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> Requires a phone number to even sign up. How is that more usable than say opening up https://web.libera.chat https://web.libera.chat and typing `/join #channe

> Requires a phone number to even sign up. How is that more usable than say opening up https://web.libera.chat https://web.libera.chat and typing `/join #channel` This is the level of hardheadedness you have to get through to interface with the FOSS community. People who actually think these things. If you actually bother to engage with features in IRC and Discord, it is 1000% apparent how Discord is vastly more usable for the average user. Discord matches expectations for how an app or service will behave, and has a powerful set of features that are easy to grasp and require minimal or no setup. That's why it wins. If you want to insist that IRC is actually more usable go ahead, but in realityland Discord has won for a reason.

teaearlgraycold 3y ago
Honestly I’m not going to complain too much about Discord. It’s the closest thing we have to a healthy form of social media. Lots of little islands. Limited performative bullshit. Mostly just friends of friends playing games together.
- TulliusCicero 3y ago
  Yeah, the fact that each server is basically an island is the key. Toxicity seems to increase with total user count.
  - Intralexical 3y ago
    It's not the total user count, but the flattening of different groups that didn't need and frankly didn't ask to be constantly smushed together: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_collapse In real life interaction happens in short term and long term physical and social bubbles where the way you act and present information naturally takes into consideration the people you're interacting with. How you talk to a customer is different from how you talk to to your friend, is different from how you talk to your partner, is different from how you talk to your boss, and is different from how you talk when all four relationships are in one conversation together. On the Internet— and basically only on the Internet— you'll say something meant for your knitting discussion group, and then Rocky, Steve, Gwen, and Stacy from the guitar, farming, volcanology, and motorcycle communities will butt in and take offence— because the geniuses in charge of the platform have decided that human progress is best measured in terms of how many people they can blindly jam into the same room at once.
nottorp 3y ago
So please explain to us why Discord should have my phone number.

teaearlgraycold 3y ago

Honestly I’m not going to complain too much about Discord. It’s the closest thing we have to a healthy form of social media. Lots of little islands. Limited performative bullshit. Mostly just friends of friends playing games together.

TulliusCicero 3y ago
Yeah, the fact that each server is basically an island is the key. Toxicity seems to increase with total user count.
- Intralexical 3y ago
  It's not the total user count, but the flattening of different groups that didn't need and frankly didn't ask to be constantly smushed together: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_collapse In real life interaction happens in short term and long term physical and social bubbles where the way you act and present information naturally takes into consideration the people you're interacting with. How you talk to a customer is different from how you talk to to your friend, is different from how you talk to your partner, is different from how you talk to your boss, and is different from how you talk when all four relationships are in one conversation together. On the Internet— and basically only on the Internet— you'll say something meant for your knitting discussion group, and then Rocky, Steve, Gwen, and Stacy from the guitar, farming, volcanology, and motorcycle communities will butt in and take offence— because the geniuses in charge of the platform have decided that human progress is best measured in terms of how many people they can blindly jam into the same room at once.

nottorp 3y ago

So please explain to us why Discord should have my phone number.