30 ms·

Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

224 points by robbiet480 5y ago

robbiet480 5y ago
Interesting to read that Discord has received higher offers than previously reported, as high as $18 billion, yet Jason refuses to sell and hopes to go public. Good for him to sticking to his guns, I don’t think I could say no to $18 billion!
- jtsiskin 5y ago
  Slack was acquired for $27.7 billion. It will be interesting to see where Discord can exit.
- ouid 5y ago
  I mean, as soon as the platform IPOs, I'm going to move to something else. It is the way.
- bagels 5y ago
  It's a chat app. I cannot imagine not selling for an offer like that. Your opportunities for what to do next would be unbounded.
  - twhb 5y ago
    Not if you’d sell them too :)
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    opportunities aren't really a function of money in particular in the software world. You need a good project, good people and whatnot, but you don't need 18 billion dollars for your next company. In fact if anything I'd honestly say it might be a negative to be that wealthy. A lot of ideas are the products of inventiveness in the face of constraints and a sense of urgency. There is a lot of super-wealthy 30 year olds that have emerged out of the big IPOs and a lot of them have basically retired.
    - bagels 5y ago
      I don't expect every billionaire to do things of this nature, but I counter with Bill Gates and Elon Musk. Myself? Definitely retirement. And race cars.
    - fsloth 5y ago
      Retiring is not bad. Some complex and deep ideas cannot be brought to fruit in urgency but need years of mulling over.
    - Broken_Hippo 5y ago
      "In fact if anything I'd honestly say it might be a negative to be that wealthy" Honestly, that sounds like propaganda telling poor people to be happier with their lot in life. Who says they'd put 18 billion towards their next company anyway?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- scumcity 5y ago
  From his perspective: he is set regardless. Much better to ride out the amazing windfall of his own creation than vesting in peace at some mediocre ladder-driven megacorp.
- vimy 5y ago
  If they find a way to make discord a central part of the (VR) metaverse it will be worth a lot more. I could see them launching a competitor to Facebook’s Horizon. It makes a lot of sense. Context: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-29/mark-zuckerberg-explains-metaverse-vision-to-facebook-fb-investors-analysts https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-29/mark-zuck... https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/announcing-a-1-billion-funding-round-to-support-epics-long-term-vision-for-the-metaverse https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/announcing-a-1-bil...
hammyhavoc 5y ago
Matrix or death.
- est 5y ago
  Matrix is a good protocol but the apps were meh!
  - aero-glide2 5y ago
    > you have unverified logins > verify this session > please backup your keys D'Arvit!
    - digitallyfree 5y ago
      First time I've heard someone use "D'Arvit" on a tech forum... wonder how many readers here still recognise it.
      - hammyhavoc 5y ago
        I'd say most people who have picked up a popular book in the last 20 years.
- sodality2 5y ago
  Matrix is miles behind discord which saddens me. It's a good UI but to consider them in the same ballpark is pretty uncomparable to me
  - awake 5y ago
    I had very high hopes for matrix because of the bridging capabilities but I was sorely disappointed after spending a couple hours to set it all up. Some of the bridges require violating the TOS for other applications, or going into the dev tools to copy cookies. Basically completely unapproachable for non-programmers. Once you have a bridge it's impossible to start a new chat with someone in another app. You need to start the chat in the other app, wait for the matrix bridge to be notified of the chat, and then you can continue the conversation in matrix.
ejj28 5y ago
Every single Discord-related post here I see comments about the "bad ux". I'm a heavy Discord user and I have no complaints with the UX, I find it pretty intuitive to be honest. I'm also constantly seeing people in shock that people would choose to use Discord over IRC/Matrix/Teamspeak/Mumble. I find Discord to be light years ahead of anything else available, and for an average person who's going to have a hard time setting up any of those, the difference is even bigger. Plus, Discord's free, you don't have to host it, and all your friends and communities are already there. It's really a no brainer for most people.
- m01120893474r 5y ago
  > you don't have to host it I really wish you could though
  - ejj28 5y ago
    A lot of the ease of using Discord comes from the fact that every server just works, and you can join using a link. If people could host their own servers I'd imagine you'd end up with poorly-hosted servers that would degrade the overall experience.
    - herbst 5y ago
      And highly increase the personal privacy and use cases. Let's be real this was a monetary decision and nothing else.
    - f1refly 5y ago
      Theres only so much even an inexperienced admin can do wrong when hosting something as basic as a chat platform. The various limits a potential machine could have are very obvious immediately. If people could host their own servers the artificial limitations discord is using to extract money from its userbase would be even more incomprehensible, and the network effect wouldn't be nearly as strong because every instance would presumably have its own account registry, both points will prevent discord indefinetly from ever allowing self managed instances.
- 5y ago
AnnoyedComment 5y ago
Once again showing that a shitty interface isn't a problem if you can just advertise the right way.
- HumanMusic 5y ago
  That's a complaint I keep hearing. But the reason I switched to discord in the first place was because I loved the interface. Both in terms of usability and aesthetics. Makes me wonder why there is such a gap in how people rate their interface.
  - keithnz 5y ago
    I initially found discord UI a little confusing, not sure why. I use it all the time for work, and the layout is essentially the same as slacks. Admining servers is much nicer with discord.
    - herbst 5y ago
      Slack learned us to join and leave channels on purpose. This is something I totally miss with discord. There is always EVERYTHING at once hammering at me. For me a definitely not work friendly environment because it builds on distractions.
      - Ekaros 5y ago
        I think it is possible to do this with roles and bot managing those. Ofc, that is not standard solution.
      - keithnz 5y ago
        I guess it depends on your setup, but for me, based on your role, you're automatically part of all the channels that are relevant to you. You can mute channels if they become distracting and aren't relevant. I find this way better, as when we get new people they are instantly part of everything they will care about. When we had slack, I found I had to force join people to channels because they wouldn't know to go particular channels.
plugger 5y ago
In comparison to Teams, Discord is a godsend. I think the biggest problem in this space is a lack of quality competition.
- 0des 5y ago
  How are we approaching 2022 and I still cannot click-to-reply in Teams?
  - ndespres 5y ago
    Or alt+tab into Teams on macOS?
    - wellthisisgreat 5y ago
      cmd+tab+alt - the shortcut for bringing the hidden window to foreground
- AtomicOrbital 5y ago
  Bravo ... discord client on Ubuntu has never crashed or sat there using 100% of cpu doing nothing unlike Teams
  - plugger 5y ago
    lol, I use Teams in the browser on Debian for work as it only takes a few hours before the "Teams Preview" fat client for linux starts consuming every cpu cycle my host has available.
  - herbst 5y ago
    That may works with the client, but not as a tab which sorrily is the only privacy sensible option
- riffic 5y ago
  Teams is an abomination, in other words it's a typical Microsoft product.
falcolas 5y ago
Disclaimer - I can't read the article; paywalled(and I don't care enough to bypass it). That said, will discord lose those initial advocates - gamers - in the process? They're already cracking down on NSFW channels, and constantly making things less convenient and more locked down in their pursuit of the general public.
adamnemecek 5y ago
I feel like in order to campfire business users, they would have to rebrand. Discord is a cool name for gamers, but maybe not for your average business person.
- riffic 5y ago
  This is the part of the thread where we bikeshed a bit over the name of an app.
- MiddleEndian 5y ago
  At least they're not called GIMP in all caps
- bityard 5y ago
  Slack does not seem like it would be good name for business use as well, and yet tons of businesses use it.
  - _jal 5y ago
    What I find amusing is that both of the names, intentionally or not, are related to mock-religions.
  - handrous 5y ago
    It's incredible that two of the front-runner chat programs in 2021 are called Slack and Discord, yet neither name is, AFAIK, related to or inspired by the Church of the Subgenius or Discordianism in any way.
  - noobermin 5y ago
    It isn't just the name.
- JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  Hey man hop on Discord, let’s go over some brain MRIs!
jamesgreenleaf 5y ago
Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/uSlv7 https://archive.is/uSlv7
deleted 5y ago
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nyolfen 5y ago
best description i've heard of discord ux is that it feels like hanging out at a chuck-e-cheese
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  Not sure what that is meant to convey except scorn. Discord's UI works fine for lots of us and I don't see any relationship with Chuck-E-Cheese here.
  - nyolfen 5y ago
    it means it feels age-inappropriate for an adult to use, like hanging out at a children's arcade
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
      Yeah, to me that is just conveying a total lack of awareness and tech snobbery. There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of adults using Discord.
      - nyolfen 5y ago
        i do not use poggers emojis or anime girl reactions in my conversations, or chat on platforms where mods have the arbitrary power to destroy your chat history. if you want to, that's fine, but it does not feel like a platform meant for people like me -- it feels like a platform for children and gamers
