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What's interesting about acquisitions like this is that the actual value that is being transacted is the userbase and their data, along with the inability for e

by ve55 6y ago

What's interesting about acquisitions like this is that the actual value that is being transacted is the userbase and their data, along with the inability for either of those to easily move elsewhere. No one wants to buy the actual chat application itself, because they could build equivalent technology on their own. But users are locked into platforms so heavily and for such long time periods that they themselves give the platform almost the entirety of its value (not to single out Discord, since we all know this is how a lot of acquisitions work in practice). [As an additional caveat, I will add that Discord has definitely built something that its users love, and I don't want to undermine the absurd amount of UI, feature refinement, and scaling work they've done successfully. It isn't negligible, but it is also not >$10B of software engineering.] I've read many discussions where someone says something of the form "I wish I didn't have to use X, but my friends and family all use it, so I'm forced to", and I think upon consideration of this statement that there is something deeply wrong with the way network effects and protocols function on our Internet such that this can even be a common scenario. We really do have quite a crisis of non-interoperability that generalizes towards a complete lack of user control, be it software, hardware, data, or anything in between. With that said, if Microsoft does purchase Discord, it might not be as bad as some foretell. While we can point to something like Skype as a failure, we can also point to something like Github, which has been doing very well post-acquisition, and in my opinion hasn't gotten worse at all. It's quite possible they wouldn't want to profit off of Discord individually, but rather use it as another tool to expand their general ecosystem horizontally. On the other hand, they could also do the exact opposite and start harvesting data and maximizing advertisements en masse, lest my post become too optimistic in tone, since this is still HN. Lastly, remember that this is still just a rumor that various news outlets have picked up on and is nowhere near guaranteed. For those looking for alternatives due to this, or just because they'd like to own their own data for once, I think Matrix is likely to be the best general solution in this product space, both with respect to similar app functionality as well as quality constraints (real encryption, decentralization, FOSS, etc).

