[HN Gopher] Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft
___________________________________________________________________
Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft
Author : coloneltcb
Score : 378 points
Date : 2021-04-20 17:17 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| joshmn wrote:
| It's crazy to me to think how TeamSpeak and Ventrilo had more
| than a decade to iterate and never came up with something like
| Discord. Xfire came close multiple times, but never got the voice
| part right, though for the time the client was acceptable.
|
| Granted, the server model was very different for TS and Vent
| (more so the latter), but it was normal then. Kudos to the
| Discord team on making a solid product.
| ev0lv wrote:
| TeamSpeak is still used heavily in the gaming community.
| Discord sucks when you have 50 people in the same voice chat.
| Kiro wrote:
| I'm a big gamer and heavy Discord user. Haven't heard anyone
| even mention TeamSpeak in a long time so I'm surprised by
| this comment.
| dharmab wrote:
| It's still used milsims like ArmA and DCS (where there are
| plugins for radio simulation integration).
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| I agree, though discord recently has put out updates to
| improve audio quality in those instances.
|
| That being said, I would argue that any voice chat with more
| than 10, maybe 20, active people talking is going to be
| nearly unusable. Not due to audio quality.
| dharmab wrote:
| Teamspeak supports plugins so an entire server of 100s of
| people only hear the players in-game that they are actively
| working with.
|
| It turns this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dM3HqNFox8)
| into this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Znv6Cf4IKgE).
| tapland wrote:
| It's mostly total lack of voice normalization killing it.
| RapidFire wrote:
| It's not really that surprising. At some point the established
| players ossify and are unable to innovate when the playing
| field changes.
|
| A new thing comes along without this problem and dominates the
| new playing field. For Teamspeak and Ventrilo the field changed
| in that it became possible to host the voice servers
| themselves, rather than the 'customers' hosting.
| saddestcatever wrote:
| Seriously! It's a shame that Xfire became a thing of the past.
| I feel like Steam baked in enough of the "community" features
| to steal their lunch, without ever delivering on the full
| community element that Discord is thriving on!
| hobs wrote:
| As far as I remember it xfire mostly developed their own
| client into the grave, making it more complex and less useful
| on each change.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| I'm really glad it's going to stay independent. I'd hate for it
| to be gradually degraded into another Skype.
| sbagel wrote:
| Discord does not give users a choice to opt-out of their wildly
| invasive data collection methods including logging executables
| running on your system while the desktop client is open, not just
| games. This data alone is very valuable.
|
| Comment from a 2019 support thread "I am pretty flabbergasted
| that people aren't making a bigger deal of this than they are.
| Discord actively monitors your executables, but the larger
| concern for people now seems to be its inaccuracy in identifying
| them as games. As if to say "make it better at identifying games"
| instead of "stop scanning my programs"."
|
| https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/3600307...
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| It sends a list of running programs, including the command line
| arguments to the server. It's worrying because although it's
| bad practice some programs get passed credentials like this.
|
| With regards to Discord's invasion of privacy as a whole, I'm
| not sure if it's malice or incompetence.
| 1zhangdey wrote:
| based and redpilled
| etempleton wrote:
| I just don't see what Discord's path towards profitability is.
| Are they going to try to start an online store again? Sell enough
| Nitro subs?
|
| I think they are playing hard ball for a better acquisition deal,
| but they risk being irrelevant before ever getting a better deal.
| RobLach wrote:
| Note:
|
| Discord has _14x_ more active users than Slack.
|
| Discord has a technology and feature superset over Slack.
|
| The Discord audience is becoming the professional audience just
| about right now.
| pell wrote:
| > Discord has 14x more active users than Slack.
|
| From what I understand Slack's model is based on selling
| plans to teams and companies. Within that framework users are
| actually representing a real monthly recurring dollar value.
| I don't think Discord is anywhere close to this.
| poyu wrote:
| On top of that, they have things that are considered
| "Enterprise Ready"
|
| https://slack.com/enterprise
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| Discord needs threads before I would even consider using it
| as a slack replacement.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Threads and the also send to channel are such a hack. It's
| much better to let conversations flow naturally.
| cdelsolar wrote:
| yeah I honestly like Discord way more than Slack.
| savanaly wrote:
| When I joined the Elm community I thought it was weird they
| use a Slack for real time discussion and not a Discord. When
| I asked why I found out that Discord's features are most
| certainly _not_ a superset of Slack 's.
|
| * Slack threads are an amazing feature and frequently used on
| the Elm slack. One discussion or one person's question can
| become a thread and then the channel won't be continuously
| pinged by the ongoing discussion, plus multiple discussions
| can happen in tandem. I remember when Slack added this
| feature lots of people including me were a bit disdainful. It
| feels like an awfully hard new UI pattern to get used to
| after so many years of single-threaded conversation on e.g.
| IRC. But now I would strongly oppose moving to Discord only
| because of this issue.
|
| * Slack also has a different model for channels on a server.
| There are probably caveats to these statements, but roughly
| speaking the default assumption on Slack is you don't belong
| to any channels in a server but can join what you want or
| what is configured for you, and on Discord the assumption is
| that you belong to everything and sometimes a Discord server
| will configure it so certain things are hidden. For a big
| organization like a programming language or a company the
| Slack model is preferable.
| samstave wrote:
| Precisely.
|
| If they can parley this into solid trust over the coming mid-
| term, without any major security breaches, then they are set.
|
| (plus the other feature options that were mentioned E2E,
| stickers etc... they have room to grow. There is already some
| payment duct-tape setup. I am sure that, barring a complete
| fuckup, discord is going to do very well.)
| cblconfederate wrote:
| i bet facebook has more users than linkedin but doubt anyone
| would pay a subscription for it
| RobLach wrote:
| What's the argument? There are plenty of monetization
| approaches beyond subscriptions.
|
| FB rev/yr $90b LinkedIn rev/yr $9b
| dyeje wrote:
| People build communities on Discord. They should monetize that.
