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I think Discord is the best chat app for friend groups and it's not even close. At this point I've written the following bots specifically for my friend group's

I think Discord is the best chat app for friend groups and it's not even close. At this point I've written the following bots specifically for my friend group's server: # Music Quiz Bot Existing apps work ok. A lot of paid and don't let you use a specific Spotify playlist. The only thing annoying about this one is that none of the Discord API wrappers handle audio very well so I've found that this one gets a bit flaky if you're trying to play a lot. This one is probably like 500 lines of Typescript but a lot of that is for the Spotify API. The game logic is pretty minimal. # Birthday Bot This is like 10 lines of Python. It's a cron that reads from a Google Sheet my friends and I keep up to date with personal information. If it's someone's birthday then it'll post a happy birthday message to them. # Plex Bot I wrote this before I discovered that Overseerr just has this built-in. My Plex was set up with a webhook to hit whenever new media was downloaded. The bot would post to a specific thread with the metadata about the new media. This included another webserver for serving the cover art from the private Plex metadata server. # Movie Quiz Bot Similar to the music bot although I don't think existing apps exist that do this. Essentially it's https://framed.wtf/ https://framed.wtf/ except as a game in a Discord channel where random frames are pulled from movies in my media library and everyone competes to name the movie first. This one required some ffmpeg fun to make pulling the stills not take forever. I considered doing static stills or having a cronjob do it, but it's more fun when it's completely random.

crossroadsguy 1y ago
Not only Discord is not private, it’s looks, feels, and interacts bloated - extremely bloated. Sometimes I am forced to use it and I am almost constantly disgusted in those durations. Luckily around where I live “friend groups” are still far from Discord.
sneak 1y ago
The problem is that Discord isn’t e2ee and logs all chats in plaintext for all time, including all DMs. This makes it a nonstarter for me; friends don’t serve as honey in the surveillance trap for communication with their friends. Nothing that builds up an ever-growing surveillance database on private conversations between friends can be in the running for “best”.
- rockostrich 1y ago
  We're all aware of this and we have multiple people working in the defense industry with high clearances in the server. If something needs to be shared that can't be made public then it doesn't go in Discord. This covers about 99.9% of our correspondences.
  - sneak 1y ago
    The cognitive overhead of remembering where I can talk about what with which people seems exhausting. I deleted all chat apps except Signal from my phone. Signal really should support bots. > can't be made public then it doesn't go in Discord. This covers about 99.9% Sometimes I forget that my friend groups are nothing like most peoples’ friend groups.
    - lurkshark 1y ago
      > Signal really should support bots. I feel the same way. If Signal supported bots/an API and “Communities” (in the WhatsApp sense) I’d finally be able to cutover all my use-cases from Discord. I get that the E2EE is a bit tricky for an API, and that you can kind of hack together Communities by just having a couple group chats, but the UX gap is just a little too big
    - viccis 1y ago
      >The cognitive overhead of remembering where I can talk about what with which people seems exhausting This is just part of life of having a clearance. If it's not Discord, then it's the happy hour where you have to worry about people getting a few too many beers deep and saying something stupid, and then others have an obligation to report it. Have some prudence about what to say in what settings is a life skill in general.
tomashubelbauer 1y ago
I'm 32 and Discord is the harbinger of getting out of touch with technology for me. It is clearly a great service, because so many people use it and seem happy with it, but it is _not_ for me. And I wish that wasn't the case because Discord is pretty much _the_ spot for the communities I'd like to hang around with. But I wasn't able to get on top of its notification system or get past the gamer heavy UI. Does your friend group consist of mainly techies? If not, I am impressed you were able to get them to use it. Even more so if they were already on it. I tried to get folks to use Signal with me for a bit and it was the most futile endeavor I've ever attempted.
- squigz 1y ago
  Don't worry - I've been on Discord for years and have ran a community for 6 and still don't understand the notification system.
  - BLKNSLVR 1y ago
    Thirded. Sometimes I get notifications about some things, and sometimes I don't. I think it's actually a bit (lot?) broken.
- dandano 1y ago
  We really only use discord for voice chat. I also loathe discord for communities and anything else. Funny you mention the notifications - every now and then discord won't send the notification till hours after my bot has sent a message. I think it has something to do with having the discord app on your desktop open and it not knowing how to handle the notification. I guess my friend group is somewhat techy - but they aren't on HN. We've been on discord since its inception. We moved to Signal as we wanted to get off Meta products.
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  I managed to get extended family onto Discord. Also have one just for my non-extended family. It works great. Signal has stuck for a couple of friends, but has decidedly not stuck for anyone else - and the ones it stuck for were either already on it or have a privacy bent. Signal, back then at least, didn't do group chats, or nowhere near as conveniently as Discord. So much so that I don't even know if Signal does group chats now as I only ever use it for one-on-one. I set up a Matrix server back then too, didn't take. Discord won.
Gamemaster1379 1y ago
These all sound like a lot of fun. I've built a few discord bots myself as I've run a few online communities. 1) Reminder bot for scheduled events. We're all working adults who all played games as teens together . To actually get us together, we schedule our favorite games for once a month to play for a few hours. We all often forget when they start, so my bot posts a 2 week, 1 week 3 days, and 2 hour notice. 2) RCON bot I run a TF2 server and a Minecraft server. You can manage both via RCON commands via slash commands in Discord. Also the tf2 one monitors player activity and alerts if players are in the server 3. Private server API bot I founded a private game server for a game that ended service in 2023. The bot reads from our API to make a central list of lobbies and status. It also creates voice channels for each public lobby. It's also used to help grant items and other admin commands. 4. For April Fools, I made a snarky bot that responded to random messages. It was backed by Gemini. These have all been fun and novel to make but I've never found a great way to productize them and make money from any of them. Wonder if you've found any avenues there.

