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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'

#231

Post by vkou »

serf wrote: post #3

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. People compared the loss of what.cd to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. While I do think that was an exaggeration at the time, I worry about the loss of effort and 'thought-power' when the discord walls get even taller th…

Exactly what knowledge is locked up behind discord's walled garden? As a knowledge repository, it's utter garbage, and always has been.

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

#232

Post by judge2020 »

serf wrote: post #3

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. People compared the loss of what.cd to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. While I do think that was an exaggeration at the time, I worry about the loss of effort and 'thought-power' when the discord walls get even taller th…

There's a different feel for something like Reddit, where you know your messages will be on google next day and easily searchable, and Discord, where technically your messages are still a permanent record, but the difficulty for someone to do something like find everything you've chatted about is much higher with search engines out of the picture. Communities are communities but typically the discussions within them aren't 100% in a reddit-like thread style where each message is an attempt to add to the discussion. This feel means the vast majority of Discord users are participating in chat and talk, while Reddit HN etc. likely follow the 90-9-1 rule (90% are lurkers, 9% will reply, 1% will post original content).

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

#233

Post by pie_flavor »

nodespace wrote: post #165
sc00ty wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on the issues you're talking about? I support a couple of creators and my interactions with the site have been fine, so I'm curious what issues you have with it.

I support a few web novel authors on Patreon, and the website on mobile is so bad that I read the new chapters in my email client. In fact, I am extremely hesitant about starting any new subscriptions because of how bad it is. (and I do not look forward to reading all the catchup chapters on that interface, not to mention trying to search through where I left off on the publicly posted content without getting spoiled…

Seconded. The experience of reading book chapters through Patreon is utterly abysmal. I don't know why Royal Road hasn't added direct integration or at least password protection like pirateaba does yet.

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

#234

Post by vkou »

vvillena wrote: post #204
this_user wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Convenience doesn't require centralization Of course it does, because otherwise you are dealing with a patchwork of different entities operating parts of the federated system. Those entities are most likely operating with different standards and different levels of professionalism. In the end, you are offloading tasks to the end users like figuring out the structure of it all, where to sign up, which instances to j…

> The average user [...] just want things to work. Indeed. This is why convenience means moving all things 'federation' to the background. Remember eDonkey, eMule, and the ED2K network? It started as a federated network, and it added a second decentralized network later on. And it was successful, because users didn't have to care about the inner workings of the product. There were a bunch of external sites acting as…

The problem is that while the users shouldn't care, they should also care (as the Lemmy instance you use does not want to federate with the one discussing CP).

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

#236

Post by judge2020 »

mjevans wrote: post #213
JamesLeonis wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe I'm dating myself I'm almost 40, so I think I can explain this. Discord is turn-key community infrastructure for users and moderators. Bespoke solutions have more incidental complexities compared to Discord with regard to hanging out with others and playing games. This initial gravity is what is pulling in the rest of the Internet communities. VoIP is not easy to set up and use in the best circumstances, and…

Reminder, look to what's happening on Reddit and elsewhere now for what will happen when any service has cornered the market. Even if the current owners say things will never happen, eventually deep enough pockets in search of profit will buy them out and seek that profit.

Sure, but the cost of pre-planning for an event like what Reddit is attempting is high - not just in terms of money, but in terms of how large you grow your community, since (for example) getting someone to join your subreddit is infinitely easier than asking them to sign up for your forum.

Reddit lasted what, over 10 years? And Discord started in 2015 but still seems to know not to destroy communities by e.g. making third-party moderation bots pay to use the service.

It makes a lot more sense as a community to coast on whatever the current most popular free platform(s) are, since it means there's no financial overhead to running the community and the centralized nature means the barrier to entry for prospective communities members is near-zero. Once federation can achieve these things, we'll see communities at least fracture with an arm on the federated site, ready to jump ship once Discord or the next platform starts to sink.

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

#237

Post by vicktour »

spongebobstoes wrote: post #194
vicktour wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll have to look into Matrix. I have been looking for something to replace discord. I have so many gripes about discord but I'll give you the most egregious. I cannot share a screenshot because I have a 1440p monitor and the output file is over 5mb. Sometimes my dislike of discord feels like I am an old man yelling at clouds but then I remember the 5mb transfer limit.

The free transfer limit was recently increased to 25MB iirc, so it should work now. They also have a premium subscription that removes the limit (or makes it so large that I've never hit it).

You are right, It looks like they changed it in April. I was wrong, it wasn't 5mb it was 8mb.

I am glad they upped the cap. I might have to try it out tonight, but I have effectively ditched it as a platform after the user name fiasco. I don't know if I can drop the way the file transfer size limit made me feel. I think you can tell a lot about a company by the way they want to monetize. If they were willing to force a subscription in order to share screenshots what else are they willing to do.

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

#238

Post by ChildOfChaos »

Discord has been a buggy mess lately since they keep pushing all these updates to add further monetisation and breaking core features.

The Mac version is handling calls horribly, often doesn't show connection strength on calls (greyed out), often completely kills Microphone and bluetooth headphones (starts working as soon as you close discord) or slows the entire machine down to a crawl unless you quit out of it.

I had an issue for months with every update, I would need to go into the library and delete the discord folder and reinstall, hasn't happened for awhile now.

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

#239

Post by OkayPhysicist »

pxue wrote: post #21

I'm so confused by the love of discord. Maybe I'm dating myself but Can someone explain to me why it's better than traditional forum plus some VoIP like teamspeak?

It's primary selling point, at least initially, was being much, much better at its job than teamspeak and its ilk. It ate forums because once people had access to adequate (not necessarily good, or even better) text communications built into their VoIP solution, people just used that instead. Network effects then killed the forum.

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

#240

Post by pndy »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #218
pndy wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing counting in favor of discord is the ability to use as many servers as you like with a single account, while you might face forums where links in the posts gets visible only if you register an account. I don't recall seeing any discord server so far that would lock posted content from their users. Tho there are servers that request you to agree on terms and go thru some simple verification to prove that…

It's actually capped at 99, unless they changed it since the time I bumped into that limit.

That's still a big number and you can always leave servers you don't think you'll find useful or enjoyable
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