Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Discord Alternatives, Ranked

taggart-tech.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 489 posts

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#281

Post by riskable »

Everyone talking about this seems to completely forget WHY everyone's using Discord: It's fun.

Discord has animated (custom) emoji, loops videos properly, silly bots, and fantastic voice chat with screen/game streaming to a HUGE amount of simultaneous users. The end user can pick and choose who they want to watch on-the-fly while remaining in the same voice channel.

The entire concept of a business using Discord for anything other than customer engagement is completely orthogonal to the very basis of the platform. It was built for gamers! It caters to GAMERS.

Repeat after me: DISCORD IS FOR GAMERS! People who want to have fun playing games with their friends. Any other use of Discord is secondary.

If you want to replace Discord with an alternative you must target gamers. What do gamers want? They want to have fun! They want a frictionless voice chat and super easy screen streaming. They want silly emoji and looping gifs in chat.

They don't care that much that the search doesn't work well. They don't care that it's centralized. They don't even really care much about this age verification check!

I swear, more teenagers (and younger) will scam the age verification system to see adult content than actual adults using Discord. Because the adults aren't there to see "adult content".

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#282

Post by ahhhhnoooo »

BowBun wrote: post #279

My take: Discord will slowly enter the arena with the likes of Google, MS, Meta, Apple, Valve for their massive user network. The amount of resources needed to sustain free offerings for so long make it a nearly insurmountable moat for others to compete. Even if one could reproduce their tech (which I doubt, they are top-tier), individuals would drown under hosting costs. They've positioned themselves incredibly well…

Discord's technical moat is not that large. They've done well, but it's not the same as something like Google or Microsoft or valve.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#283

Post by cheeseomlit »

BowBun wrote: post #276
cheeseomlit wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most people use Discord for its community features and being able to join massive servers with 1+ million people Do they? Personally I've never willingly joined one of those massive servers, only when forced to by some projects that refuse to host their content anywhere else- and its always a terrible experience. 99% of my discord usage is just a group chat with my IRL friends, so when looking for alternative I dont…

They have >200 million DAUs and guesses say they have >10K servers with >10K users. Assumptions from a tech crowd who were used to IRC should be taken with a grain of salt. Now if we're just looking for alternatives for ourselves, cool. But I think the reality is that most normal users do fully lean into the social aspects of Discord. A server like Marvel Rivals has literally millions of users. Players join that disc…

I'm just questioning the 'most users' aspect- just anecdotally among my 'normal' peers those big servers dont seem like the most common use case. For every big million-user server there could be a million private 10-user servers

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#284

Post by TechSquidTV »

riskable wrote: post #281

Everyone talking about this seems to completely forget WHY everyone's using Discord: It's fun . Discord has animated (custom) emoji, loops videos properly, silly bots, and fantastic voice chat with screen/game streaming to a HUGE amount of simultaneous users. The end user can pick and choose who they want to watch on-the-fly while remaining in the same voice channel. The entire concept of a business using Discord for…

They dont just not care that it's centralized, that's the only option they would ever entertain. A very sad truth is people HATE decentralization.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#285

Post by opan »

riskable wrote: post #281

Everyone talking about this seems to completely forget WHY everyone's using Discord: It's fun . Discord has animated (custom) emoji, loops videos properly, silly bots, and fantastic voice chat with screen/game streaming to a HUGE amount of simultaneous users. The end user can pick and choose who they want to watch on-the-fly while remaining in the same voice channel. The entire concept of a business using Discord for…

This is an interesting angle, actually. For me, IRC is the most fun out of the big three (free software chat protocols) of IRC, XMPP, Matrix. The variety of bots and their commands (I never see bots on XMPP or Matrix, kinda odd), being able to post shell command output into my chat window easily (e.g. `/exec -o figlet meme`), the culture around stuff like slapping people with a fish, pasting popular ascii stuff like the shrugging guy or the denko face. I don't really have anything like that stuff on the other platforms. They seem a bit sterile by comparison now that I think about it. I wonder how much is technical and how much is cultural. It's probably way easier to write an IRC bot than bots for the others.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#286

Post by saintfire »

ses1984 wrote: post #273
dizhn wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am the person who asked for the source. 1) I do not believe for a second that Meta would actually implement something that would remove their own ability to read those messages. 2) We do not have any proof that their claimed e2e chat service is actually compromised. The matter of fact tone of the parent made me think there was some actual proof or at least something more than speculation. That's why I asked for a s…

I am not sure I understand what you’re saying. If meta can read those messages, then they’re most definitely not e2e encrypted. Given the historical record, you would be a fool to assume that any service run by a public company isn’t fully tapped by US intelligence agencies. They’ve been tapping anything and everything they can get their hands on, why stop at whatsapp? Let me flip it around: what proof do you actuall…

You didn't actually flip it around at all.

They're stating they doubt Meta would ever allow full e2ee, which is not evidence but simply speculation.

AND

They asked for a source/evidence to prove their hunch is more than speculative.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#287

Post by hiccup_socks »

TechSquidTV wrote: post #284
riskable wrote: post #281

Everyone talking about this seems to completely forget WHY everyone's using Discord: It's fun . Discord has animated (custom) emoji, loops videos properly, silly bots, and fantastic voice chat with screen/game streaming to a HUGE amount of simultaneous users. The end user can pick and choose who they want to watch on-the-fly while remaining in the same voice channel. The entire concept of a business using Discord for…

They dont just not care that it's centralized, that's the only option they would ever entertain. A very sad truth is people HATE decentralization.

>A very sad truth is people HATE decentralization.

no, people hate friction.

it just so happens that most/all decentralized things have more friction than centralized ones.

99% of people do not give 1 shit in either direction of centralized vs. decentralized. they just want an app that is easy and "just works".

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#288

Post by aunderscored »

Gareth321 wrote: post #86
dokyun wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saving logs is gross, chats should be ephemeral. In any case there's HistServ and IRCv3 /chathistory nowadays, so if you really want it you can have it. That all the minute garbage everyone posts is preserved forever in an unfiltered state I think is a root cause of the mental degradation that results from using Discord: kids don't have anywhere to 'post into the void' anymore. Preserving past events and relationship…

I wanted to disagree but I really miss IRC internet. Saving everything we ever said online was a mistake. We need to focus on ephemeral chat making a comeback.

IRC still exists at a semi large scale. If you're looking to return

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#289

Post by ahhhhnoooo »

DivingForGold wrote: post #175
voidUpdate wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't kick people with mental illnesses off the internet. I barely have anyone to talk to as it is

Good one !

The number of people with mental illness is estimated at over 20% of adults in the U.S.

I strongly doubt that was a joke.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#290

Post by orwin »

cheeseomlit wrote: post #237
popcar2 wrote: post #222

I was considering making a similar list since I was very interested in checking out alternative chat programs, but I have to say this list isn't that good. A lot of the alternatives here aren't ACTUALLY Discord alternatives. Most people use Discord for its community features and being able to join massive servers with 1+ million people, follow news, talk in forums, etc... It also has a lot of features people hand-wai…

>Most people use Discord for its community features and being able to join massive servers with 1+ million people Do they? Personally I've never willingly joined one of those massive servers, only when forced to by some projects that refuse to host their content anywhere else- and its always a terrible experience. 99% of my discord usage is just a group chat with my IRL friends, so when looking for alternative I dont…

Any multiplayer game that doesn't have an integrated matchmaking have _big_ discord servers. Basically most paradox games, civ5 and civ6, probably others. All the organising that used to happen on forums now happens on discord servers
Post reply on HN