crossroadsguy 1y ago

Not only Discord is not private, it’s looks, feels, and interacts bloated - extremely bloated. Sometimes I am forced to use it and I am almost constantly disgusted in those durations. Luckily around where I live “friend groups” are still far from Discord.

sneak 1y ago

The problem is that Discord isn’t e2ee and logs all chats in plaintext for all time, including all DMs. This makes it a nonstarter for me; friends don’t serve as honey in the surveillance trap for communication with their friends. Nothing that builds up an ever-growing surveillance database on private conversations between friends can be in the running for “best”.

rockostrich 1y ago
We're all aware of this and we have multiple people working in the defense industry with high clearances in the server. If something needs to be shared that can't be made public then it doesn't go in Discord. This covers about 99.9% of our correspondences.
- sneak 1y ago
  The cognitive overhead of remembering where I can talk about what with which people seems exhausting. I deleted all chat apps except Signal from my phone. Signal really should support bots. > can't be made public then it doesn't go in Discord. This covers about 99.9% Sometimes I forget that my friend groups are nothing like most peoples’ friend groups.
  - lurkshark 1y ago
    > Signal really should support bots. I feel the same way. If Signal supported bots/an API and “Communities” (in the WhatsApp sense) I’d finally be able to cutover all my use-cases from Discord. I get that the E2EE is a bit tricky for an API, and that you can kind of hack together Communities by just having a couple group chats, but the UX gap is just a little too big
  - viccis 1y ago
    >The cognitive overhead of remembering where I can talk about what with which people seems exhausting This is just part of life of having a clearance. If it's not Discord, then it's the happy hour where you have to worry about people getting a few too many beers deep and saying something stupid, and then others have an obligation to report it. Have some prudence about what to say in what settings is a life skill in general.

tomashubelbauer 1y ago

I'm 32 and Discord is the harbinger of getting out of touch with technology for me. It is clearly a great service, because so many people use it and seem happy with it, but it is _not_ for me. And I wish that wasn't the case because Discord is pretty much _the_ spot for the communities I'd like to hang around with. But I wasn't able to get on top of its notification system or get past the gamer heavy UI. Does your friend group consist of mainly techies? If not, I am impressed you were able to get them to use it. Even more so if they were already on it. I tried to get folks to use Signal with me for a bit and it was the most futile endeavor I've ever attempted.

squigz 1y ago
Don't worry - I've been on Discord for years and have ran a community for 6 and still don't understand the notification system.
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  Thirded. Sometimes I get notifications about some things, and sometimes I don't. I think it's actually a bit (lot?) broken.
dandano 1y ago
We really only use discord for voice chat. I also loathe discord for communities and anything else. Funny you mention the notifications - every now and then discord won't send the notification till hours after my bot has sent a message. I think it has something to do with having the discord app on your desktop open and it not knowing how to handle the notification. I guess my friend group is somewhat techy - but they aren't on HN. We've been on discord since its inception. We moved to Signal as we wanted to get off Meta products.
BLKNSLVR 1y ago
I managed to get extended family onto Discord. Also have one just for my non-extended family. It works great. Signal has stuck for a couple of friends, but has decidedly not stuck for anyone else - and the ones it stuck for were either already on it or have a privacy bent. Signal, back then at least, didn't do group chats, or nowhere near as conveniently as Discord. So much so that I don't even know if Signal does group chats now as I only ever use it for one-on-one. I set up a Matrix server back then too, didn't take. Discord won.

Gamemaster1379 1y ago

These all sound like a lot of fun. I've built a few discord bots myself as I've run a few online communities. 1) Reminder bot for scheduled events. We're all working adults who all played games as teens together . To actually get us together, we schedule our favorite games for once a month to play for a few hours. We all often forget when they start, so my bot posts a 2 week, 1 week 3 days, and 2 hour notice. 2) RCON bot I run a TF2 server and a Minecraft server. You can manage both via RCON commands via slash commands in Discord. Also the tf2 one monitors player activity and alerts if players are in the server 3. Private server API bot I founded a private game server for a game that ended service in 2023. The bot reads from our API to make a central list of lobbies and status. It also creates voice channels for each public lobby. It's also used to help grant items and other admin commands. 4. For April Fools, I made a snarky bot that responded to random messages. It was backed by Gemini. These have all been fun and novel to make but I've never found a great way to productize them and make money from any of them. Wonder if you've found any avenues there.