this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2024
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Anything that wants to meaningfully compete with Discord will probably also need to be able to near-seamlessly port over existing Discord servers to the new platform, since it's so established now. Is there a competitor that can do that?
I'm completely out of the loop, so I might as well ask you: where is discord so established? Never used it in my life. I used IRC, ICQ and MSN in their time. Now for work Slack, teams and zoom. Signal and Telegram privately. Email for everything.
What am I missing? What does discord provide?
Unfortunately, a lot of fandom communities, video games, and (ugh) hobbyist development projects have Discard servers instead of a forum or similar.
It provides a weird IRC-but-not-really type experience that is similar to MSN in some ways. A lot of younger people flock to it because they find computer stuff difficult and they just want it to work, be easy, and have an app. The UI is trendy even though it's horrible to actually navigate due to all the wasted space and buttons.
I really just think it caught on at the right time, though the video calling is pretty good. What I have a problem with is that you need to join a server to access any information inside of it, so it's not searchable from outside of the Discord ecosystem. For dev projects or large communities, that sucks and makes the internet a worse place.
I have a hobby development project with a modest community and maintain a Discord server basically because it's necessary in order to avoid reducing my potential community reach by at least 50%.
I'm active on GitHub and respond to comments and issues there. I maintain an official thread for my project on the official forum for the game it's related to. I also keep all documentation, downloads, and guides off Discord and on the clearnet. Discord is still easily 80% or more of where people look for information about the project.
That's great - I am obviously not talking about you in that case. I understand why people want to use it, I just don't think Discord's features are good enough to justify the mass adoption and the walled garden and UI are bad.
Yeah, I'm just sort of also complaining because it feels like I have to use it.