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The problem is... There still isn't a clear business model for discord, the advantages of having premium (nitro) are almost non-existing. That's not an excuse f

The problem is... There still isn't a clear business model for discord, the advantages of having premium (nitro) are almost non-existing. That's not an excuse for privacy, I know... They tried to create a small competitor to Steam's game marketplace but it didn't work out. They're back to the drawing table. Honestly, that's actually really good for free users, like myself, because we can simply use discord's wide array of functionalities for free: Seamless audio and video sharing, wide extensibility of the platform through APIs and bots, simple file-sharing, chat persistency, mobile clients + web client, ability to pick server location, codecs, moderation tools...and the best feature in my opinion...their amazing changelogs popups. Honestly security wise it might not be very clear, as per this article, where they stand today, I am still super stoked about every other aspect.

14 7y ago
But how can you remain super stoked by features of a service that may be decrypting your communication in real time? Does that sour the whole thing for you? If they can decrypt our communications I would think the 3 letter agencies would want to get access to it as well.
- throwaway8879 7y ago
  This is actually a good indicator for understanding the issue of privacy/surveillance. There are enough hackers and engineers who care little about being spied, despite understanding some of the inner workings of how the spying is done - as long as the benefits of a free service outweigh the slight privacy-violating annoyances. Now try to understand why the average person cares even less.
  - moooo99 7y ago
    I don't think this is a reliable indicator. When you take a look at the target market of discord, it becomes pretty clear why no one really cares about the data being decrypted. The main audiences for discord are gamers and massive open communities. The first group is unlikely to discuss any sensitive topic via discord and it's not unlikely that a lot of discord users even stream their sessions publicly. The majority of conversations are likely to be game-related and not of private nature. For the huge open communities, encryption doesn't help to improve privacy when everyone can join anyways. If you want to grow a big and healthy community where everyone can join, the 3-letter agencies might as well join the voice channel rather than being the mitm. I haven't met anyone who is using discord as an alternative for WhatsApp, Telegram, etc., from my experience, discord is mainly used for on-topic discussions rather than private communications. And as other comments suggest, there are legitimate reasons why discord might want to decrypt the communications on their end. Plus, I have never seen any claims by discord to be p2p encrypted.
    - uncle_j 7y ago
      There is a massive political community on discord, there are other groups on there such as dooxers, trolls and irl shitposters and other odd groups that are doing naughty things.
- ip26 7y ago
  Depends on what you use it for. Gmail has excellent reliability, deliverability, & spam filtering. On the other hand Google gets to read all my email. Naturally then, I use Gmail for somethings- not for others.
- Kiro 7y ago
  Not OP but I've never used Discord for any private communication. I'm on servers with hundreds of people and anyone can listen to any voice channel whenever they want. It's not really something you think of as private anyway.
sl1ck731 7y ago
I'm not sure why they haven't tried the business communications angle with an alternate branded Slack competitor. As a remote worker on an almost entirely remote team, we would benefit from a sort of voice channel huddle on-demand or even just watercooler chatting. There is something more casual about jumping into a premade voice channel where people may already be chatting than starting a Webex or initiating a Slack call that could introduce more "togetherness". Something with this functionality was on my list when we were evaluating SaaS for our team and I really wanted something similar to Discord. Of course no one would go for it as its branded, but having a forked version that doesn't bear any resemblance should be doable with minimum work.
- sandGorgon 7y ago
  They are vehemently against this. There is still no way to turn ON email notifications once you "unsubscribe".
  - jtl999 7y ago
    I'm not sympathetic to Discord,but talk about (probably) shooting yourself in the foot.
- CoolGuySteve 7y ago
  Yeah my company has the worst time with Skype, but nobody takes you seriously if you mention Discord even though it’s much more reliable and has more features.
  - numlock86 7y ago
    Bring up Microsoft Teams maybe.
    - meowface 7y ago
      Teams is pretty good (and I suspect partly ripped off from Discord), but I don't believe it has the casual voice channel feature the parent wanted. You still have to manually initiate calls, like with Skype.
dyeje 7y ago
Discord trying to take on Epic and Steam to create a marketplace was perhaps the worst move I've seen in the past few years. Steam is entrenched and Epic is printing money. Discord needs to capitalize on its greatest asset: a massive community. To me, the obvious path forward is doing Patreon like features for servers and perhaps trying to break into the streaming market.
- joshschreuder 7y ago
  They have added more streaming features in recent months, so perhaps this is their pivot. Their idea of patrons is boosting servers for perks which is sort of similar but the price of boosting is far higher than Patreon sponsorship and there's no way afaik for servers to customise what the booster gets as reward (the whole server gets the reward)
  - dyeje 7y ago
    I have noticed them pushing the streaming features, and I think it's a brilliant play. Cut Twitch out of the equation entirely, stream and monetize your community directly in Discord. I think it's also interesting in that Discord servers can be private so you open up the possibility of allowing content that Twitch shuns due to its public broadcast nature (e.g. adult content).
- krige 7y ago
  When Discord was making that move, Epic store did not exist, the period when both stores existed was rather short and unevnentful, discord's being on clear decline, epic's not even bare bones and tossing money on any and all early access games in sight.
  - lowdose 7y ago
    Why isn't Epic buying Discord?
    - AQuantized 7y ago
      What would that get them? It's already clear that Discord's community doesn't translate into success for an associated game distribution platform.
kevingadd 7y ago
Pay-once-per-user has always seemed like a perfectly clear business model to me. Maybe not one that can properly fund the company, but a reasonable one. In comparison every Slack I use is filled with nag messages scolding us for not paying a per-user fee just to have casual chats about meeting up at local restaurants, as their business model is 'earn $200/mo for every person who uses our service because they have to join multiple slacks' Due to the fact that I'm on one for work, Slack is already earning more off me than Discord is but they still want more. It makes it impossible for me to like them. Discord having lower friction for joining multiple small servers is a plus here too, because it means I'm not stuck joining a big poorly-moderated community just to chat with a small group of friends. It's not game-changing but I also think things like 'high quality group video calling', 'screen sharing', and 'high quality group audio calls' are perfectly reasonable things for Discord to sell. IIRC some stuff like that is currently gated behind Nitro. The ability to use emotes cross-server is also quite popular so I see many people buying Nitro just for that. I personally have a small Discord server for my family and I use it for my personal collection of cross-server emotes.
- blowski 7y ago
  The benefit of paid Slack is more for the company than the user, hence why the company pays for a workspace.