| mesh wrote:
| More and more games are providing cross platform play. I
| suspect this is one reason Microsoft was interested so PC /
| Xbox players could play with each other and communication.
|
| Maybe Discord could monetize in game integration for its voice
| network, especially on console games.
| Lorin wrote:
| They'd make a fortune by providing Discord as an in-game
| communications solution/integration for commonly used game
| engines such as Unreal/Lumberyard.
|
| Make it free up to 1000 concurrent users, then $x/MAU at
| plateaus /w reduced rates + $ for extras such as white
| labeling.
|
| The current in-game Discord overlay is an end-user 'hack' by
| comparison. Games/applications are notorious for
| limited/locked-in communication systems and are non-trivial to
| implement internally. See Star Citizen's 'Spectrum' developed
| by Turbulent as an example of complex in-house solution.
|
| Heck, Epic provides grants for this exact sort of development.
| https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/megagrants
|
| If anyone from Discord is reading this feel free to contact me
| for bizdev/implementation advice :D
| Laremere wrote:
| > commonly used game engines such as Unreal/Lumberyard
|
| This is just such a bizarre statement. To exclude Unity while
| including Lumberyard in the condition of "commonly used game
| engines" makes zero sense. Unity is well known to be one of
| the most used game engines. Lumberyard in contrast has
| (according to wikipedia) has a single released game.
| gsich wrote:
| Teamspeak does that.
| danr4 wrote:
| Nobody mentioned the fact that their main audience (Gamers)
| love spending money on vanity stuff (hence Twitch).
| beams_of_light wrote:
| I wish my workplace could use Discord instead of Teams. The
| drop-in voice channels would be so handy.
| chrononaut wrote:
| I am not a heavy Discord user (so there might be options
| around this?), but when I have used it, it seems like every
| person on the server is in every channel. I feel like that
| would be absolute chaos at a workplace. Not to mention the
| unless notification customization that would have to take
| place.
| Karunamon wrote:
| That's the default - if you can see a channel you can read
| it and be pinged by it. Roles can restrict this, and you
| can configurably ping roles and remove the ability of
| regular users to do things like @here and @everyone.
|
| Discord's permission system is one of its killer features,
| IMO.
| xyhopguy wrote:
| 'discord professional' seems like pretty low hanging fruit and
| an obvious upgrade over slack + zoom
| stdgy wrote:
| Absolutely. I'd kill to be able to use Discord for work. It's
| just silly how much better it is than Teams, Zoom, WebEx,
| etc.
| brundolf wrote:
| It would risk chasing off their core market, even if it were
| just a branding pivot
| novok wrote:
| I think discord biz edition was obvious for a long time,
| and they've steadfastly refused to do it for that amount of
| time too.
| poidos wrote:
| It would probably have to be a separate application with
| the same features and internals to really work.
| all2 wrote:
| Accord Communications: Enterprise Edition
| antpls wrote:
| In addition to other comments : advertising. Imagine having to
| watch, or listen to an ad before you can join a channel.
| Imagine contextual ads in-between text messages.
| hguant wrote:
| Data mining. They've got a huge corpus of information available
| to them that they haven't monetized yet (as far as I'm aware).
|
| Also, and I don't mean this flippantly - stickers and shit.
| People want to look different, and selling a sticker or custom
| emoji pack would bring in money. You see this with Nitro a
| little, I believe they're experimenting with it
| aclelland wrote:
| Yeah, as long as you run the desktop app they'll keep track
| of what games and apps you have running (even if you disable
| the app sharing to your friends) which seems like it would be
| _very_ valuable to most gaming related companies.
|
| Edit: If you want to confirm this you can use their data
| export feature and check it. One good thing about that tool
| is that the data is well formatted and easy to parse
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Thanks for the heads up. Fuck this spyware trend.
| kevincox wrote:
| This is the reason that I much prefer to keep apps in my
| web browser. Sandboxing is a valuable feature. (And the
| desktop client is just a web browser anyways)
| aloisdg wrote:
| Your settings are limited in the browser. I dont know
| why..
| remir wrote:
| Pretty sure a "Business" edition is in the plan.
| kevincox wrote:
| Discord has started giving me popups and adding sparkles around
| UI elements that I need to pay for. I thought the premium
| "Nitro" was a nice option but I guess it isn't popular enough?
| Either way it seems that now they are nagging hard to get you
| to pay.
| xevrem wrote:
| so.... Discord will be a hellscape in 3-5 years as its inevitably
| destroyed by corporate greed?
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Better than being a hellscape in 6 months-2 years due to forced
| integration with Teams.
| spondyl wrote:
| Can I just say, while I believe Discord will die anyway if it
| IPOs (as with anything that believes in infinite scaling), I
| would have loved to see Microsoft enact the special fucked up
| kind of integration that only they can manage
| shagie wrote:
| My tea leaf reading suggests that it would have been a closer
| interaction to Xbox and gaming than Teams and corporate.
| Ombudsman wrote:
| I think Microsoft is smarter than that, look at Github for
| example, people have largely forgotten it's owned by MSFT.
| They would have left Discord as a gaming platform and used
| it's tech in Teams instead. Teams is so behind Discord in all
| areas except video quality.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Has there been an exodus of talent from Github if they are
| leveling salaries?
| Rapzid wrote:
| Probably an influx of talent. They suddenly started
| shipping stuff after the acquisition..
| sascha_sl wrote:
| Very poorly polished stuff, to be honest. Before, they
| always seemed to take great care in making their core
| product (and the API for it) great. The only thing I can
| think of that was similarly unpolished was GitHub
| Enterprise.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| I don't think GitHub staff has forgotten. Actions are
| straight up Azure Pipelines. The code is a huge mess. If I
| didn't know better I'd say it's obscured by design. Check
| out the actions/runner repo if you don't believe me. They
| polished them very well for the hosted version, but the
| cracks show if you try to use the self-hosted version.