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
It is a great payout to its owners. This is a sad end for Discord if history if any indicator. It was very useful, but I doubt it will remain so for much longer. And this does not even take privacy, or lack thereof, into consideration.
- meibo 6y ago
  If you're concerned about the current state of privacy at Discord, open the Chrome dev tools and look at network requests. It kinda can only go upwards from there.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
    I know what you mean, but I am thinking of it going from bad to worse similar to where we were in Windows 7 after upgrade to Windows 10.
  - c0nducktr 6y ago
    Would you elaborate a bit? Are they scanning for other devices / other details about your network?
    - ev1 6y ago
      They do Bluetooth, which by proxy gives location access, block VPNs and ban your accounts if you ever try to sign in with one or anonymisers, require a phone number non-VOIP, collect virtually every interaction way past what normal analytics would do and send them via the same or a similar route to prevent route-based adblock. Desktop client also continually scans running processes. Very aggressive client fingerprinting.
      - square_usual 6y ago
        Discord doesn't require a phone number AFAIK. I have used an account without a phone number attached for nigh on three years now.
SilverRed 6y ago
> We really do have quite a crisis of non-interoperability Interoperability in communication software is impossible. I know this will upset a lot of people here but its just what we have seen time and time again. Interoperable and standard software can not innovate because it is impossible to innovate since you need all vendors to agree and move in the same direction as you. Look at how ircv3 went. They promised the absolute bare minimum change to make irc slightly more modern and they weren't able to pull it off in time. Discord could not be interoperable with other systems because most of its features did not exist at the time it added them. Interoperability means catering to the lowest common denominator of feature sets. As discord has shown, siloed platforms are not the end, people will move to a new platform if it is clearly better. Discord was much much better than the rest so everyone moved. If someone else makes something much much better again they will move again.
- ve55 6y ago
  The way I generally imagine interoperability with larger and more complex applications is that providers can implement their own extensions and optional features, but that the most basic data elements are generally isomorphic. Would I expect Discord server permissions to be a shared protocol with ease, perhaps not. But every chat app we use has the same basic fields for a message such as 'id', 'timestamp', and 'text'. Our entire ecosystem under the chat application is based upon interoperability, from Ethernet to IP to TCP to HTTP to even HTML (note how you use a single web browser to use all of your favorite websites!), so I don't want to be too quick to rule out that it's impossible just because it is difficult. I would, however, agree that the incentives for it rarely exist. But with proper incentives, I'd say we could achieve some pretty amazing protocols for a lot of modern use cases.
  - SilverRed 6y ago
    The problem is, this kind of thing becomes annoying for users very quickly. When you use Discord, you expect that everyone has all of the features available and that moderation tools work properly everywhere. Lets say your friend is using telegram which is bridged to discord, now you want to invite them to a private group in the discord server, oh but you can't because telegram doesn't support discord roles. And then on telegram you try to open an encrypted chat with someone on IRC, but their irc client doesn't support that. Users don't care about talking to people cross platform as much as they care about everything working properly. Its easy enough to have 3 messaging apps on your phone.
miloignis 6y ago
I strongly agree with your comment about network effects and something being deeply wrong with the state of things. It's one of the topics that gets me righteously angry these days... I also have big hopes for Matrix, and run my own homeserver with a bridge or two. Here's to decentralized, encrypted, community based communication for everybody!
- ralusek 6y ago
  > Here's to decentralized, encrypted, community based communication for everybody! Here's to decentralized, encrypted, community based communication for [people who are interested in decentralized, encrypted, community based communication]!
  - miloignis 6y ago
    That's the challenge, got to make the implementation so slick and solid that it can win over people who don't care! Some friends and I are working on a Matrix client and we want to put in some features we've always wanted in a chat system (count-down to events, sophisticated ordered spoiler tags, themes, alert words, mute levels, etc). Some exist in others, some don't, but I think there's lots room for improvement in the messaging space in addition to the (for me) non-negotiables of encryption and decentralization.
- gsich 6y ago
  Matrix does not have Discord like voice capabilities. There is a difference between "calling" and "joining a channel".
torbital 6y ago
> but it is also not >$10B of software engineering Really? How did you come to this conclusion? Discord is, without a doubt, 10x better than Slack, Teams, or Zoom combined. They've solved the problem of a communication in the non-business space. That's huge. For comparison, look at Coinbase, who has a 100B valuation. What they're doing is relatively trivial. Is that >10x the value of Discord? I don't even think Coinbase is overvalued. 10B for Discord is just a steal.
- quantified 6y ago
  It’s not only better than Teams or Slack, but it has a great gamer community. Connect that with XBox, maybe it’s a monetary win.
- tshaddox 6y ago
  Imagine how much Microsoft would pay Discord for just a hosted version of the Discord service, or even an on-prem version that includes maintenance. Do you think they would still pay $10B for that, with none of the accounts, account data, brand reputation, etc.? Do you think they’d pay even 1% of $10B?
  - machineko 6y ago
    I would say few B for sure just so they can compete in that space
  - bluecalm 6y ago
    Well, imagine how much someone would pay for NVidia if the only thing you could do with their GPUs was to watch videos. Surely not 300B. Yet you can do so much more with the GPUs and you can do so much more with Discord then keeping it as in house tool.
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  Suppose you have seven dev teams of ten, plus a manager, tester, and a pm for each, plus an executive team of 9 people. 100 total people on the team. They each make an average of 200k a year. How many years will it take this team to recreate Discord? If it would take them less than 500 years, then, in some sense, Discord isn't 10 billion dollars worth of software. I think the point is that almost all of the value of Discord comes from the network effect of people locked in to using it. On the one hand, that's kind of a trivial observation, of course the users are value comes from. But, if you don't realize this, it's important to know. It means you that if even if you build something identical to Discord you're not going to be worth anything like as much - unless you also happen to get users. Or, put another way, you could build something technically worse, but if people adopted it for some reason, you'd be worth more.
kitd 6y ago
I'm not too familiar with Discord. Does it have a published protocol behind it? That is the missed opportunity there IMHO.
- notamy 6y ago
  The protocol for bots is documented, but the client's additions thereto aren't. The API that they use is exactly the same.
- f1refly 6y ago
  It doesn't matter because using non-official clients will get you banned
choppaface 6y ago
