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This kind of behavior should be illegal. Remind me again why anyone here is using proprietary chat software? Just use IRC, or if you simply must use something e

This kind of behavior should be illegal. Remind me again why anyone here is using proprietary chat software? Just use IRC, or if you simply must use something else, use Matrix.

keb_ 6y ago
User-friendliness. IRC and even Matrix is daunting to the average mom or gamer-friend. Even if they're not, there's the network effect (I can't convince even a quarter of my friends to move over to Matrix or IRC).
jaywalk 6y ago
This kind of behavior should absolutely not be illegal. As much as we might hope for and prefer open APIs, companies must have the right to protect their APIs as they see fit.
h2odragon 6y ago
My wife and child can use discord. Anything else is "just for talking to daddy" and not worth the trouble to learn how to use.
bootstamping 6y ago
Discord has integrated: -communities (as servers) -forums (as text channels) -direct messages -voice chat -video chat -private group calls This can all be used from their web-app. Their centralized server model allows people to join/leave calls at will, saves conversation history, and just so happens to give the company a great deal of data. It's all extremely convenient. I agree with you that Discord is abusive of its power, and I would much prefer to utilize a free-software solution. Unfortunately, I do not believe any communication software in the world, free or unfree, comes close to the value proposition of discord.
- pritambaral 6y ago
  > This can all be used from their web-app Video chat and screen sharing is not supported on their web app, and they push you to download their (electron) app for those features.
z3t4 6y ago
I think the problem is the business model where the strategy is to grow big enough so you can sell to someone that knows how to abuse a monopoly. How do you grow big ? Give away stuff for free, pay gatekeepers like ISP's so users can use your service for free, and pay platforms to have your service as the default. Why do users use it? It's cool, it's free, and others are using it. What happens when you sell? The founders get a lot of money, the software become uncool, and users will be leaving to another chat app that is cool and free.
neilv 6y ago
I wouldn't say illegal: as a producer, Discord obviously owns the platform, the rules seem sufficiently within the bounds of convention right now, and consumers are still free to choose. The main problem I've seen with Discord is on the consumer end, in some cases: we've even had FOSS projects and advocates, of all people, moving away from FOSS and open standards, in the tools they use themselves, to embrace very non-open systems. Some huge drawbacks to non-open systems have been understood for a few decades. And so there have been some industry collaborations on interoperation, some very hard-fought battles, some major human achievements of distributed cooperation to build great things... but then too often we just casually discard societal progress.

This kind of behavior should be illegal. Remind me again why anyone here is using proprietary chat software? Just use IRC, or if you simply must use something else, use Matrix.

keb_ 6y ago

User-friendliness. IRC and even Matrix is daunting to the average mom or gamer-friend. Even if they're not, there's the network effect (I can't convince even a quarter of my friends to move over to Matrix or IRC).

jaywalk 6y ago

This kind of behavior should absolutely not be illegal. As much as we might hope for and prefer open APIs, companies must have the right to protect their APIs as they see fit.

h2odragon 6y ago

My wife and child can use discord. Anything else is "just for talking to daddy" and not worth the trouble to learn how to use.

bootstamping 6y ago

Discord has integrated: -communities (as servers) -forums (as text channels) -direct messages -voice chat -video chat -private group calls This can all be used from their web-app. Their centralized server model allows people to join/leave calls at will, saves conversation history, and just so happens to give the company a great deal of data. It's all extremely convenient. I agree with you that Discord is abusive of its power, and I would much prefer to utilize a free-software solution. Unfortunately, I do not believe any communication software in the world, free or unfree, comes close to the value proposition of discord.

pritambaral 6y ago
> This can all be used from their web-app Video chat and screen sharing is not supported on their web app, and they push you to download their (electron) app for those features.

z3t4 6y ago

I think the problem is the business model where the strategy is to grow big enough so you can sell to someone that knows how to abuse a monopoly. How do you grow big ? Give away stuff for free, pay gatekeepers like ISP's so users can use your service for free, and pay platforms to have your service as the default. Why do users use it? It's cool, it's free, and others are using it. What happens when you sell? The founders get a lot of money, the software become uncool, and users will be leaving to another chat app that is cool and free.

neilv 6y ago

I wouldn't say illegal: as a producer, Discord obviously owns the platform, the rules seem sufficiently within the bounds of convention right now, and consumers are still free to choose. The main problem I've seen with Discord is on the consumer end, in some cases: we've even had FOSS projects and advocates, of all people, moving away from FOSS and open standards, in the tools they use themselves, to embrace very non-open systems. Some huge drawbacks to non-open systems have been understood for a few decades. And so there have been some industry collaborations on interoperation, some very hard-fought battles, some major human achievements of distributed cooperation to build great things... but then too often we just casually discard societal progress.