5 ms·

> Discord has never been a particularly good bit of software I really don't see how you can say that. How?

andai 5y ago
You know, I'm glad you asked! I've been looking forward to writing these down. Voice chat is unreliable, often requiring 2-3 attempts restarting the call to work. The calls often die midway without telling you, until you realize you're just talking into the void. Tried on multiple devices (including mobile), same result. When I hear a message come in, I have no way of knowing where it came from. There is an inbox button, but the message at the top is not the one that made the sound, and the list appears to have some kind of infinite scroll (so it isn't at the bottom either! Or maybe it is but I'm in too many servers?). I actually did find a trick for identifying what channel a message was in, assuming it's part of a busy conversation -- clear the inbox and wait for the next one. (If it's just one message, that doesn't work.) It also logs me out every single time I visit, often just hours apart, which I can only assume is intentional, to try and get me to download their electron spyware instead of using the web version? At least I hope it's a dark pattern and not incompetence, because I'd prefer to believe I live in a world where competence is misdirected, than one where it is absent.
- theshrike79 5y ago
  > Voice chat is unreliable, often requiring 2-3 attempts restarting the call to work. The calls often die midway without telling you, until you realize you're just talking into the void. Tried on multiple devices (including mobile), same result. YMMV We specifically switched one group to Discord just because the voice/video chat works every single time.
- jimmaswell 5y ago
  I've never had any of those issues on the desktop or phone app, and they're not spyware by any but the most overreaching definition.
  - andai 5y ago
    Ahh, apparently the part where it scans every process you have open can be disabled in privacy, it's checked locally against a known list of games and the data is never uploaded [0]. (But it still quits if you try to block the connection?) Still, the very principle is not something I am comfortable with. [1] [0] Why is Discord recording our open programs and uploading them? - https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/43lqyb/why_is_discord_recording_our_open_programs_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/43lqyb/why_is_d... [1] Wacom Tablets track every app you open - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22247292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22247292
    - junon 5y ago
      Then don't use Discord. It's a gaming chat that is intended to be used while gaming as a primary goal of their service. There are a wide variety of reasons to be critical of discord (many of them having little to do directly with Discord in particular) but the way they go about process scanning is unintrusive and pretty typical of similar apps, such as Steam, which is actually way more intrusive in some cases due to VAC.
    - jodrellblank 5y ago
      Discord is a social media gaming program, it tracks what games you're playing so it can prompt your friends to join you in the game. It's not an Office Slack replacement which is also spyware, it's a gaming chat which grew out into being used by FOSS projects partly because it's so good cross-platform and partly because of IRC's gradual decline. You can see it happening in the always-on user list on the side which shows people are "Playing $Game" in their status. It also changes your status, visible in the client, I think. Wacom tablets are a local computer input device. They have no business tracking or uploading anything in normal use, and you have no expectation or way to notice that it's happening. All of your chat is sent to, and archived by, Discord, forever. That's annoying but server-central-not-encrypted-chat is their product. If I found all of my Discord chat messsages were being copied and uploaded to Wacom and archived forever, by a Wacom driver/app, I'd be incensed.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > It also logs me out every single time I visit, often just hours apart, which I can only assume is intentional, to try and get me to download their electron spyware Also any discord invite link redirects to discord:// which of course breaks if you don't have the app installed. There's literally zero reasons for that behavior as replacing discord:// with discord.com just works