|
| I can't believe anyone at GitHub is particularly thrilled
| about having a Microsoft technology that broken imposed on
| them.
| adflux wrote:
| What fields are that exactly?
| russellendicott wrote:
| Teams chat is awful:
|
| - Trying to figure out how to do code snippets and inline
| code is madness.
|
| - You can't copy and paste whole conversations.
|
| - Integrations/bots are awful and make you realize the
| whole thing is built on some ancient Sharepoint SOAP API.
|
| - Mobile app on Android whacks out frequently and has to
| do the blinky reload chat 19 times before the screen
| settles down.
|
| A lot of my other gripes are probably due to enterprise
| issues but I'll mention them anyway:
|
| - Can't create my own channels.
|
| - can't be on my company Teams on a call and switch to
| Microsoft's server to talk to a TAM without dropping the
| call.
| larinzod wrote:
| Aye, nothing like investor pressure and quarterly growth
| targets to kill an otherwise good company/product.
| coldpie wrote:
| This is how tech startups work, isn't it? Use investors to
| build a product with no business model, then the founders
| cash out via purchase or IPO, and soon after the fact that
| you have no business model comes to light and the product
| falls apart trying to find a business model, while users move
| on to the next shiny thing with no business model.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Discord has a business model: Get people engaged in a
| community, sell them Nitro so they can boost their
| communities [1][2]. The "buy benefits for you community"
| scheme is wildly successful in mobile games, so I wouldn't
| be surprised if it works well for Discord.
|
| 1: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/360028038352-S...
|
| 2: https://discord.com/nitro
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| The second they try to monetize discord like a mobile
| game is the second all of my friends stop using it and
| hop to the next silicon Valley chat app that pops up
| batrat wrote:
| Yet they are not profitable. It seems that "nitro" is not
| enough.
| coldpie wrote:
| The fact that they are trying to sell/IPO is pretty
| strong evidence that they are not profitable, I think.
| But regardless, I will give them massive props for not
| just doing the ad thing, which is the last gasp of this
| style of startup before they finish circling the drain.
| Lookin' at you, Imgur.
| flxy wrote:
| I would in all honesty give them even bigger props, as
| someone who used to be but isn't a fan anymore. They
| tried to add a game store a la steam into it but realized
| it didn't get the engagement they'd hoped for so they
| stopped putting time and effort into it and shut it down.
|
| My first impression when they first added it was that
| they'd just shove it down people's throats and keep
| trying to make it work.
|
| I hope I'm not wrong about them getting rid of it again
| and I've just gotten used to tuning all that out when
| using discord.
| delecti wrote:
| Imgur has had ads since a couple months after launch.
| Nearly 98% of Imgur's lifespan has had ads.
| coldpie wrote:
| In the last ~6 months, Imgur added forced video ads when
| uploading new images:
| https://www.resetera.com/threads/hmm-so-we-now-have-to-
| watch... https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/
| k5lwus/imgur...
|
| Hilariously, I found this article from about a year
| before they added those ads:
| https://digiday.com/marketing/imgur-diversifying-beyond-
| ad-r...
|
| This is what flailing around trying to find a business
| model looks like. If Imgur was profitable without those
| ads, they wouldn't be abusing their users like this.
| throwaway_kufu wrote:
| I'd slightly revise your description of the scheme from _no
| business model_ to a intentional _no revenue business
| model_ allowing for the valuation speculation to run
| rampant (i.e. at anytime we could stop investing in our
| growth, then it's all profits). Of course by the time they
| go public like say Uber and set multiple records on
| quarterly losses and the investors drop the bag on the
| public it becomes obvious they can't stop spending or the
| business will go under so instead they will continue
| accumulating billion dollar plus losses every quarter so by
| the time the shit hits the fan original founders and
| investors are on to the next thing and can always say they
| took a xx billion dollar startup public and that's when the
| company lost its culture and the corporate greed ruined it.
| duxup wrote:
| As user's it seems we're addicted to hopping from one
| unsustainable free product to the next.
|
| We don't want to pay. And we're upset when they vanish or
| change dramatically try to find a way to remain viable
| financially.
| ergot_vacation wrote:
| Glad I'm not the only one thinking this. Seems obvious, but
| I always felt like I was missing something. How is it that
| most of the tech/SV world is just the same con being run
| over and over again, yet it keeps working? Does it operate
| on the same psychological glitch as a lottery? Do the giant
| corps buying these startups all think "I know how it's been
| in the past, but surely THIS startup WON'T turn to shit the
| moment I buy it because it was never a real business to
| begin with! This time for sure!"
|
| Or are the real suckers the investors, and the corps are
| just doing these purchases in a performative capacity to
| keep razzle-dazzling them?
| whall6 wrote:
| Have you read through any of Facebook's recent 10-Ks?
| echelon wrote:
| If they're that bad, what keeps the stock price propped
| up and the morale high?
| vmception wrote:
| The real answer is that you should be selling these works
| of fiction on the Nasdaq too.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Some acquisitions are just to eliminate potential
| competitors.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| A lot of actual profits have been made by mature tech
| companies. Valuations seem too high right now, but I
| don't think it's a giant fraud. More like there's nothing
| better to invest in.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Yes, the model is entirely built on acquisitions, where
| discord itself can't be profitable, but part of Microsoft
| it can deliver value by deepening the mote around
| everything else.
|
| Many things are only valuable as a public good or part of
| monopoly. Such is funny relationship between
| monopolization and socialism.
| Varriount wrote:
| What would the outlook be if Discord was bought by Microsoft?