    - vlunkr 5y ago
      Yeah this checks out for me. Some people at work were pushing to move from slack to discord and I've never felt more like an old man. UX preferences aside, I think it's a really bad fit for businesses compared to slack, because it seems to also want to be social media, where you have one profile across servers, where slack and others are team-centric.
      - 5y ago
Gunax 5y ago
I despise discord. It's bloatware. It has constant popups that are difficult to disable. I do read their tech posts on HN, and they are always fascinating. But it seems to me like a product that the MBAs have taken a over.
- bbellini 5y ago
  Mind going into more details about the popups? Ive been using for years and cant say I've ever had a popup besides the occasional changelog.
  - mehlmao 5y ago
    This week they've been pushing some new Discord college spaces; asking me to connect my account to a .edu mail address. Believe I've seen the popup twice on my desktop, and once on mobile.
    - bbellini 5y ago
      I actually did get that too on desktop. It is a bit annoying but not enough for me to call it bloatware.
  - Gunax 5y ago
    Yea so if you install it, it will harass you about 'going live' everytine you launch a fullscreen app. Then it puts some box in the corner (sorry cannot remember what it said) You can disable it per application of course... But I just wanted it gone. Also it makes incessant beeping noises, which again can only be disabled per room.
    - lmm 5y ago
      Um, what? I don't think either of those things have ever happened to me (unless you're talking about join/leave noises on the rooms?). Are you sure you're talking about Discord?
- noobermin 5y ago
Amasuriel 5y ago
I’ve used discord for a long time and greatly prefer it to slack, teams and Mattermost (the three competitors I’ve used most often). Ironically the only think stopping me from strongly advocating for its adoption in business is that I’m already a user! Much like GitHub and to a lesser extent teams, they seem to not get the idea that I have different personas related to different parts of my life that absolutely should not mix. If I could stay logged into my social discord servers with my gamer handle and be being logged into work servers with work handles, especially on mobile, they would gain traction I think. Add active directory account management as a paid option and would be an easy sell some places.
- carlhjerpe 5y ago
  I've thought exactly this for years now and I'm so surprised nothing has happened.
- returnInfinity 5y ago
  I have to agree with this. I find discord better than slack and I don't want to mix my gaming life with work.
- ComodoHacker 5y ago
  > I have different personas related to different parts of my life that absolutely should not mix Looks like the only one who support this is Telegram. Might be because they (supposedly) don't mine your data.
  - afiori 5y ago
    I am curious now can you explain more? As far as I know Telegram requires a unique phone number for every account on registration.
    - rcxdude 5y ago
      It does require a phone number to make an account, which makes actually creating multiple accounts a huge pain, but bizarrely enough once you have the account set up you can log into as many of them as you like in their mobile app (I don't think any of their 3(!) web apps support it though, but that's not hard to work around with containers). In comparison discord makes setting up multiple accounts easy but the app has no concept of this so it's a pain to manage (I don't know of a good way to have two instances of it logged into different accounts).
SmooL 5y ago
I've used discord for a number of years, and use it almost daily with my friends. Arguments over UX will always be opinionated, but one thing where discord absolutely shines is voice chat. There's just no competition to any other voice chat system out there; it's fast, it's high quality, and most importantly, it filters out non-voices. Clapping, water faucet, vacuums, crunching chips, coughing, breathing, desk noises, none of it comes through and all of it gets filtered out. It makes for a significantly better experience when I don't have to deal with someone else's "voice chat etiquette" incompetence/ignorance.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  > There's just no competition to any other voice chat system out there Steam's voice chat is nice. Somehow low latency VOIP where you don't interrupt eachother due to lag is something only gamers need ... Skype used to be good too. Somewhere down the line they switched to some high latency mess.
agumonkey 5y ago
I hope not, I don't like the tiny realm vibe I get on discord servers. I find it too stiff and less friendly than most webirc sites (i know irc is not 10% of discord in terms of features but even then I find the added bonuses aren't worth that negative feeling.)
- popinman322 5y ago
  What do you mean by "tiny realm vibe"? Are you on mostly smaller servers, or is it unrelated to server size? You can definitely port the crushing silence/violent turmoil dichotomy of a large freenode room to Discord with enough users.
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    So often on discord i feel a vibe of "its our place our rules" something I never sensed on irc. People kick you blind at the first polite disagreement. IRC doesn't breed this to this extent even on the worst Channels I ran into. And o irc, kicks happen if someone abuses others a lot. Not if you voice a different opinion (again politely) Hence my belief that discord makes people built tiny castles way too stiff.
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    to add a little, on IRC i often have a feeling I'm joining a topic, on discord I feel like joining a brand people dont feel like they own #anxiety on freenode for instance..
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gogs 5y ago
If they wants everybody else, let's start by adding the "hide my cam/stream" option, and adding a background blur feature.
sadness3 5y ago
I have a bad feeling about this. Discord essentially does one thing really well. I don't want to see it go down the way of so many chat platforms trying to be everything and becoming a bloated mess. Recently, they replaced the fun, gamery loading messages with something more "formal". Now it does it's one thing slightly less well. The first of many casualties, no doubt. It makes me despair of business models which require growth to be chased at all costs. I wish more businesses could be content to just get to the point where they are making money, and then just keep making that much money and being ok with that.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  I'd say it does more than one thing well, but yeah it's always sad to see every company chase forever growth and often ruin their core product in doing so.
- mihaifm 5y ago
  Problem is the tech world is changing very fast. If you're going to sit idle hoping to make the same amount of cash every year, you're going to disappear within 5-6 years. Not liking where Discord is headed either, just saying some change is necessary not only for growing, but for staying relevant.
  - themacguffinman 5y ago
    This is exactly what happened to Teamspeak, they sat on their arses for ages without changing much of anything. Now it's hard to imagine them getting back any major market share in popular communities ever again. That seems like a death sentence for a social application.
    - Shacklz 5y ago
      There's a difference between "sitting on their arses" and "trying to grab every single customer possible". TeamSpeak didn't bother to acknowledge that a lot of people often just want to write some messages to others without actually hopping into a channel/server, let alone a VoIP-channel. Their synchronous-only communication philosophy via community-maintained servers just didn't pan out.
ulimn 5y ago
Is nobody concerned about privacy? I don't like this: https://www.tosdr.org/en/service/discord https://www.tosdr.org/en/service/discord
- ajkdhcb2 5y ago
  I logged in to write the same. I have never installed Discord because its privacy policies are scary
- herbst 5y ago
  Obviously a bloated UI for chatting is more important than privacy. At least for their audience
- saladuh 5y ago
  (So this turned into a log rant... sorry) Nope, sadly not! People are complacent and unwilling to make a change due to the convience of it. Most people are unwilling to leave the online friends behind that refuse to join you on more ethical platforms. People become tied to communities, of which most are on Discord, and are unwilling to leave them out of fear of feeling alone, or because they require whatever feelings of happiness/dopamine they get from those communities. I used discord primarily for a large friend group, on one guild/server, but of course was in a bunch of other servers for things that were ultimately useless. Leaving Discord made me feel less controlled by the dopamine effect of interacting with 'communities'. My friends barely use discord for anything other than our friend group, but are unwilling to move off of it because 'pretty UI', or 'emojis', or 'bots', etc. Some of them "don't care about privacy" because "no one at discord cares about your messages/data", " I have nothing to hide", the usual fallacies regarding privacy. The last reason is "laze"/"don't care". My friends are all in the tech/software space, have careers or are aiming for careers in the space. Some of them even share posts from Hacker News on the regular. Some use Linux, one of them even uses it partly out of privacy concerns. Point is, they're not oblivious to this stuff. If anyone begins to start trying out other services with me like Matrix, they're immediately disuaded because someone else in the group doesn't want to and says they're never going to leave Discord. I've since just been using a Matrix bridge to continue being part of the group. I've decided though that I will have no part in Discord's increasing monopoly in the chat message space, with their walled garden practices. Once Matrix native voice and video chat rolls out, I'm done with the Matrix-Discord bridge. If my friends don't want to make ethical decisions and put themselves back in control of their online lives and data, then I lose my online group chat. So be it. I'll still see them out in the real world. Friends (for better or worse) come and go every decade. Sucks but I'm so done with no one caring and having to jump through hoops for people who don't care.