Could MS really build the Discord tech stack themselves though? At first blush it might be possible in theory if you look at only the key algorithms, architecture, and compute needed. But what about actually getting the engineering headcount to execute? And to build it with enough flexibility to experiment and adapt to users? And to pick technical challenges that will actually keep the headcount engaged? Google Plus seems to be a pretty good example of a competitor doing a copycat, doing a decent job technically, but then the product fell apart. Plus didn’t hit Facebook-scale growth, but it was wildly popular with certain niches like the CS academic community. Imagine if Plus had channels (in addition to circles), less corporate emojis, and 100% private circles. Then you’d have most of Discord, no? But Google didn’t build into Plus that ability to iterate. And the headcount got interested in other things like AI. And Alphabet got to join cookies through unified auth to get their ad targeting more competitive with FB. So the Googlers had their giant offsite in Maui and then let Plus die. So I don’t know if the tech stack in this Discord deal is necessarily worthless. The user engagement is probably worth more, but the software is part of the whole organism.
- IceWreck 6y ago
  Theyve already solved the engineering part with Microsoft Teams. Even the UX is similar. If they wanted to make a discord alternative, they'd just repaint MS Teams to have a more gamer-like UI. These 10 billion are for the userbase alone.
  - Felk 6y ago
    Are you talking about their backend tech specifically? Because the MS Teams frontend is lacking far behind Discord in terms of polish. It has 5% of the features and already performs like a bloated mess. It's hard to tell how robust their backend tech is but given that opening new voice channels takes 5-10 seconds, or that they had to update the client to have more inaccurate online statuses to fix backend performance issues does not give me much confidence either.
ComodoHacker 6y ago
>the actual value that is being transacted is the userbase and their data I haven't used Discord, but I'm curious, what value can Microsoft extract from user data on Discord? Shared links? Microsoft isn't a data company.
- Ligrev 6y ago
  There's Bing Ads which alone may suggest otherwise. Also, they operate a search engine.
- ignoramous 6y ago
  > Microsoft isn't a data company. Deja vu: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19854922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19854922 Surely, you haven't heard of Windows 10's horrendous surveillance? Data collection: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976298 Ads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13835733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13835733 Phone home: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10053352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10053352
  - ComodoHacker 6y ago
    Bing Ads contribute 5.5% of their total revenue, less than LinkedIn. [0] There were no signs data collected outside of web browsing were used to target ads or sold. So I conclude MS isn't a data company. I'm not saying their level of data collection is OK. I'm saying it's not a key aspect of their business model. 0. https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar20/index.html https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar20/index.html
xxs 6y ago
>No one wants to buy the actual chat application itself, because they could build equivalent technology on their own. Not sure about that one. Teams is an absolute failure of a chat and audio/video calls app. I think, even if Microsoft tried they could not get it worse than it is currently.
- blowski 6y ago
  You’re spot on there. It’s all the little things that Slack and Discord get right but Teams gets wrong. For example, searching for messages, navigating between channels, showing which channels have unread messages. Also, Teams frequently has issues on Mac in a way that Slack and Discord don’t.
  - corobo 6y ago
    Well it's also the big things like chat and video to be fair. The only saving grace Teams has is it so reliably overheats my MacBook Air that no meeting can be over an hour long
  - sjg007 6y ago
    Slack's search is terrible....
    - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
      But is it better than Teams'?
      - blowski 6y ago
        Much better. It's not perfect, but without mind-reading, I'm not sure what you would do to improve Slack's search. Teams, on the other hand... messages just seem to disappear entirely.
      - loudtieblahblah 6y ago
        Having cancer is better than Teams.
tester34 6y ago
>No one wants to buy the actual chat application itself, because they could build equivalent technology on their own. I'd hard argue I've been using various VoIPs / Voice apps over last 15 years almost everyday - ventrilo, teamspeak, mumble, skype and I must say that Discord is unparalleled. It fucking eats competition by it's quality, design and technology (API, BOTS). It offers also some kind of innovation because none of those most popular VoIPs / Voice apps combined Voice+Chat+Screen Streaming! Things like Skype, MS Teams and probably similar CANNOT EVEN IMPLEMENT BASIC FEATURE LIKE PUSH 2 TALK THAT VENTRILO (or software that's aware of gaming users) HAD LIKE 15 OR MORE YEARS AGO https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24429842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24429842 So how is it that "No one wants to buy the actual chat application itself, because they could build equivalent technology on their own." yet nobody can some with something that's even cloes to Discord?
- gsich 6y ago
  Teamspeak, Mumble, Discord have one advantage: They don't treat their users as idiots. You are expected to setup your microphone properly, no speakers, no adjusting your mic levels automatically. While there might be sane defaults, if you have a shitty microphone you will get less interaction. In MS Teams, Zoom ... you are probably paid to use that software. So it unforunateley is made to be noob compatible.
  - corobo 6y ago
    I think you're lumping Discord in with the wrong crowd. Discord is insanely easy to use compared to the alternative, that's why nobody uses the alternatives anymore. I'd still prefer Mumble myself but I'd have nobody to speak to As soon as it gets Microsoft all over it we'll all move on to the next Discord
    - scottmcdot 6y ago
      Completely agree. Turned my back on Zoom for casual video chat and use Discord instead.
    - gsich 6y ago
walrus01 6y ago
> I've read many discussions where someone says something of the form "I wish I didn't have to use X, but my friends and family all use it, so I'm forced to", I know a person who keeps an entire virtualbox guest virtual machine that only has access to the internet through a VPN service, for the purpose of logging into Facebook in a browser interface. For the unavoidable purpose of keeping in touch with non technical family members who refuse to use anything else.
- aembleton 6y ago
  Why use a VM? Couldn't he just use a VPN and a different browser?
  - walrus01 6y ago
    As it was explained to me, he finds the risk to his main desktop environment of browser fingerprinting/tracking by fb and its tracking-pixel using "partners" to be unacceptably high. By only using the browser in the vm to login to facebook and never anything else, this diminishes the risk.
    - fragileone 6y ago
      Never heard of uBlock I suppose, poor lad.
      - Nextgrid 6y ago
        uBlock is not bulletproof as it relies on signatures. Not to mention, the absence of data is data by itself, so maybe it's actually better to provide data, just that said data is fake and dissociated from your primary identity.
- rmorey 6y ago
  surprised they don’t use Qubes OS which takes this approach to isolating basically everything: https://www.qubes-os.org/intro/ https://www.qubes-os.org/intro/
atom_arranger 6y ago
The users of Discord use it because it's better designed, marketed, and implemented than alternatives. If Microsoft was capable of building equivalent technology on their own they had plenty of opportunity to do so. Maybe in Microsoft's eyes they are paying for the users, but from another perspective the users are only using Discord and not Skype, MSN, Teams, etc, because Microsoft has not built/maintained something as good, and maybe isn't capable of doing so.
