4 pane comic of dolan on the left and spooderman on the right
pane 1 (dolan): cum join opensurce cummunity!
pane 2 (spooderman): shure! how joyn?
pane 3 (dolan): Here discord! (with discord logo)
pane 4 (spooderman with tears in eyes): y u do dis?
I’m not sure you understand what “objectively” actually means… Care to provide your data in support of your objective conclusion?
Sure.
- FREE with zero maintenance or resources required on my end since day 1
- All messages and uploads are saved and searchable to anyone who joins a discord server. Some of my servers are from 2016 and all 100k messages up to this day are still there with each and every file untouched whenever I search for something. Same thing if I join a new server.
No other app has these two points along with the incredible amount of features and QoL Discord has. This is objectively true.
this is not explicitly true, moderation is still a labor requirement.
Messages get deleted from bans, channels wipes cause problems, sometimes discord just decides people shouldnt exist anymore.
Moderation is a requirement with anything involving people so I don’t see that as a discord specific problem. If anything it’s easier than a forum since I don’t have to deal with spam bots myself for the most part.
The channel wipe thing is fair. You’re right about that.
Good for you, you have a short list of requirements out of a chat service and discord perfectly fills your niche. But different people have different requirements for chat, and they don’t align. And network effects force people who have differing requirements to use the service with the most users which sucks.
For instance here are things that I require from any chat service that I use that discord completely falls flat at:
- Ability to run it on my linux machine without using an electron client (npm is a huge mess of supply chain attacks and I refuse to run any software that is likely to contain dependencies from it)
- Ability to run it on my AOSP phone which does not have any google play services installed
- Ability to write software to back up messages without fear of a company changing their API and breaking my backup system
At the end of the day all of the reasons you stated maybe <1% of people care about and most of the points have nothing to do with the chatting features itself. If I’m honest it’s basically paranoia and fear for the insanely low chance something goes slightly wrong. It’s like refusing to leave your house because you can spontaneously get struck by lightning. 🤷
Whatever solution you’re using I would bet most people would find incredibly annoying to use from a usability perspective. As it would lack the 8 years worth of features and QoL discord introduced.
So we have a philosophical difference and that’s that.
Do you want to alienate users who are banned from Discord or don’t want to use proprietary software?
Yup. I am not giving up that convenience for a tiny fractional minority. They’re the ones wanting to die on a hill over a trivial problem not me.
