4 ms·

Public* online communities are dying. Discord is thriving

by order-matters 5mo ago

echelon 5mo ago
This. Everything important has moved to discord. Which is sad because of how undiscoverable and unsearchable it is.
- ceejayoz 5mo ago
  This shit will come to Discord too.
  - order-matters 5mo ago
    on the public servers yeah. but the ones im in with real people who know each other will be fine. I think the problem is not keeping agents out of private real people spaces, but for people who dont have any pre-existing or 'real world' connections to these communities to find a way to prove they are a real person over the internet alone and get an invite On a related note, I think this is going to be the biggest challenge to most folks when it comes in resisting using government ID online. it will be the apple offered for easy proof youre not a bot to normal circles.
  - thesuitonym 5mo ago
    It's already there.
- cloverich 5mo ago
  are those attributes now assets?
  - bluefirebrand 5mo ago
    Sort of, except if no one can ever discover a community it is always dying by default Personally I'd love to find a decent online community these days, my social circle has shrunk considerably, but idk. It seems difficult to start fresh with new people nowadays
    - order-matters 5mo ago
      we were made to socialize in person. you can mimic it online and nourish existing connections over it but nothing helps build friendship more than being in the same place at the same time a few different times and talking to each other
      - cloverich 5mo ago
        Thats true but online content has always had its place. 25 years ago finding forums and irc was a god send, my lonely hobbies and interests became things i could regularly talk about. Its just modern social media abused the system, the algorithm, and us. Which is all to say i agree about needing mostly irl, but there is also something of online community that irl could never replicate (for most people).
        order-matters 5mo ago
        i know what you mean, and i think online communities can still be successful. but i think in the early internet you already had some common ground with anyone you met online because spending time on the internet was kind of a irl choice to make. It was like a magic room anyone could enter and find others. Now its so ubiquitous that simply being online or on a forum is not the same kind of specialness to it
  - pjc50 5mo ago
    Pretty much. It's the survivability onion. You can't be destroyed if you can't be discovered.
- Keyframe 5mo ago
  I'm more sad about how the UI of it all is just clunky. Even though it resembles ye olde IRC clients like mIRC, nowhere near readable for some reason.
  - Brybry 5mo ago
    Settings->Accessibility Set text size as preferred, underline links (or not), turn off display name styles (or not), ui density compact or default, chat message display to compact, space between message groups 0px, turn off all the animated emojis and gif animation stuff if you want. In client use, there's a button to hide member list (or not). You can definitely make discord look like a slightly less dense IRC client (mainly because of the channel picker) if you want. And if you want to go really crazy use it in a browser and userscript customize it or use betterdiscord. I think a lot of the features like embeds and emoji reactions add a lot of value compared to IRC (which I think is also why the IRC world is trying to add those features).
- wincy 5mo ago
  I got banned the other day from the Stellaris Discord server because someone accused me of hacking Roblox accounts. I’ve never played Roblox in my life. So that’s nice.
GaryBluto 5mo ago
If all you value is sub-IRC level irreverent discussion, maybe.
- AuthAuth 5mo ago
  Discord is far better for discussion than IRC. You can be much more expressive on discord, instantly jump into a call and screenshare, easily link people to other rooms, tag, import bots etc. IRC kinda sucks compared to modern chat and they refuse to implement features that are considered basic.
  - GaryBluto 5mo ago
    > You can be much more expressive on discord, instantly jump into a call and screenshare, easily link people to other rooms, tag, import bots etc. Some would see those as negatives. > IRC kinda sucks compared to modern chat and they refuse to implement features that are considered basic. Just because a protocol doesn't change purposes as time goes on that doesn't mean it "sucks". Who is this "they" you're talking about? Do you think IRC is a centralized service like Discord?
2ndorderthought 5mo ago
Discord is terrible. Full of bots, creeps and ai slopped to the gills. Some communities are better than others but the sheer volume of stinky trash is immense despite discord and the poor volunteer moderators efforts to prevent it. Most mods are neutral on it too. There are chat communities that are still somewhat safe with zero user verification. But I will not mention them.
- order-matters 5mo ago
  discord is a tool for hosting private chat servers. it's pretty neutral. the UI is not great for building a shared knowledge base, although people do that anyway but yes the publicly accessible servers are going to face similar problems. the socially competent people tend not to run those servers, and have smaller private servers with people they know as they have no drive to try to create a space for strangers to gather.
bsder 5mo ago
I really don't understand the folks fleeing to Discord. A mailing list does 99% of the same thing for most of the communities. Sure, if you want to chat while gaming, that's the whole point of Discord. Ganbatte. But, for everything else, Discord is such a horrible misfit that I don't understand why it's the default.
- zahlman 5mo ago
  > I don't understand why it's the default. Because it equally well supports real-time communication. And it looks shiny. And some people use it to e.g. watch a video together, or other social purposes.
- AuthAuth 5mo ago
  You are booming out. I cant believe suggesting a mailing list
  - bsder 5mo ago
    You gave an ad hominem attack with no substantive response. I can do that too: "Your account is less than a year old and is AI slop farming." Mailing lists are old, boring, boomer tech. Ayup. They are. And they work. However, Zoomer, if you must have Teh Sh1ny(tm), then explain to me why a Discourse isn't a better choice? Discord is the anti-Pangloss; it is the "Worst of All Possible Worlds".
- order-matters 5mo ago
  i predominantly use it for real time chatting, its a big group text chat and a place to hop in a voice channel and shoot the shit while doing whatever we want on the computer a la ventrilo/mumble/teamspeak but yes i also game and it gets a lot of use for that as well i agree though that for collecting and organizing information longer term like forums do, it is not ideal