PicassoCTs 6y ago
Welcome, men and ladies of Discord. Rather than incestuously promoting the same faces from within, you represent fresh blood, new ideas. Everything teams was not. It is my honor to personally welcome you all to Microsoft.
dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
The problem with this approach is that the value of the acquired products falls dramatically. Think about Facebook and Oculus: many people are simply fed up with spying Behemoths controlling all aspects of their lives. I don't believe it would be as dramatic with Microsoft and Discord, but sure some users will rebel. Good for the landscape - Discord basically monopolized gaming communication market, it's time for some interesting developments, this time preferably with open standards.
pdpi 6y ago
That’s a fairly cynical take. A more generous interpretation is that they’re not buying an application, they’re buying a working business — which is more than you can say about many startup acquisitions.
EastSmith 6y ago
> "I wish I didn't have to use X, but my friends and family all use it, so I'm forced to" That is why we need more GDPR, more laws giving you right to see all the data they've gather on you, along with how they connect it to other data they have on you too. This way people have a chance to educate themselves on all the things they gave up in order to have better emoji (as one friend suggested that the emojis was what Signal lacks awhile back).
chiefalchemist 6y ago
> With that said, if Microsoft does purchase Discord, it might not be as bad as some foretell. Regardless of the strength or weakness of the product MS' emphasis will to harvest and aggregate data, and then profit from that.
pronlover723 6y ago
Unlike github which is/was relatively "safe-ish", Discord is full of boards for distributing fan porn, real porn, warez, etc.... I'd expect if MS buys it it will be like the Tumblr porn purge. There are tons of pateron pron creators running discords for their patrons.
- nvoid 6y ago
  I'm not sure that would be such a bad thing. I'm more worried that the free speech issues would get worse though.
  - kayodelycaon 6y ago
    I happen to write erotica and be on a number of Discord servers that have adult artwork. Having Microsoft purge all adult content from Discord would destroy entire communities of people who are doing no harm to other people. American attitudes towards pornography really irk me. It's just as much free speech as any other speech.
    - ttt0 6y ago
      > American attitudes towards pornography really irk me. It's just as much free speech as any other speech. First, it's not just Americans. Second, it's not free speech and it never was. People who came up with free speech supported obscenity laws. The main purpose of free speech is to ensure that you can criticize the people in power.
      - kayodelycaon 6y ago
        Obscenity laws started in 1873. Well after the Constitution. The Supreme Court has steadily pushed the bar higher since it was created.
        ttt0 6y ago
        And since when do we have pornography as we know it right now? I'm almost 100% sure that if you went back in time and showed them furry porn, you'd be thrown in prison. If you're lucky.
varispeed 6y ago
Microsoft has an important business reason as to why GitHub needs to retain its quality - they have access to a universe of confidential corporate data - source codes, inventions, product issues, workflows and so on. They can look up what companies are up to and use that to create their own competing products. Something like Amazon does when they ask sellers on the platform to reveal all their leads and suppliers and then introduce their own cheaper version of the product. Only that Microsoft does not have to ask for this, as they already have all this data. I don't think there is evidence now that Microsoft is doing anything with this data, but it only takes a change in the management.
jariel 6y ago
"No one wants to buy the actual chat application itself, because they could build equivalent technology on their own." MS is actually one of the few companies that could try. Most companies are unable to innovate even with a clean spec in front of them. With the 'real time' aspect of Discord, which makes it much harder than MSTeams/Slack .... it's that much riskier. Look at how s**t Skype is. So the question then becomes one of risk on the product side. But the brand and userbase is the valuable thing at the end, 'Mixer' was never able to catch up to Twitch despite having a decent product and XBox lockin.
agumonkey 6y ago
Funny this reversal of network effect. In the decades prior people didn't feel negatively pressured to join, say the landline network. I may be wrong but it felt like an obvious desire and benefit.
SergeAx 6y ago
Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011. It became totally unusable in 2016, about five years after. It's too early to draw conclusions on GitHub.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  Microsoft acquired Forethought, LLC in 1987. PowerPoint is still among the most used applications in the world. Plenty of counter-anecdotes to choose from too, if you want to try to draw conclusions.
  - danaris 6y ago
    Microsoft of 1987 and Microsoft of 2011 are so different, you might as well not even consider them the same company. There's also the part where Discord is very very similar in nature to Skype, as a product, and not similar at all to PowerPoint.
    - WorldMaker 6y ago
      You are also assuming that A) Microsoft cannot learn from past mistakes, and B) the blame for Skype falls squarely on Microsoft's shoulders. Discord is currently at the top of its game (more like PowerPoint was), whereas Skype was suffering from mismanagement under eBay. Microsoft was supposedly hands off on Skype in the first few years post-acquisition and most of the mistakes that killed Skype were some combination of projects already started under eBay management or still all planned "inside the house" at Skype. (Microsoft in 1987 was said to be hands off with PowerPoint for the first few years following acquisition so as not to interfere with the creative efforts already in progress. Microsoft in 2021 is supposedly still remaining pretty hands off in GitHub management, other than replacing the outgoing CEO.) Microsoft's MO seems to be to give acquisitions enough rope to either succeed or hang themselves, and Skype sounds like they took that second option.
      - danaris 6y ago
        No, I'm reserving judgement. I hope Microsoft won't ruin Discord, not least because I use it fairly heavily and I don't want to have to switch (again). I'm just noting that at least from the outside, the Skype case looks much more relevant to this situation than the PowerPoint one.
zhenyakovalyov 6y ago
> No one wants to buy the actual chat application itself, because they could build equivalent technology on their own. Surprisingly, they didn’t. I am using Microsoft Teams for work daily, and that is the buggiest and the most poorly designed application I have ever used, not to mention their awful macOS integration or how they synchronise notification statuses between devices. I read somewhere that the Teams concept came out of a hackathon where someone integrated skype with sharepoint. It still feels like it is a proof-of-concept rather than a production ready application.
bydo 6y ago
Anyone who's familiar with Teams should be well aware that, though Microsoft surely could build a decent chat application, they certainly don't seem motivated to.
spondyl 6y ago
I guess I would suggest though that while something like Discord could be recreated by a Microsoft, the culture that grew it can't be replicated. Using Teams, it feels like a product built by committee where it's so disorienting and slow compared to Discord. They're different target markets (gamers vs businesses) but I imagine Teams by a different culture would turn out entirely differently
jariel 6y ago
There's a term for this 'Network Externalizations' and it's very powerful stuff. People are not going to move away from Discored 'because Microsoft' - however, they will move away if MS screws it up.

