cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/17617609
They supposedly can be disabled in settings- but we all know that won’t last. They’re going full Microsoft Skype mode and it’s only a matter of time.
Good. I hope people will move away from it soon. I hate Discord for banning third-party clients and datamining my system for installed apps. So I’ve never really used it.
It does mean I’m excluded from some FOSS projects’ support like Home Assistant but to hell with that :P
Hopefully those FOSS projects will gain some sense as discord becomes more shit and will leave. One can hope.
I never understood how a chatroom took off as a tool to document stuff. Who seriously thinks this is a good idea? 😵
ideally such changes to advertising and the ToS arbitration clause removing consumer rights will help give a lot of the open-source communities a gentle push to get off of discord. It’s become far too central to too many communities and is impossible to search for knowledge.
never allowed 3rd party apps
Facebook used to allow third party apps (e.g. Snaptu started as a third-party app before the acquisition) and exposed most of the functionality via their API, but it’s not really a thing any more after Cambridge Analytica - the API was locked down significantly. You can’t really have it both ways… Allowing third-party apps also allows those apps to scrape and store user info, which is what Cambridge Analytica did.
I’ve only ever used it in browser to limit what it can see on my machine. I was told by one of my coding professors that one of the signs of a virus is if it monitors what apps you’re running, I’ve been cautious ever since of anything that does that (obviously it isn’t the only sign and isn’t instant virus bin, like I have an app that monitors GPU usage and throttles apps to keep from cooking my machine)
this will always happen unless we move to FOSS
Hope we get some comparable options yet, I only know of matrix and that one allegedly has tons of security and performance issues.
Can you list some security/performance/feature comparison between matrix and discord? I don’t have the need for these class of product, but I am trying to get the hype behind discord.
I don’t know about discord issues, the hype behind is it mostly that it’s free, very convenient, feature rich and can easily integrate bots. Its the go-to place to build communities nowadays.
Matrix issues that I read about can be seen here https://telegra.ph/why-not-matrix-08-07 . I haven’t done my own research tho so I don’t know if all of this is (still) true
Mattermost does most of the required discord features. (Pun intended)
Is open source and is selfhost-able. I think there are some SaaS hosters if you need them too.
It’s often not the cost of the software, but the hosting costs, especially on a growing platform.
platforms can be peer to peer too, with maybe a cheaper to host tracker. i think its viable for a chat app, like matrix, for example.
overall yes though, i wonder when lemmy is gonna start having these issues, its still mostly run by unpaid volunteers…
Most of these platforms make no money but have taken huge amounts of VC funding which they have burned through. For the VCs to unload it and cash out they need to show the product can be monetised and them try and shift it before the users leave the platform. Idiot users want all the features of a product developed by lots of talented full time paid staff but don’t want to pay for it themselves so they leap from startup to startup then complain when the inevitable happens while dismissing open source alternatives as inadequate for their needs. Why should we care? I don’t.
While I don’t disagree with the sentiment, the Discord Nitro subscription has been around for a long while. From what I’ve seen using the platform it seems relatively popular. I’d guess adding ads to the free tier is as much about enticing people onto the subscription (which presumably won’t have ads).
Ubtil they go to the Netflix model where users can experience both a subscription and ads at the same time.
I doubt it. Video ads are worth a lot more. Unless they ad them to live streams Twitch style.
I’ve been using Discord almost since launch, and in that time, not a single feature did I find as an important addition to the program. It is now much more bloated with unnecessary stuff, stuff for which they paid those talented devs you mention.
I would have been perfectly content with a one-time payment to use it and it would have worked perfectly well for them with that model if they didn’t get greedy and want to stuff it with random junk to justify a subscription.
I don’t mind paying as long as it’s not a subscription scam for no reason at all.
IRC still rules. No ads in my irssi.
Does IRC do voice nowadays? I think that is the main reason people use Discord
If you mean that in some channels only some people can actually “talk”, I think it depends on the configuration of the channel, but it’s a possibility.
I thought people used Discord because you could have video / audio chats (not sure about this, I’ve used it very sparsely.)
And then there are Open Source projects that use Discord as the documentation repository. Hell is a place on the Internet, apparently.
Discord became popular because it’s a more convenient integration of audio chat for gaming, with text chat: no need to set up a server (like TeamSpeak or Mumble).
People using Discord for official documentation, or bug reporting, are in a circle of hell just slightly below the ones doing the same on Reddit. Community support… they may get a pass.
You mean does the 80s-based protocol that doesn’t even support encryption support voice?
It doesn’t support having messages received while you were offline
IRC supports one and one thing only: N-wise chats to connected clients. That and delusional nerds who like to think they’re better than everyone else. Huge support for that too.
People who actually have sane standards for their instant messaging use the Matrix decentralized chat protocol when they need non-proprietary coms, or revolt
slowly moving myself to https://revolt.chat/.
Its sad since I’ve been with discord since almost '15.
Compared to Matrix, or any E2EE chat, this doesn’t sound good:
we take your privacy very seriously. And with end-to-end encryption coming to DMs and group chats soon
Compared to Discord, or other established voice chat systems like Mumble, this doesn’t sound great either:
We are currently rebuilding the client and the voice server from scratch. The old voice should work in most cases, but it may inexplicably not connect in some scenarios and / or exhibit weird behaviour.
The “app” on Android seems to be just the webapp running in a standalone window.
I’ll concede them the OpenSource and self-hosted factors, and it does look like Discord, but it doesn’t seem like a suitable replacement for average users… yet. Then again, the ads might push them over.
Guess it’s worth to keep an eye on it.
so this Revolt project is open source, which is nice, but still seems to rely on centralized servers. Does it use P2P for voice+video+fileshare so that the original devs aren’t on the hook for insane bandwidth requirements? I can’t see anything about their networking systems in the FAQ or info pages.
I may consider getting my friends to switch sooner or later if it’s more P2P based. But I don’t really want something that runs ALL traffic through central servers, because the bandwidth costs will inevitably just lead to the same situation that Discord is now in.
It’s self-hostable, and they seem to be switching to webrtc-rs, not sure whether with P2P or not:
https://trello.com/c/Ay6KdiOV/1-voice-overhaul-and-video-calling
In 2022, they claimed it was using minimal resources on the server:
https://developers.revolt.chat/faq/monetisation
They also don’t seem to consider federation as a priority, but then again neither does Discord.
Oh cool there’s an Android app, that’s gonna make it so much easier to recommend!
Edit: I just read about how it’s centralized and not encrypted, I’m not sure how this can become anything but Discord except open source and less popular. Matrix + Element seems to cover my use case for a project a bit better, I’ll give that a try.
Just tried it… it says “Running in Chrome”. Seems to be a repackaged webapp.
well that’s no different than Discord already, so net zero change
running webapps in chrome or Electron containers simplifies a lot of development, i don’t like their resource requirements or dependency on Chromium, but I do understand needing to streamline development so devs can work on more important backend stuff.