kome 5y ago
I really dislike discord (slack for zoomers) and slack (discord for boomers). They are so bloated, messy and ugly. I still prefer email. The good side of discord and slack is that they are SO easy to ignore, and it was awesome when some of the groups i work with switched to them: the quantity of my email decreased significantly. By never checking them, I might miss a couple of things, but nothing worth the hassle.
hendry 5y ago
Sworn off Discord since I discovered it's really hard to get your chat logs out https://youtu.be/wA1aaIA27Iw https://youtu.be/wA1aaIA27Iw
hamburgerwah 5y ago
Discord is the classic freemium monopoly trap. They want to capture market share with a walled garden and once they do they will alter the terms to milk out every last drop of revenue they can before everyone jumps ship to the new new thing.
- tester34 5y ago
  Could you name at least two other platforms that offer at least Decent chat (file sharing, emojis, support for code snippets), decent voice chat, decent streaming and supports PUSH2TALK button? and I personally prefer when it is not self-hosted due to DDoS risk, but it's not must have. and is e.g F/OSS? Because I'm unable to name and that's why I started using Discord
  - dudus 5y ago
    MSFT Teams, Slack, Google Chat. Hate as much as you want but there's virtually no difference in terms of capabilities among these players.
    - tester34 5y ago
      >MSFT Teams >Allow users to enable push to talk in group meetings >2021-06-01 >Thank you for your continued feedback, we have not forgotten about this ask. The feature remains on our backlog. We will share an update as soon as one is available. >In the meantime, you can try using the keyboard shortcut to toggle mute (Ctrl+Shift+M) It has 3400 votes since 2017(!) https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/18837436-allow-users-to-enable-push-to-talk-in-group-meetin https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/su... _____________ and yes, this feature is important because switching between apps just to mute/unmute yourself is terrible experience and this problem has been solved like 2 decades ago or more with PUSH2TALK. It makes gaming or even coding and streaming and talking while having people at home (especially now, during WFH/pandemic) annoying as hell. ___________ The rest I didn't check.
      - 5y ago
scanr 5y ago
I use teams at work. I hadn’t used discord much but then did for a hackthebox CTF. I found discord way better for work that involves dynamic collaboration ie where folk are often working individually or jumping into each other’s streams to work together. To achieve something similar in teams we have an open all day meeting that people pop into but it’s sub par vs the discord model.
cblconfederate 5y ago
There is a huge wave of transitions from reddit/ forums towards discord because it offers voice chat / image uploads for free. It's not gonna last at that, chat is a bad format compared to hierarchical replies, hard to search etc. Gaming is their niche but at some point games will want to stop bleeding their community to them. There is also a proliferation of communities which leads to a lot of activity because it's a new platform, but as always, very few of them will survive. Then at some point they 'll also block all NSFW content and more people will leave. The value of their offering is that they re free, but money runs out, and slack already exists. Another case of overfunding for unsustainable growth.
- toxik 5y ago
  Block all non-NSFW? Are you saying it'll turn into PornHub but without the educational videos?
- Tenoke 5y ago
  Reddit also provides image uploads for free, and most people on discord never use the voice chats as far as I can tell. It's mostly real-time vs less than real-time communication. Discord for what is worth isn't that hard to search, and I wouldn't mind if they gave the option to some servers to have their logs automatically go to a crawlable page so they'd be indexed by Google. Of course, that won't work everywhere as real-time chats are often also used as they feel more ephemeral.
  - foxpurple 5y ago
    No one uses voice chat in public servers. You use voice chat in private friends servers. You get home turn on your desktop and see 3 friends on a chat and join in.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  I see it as complementary service. Reddit and forums aren't really suitable for chatting. Where as discord wills that niche very well. So communities will consist of forum/sub-reddit and a chat on Discord. One is more permanent and one is more ephemeral...
lloydatkinson 5y ago
Many software development communities are on Discord. General purpose ones as well as specific ones. There's one for Vue and a wannabe-official C#/.NET one (that's also pretty toxic unfortunately), and ones for other big frameworks and languages.
- hocuspocus 5y ago
  Discord can thank GitLab there. Gitter had pretty much conquered that entire space before its acquisition.
  - lloydatkinson 5y ago
    Interesting I didn't know this
haunter 5y ago
True sign of success: HN doesn't get the appeal of the product and they wonder why people are using it. This have happened so many times, it's actually a good indicator.
- Dowwie 5y ago
  Are you remembering the negative anecdotal evidence and disregarding the predictions that were right? Has anyone conducted a study of HN sentiments?
  - stackbutterflow 5y ago
    Not a study but there was an article about this on the frontpage yesterday. Can't find it now.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Also I see nothing about Discord trying to compete with Slack or Teams. I see it to expanding other communities like sub-reddits, forums and Facebook. Offering a different service from them. And for such purpose it's perfectly good product. Managing and allowing largish communities a chat platform.
  - jillesvangurp 5y ago
    They should compete, they have most of the features already. There's no rational reason to say no to all that SAAS money given that the products are so similar. As far as I'm concerned it's pretty much a drop in replacement for slack. There's very little that slack does that I need that discord can't do. Slack however does lack the nice/easy to use UX for talking to each other or sharing screens. Where they lack is enterprise features that have nothing to do with the UX which would include things like auditing and security, billing for a team, ensuring everyone in the team has the premium features, etc. That's probably hard to fix because the way discord is setup, only individuals pay for getting premium features such as high resolution video for sharing. That makes more sense for gamers than for corporate usage. Likewise, you have one account on discord for every community and slack has a one account per community thing. I have about 10+ accounts with them. Really annoying actually. Discord could do something like Github did which is allowing Github members to be added to any team and managing premium features on a per team basis.
buro9 5y ago
A killer use of Discord... push-to-talk audio connection to everyone else in the room. If your team is on-call and incident management could be improved, just try putting your team in a Discord room and see what happens. Don't put managers in there, just the engineers. It works great.
- dewey 5y ago
  > A killer use of Discord... push-to-talk audio connection to everyone else in the room. Slack just added this recently: https://slack.com/intl/en-de/help/articles/4402059015315-Start-a-huddle-in-a-channel-or-direct-message https://slack.com/intl/en-de/help/articles/4402059015315-Sta...
  - 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
    Telegram also added this a few months ago.
  - retor 5y ago
    I experience them as very different. Huddles are more like the audio calls Slack already had, but without the channel notifications. It lacks the auto silence that Discord has, so you can't just hang in a huddle waiting for someone to talk. There's a constant hiss. I guess they might change it, but didn't sound like this was something they were even thinking of as an issue when I spoke with a representative.
- sdflhasjd 5y ago
  I'd hardly call it a killer feature when it's something Teamspeak, etc have had for ages. The killer feature, i.e that which sets it apart from the rest, is the rich text chat and that it's free.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    I thought the killer feature is that it is free and convenient. No one has to do any work to setup a server like with Teamspeak or Ventrilo. It has been a long time since I played video games, but back then those were the two popular options.
omot 5y ago
Hello! This is the HN comments of Facebook’s latest valuation in 2007: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34057 I wonder if HN will ever be bullish on a product that’s targeting the general audience. We seem to only be able to see technical expertise as the only moat. I guess this is why product managers that can’t code get paid the big bucks. Anyone know if there’s a HN made up of folks with astute product sense? Or even better: Anyone know of a Discord server I could join. ;)
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > I wonder if HN will ever be bullish on a product that’s targeting the general audience. Sure. I don't think anyone is doubting Discord will pump a ridiculous valuation and make boatloads of money. That's not really impressing anyone here, not anymore. In more general terms: that you can impress the general audience with shiny trinkets, shepherd them into a walled garden, and then milk them for all they're worth - it's a well-known, common pattern. It's not interesting, except in terms of what we're losing as a society and as an industry because of it. So it's the latter things that get disproportional attention on HN.
xupybd 5y ago
We're using it for work. It's serving us better than Team or Zoom did and it's free.
sadness3 5y ago
As a personal user, I'd give Discord more money if high-resolution streaming and higher bitrates etc. were a bit cheaper, and I could buy credit which using these features ate through, instead of having to pay an overly expensive subscription.
DrBazza 5y ago