| pndy wrote:
| They'd probably turn this IM into family friendly safe bay
| with strictly moderated content - because let's be honest,
| nowadays anything goes in. Discord accounts at first would be
| offered an optional merge with MSA and in long time, you'd
| have to log into using MSA credentials only. Microsoft
| Discord branding would arrive. There would be a business
| oriented version created and MS would abandon Teams; basic
| Discord would have ads related to your activity - you could
| avoid that (along with telemetry) by purchasing a
| subscription as the current monetization options would be
| removed. A special version with github/git related features
| would be created - for free, but only for those who are
| really using it in code related tasks.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| Discord 365 Home Edition, with Lync (64-bit) (Not Responding)
| alpaca128 wrote:
| At least on my hardware Skype and Teams are much more
| responsive than Discord though. And the laptop's coolers
| get the workout of their lifetime whenever Discord spins
| up.
| wrenky wrote:
| Probably would leave it alone for a while- Much like Git.
| cvs268 wrote:
| For the Nth time (not you), Github is NOT git.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Deeper Xbox integration, probably. Microsoft knows the
| writing is on the wall that Xbox Party Chat usage is way down
| and a lot of it has been replaced by gamers with Discord.
|
| They know it so well the new Xbox Wireless Headset
| essentially has a "Discord feature" though obviously not
| named or marketed directly as that. (It supports dual pairing
| with a bluetooth phone for "phone calls over game audio", but
| everyone I know got the message between lines that it
| supports Discord chat, and were talking about the headset
| precisely because of that feature.)
| ipaddr wrote:
| Family friendly policies and users fleeing.
| throwaway_kufu wrote:
| A valuation based on metrics more closely tied to reality
| because the owner would actually focus on the viability and
| sustainability of the product.
| the_duke wrote:
| Doubtful, in this case.
|
| Microsoft would have bought Discord for the gaming
| community and pursued tight integration with the XBox
| ecosystem. Which could have boosted the platform, but
| probably not in a way that resulted in a lot of direct
| revenue.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Corporate greed is for sure a problem, but... does Discord even
| make money? I'm guessing their S-1 will reveal that they are
| ludicrously unprofitable, and they will actually have to fix
| that if they go public, corporate greed or no.
|
| In general, I try not to fall in love with free products that
| seem too good to be true, because the party has to come to an
| end at some point.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Higher ed instructor here. I've been teaching online for well
| over a decade, frequently subjected to the Blackboards and the
| Canvases and lately Zoom. I can name _no_ tool that has improved
| what I do from when I started except Discord.
|
| I'm old-ish, so it was a bit hard to get to at first, but after
| some time with it, I'd replace _everything_ with it if I could.
| (And this is coming from a big time free /open source guy! I'm
| not thrilled with how centralized it is, but I'll take it for
| now)
| mehlmao wrote:
| So what is Discord's path to profitability? They tried selling
| video games and closed the store not too long after launching it.
| Nitro/Server Boosts definitely don't come close to the cost of
| operation.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| How do you know that? Why would it be expensive to run a
| glorified irc server network?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Discord has voice chat, file uploads, and image and video
| hosting.
|
| It's not just glorified IRC. The bandwidth and storage costs
| are real.
| mehlmao wrote:
| For starters, storage costs. Free users can upload files,
| images, and videos up to 8MB (25MB for Nitro members).
| Storing and serving those in perpetuity adds up, plus
| bandwidth for voice and video chat and 800+ employees.
| julienb_sea wrote:
| Possibly expand into enterprise or education and tread on the
| toes of slack or teams. I suspect server boosts actually could
| cover a large percentage of costs, especially if they either
| feature gate things like file uploads or chat history.
| DethNinja wrote:
| Advertisements I guess? I still cannot believe how fast they
| captured game chat market, even with lots of other competitors.
|
| Honestly I also would like to enter to this market but breaking
| the market share of discord will be very hard indeed.
| tacticalmook wrote:
| That's not surprising to me. Discord offers free hosting for
| a feature-rich IRC and group voice service. Nobody else did
| that.
|
| A gaming clan no longer needs to maintain their own
| Teamspeak/Ventrilo server + their own website and forum. The
| convenience of having it all in one centralized program wins
| out over Discord's UX oddities, privacy concerns and more
| recent bloat. This ease of use also lowered the barrier to
| create a clan, so it captures a larger audience than its
| predecessors ever did. And yet it still provides powerful
| tools for moderation and user permissions, an API for chat
| bots, video streaming...
| chrononaut wrote:
| To be fair, I think everyone always thinks about that
| regarding the incumbent(s). Xfire / Ventrilo / TeamSpeak all
| likely seemed like a daunting adversary at their peaks.
| debacle wrote:
| Amazon (Twitch), Epic, and Valve are all targeting gaming
| verticals. Each of them are integrating the other's features as
| also-rans: streaming, marketplace, reviews, community, platform.
| Most people would probably be surprized to know that you can buy
| games on Twitch and stream on Steam.
|
| What space will Discord be able to carve out? They will be a
| Netflix in an Disney and Hulu world.
| leereeves wrote:
| Does Epic have reviews and community now? Last time I used it,
| Epic didn't have much more than an advertisement and a buy
| button.
| mehlmao wrote:
| Can you still buy games from Twitch? I thought they shut that
| store down. They still offer free games for Prime members
| though.
| evanextreme wrote:
| Discord will always have a market as long as competing
| marketplaces / ecosystems exist on PC. Discord's platform
| agnosticism makes it a safer bet than the three companies you
| mentioned, all of which are incentivized to build closed
| content ecosystems that antagonize each other in order to move
| more product. There is simply no other solution that allows me
| to see what my friends are playing, jump into their channel,
| and see the gameplay broadcast live from multiple perspectives
| in a private environment.
|
| The Netflix analogy is not particularly apt here either, as
| where Netflix produces the content, here the content is user
| generated. So its about technological executions, platform
| agnosticism, and features sets. Valve's Steam app on iOS didnt
| even support iPhone X screen resolutions until a year and a
| half ago so I wouldnt hold my breath for them to compete well
| in this space at all. Maybe Epic's acquisition of houseparty
| could cause some competition for them? But I doubt it.
| elithrar wrote:
| > What space will Discord be able to carve out? They will be a
| Netflix in an Disney and Hulu world.