Public* online communities are dying. Discord is thriving

echelon 5mo ago

This. Everything important has moved to discord. Which is sad because of how undiscoverable and unsearchable it is.

ceejayoz 5mo ago
This shit will come to Discord too.
- order-matters 5mo ago
  on the public servers yeah. but the ones im in with real people who know each other will be fine. I think the problem is not keeping agents out of private real people spaces, but for people who dont have any pre-existing or 'real world' connections to these communities to find a way to prove they are a real person over the internet alone and get an invite On a related note, I think this is going to be the biggest challenge to most folks when it comes in resisting using government ID online. it will be the apple offered for easy proof youre not a bot to normal circles.
- thesuitonym 5mo ago
  It's already there.
cloverich 5mo ago
are those attributes now assets?
- bluefirebrand 5mo ago
  Sort of, except if no one can ever discover a community it is always dying by default Personally I'd love to find a decent online community these days, my social circle has shrunk considerably, but idk. It seems difficult to start fresh with new people nowadays
  - order-matters 5mo ago
    we were made to socialize in person. you can mimic it online and nourish existing connections over it but nothing helps build friendship more than being in the same place at the same time a few different times and talking to each other
    - cloverich 5mo ago
      Thats true but online content has always had its place. 25 years ago finding forums and irc was a god send, my lonely hobbies and interests became things i could regularly talk about. Its just modern social media abused the system, the algorithm, and us. Which is all to say i agree about needing mostly irl, but there is also something of online community that irl could never replicate (for most people).
      - order-matters 5mo ago
        i know what you mean, and i think online communities can still be successful. but i think in the early internet you already had some common ground with anyone you met online because spending time on the internet was kind of a irl choice to make. It was like a magic room anyone could enter and find others. Now its so ubiquitous that simply being online or on a forum is not the same kind of specialness to it
- pjc50 5mo ago
  Pretty much. It's the survivability onion. You can't be destroyed if you can't be discovered.
Keyframe 5mo ago
I'm more sad about how the UI of it all is just clunky. Even though it resembles ye olde IRC clients like mIRC, nowhere near readable for some reason.
- Brybry 5mo ago
  Settings->Accessibility Set text size as preferred, underline links (or not), turn off display name styles (or not), ui density compact or default, chat message display to compact, space between message groups 0px, turn off all the animated emojis and gif animation stuff if you want. In client use, there's a button to hide member list (or not). You can definitely make discord look like a slightly less dense IRC client (mainly because of the channel picker) if you want. And if you want to go really crazy use it in a browser and userscript customize it or use betterdiscord. I think a lot of the features like embeds and emoji reactions add a lot of value compared to IRC (which I think is also why the IRC world is trying to add those features).
wincy 5mo ago
I got banned the other day from the Stellaris Discord server because someone accused me of hacking Roblox accounts. I’ve never played Roblox in my life. So that’s nice.

GaryBluto 5mo ago

If all you value is sub-IRC level irreverent discussion, maybe.

AuthAuth 5mo ago
Discord is far better for discussion than IRC. You can be much more expressive on discord, instantly jump into a call and screenshare, easily link people to other rooms, tag, import bots etc. IRC kinda sucks compared to modern chat and they refuse to implement features that are considered basic.
- GaryBluto 5mo ago
  > You can be much more expressive on discord, instantly jump into a call and screenshare, easily link people to other rooms, tag, import bots etc. Some would see those as negatives. > IRC kinda sucks compared to modern chat and they refuse to implement features that are considered basic. Just because a protocol doesn't change purposes as time goes on that doesn't mean it "sucks". Who is this "they" you're talking about? Do you think IRC is a centralized service like Discord?

2ndorderthought 5mo ago

Discord is terrible. Full of bots, creeps and ai slopped to the gills. Some communities are better than others but the sheer volume of stinky trash is immense despite discord and the poor volunteer moderators efforts to prevent it. Most mods are neutral on it too. There are chat communities that are still somewhat safe with zero user verification. But I will not mention them.

order-matters 5mo ago
discord is a tool for hosting private chat servers. it's pretty neutral. the UI is not great for building a shared knowledge base, although people do that anyway but yes the publicly accessible servers are going to face similar problems. the socially competent people tend not to run those servers, and have smaller private servers with people they know as they have no drive to try to create a space for strangers to gather.

bsder 5mo ago

I really don't understand the folks fleeing to Discord. A mailing list does 99% of the same thing for most of the communities. Sure, if you want to chat while gaming, that's the whole point of Discord. Ganbatte. But, for everything else, Discord is such a horrible misfit that I don't understand why it's the default.

zahlman 5mo ago
> I don't understand why it's the default. Because it equally well supports real-time communication. And it looks shiny. And some people use it to e.g. watch a video together, or other social purposes.
AuthAuth 5mo ago
You are booming out. I cant believe suggesting a mailing list
- bsder 5mo ago
  You gave an ad hominem attack with no substantive response. I can do that too: "Your account is less than a year old and is AI slop farming." Mailing lists are old, boring, boomer tech. Ayup. They are. And they work. However, Zoomer, if you must have Teh Sh1ny(tm), then explain to me why a Discourse isn't a better choice? Discord is the anti-Pangloss; it is the "Worst of All Possible Worlds".
order-matters 5mo ago
i predominantly use it for real time chatting, its a big group text chat and a place to hop in a voice channel and shoot the shit while doing whatever we want on the computer a la ventrilo/mumble/teamspeak but yes i also game and it gets a lot of use for that as well i agree though that for collecting and organizing information longer term like forums do, it is not ideal