by ve55 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago

It is a great payout to its owners. This is a sad end for Discord if history if any indicator. It was very useful, but I doubt it will remain so for much longer. And this does not even take privacy, or lack thereof, into consideration.

meibo 6y ago
If you're concerned about the current state of privacy at Discord, open the Chrome dev tools and look at network requests. It kinda can only go upwards from there.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
  I know what you mean, but I am thinking of it going from bad to worse similar to where we were in Windows 7 after upgrade to Windows 10.
- c0nducktr 6y ago
  Would you elaborate a bit? Are they scanning for other devices / other details about your network?
  - ev1 6y ago
    They do Bluetooth, which by proxy gives location access, block VPNs and ban your accounts if you ever try to sign in with one or anonymisers, require a phone number non-VOIP, collect virtually every interaction way past what normal analytics would do and send them via the same or a similar route to prevent route-based adblock. Desktop client also continually scans running processes. Very aggressive client fingerprinting.
    - square_usual 6y ago
      Discord doesn't require a phone number AFAIK. I have used an account without a phone number attached for nigh on three years now.

SilverRed 6y ago

> We really do have quite a crisis of non-interoperability Interoperability in communication software is impossible. I know this will upset a lot of people here but its just what we have seen time and time again. Interoperable and standard software can not innovate because it is impossible to innovate since you need all vendors to agree and move in the same direction as you. Look at how ircv3 went. They promised the absolute bare minimum change to make irc slightly more modern and they weren't able to pull it off in time. Discord could not be interoperable with other systems because most of its features did not exist at the time it added them. Interoperability means catering to the lowest common denominator of feature sets. As discord has shown, siloed platforms are not the end, people will move to a new platform if it is clearly better. Discord was much much better than the rest so everyone moved. If someone else makes something much much better again they will move again.

ve55 6y ago
The way I generally imagine interoperability with larger and more complex applications is that providers can implement their own extensions and optional features, but that the most basic data elements are generally isomorphic. Would I expect Discord server permissions to be a shared protocol with ease, perhaps not. But every chat app we use has the same basic fields for a message such as 'id', 'timestamp', and 'text'. Our entire ecosystem under the chat application is based upon interoperability, from Ethernet to IP to TCP to HTTP to even HTML (note how you use a single web browser to use all of your favorite websites!), so I don't want to be too quick to rule out that it's impossible just because it is difficult. I would, however, agree that the incentives for it rarely exist. But with proper incentives, I'd say we could achieve some pretty amazing protocols for a lot of modern use cases.
- SilverRed 6y ago
  The problem is, this kind of thing becomes annoying for users very quickly. When you use Discord, you expect that everyone has all of the features available and that moderation tools work properly everywhere. Lets say your friend is using telegram which is bridged to discord, now you want to invite them to a private group in the discord server, oh but you can't because telegram doesn't support discord roles. And then on telegram you try to open an encrypted chat with someone on IRC, but their irc client doesn't support that. Users don't care about talking to people cross platform as much as they care about everything working properly. Its easy enough to have 3 messaging apps on your phone.

miloignis 6y ago

I strongly agree with your comment about network effects and something being deeply wrong with the state of things. It's one of the topics that gets me righteously angry these days... I also have big hopes for Matrix, and run my own homeserver with a bridge or two. Here's to decentralized, encrypted, community based communication for everybody!

ralusek 6y ago
> Here's to decentralized, encrypted, community based communication for everybody! Here's to decentralized, encrypted, community based communication for [people who are interested in decentralized, encrypted, community based communication]!
- miloignis 6y ago
  That's the challenge, got to make the implementation so slick and solid that it can win over people who don't care! Some friends and I are working on a Matrix client and we want to put in some features we've always wanted in a chat system (count-down to events, sophisticated ordered spoiler tags, themes, alert words, mute levels, etc). Some exist in others, some don't, but I think there's lots room for improvement in the messaging space in addition to the (for me) non-negotiables of encryption and decentralization.
gsich 6y ago
Matrix does not have Discord like voice capabilities. There is a difference between "calling" and "joining a channel".