14 7y ago

But how can you remain super stoked by features of a service that may be decrypting your communication in real time? Does that sour the whole thing for you? If they can decrypt our communications I would think the 3 letter agencies would want to get access to it as well.

throwaway8879 7y ago
This is actually a good indicator for understanding the issue of privacy/surveillance. There are enough hackers and engineers who care little about being spied, despite understanding some of the inner workings of how the spying is done - as long as the benefits of a free service outweigh the slight privacy-violating annoyances. Now try to understand why the average person cares even less.
- moooo99 7y ago
  I don't think this is a reliable indicator. When you take a look at the target market of discord, it becomes pretty clear why no one really cares about the data being decrypted. The main audiences for discord are gamers and massive open communities. The first group is unlikely to discuss any sensitive topic via discord and it's not unlikely that a lot of discord users even stream their sessions publicly. The majority of conversations are likely to be game-related and not of private nature. For the huge open communities, encryption doesn't help to improve privacy when everyone can join anyways. If you want to grow a big and healthy community where everyone can join, the 3-letter agencies might as well join the voice channel rather than being the mitm. I haven't met anyone who is using discord as an alternative for WhatsApp, Telegram, etc., from my experience, discord is mainly used for on-topic discussions rather than private communications. And as other comments suggest, there are legitimate reasons why discord might want to decrypt the communications on their end. Plus, I have never seen any claims by discord to be p2p encrypted.
  - uncle_j 7y ago
    There is a massive political community on discord, there are other groups on there such as dooxers, trolls and irl shitposters and other odd groups that are doing naughty things.
ip26 7y ago
Depends on what you use it for. Gmail has excellent reliability, deliverability, & spam filtering. On the other hand Google gets to read all my email. Naturally then, I use Gmail for somethings- not for others.
Kiro 7y ago
Not OP but I've never used Discord for any private communication. I'm on servers with hundreds of people and anyone can listen to any voice channel whenever they want. It's not really something you think of as private anyway.