|
| Do you mean that in a positive or negative way? Netflix is
| doing very well - it's the other, broadcasters-cum-streaming
| platforms that are struggling.
| mouldysammich wrote:
| I wish there was anything comparably easy to use and of the same
| quality or even in the vicinity in foss communication platforms.
|
| Mumble isnt easy to use but has great voice and terrible text,
| matrix and irc are both -- for most non techy people -- hard to
| use and esentially text only, jitsi is video conferencing, xmpp
| is mainly not about voice and suffers the same issues as matrix.
|
| I really hate the state of things as I would love to contribute
| and join some oss communities but they only exist on matrix and I
| hate using it. Its one of those things i wish i had the know how
| to start building my self, but webrtc alone seems impenetrable
| for mumble/discord style audio.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| u tried Matrix with Element? It doesn't feel as bad as you
| describe
| logronoide wrote:
| I can't believe any of the people complaining here about low
| quality of the VoIP of Teams have used the VoIP of Discord,
| because they simply can't compare. Teams have anti-coupling
| features and you can use it with speakers out of the box. Discord
| does not have a good anti-coupling algorithms and it's almost
| impossible to use it without headphones. Perfect for gamers, but
| not for business. Discord is amazing to create communities,
| that's what Microsoft wanted.
| parksy wrote:
| > Discord is amazing to create communities, that's what
| Microsoft wanted.
|
| Microsoft can easily recreate the platform, they don't want the
| capability, they want the existing audience.
| logronoide wrote:
| Microsoft wants the audience AND the know-how about how to
| engage with them and atract new one. Due to Microsoft culture
| they don't know how to do it.
| COGlory wrote:
| What about Discord besides network effect makes it a desirable
| holding? Do they have any technological advantage?
| Jweb_Guru wrote:
| They're way better at dealing with large communities than any
| other chat application I've used.
| kungito wrote:
| It's been a fucking amazing product from day one and they have
| a lot of features. I only wish they release a non gaming
| branded version
| red_trumpet wrote:
| What would a non-gaming version distinguish from the current
| one?
| TkTech wrote:
| It's hard to pitch discord in the workplace, especially
| against an incumbent like Slack or Teams. It comes across
| as very "casual" and unprofessional, which is a shame,
| because it really is a top-quality product.
|
| It's never seemed to be a focus of Discord, it's just the
| niche they've chosen. Even their own homepage description
| doesn't mention work:
|
| > Whether you're part of a school club, gaming group,
| worldwide art community, or just a handful of friends that
| want to spend time together, Discord makes it easy to talk
| every day and hang out more often.
|
| A business version would need 1st-party integrations with
| GSuite/LDAP/OAuth (you can work around this with a bot but
| that's already a negative). It needs audit log features,
| retention rules (for ATIP requests and the like), less
| gaming icons, a disabled game shop, strip out mentions of
| nitro. Lots of things really.
| meristohm wrote:
| I've used Discord only for gaming and I would prefer all
| the non-voice stuff to be able to be hidden. If it wasn't
| the most reliable audio for group voice chat that we've
| tried (Steam voice is still an echo-y mess for us three,
| Signal wouldn't connect us, and then I conceded and went
| back to Discord), we'd use something else. I don't like
| that it tracks what we're playing, that it tries to be
| friendly with its treacly messages (it's a tool; my
| shovel doesn't say "welcome back, I missed you!"...), and
| that it keeps deleted accounts around. I can see that
| others may want all these and other Facebook-esque
| features. I like that Discord uses .opus codec, and that
| the audio is dependable and clear. Maybe Mumble to try
| next? What open-source options might work for enterprise?
| melkhior wrote:
| For gaming, you might enjoy Teamspeak. It's closed-
| source, but you can run own your server, it's very much
| focused on voice comms, uses Opus and (IMO) has better
| audio filters.
| oneepic wrote:
| Fewer pylons and other gaming memes.
| bentcorner wrote:
| Probably better support around auth and identity.
|
| They do support things like twitch subscriber-exclusive
| channels, so I think there's something there. And I don't
| use discord enough to know the ins-and-outs of how
| restrictive you can be with auth.
|
| But I imagine you'd want to have SSO and some kind of
| managed directory, security groups, and all that. I don't
| know if discord supports that today.
| aphextron wrote:
| The network effect _is_ what makes it desirable. Anyone can
| push bits these days. Web technology is completely
| commoditized. But a strong brand and a great product team is
| priceless (or at least worth more than $10bn).
| m01 wrote:
| They use(d) Elixir (based on Erlang VM) [1]. WhatsApp
| apparently considered Erlang to be one of the reasons why they
| could serve such a massive userbase with a tiny team [2], which
| I guess is a tech advantage.
|
| In any case, I enjoyed reading Discord's tech blogs on Elixir.
|
| [1] https://blog.discord.com/tagged/erlang
|
| [2] https://www.wired.com/2015/09/whatsapp-serves-900-million-
| us...
|
| EDIT: added reference and clarified that I don't know if they
| still use Elixir.
| davidw wrote:
| https://discord.com/jobs/4959585002 mentions 'Rust or
| Elixir'. Frustratingly, for the longest time, they were 'San
| Fran or bust' in their hiring, which seemed like an odd thing
| for a company supposedly enabling communication. Guess the
| pandemic finally forced them to start looking for remote
| workers.
|
| Are they one of the first Elixir shops to IPO?
| prox wrote:
| It's one of the most popular destinations for gaming/tech
| discussion rooms and teamtalk (during games) what they do, they
| do really well, that's their advantage.
| keb_ wrote:
| The UX and featureset of Discord is impressive. The UX in
| particular is superior to Slack, Teams, or any other modern
| chat application I've used.
|
| I'd like to move my group to Matrix, but Element (fka Riot.im)
| is nowhere near as polished or user-friendly as Discord.