I can't remember where I read it (likely Joel Spolsky, or Paul Graham), but there was an article about businesses that thrive in the shadow of FAANG + MS and others because even though they're in the same business they don't compete in a way that's worth the big guys chasing. In this case, MS Teams is obsessed with Office integration as it's key selling point. Which in turn means business workers. Whereas Discord users don't care about calendar integration and so on. Modern chat apps are a Venn diagram with a modest intersection. I can't see how Discord can get more users without losing original users. Basically, a demographic shift. And then you're in the big guys territory where they additionally have 'killer features' already and that's where businesses get bought or fold.
- mynameismon 5y ago
  This reminds me of the 'Law of Line Extension'[0]. What I think they can successfully do, is rebrand as a new product (Accord is a name that might suit it, given the nature of office communications), disassociate any gamer connections, and link it to Discord by adding an account switcher. [0]: https://ericsink.com/laws/Law_12.html https://ericsink.com/laws/Law_12.html
- lmm 5y ago
  I actually care a lot about calendar integration. For about two years I've been saying that our best hope for calendar software that doesn't suck is if Discord gets into it, and it's a natural fit - most of the discords I'm in have some sort of regular scheduled activity, gamers want to schedule when they can game together.
  - mynameismon 5y ago
    You might want to check Guilded (https://guilded.gg https://guilded.gg)
- Ekaros 5y ago
  I wouldn't be entirely sure. Discord communities are much more isolated than on other social media sites. Outside discoverability, which is pretty poor you don't end up seeing what is going on even on other public servers. So if they continue to deliver good enough product to gamers and then entice other communities to join it could work very well.
basisword 5y ago
In my limited experience Discord seems almost identical to Slack but with a much worse UI. Combine that with the fact that belonging to more than one server quickly becomes overwhelming (again, largely due to crappy UX) I’m concerned about how many communities are utilising it. Can somebody that likes it explain why it seems to be doing so well?
- lugged 5y ago
  Because its free. Slack is not.
  - blensor 5y ago
    It's the easiest way for me to connect with the community, and basically every VR developer or VR project can be found there so it's easy to connect with like minded people. There are also a lot of bots you can add for different tasks. It kind of feels like a realtime social network. Where it's really lacking is to structure information that should be available to anyone, but I guess that's not what it's meant for anyway
  - jillesvangurp 5y ago
    Slack is free as well. Or at least, like discord, it has a freemium layer. We use both and we pay for neither.
    - square_usual 5y ago
      You're really underestimating Discord's free layer. I have a server that's literally just me which I've dumped tons of images and videos into. It's like an unlimited cloud storage bucket, so long as the individual files are below a certain size. It also won't prevent you from seeing stuff after you've got 10k messages.
      - WorldMaker 5y ago
        I think it's a clear difference in business model: Slack's business model is selling to "the group". The features you have available are what your "admin" decides is good for the group, and upgrades (especially upgrades from the "free layer") need to financed/budgeted as a group decision. Discord's business model is that individual users are the paying customers so there are fewer features "nickel and dimed" at the group level. If I want better paid features as a user I don't have to convince an entire group to buy into the idea. I especially don't have to convince multiple such groups to do it if I want the same paid features in every group I am a participant in I don't have to convince the admins of multiple groups to pay for them (and/or figure out how to bill for them). Where Discord does have group-level paid features ("boosts"), they are presented as bottom up "collective individual effort as multiplier" more than "the group needs to top down pay a monthly invoice". From a user perspective, in Slack I'm not the customer, I'm a cog in some wheel that is the customer. On Discord, I'm the customer, and that deeply impacts a lot of how Discord operates including and especially how it treats the "free layer".
epaga 5y ago
FWIW one data point - we had begun beforehand but especially when COVID started, the small company I work at moved nearly all our company communication into Discord. We tried out Slack and other alternatives at the time and the huge advantage of Discord was how simple and playful it was while other solutions were so very enterprise-y. Plus, Discord offers a great bot API, so it was super easy to write our own integrations. We are very happy Discord was not bought by Microsoft.
raspyberr 5y ago
Hi ***, This is a just a super quick notice that we will be closing your open support ticket and I will be eating it shortly. Hopefully we solved your issue with such grace and finesse that you didn't need to respond. If that's the case, great! Meal for me. Otherwise, please respond and we will sick our support team on the problem like a dog on some marbled wagyu. And then I'll find something else to eat, I guess. Thanks, Eater of Support Tickets Gosh, I really feel like I've spoken to professional support. Considering they didn't fix my issue, this sort of response is pretty annoying.
mrkramer 5y ago
They refused $12bn takeover bid from Microsoft?! That's brave. Not they are worth $15bn? It is crazy valuation for the chat app that's basically gaming version of Slack. I always thought Slack would purchase Discord and make it its "Gaming division" chat app.
lvl100 5y ago
Discord is OK. Nothing groundbreaking. But the tech stack is rock solid.
delaaxe 5y ago
Discord has also won most crypto development/support communities.
_raoulcousins 5y ago
I love that I can adjust individual people’s volume in discord. Afaik I can’t in zoom.
MisterTea 5y ago
Discord is easy to use which is why its so popular. Install, pick a name and go. I don't even remember creating an account, just typing in a nick name. Even on Void Linux Musl you can install it via flatpack, scan the qr code and you're logged in with all your servers and channels already there. You couldn't setup an IRC client that fast. My great gripe? No 3rd party clients. It's also massively bloated for my need of sending a few bytes of text. For this reason I use it for just one server and to communicate with two friends and my brother. Otherwise I use IRC where I'm on three networks and 26 channels. IRC is much less convenient for sure in terms of nick registering (some SOB took my name!) "back scroll" and persistence across clients/systems but it does 99% of what I want from a chat client: chatting via text.
- SevenSigs 5y ago
  > No 3rd party clients. I use a web browser to access Discord. But I would not use Discord for anything personal, only for public channels.
- BeefWellington 5y ago
  > You couldn't setup an IRC client that fast. You can't today, there's no reason you eventually couldn't.
  - MisterTea 5y ago
    I know there are some attempts to fix those issues in IRC but at this point I'd rather Matrix as it already exists, works, open, is not user hostile (e.g. banned for using an alt client), and bridges to IRC and XMMP.
- 63 5y ago
  Technically there are third party clients, they just break tos and can get you banned if you're not careful. Ripcord has a lot of cool features, I just wish I could risk using it.
  - MisterTea 5y ago
Grakel 5y ago
I just wish it would close when you click the X. Instead it minimizes. Steam does this too, I can't believe Microsoft allows this behavior.
- zerot_ 5y ago
  Then open the settings and turn off Minimize to Tray?
  - Grakel 5y ago
    No such option on Steam.
29athrowaway 5y ago
Programmers like Discord too. There are many great programming communities there.
deleted 5y ago
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literallyaduck 5y ago
Discord is big tech, and a decentralized solution is better.
amarant 5y ago
I kind of like this, assuming they don't change their software too much(or at all). Discords voice channels are the perfect replacement for "watercooler conversations" for the remote working age.
fouc 5y ago
If Discord wants to win me over, they need to adjust their layout & themes. The default dark mode and the light mode both are not comfortable to me, and I'm someone that likes the default Slack theme or irssi/weechat in terminal on a black background.
honksillet 5y ago
Discord has also joined the ranks of tech companies censoring speech. Which essentially means they can and have eavesdropped on various groups and closed groups. No thank you.
bwship 5y ago
Yea, it would be refreshing for a company to say, we nailed this product, we are going to now just refine it more and more perfectly to streamline it even more. But instead everyone wants to cram more things into it. The old saying was that a SAAS product isn't complete until it has it's own email server baked into it.
irrational 5y ago
Having never use Discord - what is the elevator pitch for why I would want to use it?
UncleOxidant 5y ago
Forget about using Discord if you use a wireless carrier that uses VOIP (like Republic Wireless, for example). Discord will not let you authenticate. Their answer is "change carriers", but I don't need Discord all that much.
0xBA5ED 5y ago
As a frequent user of the PC client, I think it's a bloated mess which gets slower by the day (with poor UX to boot). And they're talking about expanding their market? It's clear what their priorities are.
tristor 5y ago
I've never used Discord for gaming, but I've used it extensively in the maker hobby for various groups. I don't see it as being well aligned for business use, and any changes to make it better aligned for business use would damage it's ability to serve hobbyists (and gamers). I don't think this is a good move.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jetsnoc 5y ago
They have a lot of issues if they "want everybody else on Discord" They cancelled an account of mine because it shared a phone number with a secondary account of mine. (1 for work; 1 for personal use.) Support said "Account ban is valid - FRAUD/SPAM" with no ability to have a conversation with them or escalate. My cellphone number is now blacklisted for SMS validation. Incredibly weird. No support for their products, not really.

