cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/17617609

They supposedly can be disabled in settings- but we all know that won’t last. They’re going full Microsoft Skype mode and it’s only a matter of time.

  • Megaman_EXE@beehaw.org
    9·
    9 months ago

    I’m so tired man. I just want it to stop. It feels like everything nice is slowly being squeezed in all aspects of life.

    Anything that capitalism touches or influences has begun to choke us out. It just seems to continue and doesn’t seem to ease up or improve. Maybe I’m just noticing it more, but the past 4 years felt like things accelerated quickly

    • anachronist@midwest.socialEnglish
      3·
      9 months ago

      This is the definition of late-stage capitalism. Capitalism starts out by finding useful things that improve lives for at least some people (potentially by ruining it for others). For instance, it invents assembly lines to make manufactured goods cheaper but in so doing makes the worker’s job dull, repetitive, stressful, and robs him of his agency. This is early stage capitalism. Things are getting worse for some people but broadly better for many.

      But then later on capitalism runs out of things to improve. You can only invent the assembly line once. You only get that boost when you implement it. So you have to come up with something else. Maybe you computerize things. But eventually you can’t wring any more profits out of production and profits must go up, so you have to take them out of the customers. You roll up all the competing firms into a monopoly and then start jacking up the price, slashing the quality, etc. This is late-stage. It becomes more and more parasitic and the snake eats its own tail.

        • Vodulas [they/them]@beehaw.org
          2·
          9 months ago

          I figured that was still the case, but would have been pleasantly surprised if it wasn’t. I don’t really keep up on IRC these days

      • ezchili@iusearchlinux.fyi
        6·
        9 months ago

        You mean does the 80s-based protocol that doesn’t even support encryption support voice?

        It doesn’t support having messages received while you were offline

        IRC supports one and one thing only: N-wise chats to connected clients. That and delusional nerds who like to think they’re better than everyone else. Huge support for that too.

        People who actually have sane standards for their instant messaging use the Matrix decentralized chat protocol when they need non-proprietary coms, or revolt

      • rinze@infosec.pub
        5·
        9 months ago

        If you mean that in some channels only some people can actually “talk”, I think it depends on the configuration of the channel, but it’s a possibility.

        I thought people used Discord because you could have video / audio chats (not sure about this, I’ve used it very sparsely.)

        And then there are Open Source projects that use Discord as the documentation repository. Hell is a place on the Internet, apparently.

        • Vodulas [they/them]@beehaw.org
          1·
          9 months ago

          Yeah, I mean audio chats (voice is short for voice chat). I think the video calls are not used as much, but are still a good feature. I’ll probably try Revolt (someone linked it below)

          • rinze@infosec.pub
            2·
            9 months ago

            You’re right, I completely misinterpreted the comment. The thing is that “voice” is a very specific term within IRC, and I got confused :D

            • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
              3·
              9 months ago

              Yup, I realized that :) I do believe discord has just about all the features IRC can offer. And then some, of course. But that isn’t saying much, considering IRC is one of the earliest uses of the internet.

        • jarfil@beehaw.org
          9·
          9 months ago

          Discord became popular because it’s a more convenient integration of audio chat for gaming, with text chat: no need to set up a server (like TeamSpeak or Mumble).

          People using Discord for official documentation, or bug reporting, are in a circle of hell just slightly below the ones doing the same on Reddit. Community support… they may get a pass.

  • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nlEnglish
    5·
    9 months ago

    This may be a good chance for Element to gain popularity, at least if they can release some gamer-targeting features.

    However, Discord is not profitable despite their massive amounts of revenue. You can’t use a platform for free and expect it to remain free forever, unless it’s run by volunteers like many Fediverse servers are (and even those risk collapsing if they gain any form of popularity, because they don’t have teams of dedicated network administrators to keep up with growth or optimise for server cost).

    Pay for the services you use, especially if those services include high-bandwidth features like streaming or hosting media. If you don’t, these companies will find a way to make a profit out of you, or disappear completely.

    • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      4·
      9 months ago

      TeamSpeak has always been better tbh. For actual gaming voice chat discord actually sucks, it’s low bitrate and very high latency. It’s benefit was just easy coordination in larger servers without the need to constantly self-host and self-manage your own server like TS.

    • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      3·
      9 months ago

      Sure, but you really expect that option to stay available for very long after 90% of users turn it off and ruin it’s profitability?