sl1ck731 7y ago

I'm not sure why they haven't tried the business communications angle with an alternate branded Slack competitor. As a remote worker on an almost entirely remote team, we would benefit from a sort of voice channel huddle on-demand or even just watercooler chatting. There is something more casual about jumping into a premade voice channel where people may already be chatting than starting a Webex or initiating a Slack call that could introduce more "togetherness". Something with this functionality was on my list when we were evaluating SaaS for our team and I really wanted something similar to Discord. Of course no one would go for it as its branded, but having a forked version that doesn't bear any resemblance should be doable with minimum work.

sandGorgon 7y ago
They are vehemently against this. There is still no way to turn ON email notifications once you "unsubscribe".
- jtl999 7y ago
  I'm not sympathetic to Discord,but talk about (probably) shooting yourself in the foot.
CoolGuySteve 7y ago
Yeah my company has the worst time with Skype, but nobody takes you seriously if you mention Discord even though it’s much more reliable and has more features.
- numlock86 7y ago
  Bring up Microsoft Teams maybe.
  - meowface 7y ago
    Teams is pretty good (and I suspect partly ripped off from Discord), but I don't believe it has the casual voice channel feature the parent wanted. You still have to manually initiate calls, like with Skype.

dyeje 7y ago

Discord trying to take on Epic and Steam to create a marketplace was perhaps the worst move I've seen in the past few years. Steam is entrenched and Epic is printing money. Discord needs to capitalize on its greatest asset: a massive community. To me, the obvious path forward is doing Patreon like features for servers and perhaps trying to break into the streaming market.

joshschreuder 7y ago
They have added more streaming features in recent months, so perhaps this is their pivot. Their idea of patrons is boosting servers for perks which is sort of similar but the price of boosting is far higher than Patreon sponsorship and there's no way afaik for servers to customise what the booster gets as reward (the whole server gets the reward)
- dyeje 7y ago
  I have noticed them pushing the streaming features, and I think it's a brilliant play. Cut Twitch out of the equation entirely, stream and monetize your community directly in Discord. I think it's also interesting in that Discord servers can be private so you open up the possibility of allowing content that Twitch shuns due to its public broadcast nature (e.g. adult content).
krige 7y ago
When Discord was making that move, Epic store did not exist, the period when both stores existed was rather short and unevnentful, discord's being on clear decline, epic's not even bare bones and tossing money on any and all early access games in sight.
- lowdose 7y ago
  Why isn't Epic buying Discord?
  - AQuantized 7y ago
    What would that get them? It's already clear that Discord's community doesn't translate into success for an associated game distribution platform.

kevingadd 7y ago

Pay-once-per-user has always seemed like a perfectly clear business model to me. Maybe not one that can properly fund the company, but a reasonable one. In comparison every Slack I use is filled with nag messages scolding us for not paying a per-user fee just to have casual chats about meeting up at local restaurants, as their business model is 'earn $200/mo for every person who uses our service because they have to join multiple slacks' Due to the fact that I'm on one for work, Slack is already earning more off me than Discord is but they still want more. It makes it impossible for me to like them. Discord having lower friction for joining multiple small servers is a plus here too, because it means I'm not stuck joining a big poorly-moderated community just to chat with a small group of friends. It's not game-changing but I also think things like 'high quality group video calling', 'screen sharing', and 'high quality group audio calls' are perfectly reasonable things for Discord to sell. IIRC some stuff like that is currently gated behind Nitro. The ability to use emotes cross-server is also quite popular so I see many people buying Nitro just for that. I personally have a small Discord server for my family and I use it for my personal collection of cross-server emotes.

blowski 7y ago
The benefit of paid Slack is more for the company than the user, hence why the company pays for a workspace.