224 points by robbiet480 5y ago

Interesting to read that Discord has received higher offers than previously reported, as high as $18 billion, yet Jason refuses to sell and hopes to go public. Good for him to sticking to his guns, I don’t think I could say no to $18 billion!

jtsiskin 5y ago
Slack was acquired for $27.7 billion. It will be interesting to see where Discord can exit.
ouid 5y ago
I mean, as soon as the platform IPOs, I'm going to move to something else. It is the way.
bagels 5y ago
It's a chat app. I cannot imagine not selling for an offer like that. Your opportunities for what to do next would be unbounded.
- twhb 5y ago
  Not if you’d sell them too :)
- Barrin92 5y ago
  opportunities aren't really a function of money in particular in the software world. You need a good project, good people and whatnot, but you don't need 18 billion dollars for your next company. In fact if anything I'd honestly say it might be a negative to be that wealthy. A lot of ideas are the products of inventiveness in the face of constraints and a sense of urgency. There is a lot of super-wealthy 30 year olds that have emerged out of the big IPOs and a lot of them have basically retired.
  - bagels 5y ago
    I don't expect every billionaire to do things of this nature, but I counter with Bill Gates and Elon Musk. Myself? Definitely retirement. And race cars.
  - fsloth 5y ago
    Retiring is not bad. Some complex and deep ideas cannot be brought to fruit in urgency but need years of mulling over.
  - Broken_Hippo 5y ago
    "In fact if anything I'd honestly say it might be a negative to be that wealthy" Honestly, that sounds like propaganda telling poor people to be happier with their lot in life. Who says they'd put 18 billion towards their next company anyway?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
scumcity 5y ago
From his perspective: he is set regardless. Much better to ride out the amazing windfall of his own creation than vesting in peace at some mediocre ladder-driven megacorp.
vimy 5y ago
If they find a way to make discord a central part of the (VR) metaverse it will be worth a lot more. I could see them launching a competitor to Facebook’s Horizon. It makes a lot of sense. Context: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-29/mark-zuckerberg-explains-metaverse-vision-to-facebook-fb-investors-analysts https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-29/mark-zuck... https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/announcing-a-1-billion-funding-round-to-support-epics-long-term-vision-for-the-metaverse https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/announcing-a-1-bil...

hammyhavoc 5y ago

Matrix or death.

est 5y ago
Matrix is a good protocol but the apps were meh!
- aero-glide2 5y ago
  > you have unverified logins > verify this session > please backup your keys D'Arvit!
  - digitallyfree 5y ago
    First time I've heard someone use "D'Arvit" on a tech forum... wonder how many readers here still recognise it.
    - hammyhavoc 5y ago
      I'd say most people who have picked up a popular book in the last 20 years.
sodality2 5y ago
Matrix is miles behind discord which saddens me. It's a good UI but to consider them in the same ballpark is pretty uncomparable to me
- awake 5y ago
  I had very high hopes for matrix because of the bridging capabilities but I was sorely disappointed after spending a couple hours to set it all up. Some of the bridges require violating the TOS for other applications, or going into the dev tools to copy cookies. Basically completely unapproachable for non-programmers. Once you have a bridge it's impossible to start a new chat with someone in another app. You need to start the chat in the other app, wait for the matrix bridge to be notified of the chat, and then you can continue the conversation in matrix.

ejj28 5y ago

Every single Discord-related post here I see comments about the "bad ux". I'm a heavy Discord user and I have no complaints with the UX, I find it pretty intuitive to be honest. I'm also constantly seeing people in shock that people would choose to use Discord over IRC/Matrix/Teamspeak/Mumble. I find Discord to be light years ahead of anything else available, and for an average person who's going to have a hard time setting up any of those, the difference is even bigger. Plus, Discord's free, you don't have to host it, and all your friends and communities are already there. It's really a no brainer for most people.

m01120893474r 5y ago
> you don't have to host it I really wish you could though
- ejj28 5y ago
  A lot of the ease of using Discord comes from the fact that every server just works, and you can join using a link. If people could host their own servers I'd imagine you'd end up with poorly-hosted servers that would degrade the overall experience.
  - herbst 5y ago
    And highly increase the personal privacy and use cases. Let's be real this was a monetary decision and nothing else.
  - f1refly 5y ago
    Theres only so much even an inexperienced admin can do wrong when hosting something as basic as a chat platform. The various limits a potential machine could have are very obvious immediately. If people could host their own servers the artificial limitations discord is using to extract money from its userbase would be even more incomprehensible, and the network effect wouldn't be nearly as strong because every instance would presumably have its own account registry, both points will prevent discord indefinetly from ever allowing self managed instances.
5y ago

AnnoyedComment 5y ago

Once again showing that a shitty interface isn't a problem if you can just advertise the right way.

HumanMusic 5y ago
That's a complaint I keep hearing. But the reason I switched to discord in the first place was because I loved the interface. Both in terms of usability and aesthetics. Makes me wonder why there is such a gap in how people rate their interface.
- keithnz 5y ago
  I initially found discord UI a little confusing, not sure why. I use it all the time for work, and the layout is essentially the same as slacks. Admining servers is much nicer with discord.
  - herbst 5y ago
    Slack learned us to join and leave channels on purpose. This is something I totally miss with discord. There is always EVERYTHING at once hammering at me. For me a definitely not work friendly environment because it builds on distractions.
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      I think it is possible to do this with roles and bot managing those. Ofc, that is not standard solution.
    - keithnz 5y ago
      I guess it depends on your setup, but for me, based on your role, you're automatically part of all the channels that are relevant to you. You can mute channels if they become distracting and aren't relevant. I find this way better, as when we get new people they are instantly part of everything they will care about. When we had slack, I found I had to force join people to channels because they wouldn't know to go particular channels.

plugger 5y ago

In comparison to Teams, Discord is a godsend. I think the biggest problem in this space is a lack of quality competition.

0des 5y ago
How are we approaching 2022 and I still cannot click-to-reply in Teams?
- ndespres 5y ago
  Or alt+tab into Teams on macOS?
  - wellthisisgreat 5y ago
    cmd+tab+alt - the shortcut for bringing the hidden window to foreground
AtomicOrbital 5y ago
Bravo ... discord client on Ubuntu has never crashed or sat there using 100% of cpu doing nothing unlike Teams
- plugger 5y ago
  lol, I use Teams in the browser on Debian for work as it only takes a few hours before the "Teams Preview" fat client for linux starts consuming every cpu cycle my host has available.
- herbst 5y ago
  That may works with the client, but not as a tab which sorrily is the only privacy sensible option
riffic 5y ago
Teams is an abomination, in other words it's a typical Microsoft product.

falcolas 5y ago

Disclaimer - I can't read the article; paywalled(and I don't care enough to bypass it). That said, will discord lose those initial advocates - gamers - in the process? They're already cracking down on NSFW channels, and constantly making things less convenient and more locked down in their pursuit of the general public.

adamnemecek 5y ago

I feel like in order to campfire business users, they would have to rebrand. Discord is a cool name for gamers, but maybe not for your average business person.

riffic 5y ago
This is the part of the thread where we bikeshed a bit over the name of an app.
MiddleEndian 5y ago
At least they're not called GIMP in all caps
bityard 5y ago
Slack does not seem like it would be good name for business use as well, and yet tons of businesses use it.
- _jal 5y ago
  What I find amusing is that both of the names, intentionally or not, are related to mock-religions.
- handrous 5y ago
  It's incredible that two of the front-runner chat programs in 2021 are called Slack and Discord, yet neither name is, AFAIK, related to or inspired by the Church of the Subgenius or Discordianism in any way.
- noobermin 5y ago
  It isn't just the name.
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
Hey man hop on Discord, let’s go over some brain MRIs!

jamesgreenleaf 5y ago

Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/uSlv7 https://archive.is/uSlv7

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

nyolfen 5y ago

best description i've heard of discord ux is that it feels like hanging out at a chuck-e-cheese

asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
Not sure what that is meant to convey except scorn. Discord's UI works fine for lots of us and I don't see any relationship with Chuck-E-Cheese here.
- nyolfen 5y ago
  it means it feels age-inappropriate for an adult to use, like hanging out at a children's arcade
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    Yeah, to me that is just conveying a total lack of awareness and tech snobbery. There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of adults using Discord.
    - nyolfen 5y ago
      i do not use poggers emojis or anime girl reactions in my conversations, or chat on platforms where mods have the arbitrary power to destroy your chat history. if you want to, that's fine, but it does not feel like a platform meant for people like me -- it feels like a platform for children and gamers
  - vlunkr 5y ago
    Yeah this checks out for me. Some people at work were pushing to move from slack to discord and I've never felt more like an old man. UX preferences aside, I think it's a really bad fit for businesses compared to slack, because it seems to also want to be social media, where you have one profile across servers, where slack and others are team-centric.
    - 5y ago