    • FrostyPolicy@suppo.fi
      2·
      9 months ago

      For now. I’m quite sure that option will disappear at some point in the not too distant future.

    • smb@lemmy.mlEnglish
      8·
      9 months ago

      usually at first you can do such, and later on, when a ceo wants more money, you then can buy that together with the new “pro” features actually nobody needs nor wants.

      maybe better look for more stable solutions before they start acting like a broadcom ;-)

  • shirro@aussie.zoneEnglish
    38·
    9 months ago

    Most of these platforms make no money but have taken huge amounts of VC funding which they have burned through. For the VCs to unload it and cash out they need to show the product can be monetised and them try and shift it before the users leave the platform. Idiot users want all the features of a product developed by lots of talented full time paid staff but don’t want to pay for it themselves so they leap from startup to startup then complain when the inevitable happens while dismissing open source alternatives as inadequate for their needs. Why should we care? I don’t.

    • Norah - She/They@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      17·
      9 months ago

      While I don’t disagree with the sentiment, the Discord Nitro subscription has been around for a long while. From what I’ve seen using the platform it seems relatively popular. I’d guess adding ads to the free tier is as much about enticing people onto the subscription (which presumably won’t have ads).

    • LoreleiSankTheShip@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      I’ve been using Discord almost since launch, and in that time, not a single feature did I find as an important addition to the program. It is now much more bloated with unnecessary stuff, stuff for which they paid those talented devs you mention.

      I would have been perfectly content with a one-time payment to use it and it would have worked perfectly well for them with that model if they didn’t get greedy and want to stuff it with random junk to justify a subscription.

      I don’t mind paying as long as it’s not a subscription scam for no reason at all.

  • Nora@lemmy.ml
    1·
    9 months ago

    We need a Federated FOSS Discord alternative built to work with the activity pub protocol. I’m currently setting up an XMPP server, but I hope something like XMPP but works with activitypub gets made some day.

      • dan@upvote.au
        2·
        9 months ago

        It’s not designed for real-time communication at all. ActivityPub is fine for things where it takes a little bit of time to sync everything, but a chat that worked that way would feel very slow. XMPP is a better fit.

    • Kaldo@beehaw.org
      11·
      9 months ago

      Hope we get some comparable options yet, I only know of matrix and that one allegedly has tons of security and performance issues.

      • Red@reddthat.comEnglish
        5·
        9 months ago

        Mattermost does most of the required discord features. (Pun intended)

        Is open source and is selfhost-able. I think there are some SaaS hosters if you need them too.

      • Nia [She/Her]@beehaw.org
        6·
        9 months ago

        Revolt is close but not quite there yet, I’ve been keeping an eye on that one most. It’s closer than Matrix to being a proper discord replacement (especially with UI, it’s almost an exact clone), but it’s still too early to switch to it for most.

      • baseless_discourse@mander.xyz
        8·
        9 months ago

        Can you list some security/performance/feature comparison between matrix and discord? I don’t have the need for these class of product, but I am trying to get the hype behind discord.

        • Kaldo@beehaw.org
          6·
          9 months ago

          I don’t know about discord issues, the hype behind is it mostly that it’s free, very convenient, feature rich and can easily integrate bots. Its the go-to place to build communities nowadays.

          Matrix issues that I read about can be seen here https://telegra.ph/why-not-matrix-08-07 . I haven’t done my own research tho so I don’t know if all of this is (still) true

          • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
            5·
            9 months ago

            Almost all of those issues are due to federation. Lemmy shares most of them. Considering that we’re on Lemmy, I’d say it’s mostly a non-issue for us. Maybe use something else for encryption-required communications, but other than that it sounds fine to me.

            • tlf@feddit.de
              2·
              9 months ago

              Just because I use Lemmy doesn’t mean I was able to convince anyone of my social circle to join (with lack of content as the primary reason). Building communities requires users and a lack of those is an issue with many FOSS projects.

              • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
                1·
                9 months ago

                That’s true. Unrelated to the issues in the article, but it is something that makes it hard to switch over.

            • Kaldo@beehaw.org
              3·
              9 months ago

              Lemmy is a public forum, discord servers are usually for invite-only, more closed-off communities, and we’re not talking about a lemmy replacement but rather how this is inadequate as a discord replacement.

              • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
                5·
                9 months ago

                That’s true, but the vast majority of the issues aren’t related to that. The majority of the issues in the article (if you read them you’d know) are about replication. They’re about whether the timing of posts, deletions, bans, and things like that possibly not being replicated perfectly across all instances. Lemmy has the same issues, but I haven’t noticed them causing problems yet. They would be even less of a problem in a private discord-like environment.

    • GadgeteerZA@beehaw.orgEnglish
      5·
      9 months ago

      It’s often not the cost of the software, but the hosting costs, especially on a growing platform.

      • umbrella@lemmy.ml
        3·
        9 months ago

        platforms can be peer to peer too, with maybe a cheaper to host tracker. i think its viable for a chat app, like matrix, for example.

        overall yes though, i wonder when lemmy is gonna start having these issues, its still mostly run by unpaid volunteers…

        • GadgeteerZA@beehaw.orgEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          I think it’s why many decentralised platforms don’t want very big instances, and prefer them to split off into smaller federated sites.

    • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      3·
      9 months ago

      so this Revolt project is open source, which is nice, but still seems to rely on centralized servers. Does it use P2P for voice+video+fileshare so that the original devs aren’t on the hook for insane bandwidth requirements? I can’t see anything about their networking systems in the FAQ or info pages.

      I may consider getting my friends to switch sooner or later if it’s more P2P based. But I don’t really want something that runs ALL traffic through central servers, because the bandwidth costs will inevitably just lead to the same situation that Discord is now in.

    • Segab 👻@beehaw.orgEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      Oh cool there’s an Android app, that’s gonna make it so much easier to recommend!

      Edit: I just read about how it’s centralized and not encrypted, I’m not sure how this can become anything but Discord except open source and less popular. Matrix + Element seems to cover my use case for a project a bit better, I’ll give that a try.

      • jarfil@beehaw.org
        2·
        9 months ago

        Just tried it… it says “Running in Chrome”. Seems to be a repackaged webapp.

        • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
          2·
          9 months ago

          well that’s no different than Discord already, so net zero change

          running webapps in chrome or Electron containers simplifies a lot of development, i don’t like their resource requirements or dependency on Chromium, but I do understand needing to streamline development so devs can work on more important backend stuff.

          • jarfil@beehaw.org
            4·
            9 months ago

            The difference is:

            • Discord: Electron app, 156 MB, works offline
            • Revolt: webapp, 635 kB, doesn’t work offline

            The “works offline” is not much of a bonus for a chat app, but you can access cached chats on Discord, while Revolt… just doesn’t run.

            There seem to be other clients for it, though. Haven’t checked those out.

            • SteveTech@programming.devEnglish
              2·
              9 months ago

              In theory PWAs can be configured to run offline, whether they’re doing that I don’t know.

              The desktop app looks like it’s electron though.

              • jarfil@beehaw.org
                2·
                9 months ago

                I know, one of the best PWAs I’ve seen is Draw.io, fully usable offline, with both device and browser storage.

                The Revolt’s one however, even though delivered as a PWA, seems to be only the login page. If already logged in, it throws a “Network error.” dialog. Haven’t checked the desktop one.

    • jarfil@beehaw.org
      10·
      9 months ago

      Compared to Matrix, or any E2EE chat, this doesn’t sound good:

      we take your privacy very seriously. And with end-to-end encryption coming to DMs and group chats soon

      Compared to Discord, or other established voice chat systems like Mumble, this doesn’t sound great either:

      We are currently rebuilding the client and the voice server from scratch. The old voice should work in most cases, but it may inexplicably not connect in some scenarios and / or exhibit weird behaviour.

      The “app” on Android seems to be just the webapp running in a standalone window.

      I’ll concede them the OpenSource and self-hosted factors, and it does look like Discord, but it doesn’t seem like a suitable replacement for average users… yet. Then again, the ads might push them over.

      Guess it’s worth to keep an eye on it.

  • Zworf@beehaw.org
    33·
    9 months ago

    Good. I hope people will move away from it soon. I hate Discord for banning third-party clients and datamining my system for installed apps. So I’ve never really used it.

