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IMO discord is not great. I might be in the minority but everything these days offers a discord because it's simple. I'm not a fan of it and would prefer IRC. P

IMO discord is not great. I might be in the minority but everything these days offers a discord because it's simple. I'm not a fan of it and would prefer IRC. Part of that reason is discord is just spying equipment dressed up with a nice UI. I couldn't imagine using discord for a company. Slack actually provides some value outside of just chat that makes it legitimately nicer than the mid 00's solution of AOL messenger (or MSN) that companies used to use. I don't think self hosting a chat of similar value would be much cheaper if you did it properly. 1,000 users will require plenty of servers and failover, plenty of storage for messages (even if you cut it off at 90 days), etc. A lot of people use slack as an ad-hoc note storing service with search so go ahead and add even more hardware. On AWS this would get prohibitively expensive quickly. Honestly I could do without 90% of the features and would be very happy if I could just run IRC in my terminal for work. Unfortunately IRC is non-trivial to get a normal person started on.

d23 4y ago
> Part of that reason is discord is just spying equipment dressed up with a nice UI. In what way? I didn't know about this.
- ivraatiems 4y ago
  Can't speak for the parent, but I suspect they're referring to two things: 1) A good chunk of Discord is owned by Tencent, a big Chinese conglomerate 2) Discord decrypts and then re-encrypts content on its servers, allegedly for efficiency reasons I think for a small startup that is making games/software which are non-controversial, Discord might still be a fine choice. For anything requiring assurances of enterprise-grade security, I'd avoid it.
  - judge2020 4y ago
    > 1) A good chunk of Discord is owned by Tencent, a big Chinese conglomerate The most credible source from this is this article[0], but since it's VC we have no idea what the ownership looks like. For all we know Tencent owns 5% or less of Discord, especially given two companies are listed before them in the article: > The round was led by Greenoaks Capital with participation from Firstmark, Tencent, IVP, Index Ventures and Technology Opportunity Partners. In general Tencent has more pull in other big gaming companies[1], which is more concerning imo. 0: https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/21/gaming-chat-startup-discord-raises-150m-surpassing-2b-valuation/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/21/gaming-chat-startup-discor... 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21190677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21190677
- nightpool 4y ago
  In no possible way, OP is just making grandiose claims without any shred of evidence.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    Discord Inc should have thought better on the implications of having Tencent in the owner list.
  - Test0129 4y ago
    Without any shred of evidence? Lmao. Lets start with the privacy policy [1] "We may also use content posted in public spaces to help power features like Server Discovery and to help us identify harmful content on the services." So they monitor all chat for badthink. "We collect information about the device you are using to access the services. This includes information like your IP address, operating system information, browser information, and information about your device settings, such as your microphone and/or camera." Inappropriate access to hardware and private information. "We may collect or share personal data if we think someone’s life is in danger—for example, to help resolve an urgent medical situation." So not only do they monitor chat they monitor it for someone's life being in danger. Not sure how this is their responsibility. > We may share information in response to a request for information if we believe disclosure is required by law, including meeting national security or law enforcement requirements Say something 2 years ago that is logged forever and law enforcement goes on a fishing expedition when the party in power thinks its wrongthink. > We retain personal information for as long as it is needed for the purposes for which we collected it. Information is never deleted. There's even more in the privacy policy but I'm not going to keep rooting around in it to prove my point that you're wrong. Funding [2] Discord has taken funding from Tencent which means they're liable to the CCP. Moreover, the list of funders includes large companies known for suing/taking legal action against users historically. Sony, for example. Moreover EVERYTHING YOU DO including interacting on unrelated websites that support discord goes to them. They MINE YOUR DATA and you have no control over it. Your argument my claims are gradiose is false on its face. I assume you're a paid shill. Discord is spyware by any other name. Maybe you're willing to accept the risks but most people use it ignorant of the fact they are as bad as Facebook when it comes to spying. [1] https://discord.com/privacy https://discord.com/privacy [2] https://app.dealroom.co/companies/discord https://app.dealroom.co/companies/discord
