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You are partially correct. Community and network effects are strong, but Discord has technical features no FOSS equivalent currently has: * One-click audio-vid

You are partially correct. Community and network effects are strong, but Discord has technical features no FOSS equivalent currently has: * One-click audio-video screensharing * One-click video conference and chatting * Emojis and inline images * Decent UI Bonus: Discord gives people the super quick option to have a hosted private server. Discord can do all this because you are the product. Sure, there is nitro, but Discord is spyware that looks at every process on your computer and I'm sure they are using/selling that data. So I believe that a client/server architecture that can do self-hosting and meet those technical requirements, could possibly bolt-on "single identity" ala Discord. Does Matrix support instant screenshare/video chat rooms?

yosito 5y ago
> Discord is spyware that looks at every process on your computer and I'm sure they are using/selling that data Is there solid evidence that supports this, or are you saying it based on intuition?
- georgyo 5y ago
  Not evidence that they are selling or even collecting this data, but discord _must_ look at the process and/or window table periodically to know when you are playing a video game so it can give you the one click stream button.
- nawgz 5y ago
  What do you think free apps do to make money? Especially one which is hosting real-time communications? There's a reason they shove the app down your throat even though the website works perfectly...
  - wheybags 5y ago
    They sell premium subscriptions
- unethical_ban 5y ago
  Personally, suspicion. The other two comments combined cover it: Discord does look at all your processes to see if you're playing games, and having not read the EULA but knowing how "free" apps that cost money to operate work, I assume they are doing some kind of analytics and selling that data.
  - nucleardog 5y ago
    It's just an electron app. Rather than just flinging mud, it'd be relatively easy for anyone to actually find evidence of this. That there are several articles about people reverse engineering the client and protocol and nobody else has brought this up, I feel pretty comfortable calling this unfounded unless you can provide some indication otherwise.
    - lmm 5y ago
      Discord definitely checks your process list, that's well-known and obvious (by default it shows everyone which game you're currently playing, if any). Given that that information does go to the server, there's no way to know what it's used for.
      - nucleardog 5y ago
        > Given that that information does go to the server That "given" there is doing a lot of work. I've never seen any reference stating that it's sending the entire process list anywhere. The current third party protocol implementations all expose setting the game/activity you're playing directly, sure making it look like everything is done client-side.
      - dymk 5y ago
        Are you sure it's checking your process list, or is it using something like e.g. the Steam API to ask about the currently running game?
        exciteabletom 5y ago
- jarcane 5y ago
  I have at this point lost count of the number of times I or someone else I know on Discord has described getting Youtube recs or ads directly referencing shit they'd just talked about. I started getting blasted with YT recs for weeks for a channel I had never heard of, never watched, had no real common connections with ... until someone referenced them in a conversation on Discord. Now, you can shit on that as anecdotal or "intuition" or whatever, but come on. This is HN. No one here is ignorant about the level of data sharing that goes on in the adtech space, and everyone claims they don't until Gmail's selling you ads based on your emails. It's not like someone's just argued that the president is a space alien. We're talking about suggesting a for-profit internet company is doing something that literally damn near all the for-profit internet companies do and have done now for decades. The bigger question is to how anyone could be so credulous as to assume they are not.
  - d3nj4l 5y ago
    This is the same thing people accuse Facebook of and nobody has convincingly proved Facebook does it. I despise Facebook as much as the next HNer but I am loath to make it seem more capable than it is. Likewise with Discord, I sincerely doubt they can handle combing through voice + text data to build profiles of users, and I'll keep that stance until someone convincingly proves that they do.
    - jarcane 5y ago
      Natural Language Processing is literally a major wing of AI development and data science, but even that isn't really necessary. Matching text on ad-based keywords has been going on since fucking About.com.
  - yosito 5y ago
    I'm not shitting on it, I'm just asking what level of information we have about which data Discord is actually collecting/storing and what they're doing with it.
- chaoskanzlerin 5y ago
  Unrelated to "looks at every process", but Discord stores messages unencrypted & refuses to delete messages. With "refusal to delete messages" being a clear violation of GDPR, I think it's fair to assume fishy things are going on.
mr_johnson22 5y ago
Matrix doesn't (yet), but Jitsi does, even without accounts for joined users. All you need to start a Jitsi chat with any number of people is a URL. _Integration_ with Jitsi is a separate matter, however. Hosting it can be a pain too.
- gsich 5y ago
  This is not the same as channels in Discord/Mumble/Teamspeak.
chuckee 5y ago
You missed the most important technical feature: shared chat history.
altantiprocrast 5y ago
In Matrix (element.io here), you can click on one button in any room and start a video chat, and then after one more click screen share. The rooms aren't dedicated to voice/video but it definitely is very easy to do that. It is implemented using Jitsi at a protocol level but the end-user doesn't usually notice that.
charcircuit 5y ago
Discord is not spyware, it does not sell user data, and it doesn't collect all the programs you use on your computer. If you have the setting to show what game you are playing it periodically checks your processes and looks for a match locally before setting that match as your status.

