191–200 of 244 posts
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discord is just IRC in a trenchcoat. what’s to replace?
Voice chat, Video chat, emojis, embedded gifs, smart embeds of links.
- edit/delete messages
- code highlight
- notifications
- fast search that works for everyone:
https://discord.com/blog/how-discord-stores-billions-of-mess...
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I'm blind and I don't like Discord. They implement accessibility well, but they, Slack, Teams and the like have decided that I need to know the sender and time stamp of every message in the chat. Read to me for every message. Jumping between screen sections is annoying because lists and headings are too nineties and the hell with them. Captchas? Should I mention that for some reason they disliked one of my logins and…
I’m sorry to hear that. I know two of the blind users personally and they are active in discord. I agree on captchas. Rocket.Chat was the previous platform. I will file a bug against discord on the timestamp issue. When I worked for Washington State University, one of our tests pre website update, was the developers had to use a desktop with a screen reader and the display turned off. I think we made great websites f…
But I guess I'll just put a blanket over the monitor. New OSes and GUI frameworks behave strangely with no target resolution.
178 points, 145 comments in 2 hours, how did this disappear from the front page ? Anyways, my biggest concern for discord is their unclear business model. They have a ton of free features (unlimited video and voice streaming, unlimited messages, accessible forever, including uploaded files). But they are free. How do they intend to pay for all this ? AFAIK, their paid stuff (Nitro, goodies, and other features I could…
It disappeared because people disagree on whether to upvote or downvote comments. When the HN algorithm sees signals like comments receiving large numbers of upvotes and downvotes simultaneously, it interprets that signal as "this post is controversial." HN explicitly and intentionally downranks algorithmically identified controversial topics in order to reduce the odds commenters behave badly (which is disproportion…
Oh wait, I can't? So it's not really "my" "server"?
I would have a very different take on Discord if I could host a server myself and ensure that what I and my community have built won't be deleted at the whim of the corporation or threat from a lawyer. There's no offline backup where you can just spin everything back up on a different host.
And to those that think an obscure "invite" link will protect you from Nintendo's lawyers, you're living in a different reality than I am. Discord, a registered company with a lot to lose, will throw you under the bus in a heartbeat to lawyers or law enforcement.
The current generation is way too comfortable with technical stuff being abstracted away behind pretty cloud based interfaces and Electron apps.
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Isn't that just Reddit?
No, on reddit you are subjected to the reddit administrators their policies. You have no real control. The user interface is also awful if you're interested in content older than a day.
I'm not the first to say this, but Discord is essentially IRC. It's great for ephemeral chatting and arguably the best platform for that currently. The content on it is not indexed and not discoverable with web search engines. I have been wondering: is it even possible for a platform to fulfill both needs? For searchable, "forum style" discussions, we already have a large accessible platform: Reddit! I genuinely ask…
Let's say the maintainers of Foo and the Debian Foo package disagree on which plugins should be in the default install.
If they have that discussion on a public forum, maybe unhappy people get directed to the conversation, or someone decides to parade a comment around twitter and link it from HN so everyone can see what an asshole you are. Quite possibly with your real name attached.
But if you have the same discussion on Discord? Much harder for people to link to, once it's scrolled off the screen it's practically forgotten, and almost nobody uses their real name. And you don't see people screenshotting Discord posts anywhere near as often as they screenshot Twitter posts (although it is possible, of course).
I can see how an open source maintainer using their free time to provide unpaid support might find the latter more pleasant.
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> it already has chokehold on its users and there is no equivalent. There are plenty of equivalents - Slack, Microsoft Teams etc offer the same IRC + persistent messages + searchable + persistent user accounts & admin + multi-device + image sharing + file sharing + spam protection product. They're just even worse , by most of the metrics that make people hate discord.
If they're worse are they equivalent?
The big difference is in vibes. Slack is unashamedly corporate and would love to sell you premium SSO integration. They could cut out (or offend) the free community tier, no sweat. On the other hand Discord is more gaming aligned, and would love to sell you some premium custom emojis. Offending the free tier users or getting rid of the free tier is a lot less compatible with their business model.
I'm not the first to say this, but Discord is essentially IRC. It's great for ephemeral chatting and arguably the best platform for that currently. The content on it is not indexed and not discoverable with web search engines. I have been wondering: is it even possible for a platform to fulfill both needs? For searchable, "forum style" discussions, we already have a large accessible platform: Reddit! I genuinely ask…
I'm _still_ looking for a Reddit replacement that has sufficient community to make it at all useful, since Reddit died.
It will be as useful as other HN campaigns: stop using WhatsApp and use Signal, stop using Chrome and use Firefox, stop using Twitter and use this OSS alternative with 0.1% of the users, stop using Reddit, stop using Kubernetes, etc.
What's your alternative action? I tend to agree with you, but personally I've tried to stop pointing out problems without providing solutions; failing at something is better than preemptive surrender.
This convenience-driven mindset extends to technical communities on Discord. Creating a server there is as simple as clicking a couple of buttons, whereas setting up a new forum requires significant technical effort and ongoing maintenance, besides $$$. These practical aspects are often overlooked in discussions, hence the failure of all these campaigns lead by a bit too technical people i.e. those who are willing to spend time researching alternatives and enduring their particular pains, and don't care about networking effects.
To challenge Discord effectively, create something equally convenient yet superior (like being indexable by Google). Wait for Discord's deep enshittification and seize the opportunity then. If it's not as convenient, don't expect users to switch. The average user won't invest time in learning new platforms when they can get everything faster and for free elsewhere.