Discord should be avoided as a communications platform. I don’t see a single point that makes me want to use it.
It has no customization or designing flexibility, you are forced to stick to one design unless you pay for a stupeid & an expensive subscription. Otherwise you need to use potentially unsafe third party tools for it and even those go against Discord’s ToS.
It is a non-private, non-secure and overtly commercialized product that should be put in the bin. But thanks to the virtual monopoly in creating a social platform (also thanks to the tech-illiterate influencers for promoting it) for more than just “Chatting for gamers”, as it was originally intended for. Discord in its current state is nothing more than just a commercial market where you are the commodity. Its not a social platform.
I don’t want to give out my data and message history for some company to sell to be able to discuss about your project on GitHub, or even be able to communicate with you.
The client is garbage as well unless you own a super expensive rig.
I abandoned Discord completely more than half an year ago with the vow of never registering again. I completely shifted my comms to Matrix & Signal. I have not been more at peace since.
If you manage a public project you wish for people to interact with. I request you to at least keep a mirror/bridge on XMPP, Matrix or even Revolt. Please choose something open source, private and secure for the sake of other people.
The client is garbage as well unless you own a super expensive rig.
What are you on about with this? Discord has its criticisms but this is stretching it.
This is not at all stretching it. Discord’s client is very poorly optimized and bloated and it is known since a long time. I could never run it on my hardware with a comfortable experience. Even some of my friends would ask me to look for and provide them older versions of the app because each update would make it laggier for them to use. I don’t live in a First or Second world country with a good paying job. Most electronics are imported here and cost a lot.
Ever look at it’s resource usage? It’s so bloated and resource heavy for nothing more than a chat client.
I don’t deny discord comes with bloat. But the idea that discord needs a “super expensive rig” seems a bit hyperbolic. If you can browse this site, your hardware can probably deal with discord.
I have a 12 year old CPU and I can flawlessly stream video while I play games to my chat group. Discord is doing petty good.
The one and only reason I use discord is because it’s pretty ubiquitous in the tech industry, and I’m a union organizer at a tech company.
Then do better. If you’re a Union organiser, you should know to push the better options rather than kneel to the “WELL MOST PEOPLE DO X” BS.
This is a very juvenile response. If you’re trying to organize people, it’s hard enough to get them to do one specific action, you don’t add in a bunch of other steps that don’t directly contribute to the goal. You want to remove every barrier.
For example, if you want people to sign a petition and you’re going door to door, you bring a clipboard with the paper, pens, and supporting literature. You don’t tell them to go to a website, or print out a document themselves. You definitely don’t demand they move to a new neighborhood where the doors are closer together and all at street level.
Discord is bullshit, and I’d love to see everyone move away from it. But you’ve got to keep things in perspective and think about what your primary goals are.
It’s more important to reach people, don’t you think?
Although I agree a bridge would be the nice thing to do
I yet have to find another platform that implements screen sharing with sound in group chats as good as discord does
I wish it was more simple.
The official matrix.org server is completely stripped down and removes a lot of features, and Element as a client is nowhere near as good as anything else.
Element X (with the sliding sync support) does fix the massive issue of absolutely horrifically slow syncing.
None of Matrix comes anywhere near the levels of usability Discord has and nor does Element, Discord’s server-chat model is unbeatable in this aspect.
as much as i agree,
- accessibility is usually pretty horrendous on most matrix clients, none i could find have full, proper reduced motion support, which i need to properly use pretty much any piece of software. discord is far from perfect in this regard, and getting worse and worse, but still miles ahead of most chat apps i’ve tried, especially proprietary ones. I have barely used revolt, and in my memory it’s far worse than discord, and i have yet to figure out how xmpp works…
- none of my friends are on it. while i could convince some to move, here discord is already a quite “niche” chat service, and as a student, i’m more or less required to be on any chat service whatever group project i need to do is organised. same with friend groups, i’m usually not a “group leader”, and join in friend groups that already exist, so it’s much harder to insist on moving anyone over to a new thing no one but me has ever used before
- ux isn’t great. it’s improving, but i’ve had quite a few “key exchange” issues with matrix especially… Also, i found most clients quite messy, but that’s more to personal taste!
I use discord because my two friends use it when we talk every once in a while and its the tool they know and are comfortable with. They don’t live at their computers and do not bother. I don’t use it other than that.
I’m gonna look into matrix though. If no one adopts an alternative, it will never be standard. And matrix is a cool name.
I can send messages, images, files, links, it supports youtube miniplayer for links, and I can start audio calls all in a singular app, and I can control which members of a channel see those messages or access that call very simply with roles. They also store that message history for years and years, idk what the limit is for channels but for DMs I can scroll back at least 5 years no problem. This works both on Desktop and Smartphones. I don’t know of any other programs or apps that do all of that, please correct me if I’m wrong.