| antris wrote:
| Have you ever tried to disable notifications on Discord? I
| have tried to do it 500 times and still get those annoying
| red dots with numbers, red dots without numbers, and just a
| few weeks ago I started getting random notification sounds
| (after I had disabled them before) without any clue where
| they were coming from.
|
| My only option is trying to disable all notifications and all
| notification sounds everywhere, but still I get those dots
| even when I'm not mentioned.
|
| edit:
|
| I think the root of the problem is that Discord is trying to
| game the user attention/retention/time spent in app by
| flooding the user with notifications. In IRC, you had to
| explicitly enable every notification, otherwise you'd never
| get notified of anything. "Disable everything by default
| unless I turn it on" seems to be made as difficult as
| possible on Discord.
| hanniabu wrote:
| About a month ago they pushed an update that improved the
| notification options. That might help you.
| antris wrote:
| Well that seemed to erase the "red dot without number"
| problem, but it still seems I get "red dot with number"
| that I have to go manually clear even when it's obvious
| that nobody has mentioned me.
|
| Anyway, thanks for the tip
| Semaphor wrote:
| For @ mentions, there is currently no way to fully
| (@everyone only per server, @name or @role not at all)
| disable them (I don't mind that, I do want to read those).
| The red dot you can disable them in Settings ->
| Notifications -> Enable Unread Message Badge
| Notorious_BLT wrote:
| Right-click the server icon, select "notifications
| settings", press "Mute <server name>". When it asks how
| long, select "until I turn it back on". This will kill the
| white dot unless you're mentioned (or @everyone'd). Its a
| little tricky to find but that will solve your issue
| tpxl wrote:
| You can also turn off @everyone/@here/@username in right-
| click -> notification settings -> 'Suppress @everyone and
| @here'. Like the sibling said, doing this for every
| channel is tedious.
| antris wrote:
| I want to change my global settings, not server settings.
| I'm on dozens of Discords and join/leave them and change
| their order on the sidebar all the time. Going through
| each of them (and remembering to do it every time I join
| a new one) sounds like a nightmare. Every time I hear/see
| a notification that I don't want, I'd have to go through
| all those dialogs for all of my servers? Nope, not gonna
| happen.
| Notorious_BLT wrote:
| From your original comment I assumed you actually would
| want to know how to do it, I see now it was simply
| whining.
|
| edit: sorry, this came off more aggressive than I
| intended. I just meant that I thought you were looking
| for a solution, but you were actually critiquing, so I
| felt like I'd wasted the time trying to help. Sorry to be
| an ass.
| antris wrote:
| I was replying to a post that praised Discords UX. I
| agree, it's mostly excellent, but there are points that
| deserve critique, which prompted this response.
|
| If you feel like that's whining, well, as an UX designer
| I'd welcome feedback on what could be improved.
| paxys wrote:
| I have been on Slack for years, and when I tried Discord I
| found it practically unusable. UX is really all about what
| you are used to.
| speedgoose wrote:
| It provides a nicer user experience overall.
| afpx wrote:
| Do they even have a lot of active users? I haven't found many
| public discord channels that seem to be actively used.
|
| Or, is discord more for private chat?
|
| I've used it a few times for organizing online gaming. But, it
| wasn't worth it to keep it installed.
| nesarkvechnep wrote:
| It has a technological advantage - Elixir.
| Merem wrote:
| Data from a lot of users? I mean, they inspect all audio/video
| communications in real-time[1] and save all your messages,
| pictures etc. It also helps a lot that basically no one cares
| about privacy anymore, so further growth seems secured.
|
| [1] https://medium.com/tenable-techblog/lets-reverse-engineer-
| di...
| whoopdedo wrote:
| I assumed they wanted to buy the userbase. And use it to
| promote XBox and Game Pass.
|
| I can see why Discord backed off if their vision is to have a
| broader audience of non-gamers. Joining Microsoft would have
| meant they'd be stuck in their pigeonhole.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| Its B2C software so its fundamentally designed for consumers -
| individual users and community creators.
|
| Slack, Teams etc. are B2B so end-users are forced to adopt it.
|
| The UX of both reflects this.
| Varriount wrote:
| I don't know if you consider this a technological advantage,
| but compared to Slack, Discord puts a relatively heavy emphasis
| on its live voice channel functionality. You can join and leave
| them at a whim, mute and control the volume of individual
| users, etc.
|
| I personally also appreciate the fact that channels and servers
| can be grouped, and that the markup syntax supported in text
| chat is more compliant with markdown expectations than the
| markup supported by Slack.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Brand; the days of "technological advantage" as a
| differentiator are over. Technology progress has plateaued in a
| great many industries over the last decade so it's all about
| the product experience these days.
|
| Honestly tho, Google could instantly leapfrog its competitors
| in the space by acquiring Discord. The Google ecosystem is
| desperately in need of a decent collaboration tool and
| everything Google tried to build in that space is shit.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > Brand; the days of "technological advantage" as a
| differentiator are over.
|
| There is a vast gulf even in terms of ,,just working" between
| garbage like Microsoft Teams and something like Discord.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Honestly teams "just works" for a lot of companies. My
| company had a 100% in-office culture and transitioned to
| using Teams extensively within a week of the pandemic
| starting. The fact that it's built off of Active Directory
| and integrates with existing Sharepoint and Exchange
| systems is a huge plus for business users.
|
| Totally agree it's shit for developers though. But for
| _business_ teams, MS Teams works great. Teams _does_ "just
| work" -- if you've already made a large investment into the
| Microsoft ecosystem (which, to be fair, 90% of corporate
| America has).
| magicalhippo wrote:
| I find this "Teams is garbage" vs the experience at our
| company quite interesting.
|
| We've been relying on Teams since the pandemic broke out.
| Us devs had been using it before just for chat and such, so
| was obvious fit.
|
| Teams voice, video and screen sharing just works for us.
| Heck, today I helped my coworker with an urgent issue via a
| Teams call while I was hiking in the mountains. He shared
| his screen and I viewed it on my mobile phone, so I could
| talk him through a workaround. Worked smooth as ever.