- judge2020 4y ago
  It's not e2ee, but I imagine it's a tall order to ask for communities with thousands of members to support E2EE while also supporting message history (since you want things like old messages searchable) and complex mentions (ie. @role notifications) with maybe a thousand messages per minute being sent across all channels/topics.
- fps 4y ago
  Discord monitors all running processes on a user's machine so it can tag users with a "now playing ..." status text. The content of chats/private messages is also accessible to them. Their ToS allows them to sell/share this data.
  - vel0city 4y ago
    > The content of chats/private messages is also accessible to them. Not only that, the attachments on private messages are publicly visible. Send an attachment in a private chat. Grab the link. Open it in a browser unaffiliated with your Discord login. wget it on a VM a thousand miles away. Its now publicly hosted.
    - judge2020 4y ago
      Attachment links include the server ID but not the channel ID, so it's not like you can enumerate for files in a server by obtaining the server and channel IDs. Each attachment's ID is in a snowflake[0], so the urls are cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/:SERVER_ID/:ATTACHMENT_ID/:filename.png 0: https://discord.com/developers/docs/resources/channel#attachment-object https://discord.com/developers/docs/resources/channel#attach...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
mbesto 4y ago
Note - this is for Nomadlist that has a community of 1k people, not a corporate employee base of 1k people. Different value proposition here. Discord is actually a decent fit for them.
LinuxBender 4y ago
and would prefer IRC I too prefer IRC. For those that want the message history and scrollback that IRC lacks they can front-end it with things like TheLounge [1] or Convos. TheLounge uses a Redis cache for messages. And for the Slack-specific features, one could implement them either in IRC modules or IRC bots. UnrealIRCD [2] is very modular. [1] - https://github.com/thelounge https://github.com/thelounge [2] - https://www.unrealircd.org/ https://www.unrealircd.org/
- packetlost 4y ago
  For people who like living in 2022 or don't know/care about setting up their own chat infrastructure, there's also Matrix which offers pretty much all modern chat features with little more than creating an account as setup.
ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
I honestly feel there is a big gap in the market for a good community software. Something which ties events in the community with messages and also has voice chat and other capabilities on the side. Discord is popular because there are no free alternatives which does what Discord does poorly.
- SleepilyLimping 4y ago
  No one wants to self-host, and normies especially don't want to learn or care about self-hosting. Discord does what it does, normies like it, and people make bots and utilities for Discord because people use it. It's a network effect.
  - Stamp01 4y ago
    Maybe there's a market for turn-key Mattermost or Matrix hosting? Similar to how you can go and pay for someone to host Wordpress for you.
    - Arathorn 4y ago
      There are a bunch of people providing turnkey Matrix hosting - e.g. https://element.io/matrix-services https://element.io/matrix-services from Element, or https://etke.cc/ https://etke.cc/ and https://ungleich.ch/u/products/hosted-matrix-chat/ https://ungleich.ch/u/products/hosted-matrix-chat/.
iLoveOncall 4y ago
As much as I can get behind "Discord is not great", the idea of putting IRC in competition with Slack and Discord is absolutely laughable. IRC provides probably at most 2% of the features of those two, even stuff that I use daily like settings a status, having a profile picture, editing messages, pining messages, and other very basic stuff. Anyone suggesting IRC as an entreprise solution is a greybeard of thr highest order.
- Test0129 4y ago
  > greybeard of the highest order Yes. > I use daily like settings a status, having a profile picture, editing messages, pining messages, and other very basic stuff. These are client side. I got by for a long time without any of this. I continue to get by without it today. I use about 2% of slack's features and remain as productive and "available" as needed. Slack is a complete waste of time and space to me. The only people who seem to REALLY like it are normies. Which is the market anyway.