Gunax 5y ago

I despise discord. It's bloatware. It has constant popups that are difficult to disable. I do read their tech posts on HN, and they are always fascinating. But it seems to me like a product that the MBAs have taken a over.

bbellini 5y ago
Mind going into more details about the popups? Ive been using for years and cant say I've ever had a popup besides the occasional changelog.
- mehlmao 5y ago
  This week they've been pushing some new Discord college spaces; asking me to connect my account to a .edu mail address. Believe I've seen the popup twice on my desktop, and once on mobile.
  - bbellini 5y ago
    I actually did get that too on desktop. It is a bit annoying but not enough for me to call it bloatware.
- Gunax 5y ago
  Yea so if you install it, it will harass you about 'going live' everytine you launch a fullscreen app. Then it puts some box in the corner (sorry cannot remember what it said) You can disable it per application of course... But I just wanted it gone. Also it makes incessant beeping noises, which again can only be disabled per room.
  - lmm 5y ago
    Um, what? I don't think either of those things have ever happened to me (unless you're talking about join/leave noises on the rooms?). Are you sure you're talking about Discord?
noobermin 5y ago

Amasuriel 5y ago

I’ve used discord for a long time and greatly prefer it to slack, teams and Mattermost (the three competitors I’ve used most often). Ironically the only think stopping me from strongly advocating for its adoption in business is that I’m already a user! Much like GitHub and to a lesser extent teams, they seem to not get the idea that I have different personas related to different parts of my life that absolutely should not mix. If I could stay logged into my social discord servers with my gamer handle and be being logged into work servers with work handles, especially on mobile, they would gain traction I think. Add active directory account management as a paid option and would be an easy sell some places.

carlhjerpe 5y ago
I've thought exactly this for years now and I'm so surprised nothing has happened.
returnInfinity 5y ago
I have to agree with this. I find discord better than slack and I don't want to mix my gaming life with work.
ComodoHacker 5y ago
> I have different personas related to different parts of my life that absolutely should not mix Looks like the only one who support this is Telegram. Might be because they (supposedly) don't mine your data.
- afiori 5y ago
  I am curious now can you explain more? As far as I know Telegram requires a unique phone number for every account on registration.
  - rcxdude 5y ago
    It does require a phone number to make an account, which makes actually creating multiple accounts a huge pain, but bizarrely enough once you have the account set up you can log into as many of them as you like in their mobile app (I don't think any of their 3(!) web apps support it though, but that's not hard to work around with containers). In comparison discord makes setting up multiple accounts easy but the app has no concept of this so it's a pain to manage (I don't know of a good way to have two instances of it logged into different accounts).

SmooL 5y ago

I've used discord for a number of years, and use it almost daily with my friends. Arguments over UX will always be opinionated, but one thing where discord absolutely shines is voice chat. There's just no competition to any other voice chat system out there; it's fast, it's high quality, and most importantly, it filters out non-voices. Clapping, water faucet, vacuums, crunching chips, coughing, breathing, desk noises, none of it comes through and all of it gets filtered out. It makes for a significantly better experience when I don't have to deal with someone else's "voice chat etiquette" incompetence/ignorance.

rightbyte 5y ago
> There's just no competition to any other voice chat system out there Steam's voice chat is nice. Somehow low latency VOIP where you don't interrupt eachother due to lag is something only gamers need ... Skype used to be good too. Somewhere down the line they switched to some high latency mess.

agumonkey 5y ago

I hope not, I don't like the tiny realm vibe I get on discord servers. I find it too stiff and less friendly than most webirc sites (i know irc is not 10% of discord in terms of features but even then I find the added bonuses aren't worth that negative feeling.)

popinman322 5y ago
What do you mean by "tiny realm vibe"? Are you on mostly smaller servers, or is it unrelated to server size? You can definitely port the crushing silence/violent turmoil dichotomy of a large freenode room to Discord with enough users.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  So often on discord i feel a vibe of "its our place our rules" something I never sensed on irc. People kick you blind at the first polite disagreement. IRC doesn't breed this to this extent even on the worst Channels I ran into. And o irc, kicks happen if someone abuses others a lot. Not if you voice a different opinion (again politely) Hence my belief that discord makes people built tiny castles way too stiff.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  to add a little, on IRC i often have a feeling I'm joining a topic, on discord I feel like joining a brand people dont feel like they own #anxiety on freenode for instance..

deleted 5y ago

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gogs 5y ago

If they wants everybody else, let's start by adding the "hide my cam/stream" option, and adding a background blur feature.

sadness3 5y ago

I have a bad feeling about this. Discord essentially does one thing really well. I don't want to see it go down the way of so many chat platforms trying to be everything and becoming a bloated mess. Recently, they replaced the fun, gamery loading messages with something more "formal". Now it does it's one thing slightly less well. The first of many casualties, no doubt. It makes me despair of business models which require growth to be chased at all costs. I wish more businesses could be content to just get to the point where they are making money, and then just keep making that much money and being ok with that.

TulliusCicero 5y ago
I'd say it does more than one thing well, but yeah it's always sad to see every company chase forever growth and often ruin their core product in doing so.
mihaifm 5y ago
Problem is the tech world is changing very fast. If you're going to sit idle hoping to make the same amount of cash every year, you're going to disappear within 5-6 years. Not liking where Discord is headed either, just saying some change is necessary not only for growing, but for staying relevant.
- themacguffinman 5y ago
  This is exactly what happened to Teamspeak, they sat on their arses for ages without changing much of anything. Now it's hard to imagine them getting back any major market share in popular communities ever again. That seems like a death sentence for a social application.
  - Shacklz 5y ago
    There's a difference between "sitting on their arses" and "trying to grab every single customer possible". TeamSpeak didn't bother to acknowledge that a lot of people often just want to write some messages to others without actually hopping into a channel/server, let alone a VoIP-channel. Their synchronous-only communication philosophy via community-maintained servers just didn't pan out.

ulimn 5y ago

Is nobody concerned about privacy? I don't like this: https://www.tosdr.org/en/service/discord https://www.tosdr.org/en/service/discord

ajkdhcb2 5y ago
I logged in to write the same. I have never installed Discord because its privacy policies are scary
herbst 5y ago
Obviously a bloated UI for chatting is more important than privacy. At least for their audience
saladuh 5y ago
(So this turned into a log rant... sorry) Nope, sadly not! People are complacent and unwilling to make a change due to the convience of it. Most people are unwilling to leave the online friends behind that refuse to join you on more ethical platforms. People become tied to communities, of which most are on Discord, and are unwilling to leave them out of fear of feeling alone, or because they require whatever feelings of happiness/dopamine they get from those communities. I used discord primarily for a large friend group, on one guild/server, but of course was in a bunch of other servers for things that were ultimately useless. Leaving Discord made me feel less controlled by the dopamine effect of interacting with 'communities'. My friends barely use discord for anything other than our friend group, but are unwilling to move off of it because 'pretty UI', or 'emojis', or 'bots', etc. Some of them "don't care about privacy" because "no one at discord cares about your messages/data", " I have nothing to hide", the usual fallacies regarding privacy. The last reason is "laze"/"don't care". My friends are all in the tech/software space, have careers or are aiming for careers in the space. Some of them even share posts from Hacker News on the regular. Some use Linux, one of them even uses it partly out of privacy concerns. Point is, they're not oblivious to this stuff. If anyone begins to start trying out other services with me like Matrix, they're immediately disuaded because someone else in the group doesn't want to and says they're never going to leave Discord. I've since just been using a Matrix bridge to continue being part of the group. I've decided though that I will have no part in Discord's increasing monopoly in the chat message space, with their walled garden practices. Once Matrix native voice and video chat rolls out, I'm done with the Matrix-Discord bridge. If my friends don't want to make ethical decisions and put themselves back in control of their online lives and data, then I lose my online group chat. So be it. I'll still see them out in the real world. Friends (for better or worse) come and go every decade. Sucks but I'm so done with no one caring and having to jump through hoops for people who don't care.

