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PSA: Don't base your business around Discord.7yr account banned for posting ASNs

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Re: PSA: Don't base your business around Discord.7yr account banned for posting ASNs

#91

Post by posguy »

ivanmontillam wrote: post #83
MichaelZuo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, which is why Discord charges much less then the several hundred dollars per year per seat that Microsoft does? What is the complaint here, that they're offering a much cheaper service with less credibility?

The complaint here is that Discord is too popular among a generation of young business owners that put their livelihoods on the line in such an unreliable service, business-wise. Discord's marketing is too powerful for these business owners to consider safer, more reliable alternatives. Same story with Stripe, and similar services that cut lifelines with no recourse other than outcry in public forums like HN and Redd…

If your planning to use services that are ban happy like Discord, Stripe and ilk, make sure to document and communicate a fallback plan.

For example, ensure you have a backup email address for those you communicate with on Discord, and convey an alternate communication method (Meet us on Matrix at XYZ!), or on the payments side plan on how to handle a PAN Data Export with a pre-selected vendor that is experienced in ensuring Stripe exports this data to them. From what I have heard, nearly half of all data exports from Stripe fail to occur, so you need to be your own advocate to ensure the stable hosting of your payment card data.

Re: PSA: Don't base your business around Discord.7yr account banned for posting ASNs

#92

Post by [deleted] »

bottiger1 wrote: post #80
Earwig wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From googling your username, it sounds like you are connected to Skial, the TF2 server? So I'm guessing you posted ASNs of (in your words, basically ISPs) of some players on your server, indicating generally where they live. Was it connected to specific people? I can see why Discord would consider that private info.

It was just a list of ASNs. There was no other information that would allow you to connect them to a user. And it was also not "malicious" as described by their email to me.

[deleted]

Re: PSA: Don't base your business around Discord.7yr account banned for posting ASNs

#94

Post by mdwalters »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #63

So discord is something I use for voice-chatting and shitposting with friends, typically while also playing video games. Can anyone tell me why they would ever use it for anything remotely serious? Can you tell me why you'd want to stake your livelihood on a walled garden designed for video game voice chat and sharing rickroll videos? Not only that, I can't take seriously a business that uses discord. Like, what are…

Not a "buisness," but the project I volunteer on used to bridge to Revolt, a FOSS clone of Discord. The Revolt server got raided, as my friend, who also worked with the project accidentally leaked the invite, which would lead to the server's deletion. Me and my friend asked the project leader and co-leader to re-bridge to Revolt, I don't even remember what their responses were. My other friend made a hobby project that bridges directly to the project's main product, and that became the de facto Revolt server. My friend then asked me to make a replacement for the bridge with the library I made (for Node.js/TypeScript), as it was faster and stays online longer (sending a websocket message to the server every 15 seconds - the same as the main client) than my other friend's (for Python - the project leader dropped a backwards-incompatible release in the websocket library, so my other friend was pretty screwed).

RIP, volunteer project's Revolt server, 2022 - 2022.

Re: PSA: Don't base your business around Discord.7yr account banned for posting ASNs

#97

Post by dredmorbius »

WalterBright wrote: post #89

It's not just Discord. Don't ever base your business on the whims of another business under which you have no recourse whatsoever.

What would an instance or instances of businesses you do have recourse over?

I'd argue that for many businesses, your advice is effectively impossible to follow, no matter how well-intentioned it is.

Re: PSA: Don't base your business around Discord.7yr account banned for posting ASNs

#98

Post by abdullahkhalids »

dredmorbius wrote: post #97
WalterBright wrote: post #89

It's not just Discord. Don't ever base your business on the whims of another business under which you have no recourse whatsoever.

What would an instance or instances of businesses you do have recourse over? I'd argue that for many businesses, your advice is effectively impossible to follow, no matter how well-intentioned it is.

You ensure that there are multiple businesses who provide you with the same product. So one of them ending business relations with you, doesn't mean the end of your business.

For instance, The Pirate Bay, while being highly illegal, hasn't been shutdown in two decades because cutting them from one webhost or domain seller just means they switch to a different one. I am pretty sure there are hundreds of torrent sharing "services" that started as discord/slack servers and were quickly banned with no recourse.

Re: PSA: Don't base your business around Discord.7yr account banned for posting ASNs

#99

Post by raincole »

gruez wrote: post #30
ivanmontillam wrote: post #28

I've always been wary of adopting Discord, at all. Every time I see a business inviting me to a Discord, I feel like I'm putting myself in a position to be mistreated either by the platform or by the company inviting me. I feel like they don't quite understand sound business principles like Platform Risk. If keeping up the business afloat is your mission as a business owner, why'd you base your business off a platfor…

>Every time I see a business inviting me to a Discord, I feel like I'm putting myself in a position to be mistreated either by the platform or by the company inviting me. I feel like they don't quite understand sound business principles like Platform Risk. >If keeping up the business afloat is your mission as a business owner, why'd you base your business off a platform you don't control? [...] Why is discord any dif…

There is no difference and people saying otherwise are just in denial.

Because their businesses/jobs are so tightly tied to AWS etc, they just tell themselves everything is fine. (What else can they do? Quit and be a full time open source developer?)

Re: PSA: Don't base your business around Discord.7yr account banned for posting ASNs

#100

Post by dredmorbius »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #98
dredmorbius wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would an instance or instances of businesses you do have recourse over? I'd argue that for many businesses, your advice is effectively impossible to follow, no matter how well-intentioned it is.

You ensure that there are multiple businesses who provide you with the same product. So one of them ending business relations with you, doesn't mean the end of your business. For instance, The Pirate Bay, while being highly illegal, hasn't been shutdown in two decades because cutting them from one webhost or domain seller just means they switch to a different one. I am pretty sure there are hundreds of torrent sharin…

Diversification is one option I'd considered. It's still difficult to achieve for numerous services, particularly location-based utilities (electrical, water, gas, sewerage, data/comms). For hosting services it's somewhat more tractable, though you're looking at multi-tenancy hosting with distinct providers. For a small organisation, that's going to be a challenge. (It's a challenge for many sizeable organisations.)

Self-hosting is of course another option, and for critical infrastructure probably a worthwhile consideration, though that leaves other risks (e.g., self-owned datacentre outage, personnel risks), and again is challenging for the overwhelming majority of businesses.

Even large business sectors often have very few independent systems / solutions / software providers. Banking, healthcare, and numerous other sectors often have only a small handful, and often a single core supplier of critical systems. Often affecting large organisations as well as small ones.

It's almost as if attacking the recourse rather than the diversification angle might be necessary.

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