torbital 6y ago

> but it is also not >$10B of software engineering Really? How did you come to this conclusion? Discord is, without a doubt, 10x better than Slack, Teams, or Zoom combined. They've solved the problem of a communication in the non-business space. That's huge. For comparison, look at Coinbase, who has a 100B valuation. What they're doing is relatively trivial. Is that >10x the value of Discord? I don't even think Coinbase is overvalued. 10B for Discord is just a steal.

quantified 6y ago
It’s not only better than Teams or Slack, but it has a great gamer community. Connect that with XBox, maybe it’s a monetary win.
tshaddox 6y ago
Imagine how much Microsoft would pay Discord for just a hosted version of the Discord service, or even an on-prem version that includes maintenance. Do you think they would still pay $10B for that, with none of the accounts, account data, brand reputation, etc.? Do you think they’d pay even 1% of $10B?
- machineko 6y ago
  I would say few B for sure just so they can compete in that space
- bluecalm 6y ago
  Well, imagine how much someone would pay for NVidia if the only thing you could do with their GPUs was to watch videos. Surely not 300B. Yet you can do so much more with the GPUs and you can do so much more with Discord then keeping it as in house tool.
ALittleLight 6y ago
Suppose you have seven dev teams of ten, plus a manager, tester, and a pm for each, plus an executive team of 9 people. 100 total people on the team. They each make an average of 200k a year. How many years will it take this team to recreate Discord? If it would take them less than 500 years, then, in some sense, Discord isn't 10 billion dollars worth of software. I think the point is that almost all of the value of Discord comes from the network effect of people locked in to using it. On the one hand, that's kind of a trivial observation, of course the users are value comes from. But, if you don't realize this, it's important to know. It means you that if even if you build something identical to Discord you're not going to be worth anything like as much - unless you also happen to get users. Or, put another way, you could build something technically worse, but if people adopted it for some reason, you'd be worth more.

kitd 6y ago

I'm not too familiar with Discord. Does it have a published protocol behind it? That is the missed opportunity there IMHO.

notamy 6y ago
The protocol for bots is documented, but the client's additions thereto aren't. The API that they use is exactly the same.
f1refly 6y ago
It doesn't matter because using non-official clients will get you banned

choppaface 6y ago

Could MS really build the Discord tech stack themselves though? At first blush it might be possible in theory if you look at only the key algorithms, architecture, and compute needed. But what about actually getting the engineering headcount to execute? And to build it with enough flexibility to experiment and adapt to users? And to pick technical challenges that will actually keep the headcount engaged? Google Plus seems to be a pretty good example of a competitor doing a copycat, doing a decent job technically, but then the product fell apart. Plus didn’t hit Facebook-scale growth, but it was wildly popular with certain niches like the CS academic community. Imagine if Plus had channels (in addition to circles), less corporate emojis, and 100% private circles. Then you’d have most of Discord, no? But Google didn’t build into Plus that ability to iterate. And the headcount got interested in other things like AI. And Alphabet got to join cookies through unified auth to get their ad targeting more competitive with FB. So the Googlers had their giant offsite in Maui and then let Plus die. So I don’t know if the tech stack in this Discord deal is necessarily worthless. The user engagement is probably worth more, but the software is part of the whole organism.

IceWreck 6y ago
Theyve already solved the engineering part with Microsoft Teams. Even the UX is similar. If they wanted to make a discord alternative, they'd just repaint MS Teams to have a more gamer-like UI. These 10 billion are for the userbase alone.
- Felk 6y ago
  Are you talking about their backend tech specifically? Because the MS Teams frontend is lacking far behind Discord in terms of polish. It has 5% of the features and already performs like a bloated mess. It's hard to tell how robust their backend tech is but given that opening new voice channels takes 5-10 seconds, or that they had to update the client to have more inaccurate online statuses to fix backend performance issues does not give me much confidence either.

ComodoHacker 6y ago

>the actual value that is being transacted is the userbase and their data I haven't used Discord, but I'm curious, what value can Microsoft extract from user data on Discord? Shared links? Microsoft isn't a data company.

Ligrev 6y ago
There's Bing Ads which alone may suggest otherwise. Also, they operate a search engine.
ignoramous 6y ago
> Microsoft isn't a data company. Deja vu: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19854922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19854922 Surely, you haven't heard of Windows 10's horrendous surveillance? Data collection: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976298 Ads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13835733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13835733 Phone home: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10053352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10053352
- ComodoHacker 6y ago
  Bing Ads contribute 5.5% of their total revenue, less than LinkedIn. [0] There were no signs data collected outside of web browsing were used to target ads or sold. So I conclude MS isn't a data company. I'm not saying their level of data collection is OK. I'm saying it's not a key aspect of their business model. 0. https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar20/index.html https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar20/index.html

xxs 6y ago

>No one wants to buy the actual chat application itself, because they could build equivalent technology on their own. Not sure about that one. Teams is an absolute failure of a chat and audio/video calls app. I think, even if Microsoft tried they could not get it worse than it is currently.