kome 5y ago

I really dislike discord (slack for zoomers) and slack (discord for boomers). They are so bloated, messy and ugly. I still prefer email. The good side of discord and slack is that they are SO easy to ignore, and it was awesome when some of the groups i work with switched to them: the quantity of my email decreased significantly. By never checking them, I might miss a couple of things, but nothing worth the hassle.

hendry 5y ago

Sworn off Discord since I discovered it's really hard to get your chat logs out https://youtu.be/wA1aaIA27Iw https://youtu.be/wA1aaIA27Iw

hamburgerwah 5y ago

Discord is the classic freemium monopoly trap. They want to capture market share with a walled garden and once they do they will alter the terms to milk out every last drop of revenue they can before everyone jumps ship to the new new thing.

tester34 5y ago
Could you name at least two other platforms that offer at least Decent chat (file sharing, emojis, support for code snippets), decent voice chat, decent streaming and supports PUSH2TALK button? and I personally prefer when it is not self-hosted due to DDoS risk, but it's not must have. and is e.g F/OSS? Because I'm unable to name and that's why I started using Discord
- dudus 5y ago
  MSFT Teams, Slack, Google Chat. Hate as much as you want but there's virtually no difference in terms of capabilities among these players.
  - tester34 5y ago
    >MSFT Teams >Allow users to enable push to talk in group meetings >2021-06-01 >Thank you for your continued feedback, we have not forgotten about this ask. The feature remains on our backlog. We will share an update as soon as one is available. >In the meantime, you can try using the keyboard shortcut to toggle mute (Ctrl+Shift+M) It has 3400 votes since 2017(!) https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/18837436-allow-users-to-enable-push-to-talk-in-group-meetin https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/su... _____________ and yes, this feature is important because switching between apps just to mute/unmute yourself is terrible experience and this problem has been solved like 2 decades ago or more with PUSH2TALK. It makes gaming or even coding and streaming and talking while having people at home (especially now, during WFH/pandemic) annoying as hell. ___________ The rest I didn't check.
    - 5y ago

scanr 5y ago

I use teams at work. I hadn’t used discord much but then did for a hackthebox CTF. I found discord way better for work that involves dynamic collaboration ie where folk are often working individually or jumping into each other’s streams to work together. To achieve something similar in teams we have an open all day meeting that people pop into but it’s sub par vs the discord model.

cblconfederate 5y ago

There is a huge wave of transitions from reddit/ forums towards discord because it offers voice chat / image uploads for free. It's not gonna last at that, chat is a bad format compared to hierarchical replies, hard to search etc. Gaming is their niche but at some point games will want to stop bleeding their community to them. There is also a proliferation of communities which leads to a lot of activity because it's a new platform, but as always, very few of them will survive. Then at some point they 'll also block all NSFW content and more people will leave. The value of their offering is that they re free, but money runs out, and slack already exists. Another case of overfunding for unsustainable growth.

toxik 5y ago
Block all non-NSFW? Are you saying it'll turn into PornHub but without the educational videos?
Tenoke 5y ago
Reddit also provides image uploads for free, and most people on discord never use the voice chats as far as I can tell. It's mostly real-time vs less than real-time communication. Discord for what is worth isn't that hard to search, and I wouldn't mind if they gave the option to some servers to have their logs automatically go to a crawlable page so they'd be indexed by Google. Of course, that won't work everywhere as real-time chats are often also used as they feel more ephemeral.
- foxpurple 5y ago
  No one uses voice chat in public servers. You use voice chat in private friends servers. You get home turn on your desktop and see 3 friends on a chat and join in.
Ekaros 5y ago
I see it as complementary service. Reddit and forums aren't really suitable for chatting. Where as discord wills that niche very well. So communities will consist of forum/sub-reddit and a chat on Discord. One is more permanent and one is more ephemeral...

lloydatkinson 5y ago

Many software development communities are on Discord. General purpose ones as well as specific ones. There's one for Vue and a wannabe-official C#/.NET one (that's also pretty toxic unfortunately), and ones for other big frameworks and languages.

hocuspocus 5y ago
Discord can thank GitLab there. Gitter had pretty much conquered that entire space before its acquisition.
- lloydatkinson 5y ago
  Interesting I didn't know this

haunter 5y ago

True sign of success: HN doesn't get the appeal of the product and they wonder why people are using it. This have happened so many times, it's actually a good indicator.

Dowwie 5y ago
Are you remembering the negative anecdotal evidence and disregarding the predictions that were right? Has anyone conducted a study of HN sentiments?
- stackbutterflow 5y ago
  Not a study but there was an article about this on the frontpage yesterday. Can't find it now.
Ekaros 5y ago
Also I see nothing about Discord trying to compete with Slack or Teams. I see it to expanding other communities like sub-reddits, forums and Facebook. Offering a different service from them. And for such purpose it's perfectly good product. Managing and allowing largish communities a chat platform.
- jillesvangurp 5y ago
  They should compete, they have most of the features already. There's no rational reason to say no to all that SAAS money given that the products are so similar. As far as I'm concerned it's pretty much a drop in replacement for slack. There's very little that slack does that I need that discord can't do. Slack however does lack the nice/easy to use UX for talking to each other or sharing screens. Where they lack is enterprise features that have nothing to do with the UX which would include things like auditing and security, billing for a team, ensuring everyone in the team has the premium features, etc. That's probably hard to fix because the way discord is setup, only individuals pay for getting premium features such as high resolution video for sharing. That makes more sense for gamers than for corporate usage. Likewise, you have one account on discord for every community and slack has a one account per community thing. I have about 10+ accounts with them. Really annoying actually. Discord could do something like Github did which is allowing Github members to be added to any team and managing premium features on a per team basis.

buro9 5y ago

A killer use of Discord... push-to-talk audio connection to everyone else in the room. If your team is on-call and incident management could be improved, just try putting your team in a Discord room and see what happens. Don't put managers in there, just the engineers. It works great.

dewey 5y ago
> A killer use of Discord... push-to-talk audio connection to everyone else in the room. Slack just added this recently: https://slack.com/intl/en-de/help/articles/4402059015315-Start-a-huddle-in-a-channel-or-direct-message https://slack.com/intl/en-de/help/articles/4402059015315-Sta...
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
  Telegram also added this a few months ago.
- retor 5y ago
  I experience them as very different. Huddles are more like the audio calls Slack already had, but without the channel notifications. It lacks the auto silence that Discord has, so you can't just hang in a huddle waiting for someone to talk. There's a constant hiss. I guess they might change it, but didn't sound like this was something they were even thinking of as an issue when I spoke with a representative.
sdflhasjd 5y ago
I'd hardly call it a killer feature when it's something Teamspeak, etc have had for ages. The killer feature, i.e that which sets it apart from the rest, is the rich text chat and that it's free.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I thought the killer feature is that it is free and convenient. No one has to do any work to setup a server like with Teamspeak or Ventrilo. It has been a long time since I played video games, but back then those were the two popular options.

omot 5y ago

Hello! This is the HN comments of Facebook’s latest valuation in 2007: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34057 I wonder if HN will ever be bullish on a product that’s targeting the general audience. We seem to only be able to see technical expertise as the only moat. I guess this is why product managers that can’t code get paid the big bucks. Anyone know if there’s a HN made up of folks with astute product sense? Or even better: Anyone know of a Discord server I could join. ;)

TeMPOraL 5y ago
> I wonder if HN will ever be bullish on a product that’s targeting the general audience. Sure. I don't think anyone is doubting Discord will pump a ridiculous valuation and make boatloads of money. That's not really impressing anyone here, not anymore. In more general terms: that you can impress the general audience with shiny trinkets, shepherd them into a walled garden, and then milk them for all they're worth - it's a well-known, common pattern. It's not interesting, except in terms of what we're losing as a society and as an industry because of it. So it's the latter things that get disproportional attention on HN.

xupybd 5y ago

We're using it for work. It's serving us better than Team or Zoom did and it's free.

sadness3 5y ago

As a personal user, I'd give Discord more money if high-resolution streaming and higher bitrates etc. were a bit cheaper, and I could buy credit which using these features ate through, instead of having to pay an overly expensive subscription.