|
| There are some points where it's not as smooth, especially
| search is a pain. But basic functionality like chat, voice
| and video just works for us.
| ganzuul wrote:
| Makes the users feel like the devs care.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > Makes the users feel like the devs care.
|
| Isn't that true of virtually all internet companies BEFORE
| their IPO?
|
| After the IPO, the new owners (aka: the stock market
| investors) demand profits. And those profit demands result in
| the slowly, but surely, fleecing of customers.
|
| Be it Geocities, Tumblr, Slack, or whatever really. If you
| start with a "growth-oriented" service with a free product
| for clicks/subscribers, the community always grows
| disappointed when the money starts to flow. (Geocities /
| Tumblr were acquired, but same idea really. The new owners
| demanded $$$$ be made and the community suffered)
|
| --------
|
| In contrast, companies that seem to charge early (ie: Amazon:
| AWS or the storefront) seem to be more sustainable. Customers
| get used to paying for the service, and don't mind paying a
| fair price to stay a customer.
|
| Alternatively: being a digital nomad: moving from service to
| service during their "free periods" seems moderately
| sustainable. It seems like new companies can offer free
| services... until they can't. At which point, you pick up
| your community and move to the next free service. Especially
| for communities built up around entertainment (video games),
| having a digital nomad lifestyle is fine since the community
| actually has tons of freetime.
| lostcolony wrote:
| Does anyone in this space? At least, that has any user facing
| affect (i.e., 99.9% uptime vs 99.99% uptime is not something
| users will be comparing). It's all network effect and business
| model.
| wongarsu wrote:
| It's arguably the best software in the "modern IRC" space.
|
| Sure, anyone else could catch up, but Discord has a core
| audience that cares about latency, low resource use, reliable
| effortless voice channels and good UX, while Discord's
| competition seems to move in the opposite direction.
| devwastaken wrote:
| They have users. If they wanted to they could become the next
| Steam tomorrow by simply selling games and giving deals. The
| engaged userbase of discord far surpasses steam, epic, and all
| other gaming clients. Valve doesn't care about competing or
| innovating, theyll simply roll over and let it happen.
|
| But like any startup discord is created with monopoly money and
| therefore they don't have any actual knowledge, expertise, or
| good way of gaining revenue. They're designed to spend
| ridiculous amounts of money to get users and sell to a
| megacorp. They have no ability to manage a business that
| requires money outside of their investors monopoly money.
| [deleted]
| Notorious_BLT wrote:
| They already tried, it flopped and they killed off the
| feature. PC gamers already own games through Steam, no one
| wants to have to split their library if they can avoid it.
| ehsankia wrote:
| > simply selling games and giving deals
|
| They already did try that, and they also then tried pivoting
| to subscription model (a la Gamepass), both failed and
| eventually they closed their game store entirely.
|
| You could argue that maybe they tried it too soon, but I
| don't think so. The competition is kinda big with Microsoft,
| Steam and Epic. I don't think people want to own games on
| their chat app.
| donkarma wrote:
| Considering the state of Teams they really needed Discord for
| their amazing technology of actually being semi responsive
| curiousgal wrote:
| Been using Teams for school for two years now and have zero
| complaints.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Have you used other software like Discord though to have a
| frame of reference?
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Been using Teams for work for two years and I have so many
| complaints.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Sometimes you need to be a "power user" to encounter all a
| product's flaws. I've been using it professionally for 3.5
| years, and I touch pretty much every feature. I had high
| hopes because I loved a lot of the decisions they were
| making, so I started maintaining a list of issues/bugs. I
| reported them when I had time to describe them well. After a
| year, it got into the hundreds, with some that were pretty
| dramatic, and I stopped caring enough to continue, because it
| was clearly not going to be the product I was hoping it could
| be. Since then, the most obvious problem that has happened is
| slowdown. It takes full seconds to do most navigation/loading
| in our (large) team. The whole affair made me truly sad,
| frustrated, and angry.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| MS already owned Skype for over half a decade before they made
| Teams and Teams voice/video chat is still vastly inferior than
| Skype. How would owning a bunch more IP that they're ignoring
| help?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Not just that, but you can no longer sign up for a Skype
| (even "for business") account if your organization has Teams
| through Office 365, but Teams doesn't interoperate well with
| Skype so if you, for business reasons, need to communicate
| with a Skype user without using a personal Skype account,
| you're SOL.
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| But the main problem with Teams is its low-performance GUI
| (Electron-based). And from what I hear about Discord, it's the
| same there.
|
| There's other minor problems like insane chat latency, but I
| can work with that. Voice and Video generally works fine.
| milkytron wrote:
| Maybe...
|
| Teams is utter garbage in my opinion, but I don't think
| acquiring Discord would solve that. Skype seems like a similar
| acquisition, and look how that turned out.
| krzepah wrote:
| Microsoft has trouble with UI design and it only got worse.
| Think about the "help" buttons that are on win system
| preferences, instead of directing you to the option they send
| you to google or bing. It's ridiculous.
| me_me_me wrote:
| UI design? Teams has no UI design, but haphazardly aranged
| buttons that are hard to spot.
|
| I can't describe how bad of experience it is to use.
|
| How does a corp that actively pushes their users/clients
| into using Teams makes no UX effort.
| mopsi wrote:
| The whole Settings app also feels like something thrown
| together in a really primitive GUI scripting language
| that doesn't support anything besides text and its
| alignment.
|
| This is the old disk management utility:
| https://i.imgur.com/AqhYewC.jpg
|
| This is the new one: https://i.imgur.com/DNb0qJl.jpg
|
| While the old was far from perfect, it at least gave
| visual hints to how partitions relate to disks. The new
| """design""" is just plain text, some of which is
| clickable and will reveal "Properties" button. It's up to
| you to find the hidden clickspots.
|
| I can't believe they are releasing such garbage.