blowski 6y ago
You’re spot on there. It’s all the little things that Slack and Discord get right but Teams gets wrong. For example, searching for messages, navigating between channels, showing which channels have unread messages. Also, Teams frequently has issues on Mac in a way that Slack and Discord don’t.
- corobo 6y ago
  Well it's also the big things like chat and video to be fair. The only saving grace Teams has is it so reliably overheats my MacBook Air that no meeting can be over an hour long
- sjg007 6y ago
  Slack's search is terrible....
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    But is it better than Teams'?
    - blowski 6y ago
      Much better. It's not perfect, but without mind-reading, I'm not sure what you would do to improve Slack's search. Teams, on the other hand... messages just seem to disappear entirely.
    - loudtieblahblah 6y ago
      Having cancer is better than Teams.

tester34 6y ago

>No one wants to buy the actual chat application itself, because they could build equivalent technology on their own. I'd hard argue I've been using various VoIPs / Voice apps over last 15 years almost everyday - ventrilo, teamspeak, mumble, skype and I must say that Discord is unparalleled. It fucking eats competition by it's quality, design and technology (API, BOTS). It offers also some kind of innovation because none of those most popular VoIPs / Voice apps combined Voice+Chat+Screen Streaming! Things like Skype, MS Teams and probably similar CANNOT EVEN IMPLEMENT BASIC FEATURE LIKE PUSH 2 TALK THAT VENTRILO (or software that's aware of gaming users) HAD LIKE 15 OR MORE YEARS AGO https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24429842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24429842 So how is it that "No one wants to buy the actual chat application itself, because they could build equivalent technology on their own." yet nobody can some with something that's even cloes to Discord?

gsich 6y ago
Teamspeak, Mumble, Discord have one advantage: They don't treat their users as idiots. You are expected to setup your microphone properly, no speakers, no adjusting your mic levels automatically. While there might be sane defaults, if you have a shitty microphone you will get less interaction. In MS Teams, Zoom ... you are probably paid to use that software. So it unforunateley is made to be noob compatible.
- corobo 6y ago
  I think you're lumping Discord in with the wrong crowd. Discord is insanely easy to use compared to the alternative, that's why nobody uses the alternatives anymore. I'd still prefer Mumble myself but I'd have nobody to speak to As soon as it gets Microsoft all over it we'll all move on to the next Discord
  - scottmcdot 6y ago
    Completely agree. Turned my back on Zoom for casual video chat and use Discord instead.
  - gsich 6y ago

walrus01 6y ago

> I've read many discussions where someone says something of the form "I wish I didn't have to use X, but my friends and family all use it, so I'm forced to", I know a person who keeps an entire virtualbox guest virtual machine that only has access to the internet through a VPN service, for the purpose of logging into Facebook in a browser interface. For the unavoidable purpose of keeping in touch with non technical family members who refuse to use anything else.

aembleton 6y ago
Why use a VM? Couldn't he just use a VPN and a different browser?
- walrus01 6y ago
  As it was explained to me, he finds the risk to his main desktop environment of browser fingerprinting/tracking by fb and its tracking-pixel using "partners" to be unacceptably high. By only using the browser in the vm to login to facebook and never anything else, this diminishes the risk.
  - fragileone 6y ago
    Never heard of uBlock I suppose, poor lad.
    - Nextgrid 6y ago
      uBlock is not bulletproof as it relies on signatures. Not to mention, the absence of data is data by itself, so maybe it's actually better to provide data, just that said data is fake and dissociated from your primary identity.
rmorey 6y ago
surprised they don’t use Qubes OS which takes this approach to isolating basically everything: https://www.qubes-os.org/intro/ https://www.qubes-os.org/intro/

atom_arranger 6y ago

The users of Discord use it because it's better designed, marketed, and implemented than alternatives. If Microsoft was capable of building equivalent technology on their own they had plenty of opportunity to do so. Maybe in Microsoft's eyes they are paying for the users, but from another perspective the users are only using Discord and not Skype, MSN, Teams, etc, because Microsoft has not built/maintained something as good, and maybe isn't capable of doing so.

PicassoCTs 6y ago

Welcome, men and ladies of Discord. Rather than incestuously promoting the same faces from within, you represent fresh blood, new ideas. Everything teams was not. It is my honor to personally welcome you all to Microsoft.

dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago

The problem with this approach is that the value of the acquired products falls dramatically. Think about Facebook and Oculus: many people are simply fed up with spying Behemoths controlling all aspects of their lives. I don't believe it would be as dramatic with Microsoft and Discord, but sure some users will rebel. Good for the landscape - Discord basically monopolized gaming communication market, it's time for some interesting developments, this time preferably with open standards.

pdpi 6y ago

That’s a fairly cynical take. A more generous interpretation is that they’re not buying an application, they’re buying a working business — which is more than you can say about many startup acquisitions.