yosito 5y ago

> Discord is spyware that looks at every process on your computer and I'm sure they are using/selling that data Is there solid evidence that supports this, or are you saying it based on intuition?

georgyo 5y ago
Not evidence that they are selling or even collecting this data, but discord _must_ look at the process and/or window table periodically to know when you are playing a video game so it can give you the one click stream button.
nawgz 5y ago
What do you think free apps do to make money? Especially one which is hosting real-time communications? There's a reason they shove the app down your throat even though the website works perfectly...
- wheybags 5y ago
  They sell premium subscriptions
unethical_ban 5y ago
Personally, suspicion. The other two comments combined cover it: Discord does look at all your processes to see if you're playing games, and having not read the EULA but knowing how "free" apps that cost money to operate work, I assume they are doing some kind of analytics and selling that data.
- nucleardog 5y ago
  It's just an electron app. Rather than just flinging mud, it'd be relatively easy for anyone to actually find evidence of this. That there are several articles about people reverse engineering the client and protocol and nobody else has brought this up, I feel pretty comfortable calling this unfounded unless you can provide some indication otherwise.
  - lmm 5y ago
    Discord definitely checks your process list, that's well-known and obvious (by default it shows everyone which game you're currently playing, if any). Given that that information does go to the server, there's no way to know what it's used for.
    - nucleardog 5y ago
      > Given that that information does go to the server That "given" there is doing a lot of work. I've never seen any reference stating that it's sending the entire process list anywhere. The current third party protocol implementations all expose setting the game/activity you're playing directly, sure making it look like everything is done client-side.
    - dymk 5y ago
      Are you sure it's checking your process list, or is it using something like e.g. the Steam API to ask about the currently running game?
      - exciteabletom 5y ago
jarcane 5y ago
I have at this point lost count of the number of times I or someone else I know on Discord has described getting Youtube recs or ads directly referencing shit they'd just talked about. I started getting blasted with YT recs for weeks for a channel I had never heard of, never watched, had no real common connections with ... until someone referenced them in a conversation on Discord. Now, you can shit on that as anecdotal or "intuition" or whatever, but come on. This is HN. No one here is ignorant about the level of data sharing that goes on in the adtech space, and everyone claims they don't until Gmail's selling you ads based on your emails. It's not like someone's just argued that the president is a space alien. We're talking about suggesting a for-profit internet company is doing something that literally damn near all the for-profit internet companies do and have done now for decades. The bigger question is to how anyone could be so credulous as to assume they are not.
- d3nj4l 5y ago
  This is the same thing people accuse Facebook of and nobody has convincingly proved Facebook does it. I despise Facebook as much as the next HNer but I am loath to make it seem more capable than it is. Likewise with Discord, I sincerely doubt they can handle combing through voice + text data to build profiles of users, and I'll keep that stance until someone convincingly proves that they do.
  - jarcane 5y ago
    Natural Language Processing is literally a major wing of AI development and data science, but even that isn't really necessary. Matching text on ad-based keywords has been going on since fucking About.com.
- yosito 5y ago
  I'm not shitting on it, I'm just asking what level of information we have about which data Discord is actually collecting/storing and what they're doing with it.
chaoskanzlerin 5y ago
Unrelated to "looks at every process", but Discord stores messages unencrypted & refuses to delete messages. With "refusal to delete messages" being a clear violation of GDPR, I think it's fair to assume fishy things are going on.

mr_johnson22 5y ago

Matrix doesn't (yet), but Jitsi does, even without accounts for joined users. All you need to start a Jitsi chat with any number of people is a URL. _Integration_ with Jitsi is a separate matter, however. Hosting it can be a pain too.

gsich 5y ago
This is not the same as channels in Discord/Mumble/Teamspeak.

chuckee 5y ago

You missed the most important technical feature: shared chat history.

altantiprocrast 5y ago

In Matrix (element.io here), you can click on one button in any room and start a video chat, and then after one more click screen share. The rooms aren't dedicated to voice/video but it definitely is very easy to do that. It is implemented using Jitsi at a protocol level but the end-user doesn't usually notice that.

charcircuit 5y ago

Discord is not spyware, it does not sell user data, and it doesn't collect all the programs you use on your computer. If you have the setting to show what game you are playing it periodically checks your processes and looks for a match locally before setting that match as your status.