  - junon 5y ago
    I've never had this be a problem.
    - gertlex 5y ago
      I started noticing this the past few weeks with the desktop app. Not sure if it's new, but it's sure a PITA to share a link from discord by first clicking it to open it (into browser) then copying the browser's URL. Even just pasting from one discord server to another server requires this extra nonsense.
  - jodrellblank 5y ago
    If you replaced the discord protocol with the website address, wouldn't that stop it from opening in the client for everyone who has the client installed?
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      I have to replace this myself when I get sent a discord invite link.
- junon 5y ago
  > Voice chat is unreliable, often requiring 2-3 attempts restarting the call to work I've never had this happen. If there's anything to praise about Discord is that they have one of the best at-scale AV chat systems on the planet in my experience, and I've used a lot of them. > appears to have some kind of infinite scroll No idea what you're talking about. The only thing in Discord with infinite scroll is a channel chat frame, which isn't where you look for notifications. > It also logs me out every single time I visit, often just hours apart, which I can only assume is intentional I've literally never had this problem nor have I heard of anyone having this problem. Sounds like a browser issue.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - cma 5y ago
    I've had the log out problem, but it eventually went away.
- Kiro 5y ago
  > Voice chat is unreliable, often requiring 2-3 attempts restarting the call to work. Sorry but that must be something on your end. Never heard anyone with that problem and I'm very very active on Discord.
Banana699 5y ago
Not OP, but this rant is too good to miss. 1- Memory hungry and laggy: 1st one is expected from an electron app, but VS code is an electron app (and fairly memory hungry) but also works like a charm once startup is done. 2- Network hungry: I literally don't know what it's doing with the bandwidth, when zoom and google meets both work fine for 50+ people (as far as I saw it) with only the occasional cough, why the f* is that 4-person meeting lagging and cutting off audio out of nowhere every 3 minutes ? 3- General awefulness and user-hostility: - Updates are always the first thing to do at app startup, "f* you user, you don't get to see the UI before I'm done!". I have even heard from a friend on windows that the app launches at computer startup to fetch updates, even after the app's "launch at startup" was disabled from the task manager !, thankfully this never happened with me (also windows, but older). What is that weird fetish anyway ? the app was working before the updates perfectly fine, you would rather block the UI thread for a non-critical update ? hijack computer startup (an incredibly annoying and slow process especially if the OS is on hard drive) to fetch the update that adds that extra dumb colored widget to the UI ? - Discoverability, maybe I'm missing the point a bit since discord is about privat groups, but is the search feature literally useless ? I swear it has a bunch of hard-coded channels for advertisment and replies to any other search with "not found". Privacy is compatible with this, you can make people ask to join things they find interesting and wait for approval from admins, I don't see why you have to implement whatsapp's invite-only groups - which makes sense only in the context of an addressing scheme based on phone numbers as they are inherently invite-only and can't be collected and indexed - in a web app. Maybe this is a fundamental limitation of IRC somehow ? it just sucks, it's the reason I don't use it as anything other than an inferior version of a zoom/whatsapp hybrid.
- quartesixte 5y ago
  The subset of servers I am in inherently do not want to be easily discovered. And I’m in some large servers (total members > 25,000). You have to either be in a related server, find it from a related subreddit/youtube channel/tiktok profile/etc., or be directly invited. Anecdatally, this seems generally to be a cultural divide among demographics where restricting access is not good enough for privacy—the mere knowledge of its existence is the first barrier (see: teenagers and “finstagrams”)

