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> Maybe I'm dating myself I'm almost 40, so I think I can explain this. Discord is turn-key community infrastructure for users and moderators. Bespoke solution

> Maybe I'm dating myself I'm almost 40, so I think I can explain this. Discord is turn-key community infrastructure for users and moderators. Bespoke solutions have more incidental complexities compared to Discord with regard to hanging out with others and playing games. This initial gravity is what is pulling in the rest of the Internet communities. VoIP is not easy to set up and use in the best circumstances, and Discord makes it painless. I cannot stress this enough! Usually it took That Guy who spent days pouring over how-tos and several aborted attempts at setting it up. Discord is similar to what GameSpy brought to game server hosting compared to hosting a game yourself. If that sounds like foreshadowing, I agree! Discord also is replacing the whole communication/coordination stack. Forums are a casualty for the same reason Reddit took over; setting up a public internet service is hard. But Discord steps beyond that. It is taking over the chat communications gamers use to coordinate, including text messages and AIM/IRQ/IRC/etc. This meshes very well with guilds and amateur competitive gaming, as well as the hangout vibe of sitting in a chat room. Throw in built-in video streaming and you have Twitch.tv functionality all in the same app. Combine the above with a single unified moderation, and you have a critical nexus of features for community management without all the fuss of hosting the infrastructure yourself. Individuals have a single login that can access hundreds of communities, while moderators have similar management controls as forums over their own. Are there downsides? Oh my yes, but those will manifest later as Discord matures into its own blow-up stage of venture capital social networks.

mjevans 3y ago
Reminder, look to what's happening on Reddit and elsewhere now for what will happen when any service has cornered the market. Even if the current owners say things will never happen, eventually deep enough pockets in search of profit will buy them out and seek that profit.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  Who cares though? It’s not like I’m signing a 30 year contract with Discord. Skype already enshittified and everyone just jumped ship as soon as a better alternative was built. When someone builds a better reddit, I’m sure people would move over too. I’ll take free stuff being handed out for as long as it’s being handed out.
- judge2020 3y ago
  Sure, but the cost of pre-planning for an event like what Reddit is attempting is high - not just in terms of money, but in terms of how large you grow your community, since (for example) getting someone to join your subreddit is infinitely easier than asking them to sign up for your forum. Reddit lasted what, over 10 years? And Discord started in 2015 but still seems to know not to destroy communities by e.g. making third-party moderation bots pay to use the service. It makes a lot more sense as a community to coast on whatever the current most popular free platform(s) are, since it means there's no financial overhead to running the community and the centralized nature means the barrier to entry for prospective communities members is near-zero. Once federation can achieve these things, we'll see communities at least fracture with an arm on the federated site, ready to jump ship once Discord or the next platform starts to sink.

mjevans 3y ago

Reminder, look to what's happening on Reddit and elsewhere now for what will happen when any service has cornered the market. Even if the current owners say things will never happen, eventually deep enough pockets in search of profit will buy them out and seek that profit.

Gigachad 3y ago
Who cares though? It’s not like I’m signing a 30 year contract with Discord. Skype already enshittified and everyone just jumped ship as soon as a better alternative was built. When someone builds a better reddit, I’m sure people would move over too. I’ll take free stuff being handed out for as long as it’s being handed out.
judge2020 3y ago
Sure, but the cost of pre-planning for an event like what Reddit is attempting is high - not just in terms of money, but in terms of how large you grow your community, since (for example) getting someone to join your subreddit is infinitely easier than asking them to sign up for your forum. Reddit lasted what, over 10 years? And Discord started in 2015 but still seems to know not to destroy communities by e.g. making third-party moderation bots pay to use the service. It makes a lot more sense as a community to coast on whatever the current most popular free platform(s) are, since it means there's no financial overhead to running the community and the centralized nature means the barrier to entry for prospective communities members is near-zero. Once federation can achieve these things, we'll see communities at least fracture with an arm on the federated site, ready to jump ship once Discord or the next platform starts to sink.