich permissions, avatars, attachments oh, and chat history. Because everyone loves needing an irc bouncer to be able to assimilate the context of the active conversation when they log in.

It’s it interesting how many meaningful conversations we’ve all had on IRC, lacking all those essential features you mention?

Re: So Long, Twitter and Reddit

#65

Post by numpad0 »

kemayo wrote: post #6

> Discord has been decent for a while. I suspect enshittification will commence soon, so we should be on the lookout for an alternative over the next five years. Discord's fine for what it is, but it's also a fundamentally different thing than social media or forums or a support-site. Projects that try to funnel everything onto Discord are (a) losing anyone who thinks joining an 800 person chatroom doesn't sound fun,…

Glad I wasn't the only one uncomfortable with Discord, especially in the vicinity of that point (a). To me, Discord feels tainted with weird masculism or toxic kind of gamerism that isn't my kind.

Re: So Long, Twitter and Reddit

#66

Post by thrwjud »

>Nuance and subtlety is impossible to distinguish from dog whistling. Most users don't understand that by "dunking" on someone, they are actually promoting the content. In summary, it gave me a darker feeling about the world in general, and in exchange, did not offer much to enrich my life. [...] And finally, I have more nuanced conversations with my wife and friends about politics and other hot topics, without worrying that I'm going to come off as dog whistling or naysaying.

It sounds like the problem with social media for OP is between the ears rather than on the screen.

Re: So Long, Twitter and Reddit

#67

Post by hardwaresofton »

raincole wrote: post #59
hardwaresofton wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did, Discourse is basically just a plain old forum -- with a somewhat newer coat of paint. > Is it the lacking of "one-click setup" forum services? I'm a bit biased (since I run a tiny managed service provider) -- would you create a forum if it had one click setup? Services like Discourse and NodeBB do offer this kind of service, so it seems like the option is there.

> would you create a forum if it had one click setup? The only reason I'd be hesitate to create a forum is that I think people (not me) might actually prefer Discord and I'm doing a disservice for them. So it's like Catch 22.

Ah I could see that -- I personally think that forums and Discord are actually different mediums, for different purposes.

Slack/Discord/Mattermost/Matrix is great for frenetic conversation and water cooler chat, but it just feels like history and long term knowledge doesn't get built easily there. It's like the difference between old school forums and IRC -- people generally didn't expect much from ephemeral conversation on IRC.

The one exception might be Zulip -- their threaded chat model is actually a blend and is very effective at creating enough mass around a single conversation (i.e. a thread) and making it trackable. That said, I still think forums are a different beast.

Re: So Long, Twitter and Reddit

#68

Post by gabereiser »

judge2020 wrote: post #57
gabereiser wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okta is a SaaS offering that does that. Maybe not fraud. What is fraud in this context? Spam? Check. Lost passwords? Check. Let someone else deal with auth? Check. All of those are either services or software you can host yourself that provide auth and user management, OTPs, 2FA, email recovery, forgotten passwords, single-sign on, and more.

> Spam? Check In what way? verification emails don't count. And for many servers where spam and troll accounts is a problem, custom bots and new member screening features deal with this - since they don't want to spend every waking moment staring at the server and banning people who join and immediately cause issues.

Okta recently partnered with a few folks to tackle this. They published a thing [1] in April. Fraudulent registrations and bots are being screened using Shape which was acquired by F5 [2]. I'm not saying this problem has been solved, but it's an area of active concentration. For most folks, the offerings are more than adequate. For the top saas or platforms, you'll probably always have this issue as you're a lucrative target.

[1] https://sec.okta.com/shareddetections

[2] https://www.f5.com/cloud/products/bot-defense

Re: So Long, Twitter and Reddit

#70

Post by jakecopp »

> I have a Mastodon account, but I don't love it, for the same reasons I didn't like Twitter. In addition, I think that way of consuming content is generally like watching mainstream TV or listening to radio with ads. You're letting a bunch of people who aren't really that important to you, or qualified to do the job, be the content curators for you.

Isn't that the opposite of Mastodon? The _default_ Mastodon home feed is only people you explicitly follow and posts they re-share (and it's easy to hide re-posts if desired). There is no suggested content.

It's basically as close as social media can get to an RSS feed.

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