You know, I'm glad you asked! I've been looking forward to writing these down. Voice chat is unreliable, often requiring 2-3 attempts restarting the call to work. The calls often die midway without telling you, until you realize you're just talking into the void. Tried on multiple devices (including mobile), same result. When I hear a message come in, I have no way of knowing where it came from. There is an inbox button, but the message at the top is not the one that made the sound, and the list appears to have some kind of infinite scroll (so it isn't at the bottom either! Or maybe it is but I'm in too many servers?). I actually did find a trick for identifying what channel a message was in, assuming it's part of a busy conversation -- clear the inbox and wait for the next one. (If it's just one message, that doesn't work.) It also logs me out every single time I visit, often just hours apart, which I can only assume is intentional, to try and get me to download their electron spyware instead of using the web version? At least I hope it's a dark pattern and not incompetence, because I'd prefer to believe I live in a world where competence is misdirected, than one where it is absent.

theshrike79 5y ago
> Voice chat is unreliable, often requiring 2-3 attempts restarting the call to work. The calls often die midway without telling you, until you realize you're just talking into the void. Tried on multiple devices (including mobile), same result. YMMV We specifically switched one group to Discord just because the voice/video chat works every single time.
jimmaswell 5y ago
I've never had any of those issues on the desktop or phone app, and they're not spyware by any but the most overreaching definition.
- andai 5y ago
  Ahh, apparently the part where it scans every process you have open can be disabled in privacy, it's checked locally against a known list of games and the data is never uploaded [0]. (But it still quits if you try to block the connection?) Still, the very principle is not something I am comfortable with. [1] [0] Why is Discord recording our open programs and uploading them? - https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/43lqyb/why_is_discord_recording_our_open_programs_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/43lqyb/why_is_d... [1] Wacom Tablets track every app you open - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22247292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22247292
  - junon 5y ago
    Then don't use Discord. It's a gaming chat that is intended to be used while gaming as a primary goal of their service. There are a wide variety of reasons to be critical of discord (many of them having little to do directly with Discord in particular) but the way they go about process scanning is unintrusive and pretty typical of similar apps, such as Steam, which is actually way more intrusive in some cases due to VAC.
  - jodrellblank 5y ago
    Discord is a social media gaming program, it tracks what games you're playing so it can prompt your friends to join you in the game. It's not an Office Slack replacement which is also spyware, it's a gaming chat which grew out into being used by FOSS projects partly because it's so good cross-platform and partly because of IRC's gradual decline. You can see it happening in the always-on user list on the side which shows people are "Playing $Game" in their status. It also changes your status, visible in the client, I think. Wacom tablets are a local computer input device. They have no business tracking or uploading anything in normal use, and you have no expectation or way to notice that it's happening. All of your chat is sent to, and archived by, Discord, forever. That's annoying but server-central-not-encrypted-chat is their product. If I found all of my Discord chat messsages were being copied and uploaded to Wacom and archived forever, by a Wacom driver/app, I'd be incensed.
dmitriid 5y ago
> It also logs me out every single time I visit, often just hours apart, which I can only assume is intentional, to try and get me to download their electron spyware Also any discord invite link redirects to discord:// which of course breaks if you don't have the app installed. There's literally zero reasons for that behavior as replacing discord:// with discord.com just works
- junon 5y ago
  I've never had this be a problem.
  - gertlex 5y ago
    I started noticing this the past few weeks with the desktop app. Not sure if it's new, but it's sure a PITA to share a link from discord by first clicking it to open it (into browser) then copying the browser's URL. Even just pasting from one discord server to another server requires this extra nonsense.
- jodrellblank 5y ago
  If you replaced the discord protocol with the website address, wouldn't that stop it from opening in the client for everyone who has the client installed?
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    I have to replace this myself when I get sent a discord invite link.
junon 5y ago
> Voice chat is unreliable, often requiring 2-3 attempts restarting the call to work I've never had this happen. If there's anything to praise about Discord is that they have one of the best at-scale AV chat systems on the planet in my experience, and I've used a lot of them. > appears to have some kind of infinite scroll No idea what you're talking about. The only thing in Discord with infinite scroll is a channel chat frame, which isn't where you look for notifications. > It also logs me out every single time I visit, often just hours apart, which I can only assume is intentional I've literally never had this problem nor have I heard of anyone having this problem. Sounds like a browser issue.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- cma 5y ago
  I've had the log out problem, but it eventually went away.
Kiro 5y ago
> Voice chat is unreliable, often requiring 2-3 attempts restarting the call to work. Sorry but that must be something on your end. Never heard anyone with that problem and I'm very very active on Discord.

Banana699 5y ago

Not OP, but this rant is too good to miss. 1- Memory hungry and laggy: 1st one is expected from an electron app, but VS code is an electron app (and fairly memory hungry) but also works like a charm once startup is done. 2- Network hungry: I literally don't know what it's doing with the bandwidth, when zoom and google meets both work fine for 50+ people (as far as I saw it) with only the occasional cough, why the f* is that 4-person meeting lagging and cutting off audio out of nowhere every 3 minutes ? 3- General awefulness and user-hostility: - Updates are always the first thing to do at app startup, "f* you user, you don't get to see the UI before I'm done!". I have even heard from a friend on windows that the app launches at computer startup to fetch updates, even after the app's "launch at startup" was disabled from the task manager !, thankfully this never happened with me (also windows, but older). What is that weird fetish anyway ? the app was working before the updates perfectly fine, you would rather block the UI thread for a non-critical update ? hijack computer startup (an incredibly annoying and slow process especially if the OS is on hard drive) to fetch the update that adds that extra dumb colored widget to the UI ? - Discoverability, maybe I'm missing the point a bit since discord is about privat groups, but is the search feature literally useless ? I swear it has a bunch of hard-coded channels for advertisment and replies to any other search with "not found". Privacy is compatible with this, you can make people ask to join things they find interesting and wait for approval from admins, I don't see why you have to implement whatsapp's invite-only groups - which makes sense only in the context of an addressing scheme based on phone numbers as they are inherently invite-only and can't be collected and indexed - in a web app. Maybe this is a fundamental limitation of IRC somehow ? it just sucks, it's the reason I don't use it as anything other than an inferior version of a zoom/whatsapp hybrid.

quartesixte 5y ago
The subset of servers I am in inherently do not want to be easily discovered. And I’m in some large servers (total members > 25,000). You have to either be in a related server, find it from a related subreddit/youtube channel/tiktok profile/etc., or be directly invited. Anecdatally, this seems generally to be a cultural divide among demographics where restricting access is not good enough for privacy—the mere knowledge of its existence is the first barrier (see: teenagers and “finstagrams”)