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Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

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Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#171

Post by Lanolderen »

TZubiri wrote: post #58

Reminder that discord is an app for kids. Is your open source code and volunteer run project going to keep kids safe? Is it an advantage that the comms protocols are open and everyone can build bots? Or a disadvantage for this usecase? Also, how is it an alternative for Discord if it's in a whole different jurisdiction?

Not sure about that one. There's a ton of minor edating/esex/grooming going on. You have massive community servers that essentially work like gaiaonline back in the day and tons of servers of 18+ communities. Horny, curious kids will always find a way so I can't blame Discord for not having a magic wand but I would be monitoring its usage if I were a parent. Only 1 of the servers I'm in is what I'd consider kid safe and it's a company's community server.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#172

Post by sph »

smittywerben wrote: post #153
bsenftner wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Group mentality that picks and chooses who is "cool" and then bullies everyone else.

I've never been in a Discord server and thought "Wow this server doesn't do the moderator LARP-ing thing".

My dream is to be invited into a mildly popular server (more than 15 users), than doesn't have 50 channels, 8 separate roles and T&C to agree to. It hasn't happened yet.

An entire generation of bureaucrats and bean counters is learning the ropes on Discord.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#173

Post by NullifyNAN »

jorvi wrote: post #159
roenxi wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also spot "That’s the website, you can’t scroll further." in large, helpful letters. These people seem to have a pretty solid sense of humour. Mild enough it is difficult to take offence to, playful enough to add character. Hope they do well; I dislike closed source chat programs.

Rather than open or closed source programs, let's have interoperability. Then everyone can choose. I believe Facebook was aiming for something like that with Threads, and was playing to have WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger be open to a specific standard as well? I fondly remember the days of Pidgin and Adium..

This is literally the old Microsoft playbook for destroying open source software. “Embrace, extend, extinguish”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents

They did it with XMPP and Windows live messenger in the 2000s.

At the end of the day these companies have no incentive to be responsible stewards of open protocols. The moment they have a tough quarter they’ll eviscerate it if it means they’ll make a buck.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#174

Post by Ukv »

concerndc1tizen wrote: post #112

What do people find upsetting about Discord? It's free, there's no ads, it's reliable, it has many established communities, it's cross-platform and even works in the browser, supports voice chat and screen sharing. What more could you ask for? Or, are you asking for too much? What I mean is: What innovative functionality is missing to such a degree, that if it was introduces, would make people abandon Discord?

Many platforms have followed the trend of first offering a legitimately good product to build up a userbase, then squeezing out profit with increasingly anti-user changes, exploiting the fact it's difficult to switch (network effect and intentional lock-in).

It's not impossible that Discord stays more or less as it currently is, with a few features locked behind its paid subscription but generally a good experience, but it seems prudent to have a backup option for if/when things go further downhill.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#176

Post by fazeirony »

bsenftner wrote: post #129
Mashimo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is where enthusiasm is met with "bad girls" energy. What does that mean?

Group mentality that picks and chooses who is "cool" and then bullies everyone else.

i'm on a number of discord servers. yes, some have that 'mean girls' vibe but considering the content, i expect that. the more tech oriented ones i'm on...that's not an issue at all.

to me, in general the vibe of a given discord is similar to the general vibe of that topic (i.e some games have terrible, vitriolic cesspools for communities and those discords reflect that. other things, such as one of the rust ones i'm on, reflects that community's vibe which is a lot more wholesome imo).

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#177

Post by JeremyNT »

lordofgibbons wrote: post #47

The biggest selling point of Discord is its insane network effects. There are servers for libraries/frameworks, languages, ai/ml, math, whatever you can think of. And a lot of the adjacent ones will cross-link scheduled events and messages from other servers. I'm really hoping for an alternative. I'm always weary of en-shitification whenever a single platform wins all the users.. like what has happened to Reddit.

I mean from what I can tell a lot of its recent success is simply because Slack is terrible. Most of the discord "servers" I use which aren't actually gaming related would be almost the same on slack, but slack has a less generous free tier.

I don't think discord has much of a real network effect, it's just a good value proposition. When the screws tighten that may change.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#178

Post by Cthulhu_ »

pjc50 wrote: post #132
concerndc1tizen wrote: post #112

What do people find upsetting about Discord? It's free, there's no ads, it's reliable, it has many established communities, it's cross-platform and even works in the browser, supports voice chat and screen sharing. What more could you ask for? Or, are you asking for too much? What I mean is: What innovative functionality is missing to such a degree, that if it was introduces, would make people abandon Discord?

It's very, very badly performing. And yet every time I want to start it, it requires another 15 updates.

Sounds like your average web development project though; frequent releases are a good thing, although I suppose for each individual they'll want to slow it down a bit.

I just wish there were more native applications instead of all the web desktop stuff. But, visual design options and developer availability is a huge factor there. Native iOS designs come the closest to what I'd like to see on the desktop.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#179

Post by Cthulhu_ »

grumple wrote: post #88
bryanhogan wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There really is no other app in this space on the same quality as Discord. Discord was born out of Skype, Teamspeak and similar being so awful to use. Discord took the complaints from these and made a product which was the best version of them all.

Discord has always seemed like a Slack clone with better voice chat to me.

With an emphasis on the gaming space and open communities, whereas Slack focused on corporate and closed communities.

I've been in the Go community for a while and they had to write a bot to get access to it (as Slack works invite only) and iirc had to work with Slack engineers to work with the scale they had. Meanwhile Discord's success is down to it being open, anyone can create a new channel and get instant access to things like voice chat.

Of course, this has its downside, and I'm sure Slack deals with a lot of abuse, ranging from porn to doxxing to it being used as a C&C server.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#180

Post by Brybry »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #140
concerndc1tizen wrote: post #112

What do people find upsetting about Discord? It's free, there's no ads, it's reliable, it has many established communities, it's cross-platform and even works in the browser, supports voice chat and screen sharing. What more could you ask for? Or, are you asking for too much? What I mean is: What innovative functionality is missing to such a degree, that if it was introduces, would make people abandon Discord?

Let me preface this by saying I use Discord daily to keep in touch with friends. It's a great digital campfire where you can relax with people, talk with them over voice and video or just post random stuff. The issue is that Discord has replaced things which it shouldn't have, the internet forums. Discord is the epitome of a golden cage. It is a prison for information, a black hole. I'm not even talking about the abs…

Even IRC was better for data archiving and searching. We usually had local logs we could grep and web-indexed/searchable logs from bots.

It's really insane how much information is on Discord that is both impossible to discover and will silently disappear at some point.

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