    It does mean I’m excluded from some FOSS projects’ support like Home Assistant but to hell with that :P

    • Ms. ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.ml
      3·
      9 months ago

      I’ve only ever used it in browser to limit what it can see on my machine. I was told by one of my coding professors that one of the signs of a virus is if it monitors what apps you’re running, I’ve been cautious ever since of anything that does that (obviously it isn’t the only sign and isn’t instant virus bin, like I have an app that monitors GPU usage and throttles apps to keep from cooking my machine)

    • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      6·
      9 months ago

      ideally such changes to advertising and the ToS arbitration clause removing consumer rights will help give a lot of the open-source communities a gentle push to get off of discord. It’s become far too central to too many communities and is impossible to search for knowledge.

    • dan@upvote.au
      1·
      9 months ago

      People will move away, sure, but to another proprietary service that’ll do the same thing in a year or two.

    • helenslunch@feddit.nl
      10·
      9 months ago

      Good. I hope people will move away from it soon.

      You mean like they moved away from Reddit when they killed 3rd party clients and openly began selling user data to data brokers?

      Or how they left Twitter when it was bought by an egomaniac who killed 3rd party clients, fired the entirety of the moderation staff, then required users to log in to view posts?

      Or maybe how they left Facebook after any of the many times they’ve been caught collecting user data against their will, promoted genocide, never allowed 3rd party apps, and willingly manipulated elections?

      Nevermind the fact that those platforms have had ads for decades.

      Yeah sorry, ain’t gonna happen.

      • dan@upvote.au
        1·
        9 months ago

        never allowed 3rd party apps

        Facebook used to allow third party apps (e.g. Snaptu started as a third-party app before the acquisition) and exposed most of the functionality via their API, but it’s not really a thing any more after Cambridge Analytica - the API was locked down significantly. You can’t really have it both ways… Allowing third-party apps also allows those apps to scrape and store user info, which is what Cambridge Analytica did.

        • helenslunch@feddit.nl
          1·
          9 months ago

          You can’t really have it both ways…

          I don’t want it both ways.

          Allowing third-party apps also allows those apps to scrape and store user info, which is what Cambridge Analytica did.

          Accessing an API is not scraping. Scraping is still possible without an API. All CA did was access public information. The problem in that case is not access to public information, it is intentional paid disinformation.

          • dan@upvote.au
            1·
            9 months ago

            Accessing an API is not scraping.

            I probably used the wrong words… What I meant is that given API access, a malicious third-party can gather a large amount of data and store it in a way that goes against the service’s terms of service, without the proper privacy guarantees (e.g. user data being deleted if they delete their account). Obviously that’s a problem for a social network where people can post a lot of friends-only posts.

    • Zetta@mander.xyz
      11·
      9 months ago

      Hopefully those FOSS projects will gain some sense as discord becomes more shit and will leave. One can hope.

      • ErilElidor@feddit.de
        18·
        9 months ago

        I never understood how a chatroom took off as a tool to document stuff. Who seriously thinks this is a good idea? 😵

        • dan@upvote.au
          4·
          9 months ago

          If a project only has Discord for support (no docs, no bug tracker), I’m not using it. Don’t want to deal with trying to find anything in Discord.

  • helenslunch@feddit.nl
    9·
    9 months ago

    Discord always had Discord ads. Thought I’d get rid of them by paying, because I genuinely like the product.

    Nope, ads kept coming. That’s when I left Discord.

      • kaishi@kbin.social
        7·
        9 months ago

        Sure does, and I hate it. If they add more ads, I’m going to cancel nitro and move elsewhere.

        • person@lemm.ee
          1·
          9 months ago

          mental. For me, if when I see a single non-nitro ad - I’m off. Hopefully earlier.

          • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
            1·
            9 months ago

            If you don’t already, consider using an ad-blocking DNS server. That blocks ad domains systemwide, not just in your web browser. Mullvad, Adguard, and some others have public DNS servers with adblocking. You can use them on both iOS and Android.

              • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
                2·
                9 months ago

                A DNS server is what converts a domain name, like google.com, into a numeric IP address, which is required for Internet traffic. Think of it like the mail room in an office building. They get mail for Bob in accounting, but the mail only has the name and the building’s address. The mail room staff (DNS) knows what floor and desk Bob sits at.

                Since many ads are hosted on their own domains, like doubleclick.net, you can block them at the DNS level so your device never actually connects to the ad server.

                By default you’re probably using your ISP’s DNS server, but you can customize it.