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I think Discord's use of the word server is misleading, and it leads people to think they own something when they don't. Discord owns it and can pull the rug ou

I think Discord's use of the word server is misleading, and it leads people to think they own something when they don't. Discord owns it and can pull the rug out from under you at any time, regardless of how much hard work you put into building a community, and that hurts. I understand that "server" is an abstract term and just means "something which provides a service", but most other uses of the word relate to something owned by the person operating it. E.g., if I run a Matrix server instance, it's mine to administer, manage, destroy, etc. If I start a Discord "server" it's a glorified chat room or set of chat rooms owned and maintained by the company. Language is powerful and helps shape our world, and by redefining "server" to mean a segmented part of someone else's website, it's another nail in the coffin for the concept of real ownership.

stnvh 4y ago
Indeed. "Our server got hacked" sounds awfully more dramatic in a self-proclaimed crisis, laying the ambiguous notion of responsibility toward the "service" while maintaining the guise of ownership. Hey ho.
ziml77 4y ago
I've also never quite liked the term, but I guess they wanted to go with terminology that gamers were already familiar with. For voice chat people would have been used to Vent, TS, or Mumble where you actually did connect to individual server instances. It seems unlikely to me that causing confusion over ownership was their intention even though that has been the effect. (Interestingly it seems like the choice to call them servers must have come late in development, because in the API they're called guilds) EDIT: A comment elsewhere in this thread is implying that they were officially called guilds initially but then changed because users kept calling them servers. I don't know if that's true. I don't recall ever seeing them called guilds even in the early days of Discord, but I also wouldn't have been reading their official user-facing docs and support page for pleasure.
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nextaccountic 4y ago
Wait, so you can't run Discord servers in your own server? I supposed they distributed at least a proprietary binary for running the server or something like that
sandos 4y ago
Exactly this. Discord servers are more like free domain names given out on first-come basis in a private namespace...

stnvh 4y ago

Indeed. "Our server got hacked" sounds awfully more dramatic in a self-proclaimed crisis, laying the ambiguous notion of responsibility toward the "service" while maintaining the guise of ownership. Hey ho.

ziml77 4y ago

I've also never quite liked the term, but I guess they wanted to go with terminology that gamers were already familiar with. For voice chat people would have been used to Vent, TS, or Mumble where you actually did connect to individual server instances. It seems unlikely to me that causing confusion over ownership was their intention even though that has been the effect. (Interestingly it seems like the choice to call them servers must have come late in development, because in the API they're called guilds) EDIT: A comment elsewhere in this thread is implying that they were officially called guilds initially but then changed because users kept calling them servers. I don't know if that's true. I don't recall ever seeing them called guilds even in the early days of Discord, but I also wouldn't have been reading their official user-facing docs and support page for pleasure.

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nextaccountic 4y ago

Wait, so you can't run Discord servers in your own server? I supposed they distributed at least a proprietary binary for running the server or something like that

sandos 4y ago

Exactly this. Discord servers are more like free domain names given out on first-come basis in a private namespace...