EastSmith 6y ago

> "I wish I didn't have to use X, but my friends and family all use it, so I'm forced to" That is why we need more GDPR, more laws giving you right to see all the data they've gather on you, along with how they connect it to other data they have on you too. This way people have a chance to educate themselves on all the things they gave up in order to have better emoji (as one friend suggested that the emojis was what Signal lacks awhile back).

chiefalchemist 6y ago

> With that said, if Microsoft does purchase Discord, it might not be as bad as some foretell. Regardless of the strength or weakness of the product MS' emphasis will to harvest and aggregate data, and then profit from that.

pronlover723 6y ago

Unlike github which is/was relatively "safe-ish", Discord is full of boards for distributing fan porn, real porn, warez, etc.... I'd expect if MS buys it it will be like the Tumblr porn purge. There are tons of pateron pron creators running discords for their patrons.

nvoid 6y ago
I'm not sure that would be such a bad thing. I'm more worried that the free speech issues would get worse though.
- kayodelycaon 6y ago
  I happen to write erotica and be on a number of Discord servers that have adult artwork. Having Microsoft purge all adult content from Discord would destroy entire communities of people who are doing no harm to other people. American attitudes towards pornography really irk me. It's just as much free speech as any other speech.
  - ttt0 6y ago
    > American attitudes towards pornography really irk me. It's just as much free speech as any other speech. First, it's not just Americans. Second, it's not free speech and it never was. People who came up with free speech supported obscenity laws. The main purpose of free speech is to ensure that you can criticize the people in power.
    - kayodelycaon 6y ago
      Obscenity laws started in 1873. Well after the Constitution. The Supreme Court has steadily pushed the bar higher since it was created.
      - ttt0 6y ago
        And since when do we have pornography as we know it right now? I'm almost 100% sure that if you went back in time and showed them furry porn, you'd be thrown in prison. If you're lucky.

varispeed 6y ago

Microsoft has an important business reason as to why GitHub needs to retain its quality - they have access to a universe of confidential corporate data - source codes, inventions, product issues, workflows and so on. They can look up what companies are up to and use that to create their own competing products. Something like Amazon does when they ask sellers on the platform to reveal all their leads and suppliers and then introduce their own cheaper version of the product. Only that Microsoft does not have to ask for this, as they already have all this data. I don't think there is evidence now that Microsoft is doing anything with this data, but it only takes a change in the management.

jariel 6y ago

"No one wants to buy the actual chat application itself, because they could build equivalent technology on their own." MS is actually one of the few companies that could try. Most companies are unable to innovate even with a clean spec in front of them. With the 'real time' aspect of Discord, which makes it much harder than MSTeams/Slack .... it's that much riskier. Look at how s**t Skype is. So the question then becomes one of risk on the product side. But the brand and userbase is the valuable thing at the end, 'Mixer' was never able to catch up to Twitch despite having a decent product and XBox lockin.

agumonkey 6y ago

Funny this reversal of network effect. In the decades prior people didn't feel negatively pressured to join, say the landline network. I may be wrong but it felt like an obvious desire and benefit.

SergeAx 6y ago

Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011. It became totally unusable in 2016, about five years after. It's too early to draw conclusions on GitHub.

WorldMaker 6y ago
Microsoft acquired Forethought, LLC in 1987. PowerPoint is still among the most used applications in the world. Plenty of counter-anecdotes to choose from too, if you want to try to draw conclusions.
- danaris 6y ago
  Microsoft of 1987 and Microsoft of 2011 are so different, you might as well not even consider them the same company. There's also the part where Discord is very very similar in nature to Skype, as a product, and not similar at all to PowerPoint.
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    You are also assuming that A) Microsoft cannot learn from past mistakes, and B) the blame for Skype falls squarely on Microsoft's shoulders. Discord is currently at the top of its game (more like PowerPoint was), whereas Skype was suffering from mismanagement under eBay. Microsoft was supposedly hands off on Skype in the first few years post-acquisition and most of the mistakes that killed Skype were some combination of projects already started under eBay management or still all planned "inside the house" at Skype. (Microsoft in 1987 was said to be hands off with PowerPoint for the first few years following acquisition so as not to interfere with the creative efforts already in progress. Microsoft in 2021 is supposedly still remaining pretty hands off in GitHub management, other than replacing the outgoing CEO.) Microsoft's MO seems to be to give acquisitions enough rope to either succeed or hang themselves, and Skype sounds like they took that second option.
    - danaris 6y ago
      No, I'm reserving judgement. I hope Microsoft won't ruin Discord, not least because I use it fairly heavily and I don't want to have to switch (again). I'm just noting that at least from the outside, the Skype case looks much more relevant to this situation than the PowerPoint one.

zhenyakovalyov 6y ago

> No one wants to buy the actual chat application itself, because they could build equivalent technology on their own. Surprisingly, they didn’t. I am using Microsoft Teams for work daily, and that is the buggiest and the most poorly designed application I have ever used, not to mention their awful macOS integration or how they synchronise notification statuses between devices. I read somewhere that the Teams concept came out of a hackathon where someone integrated skype with sharepoint. It still feels like it is a proof-of-concept rather than a production ready application.

bydo 6y ago

Anyone who's familiar with Teams should be well aware that, though Microsoft surely could build a decent chat application, they certainly don't seem motivated to.

spondyl 6y ago

I guess I would suggest though that while something like Discord could be recreated by a Microsoft, the culture that grew it can't be replicated. Using Teams, it feels like a product built by committee where it's so disorienting and slow compared to Discord. They're different target markets (gamers vs businesses) but I imagine Teams by a different culture would turn out entirely differently

jariel 6y ago

There's a term for this 'Network Externalizations' and it's very powerful stuff. People are not going to move away from Discored 'because Microsoft' - however, they will move away if MS screws it up.