DrBazza 5y ago

I can't remember where I read it (likely Joel Spolsky, or Paul Graham), but there was an article about businesses that thrive in the shadow of FAANG + MS and others because even though they're in the same business they don't compete in a way that's worth the big guys chasing. In this case, MS Teams is obsessed with Office integration as it's key selling point. Which in turn means business workers. Whereas Discord users don't care about calendar integration and so on. Modern chat apps are a Venn diagram with a modest intersection. I can't see how Discord can get more users without losing original users. Basically, a demographic shift. And then you're in the big guys territory where they additionally have 'killer features' already and that's where businesses get bought or fold.

mynameismon 5y ago
This reminds me of the 'Law of Line Extension'[0]. What I think they can successfully do, is rebrand as a new product (Accord is a name that might suit it, given the nature of office communications), disassociate any gamer connections, and link it to Discord by adding an account switcher. [0]: https://ericsink.com/laws/Law_12.html https://ericsink.com/laws/Law_12.html
lmm 5y ago
I actually care a lot about calendar integration. For about two years I've been saying that our best hope for calendar software that doesn't suck is if Discord gets into it, and it's a natural fit - most of the discords I'm in have some sort of regular scheduled activity, gamers want to schedule when they can game together.
- mynameismon 5y ago
  You might want to check Guilded (https://guilded.gg https://guilded.gg)
Ekaros 5y ago
I wouldn't be entirely sure. Discord communities are much more isolated than on other social media sites. Outside discoverability, which is pretty poor you don't end up seeing what is going on even on other public servers. So if they continue to deliver good enough product to gamers and then entice other communities to join it could work very well.

basisword 5y ago

In my limited experience Discord seems almost identical to Slack but with a much worse UI. Combine that with the fact that belonging to more than one server quickly becomes overwhelming (again, largely due to crappy UX) I’m concerned about how many communities are utilising it. Can somebody that likes it explain why it seems to be doing so well?

lugged 5y ago
Because its free. Slack is not.
- blensor 5y ago
  It's the easiest way for me to connect with the community, and basically every VR developer or VR project can be found there so it's easy to connect with like minded people. There are also a lot of bots you can add for different tasks. It kind of feels like a realtime social network. Where it's really lacking is to structure information that should be available to anyone, but I guess that's not what it's meant for anyway
- jillesvangurp 5y ago
  Slack is free as well. Or at least, like discord, it has a freemium layer. We use both and we pay for neither.
  - square_usual 5y ago
    You're really underestimating Discord's free layer. I have a server that's literally just me which I've dumped tons of images and videos into. It's like an unlimited cloud storage bucket, so long as the individual files are below a certain size. It also won't prevent you from seeing stuff after you've got 10k messages.
    - WorldMaker 5y ago
      I think it's a clear difference in business model: Slack's business model is selling to "the group". The features you have available are what your "admin" decides is good for the group, and upgrades (especially upgrades from the "free layer") need to financed/budgeted as a group decision. Discord's business model is that individual users are the paying customers so there are fewer features "nickel and dimed" at the group level. If I want better paid features as a user I don't have to convince an entire group to buy into the idea. I especially don't have to convince multiple such groups to do it if I want the same paid features in every group I am a participant in I don't have to convince the admins of multiple groups to pay for them (and/or figure out how to bill for them). Where Discord does have group-level paid features ("boosts"), they are presented as bottom up "collective individual effort as multiplier" more than "the group needs to top down pay a monthly invoice". From a user perspective, in Slack I'm not the customer, I'm a cog in some wheel that is the customer. On Discord, I'm the customer, and that deeply impacts a lot of how Discord operates including and especially how it treats the "free layer".

epaga 5y ago

FWIW one data point - we had begun beforehand but especially when COVID started, the small company I work at moved nearly all our company communication into Discord. We tried out Slack and other alternatives at the time and the huge advantage of Discord was how simple and playful it was while other solutions were so very enterprise-y. Plus, Discord offers a great bot API, so it was super easy to write our own integrations. We are very happy Discord was not bought by Microsoft.

raspyberr 5y ago

Hi ***, This is a just a super quick notice that we will be closing your open support ticket and I will be eating it shortly. Hopefully we solved your issue with such grace and finesse that you didn't need to respond. If that's the case, great! Meal for me. Otherwise, please respond and we will sick our support team on the problem like a dog on some marbled wagyu. And then I'll find something else to eat, I guess. Thanks, Eater of Support Tickets Gosh, I really feel like I've spoken to professional support. Considering they didn't fix my issue, this sort of response is pretty annoying.

mrkramer 5y ago

They refused $12bn takeover bid from Microsoft?! That's brave. Not they are worth $15bn? It is crazy valuation for the chat app that's basically gaming version of Slack. I always thought Slack would purchase Discord and make it its "Gaming division" chat app.

lvl100 5y ago

Discord is OK. Nothing groundbreaking. But the tech stack is rock solid.

delaaxe 5y ago

Discord has also won most crypto development/support communities.

_raoulcousins 5y ago

I love that I can adjust individual people’s volume in discord. Afaik I can’t in zoom.

MisterTea 5y ago

Discord is easy to use which is why its so popular. Install, pick a name and go. I don't even remember creating an account, just typing in a nick name. Even on Void Linux Musl you can install it via flatpack, scan the qr code and you're logged in with all your servers and channels already there. You couldn't setup an IRC client that fast. My great gripe? No 3rd party clients. It's also massively bloated for my need of sending a few bytes of text. For this reason I use it for just one server and to communicate with two friends and my brother. Otherwise I use IRC where I'm on three networks and 26 channels. IRC is much less convenient for sure in terms of nick registering (some SOB took my name!) "back scroll" and persistence across clients/systems but it does 99% of what I want from a chat client: chatting via text.

SevenSigs 5y ago
> No 3rd party clients. I use a web browser to access Discord. But I would not use Discord for anything personal, only for public channels.
BeefWellington 5y ago
> You couldn't setup an IRC client that fast. You can't today, there's no reason you eventually couldn't.
- MisterTea 5y ago
  I know there are some attempts to fix those issues in IRC but at this point I'd rather Matrix as it already exists, works, open, is not user hostile (e.g. banned for using an alt client), and bridges to IRC and XMMP.
63 5y ago
Technically there are third party clients, they just break tos and can get you banned if you're not careful. Ripcord has a lot of cool features, I just wish I could risk using it.
- MisterTea 5y ago

Grakel 5y ago

I just wish it would close when you click the X. Instead it minimizes. Steam does this too, I can't believe Microsoft allows this behavior.

zerot_ 5y ago
Then open the settings and turn off Minimize to Tray?
- Grakel 5y ago
  No such option on Steam.

29athrowaway 5y ago

Programmers like Discord too. There are many great programming communities there.

deleted 5y ago

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literallyaduck 5y ago

Discord is big tech, and a decentralized solution is better.

amarant 5y ago

I kind of like this, assuming they don't change their software too much(or at all). Discords voice channels are the perfect replacement for "watercooler conversations" for the remote working age.

fouc 5y ago

If Discord wants to win me over, they need to adjust their layout & themes. The default dark mode and the light mode both are not comfortable to me, and I'm someone that likes the default Slack theme or irssi/weechat in terminal on a black background.

honksillet 5y ago

Discord has also joined the ranks of tech companies censoring speech. Which essentially means they can and have eavesdropped on various groups and closed groups. No thank you.

bwship 5y ago

Yea, it would be refreshing for a company to say, we nailed this product, we are going to now just refine it more and more perfectly to streamline it even more. But instead everyone wants to cram more things into it. The old saying was that a SAAS product isn't complete until it has it's own email server baked into it.

irrational 5y ago

Having never use Discord - what is the elevator pitch for why I would want to use it?

UncleOxidant 5y ago

Forget about using Discord if you use a wireless carrier that uses VOIP (like Republic Wireless, for example). Discord will not let you authenticate. Their answer is "change carriers", but I don't need Discord all that much.

0xBA5ED 5y ago

As a frequent user of the PC client, I think it's a bloated mess which gets slower by the day (with poor UX to boot). And they're talking about expanding their market? It's clear what their priorities are.

tristor 5y ago

I've never used Discord for gaming, but I've used it extensively in the maker hobby for various groups. I don't see it as being well aligned for business use, and any changes to make it better aligned for business use would damage it's ability to serve hobbyists (and gamers). I don't think this is a good move.

deleted 5y ago

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jetsnoc 5y ago

They have a lot of issues if they "want everybody else on Discord" They cancelled an account of mine because it shared a phone number with a secondary account of mine. (1 for work; 1 for personal use.) Support said "Account ban is valid - FRAUD/SPAM" with no ability to have a conversation with them or escalate. My cellphone number is now blacklisted for SMS validation. Incredibly weird. No support for their products, not really.