d23 4y ago

> Part of that reason is discord is just spying equipment dressed up with a nice UI. In what way? I didn't know about this.

ivraatiems 4y ago
Can't speak for the parent, but I suspect they're referring to two things: 1) A good chunk of Discord is owned by Tencent, a big Chinese conglomerate 2) Discord decrypts and then re-encrypts content on its servers, allegedly for efficiency reasons I think for a small startup that is making games/software which are non-controversial, Discord might still be a fine choice. For anything requiring assurances of enterprise-grade security, I'd avoid it.
- judge2020 4y ago
  > 1) A good chunk of Discord is owned by Tencent, a big Chinese conglomerate The most credible source from this is this article[0], but since it's VC we have no idea what the ownership looks like. For all we know Tencent owns 5% or less of Discord, especially given two companies are listed before them in the article: > The round was led by Greenoaks Capital with participation from Firstmark, Tencent, IVP, Index Ventures and Technology Opportunity Partners. In general Tencent has more pull in other big gaming companies[1], which is more concerning imo. 0: https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/21/gaming-chat-startup-discord-raises-150m-surpassing-2b-valuation/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/21/gaming-chat-startup-discor... 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21190677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21190677
nightpool 4y ago
In no possible way, OP is just making grandiose claims without any shred of evidence.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  Discord Inc should have thought better on the implications of having Tencent in the owner list.
- Test0129 4y ago
  Without any shred of evidence? Lmao. Lets start with the privacy policy [1] "We may also use content posted in public spaces to help power features like Server Discovery and to help us identify harmful content on the services." So they monitor all chat for badthink. "We collect information about the device you are using to access the services. This includes information like your IP address, operating system information, browser information, and information about your device settings, such as your microphone and/or camera." Inappropriate access to hardware and private information. "We may collect or share personal data if we think someone’s life is in danger—for example, to help resolve an urgent medical situation." So not only do they monitor chat they monitor it for someone's life being in danger. Not sure how this is their responsibility. > We may share information in response to a request for information if we believe disclosure is required by law, including meeting national security or law enforcement requirements Say something 2 years ago that is logged forever and law enforcement goes on a fishing expedition when the party in power thinks its wrongthink. > We retain personal information for as long as it is needed for the purposes for which we collected it. Information is never deleted. There's even more in the privacy policy but I'm not going to keep rooting around in it to prove my point that you're wrong. Funding [2] Discord has taken funding from Tencent which means they're liable to the CCP. Moreover, the list of funders includes large companies known for suing/taking legal action against users historically. Sony, for example. Moreover EVERYTHING YOU DO including interacting on unrelated websites that support discord goes to them. They MINE YOUR DATA and you have no control over it. Your argument my claims are gradiose is false on its face. I assume you're a paid shill. Discord is spyware by any other name. Maybe you're willing to accept the risks but most people use it ignorant of the fact they are as bad as Facebook when it comes to spying. [1] https://discord.com/privacy https://discord.com/privacy [2] https://app.dealroom.co/companies/discord https://app.dealroom.co/companies/discord
judge2020 4y ago
It's not e2ee, but I imagine it's a tall order to ask for communities with thousands of members to support E2EE while also supporting message history (since you want things like old messages searchable) and complex mentions (ie. @role notifications) with maybe a thousand messages per minute being sent across all channels/topics.
fps 4y ago
Discord monitors all running processes on a user's machine so it can tag users with a "now playing ..." status text. The content of chats/private messages is also accessible to them. Their ToS allows them to sell/share this data.
- vel0city 4y ago
  > The content of chats/private messages is also accessible to them. Not only that, the attachments on private messages are publicly visible. Send an attachment in a private chat. Grab the link. Open it in a browser unaffiliated with your Discord login. wget it on a VM a thousand miles away. Its now publicly hosted.
  - judge2020 4y ago
    Attachment links include the server ID but not the channel ID, so it's not like you can enumerate for files in a server by obtaining the server and channel IDs. Each attachment's ID is in a snowflake[0], so the urls are cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/:SERVER_ID/:ATTACHMENT_ID/:filename.png 0: https://discord.com/developers/docs/resources/channel#attachment-object https://discord.com/developers/docs/resources/channel#attach...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

mbesto 4y ago

Note - this is for Nomadlist that has a community of 1k people, not a corporate employee base of 1k people. Different value proposition here. Discord is actually a decent fit for them.

LinuxBender 4y ago

and would prefer IRC I too prefer IRC. For those that want the message history and scrollback that IRC lacks they can front-end it with things like TheLounge [1] or Convos. TheLounge uses a Redis cache for messages. And for the Slack-specific features, one could implement them either in IRC modules or IRC bots. UnrealIRCD [2] is very modular. [1] - https://github.com/thelounge https://github.com/thelounge [2] - https://www.unrealircd.org/ https://www.unrealircd.org/

packetlost 4y ago
For people who like living in 2022 or don't know/care about setting up their own chat infrastructure, there's also Matrix which offers pretty much all modern chat features with little more than creating an account as setup.

ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago

I honestly feel there is a big gap in the market for a good community software. Something which ties events in the community with messages and also has voice chat and other capabilities on the side. Discord is popular because there are no free alternatives which does what Discord does poorly.

SleepilyLimping 4y ago
No one wants to self-host, and normies especially don't want to learn or care about self-hosting. Discord does what it does, normies like it, and people make bots and utilities for Discord because people use it. It's a network effect.
- Stamp01 4y ago
  Maybe there's a market for turn-key Mattermost or Matrix hosting? Similar to how you can go and pay for someone to host Wordpress for you.
  - Arathorn 4y ago
    There are a bunch of people providing turnkey Matrix hosting - e.g. https://element.io/matrix-services https://element.io/matrix-services from Element, or https://etke.cc/ https://etke.cc/ and https://ungleich.ch/u/products/hosted-matrix-chat/ https://ungleich.ch/u/products/hosted-matrix-chat/.

iLoveOncall 4y ago

As much as I can get behind "Discord is not great", the idea of putting IRC in competition with Slack and Discord is absolutely laughable. IRC provides probably at most 2% of the features of those two, even stuff that I use daily like settings a status, having a profile picture, editing messages, pining messages, and other very basic stuff. Anyone suggesting IRC as an entreprise solution is a greybeard of thr highest order.

Test0129 4y ago
> greybeard of the highest order Yes. > I use daily like settings a status, having a profile picture, editing messages, pining messages, and other very basic stuff. These are client side. I got by for a long time without any of this. I continue to get by without it today. I use about 2% of slack's features and remain as productive and "available" as needed. Slack is a complete waste of time and space to me. The only people who seem to REALLY like it are normies. Which is the market anyway.