| Sometimes I wonder: does Satya Nadella use Windows? How
| is he not raging every time he opens the Settings app?
| airstrike wrote:
| That's one painful side-by-side
| tyingq wrote:
| Decision makers are pretty forgiving of an application
| that comes bundled with something else they had to buy
| anyway. And it is "good enough", despite being worse than
| competitors, for things like hosting video meetings.
| vkou wrote:
| IF you want a really ridicilous example of Microsoft's
| inability to deal with UX, try changing literally anything
| that has to do with sound in Windows, and tell me how many
| separate sound-related configuration applications there
| are, and what are the paths to opening them.
|
| Then, ask someone who never used Windows XP to explain to
| you what each of those configuration applications is
| responsible for. (So they won't be able to lean on the
| crutch of "Oh, this one is the exact same thing as the
| sound application in Windows 98...")
| tinus_hn wrote:
| One of the reasons of course is that every driver feels
| the need to add their great pane to the control panel
| applet, so now Microsoft can't change anything to the
| applet or all the drivers break.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| 3 of those settings panes are baked directly into Windows
| 10 and have nothing to do with any 3rd-party drivers.
|
| If the sound isn't enough, the power management is even
| worse. I count at least 5 different panes to configure
| different subsets of screen saver, sleep, hibernate and
| power on/off behavior, all from Windows itself with no
| 3rd-party software involved.
| vkou wrote:
| I believe (but can't confirm, because I don't own enough
| wierd audio equipment) that third-party drivers can embed
| controls into one of those settings panes.
|
| But yes, your point still stands. There's no good reason
| for this mess, and Microsoft needs to put someone who
| cares in charge of Windows UX.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| > I believe (but can't confirm, because I don't own
| enough wierd audio equipment) that third-party drivers
| can embed controls into one of those settings panes.
|
| That would be an improvement on the current status quo,
| where each third-party device adds its own new settings
| pane.
| remir wrote:
| If you think Teams is garbage, try dealing with the admin
| side of Teams. UX nightmare.
| dekerta wrote:
| Teams definitely feels like it was rushed to market to take
| advantage of the pandemic. I'm really sad our company moved us
| from Slack to Teams. It's so much worse, especially on Linux
| alwayshasbeen wrote:
| Teams was present long before the pandemic.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| Teams has been rushed to market 4 years ago..
| wussboy wrote:
| And it was still better than the dumpster fire that was
| Skype for Business. I loved how it would push a message to
| the device that it thought you were active on, but that
| there wasn't a centralized storage of messages. Messages
| sent to Device 1 didn't exist on Device 2.
| thow-01187 wrote:
| I wonder whether the near universal unpleasant experiences
| mentioned in this thread aren't caused by bad ports of MS
| Teams to Mac/Linux/Android. I use Teams solely on Windows,
| and the calls/video are flawless, recording just works,
| captions and audio transcripts are fairly accurate. The chat
| portion has minor warts, but it does get the job done.
| Markdown syntax works for most of the message formatting
| needs. Webhooks are easy to implement.
| nikolay wrote:
| I guess, we should expect a version of Discord built by
| Microsoft, integrated into Xbox and Minecraft.
| thedudeabides5 wrote:
| If Clubhouse is worth $4, I'd buy Discord at $12bn easy.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/19/clubhouse/
| fish45 wrote:
| Speaking as an 18 y.o. doing my first year college online, I
| wouldn't have made it through quarantine without Discord. I've a
| server with my high school friends and since Discord lowers the
| barrier to join a voice call so much it's super chill to just hop
| in a channel when doing homework or playing a game or whatever
| else, and anyone else who's free can join.
|
| I really wish there were competition, but there's nothing AFAIK
| that can replicate this particular experience except for
| Teamspeak, which has other problems.
| gfodor wrote:
| You might like what I am working on - it's aiming to be Discord
| + Minecraft: https://jel.app
| DoctorOW wrote:
| This looks really interesting. It solves a problem my Discord
| server has specifically. We do online improv and while most
| of the members don't have cameras we find the lack of a
| visual component is detrimental to the experience.
|
| I notice that you have a support Discord, maybe a Discord
| integration would be good.
| gfodor wrote:
| Yes for chat I am using Synapse/Matrix and will be adding
| Discord bridging.
| brundolf wrote:
| As a 29 year old, similar (to a lesser extent) deal. I've used
| Discord a huge amount over the past year, mostly for gaming but
| sometimes while playing different games at the same time/just
| hanging out.
| sunpazed wrote:
| As a 43 year old, I've been using Discord to collaborate
| within a small developer community across Europe and the
| United States (I'm in Australia). Since the pandemic, we've
| done more than code -- supporting one another in our various
| COVID circumstances.
| MentallyRetired wrote:
| The kids are using Guilded and dropping Discord these days,
| from what I hear.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| Just Googling it, I haven't seen what makes it better than
| Discord. It reads like an alternative for the sake of
| competing. Not a bad idea, but I think it'll always be
| lagging behind like the wake of Facebook/YouTube/Reddit
| clones we've seen over the years.
| 2iP1zbR wrote:
| > Teamspeak, which has other problems
|
| like server admins viewing the IP addresses of other users in
| the server, if that counts
| gsich wrote:
| Well, that is obvious and not changeable.
| superkuh wrote:
| The employees and their contractors and related at Discord
| corporate can see your IP address too and much more. Luckily
| it won't be Microsoft owning it as they could correlate
| against their software empire too.
|
| But Discord does have significant profit motive to collect
| information about you. In fact, their entire proprietary
| protocol, client, and restriction of clients is based around
| ensuring this.
| ripdog wrote:
| He wasn't talking about mass data collection used to sell
| advertising, he was talking about a the admin of a server
| with maybe a dozen users having access to his IP, which
| potentially could be used for DDOS or geolocation. The kind
| of 'data collection' which could have visible impacts upon
| his life.
| Topgamer7 wrote:
| Or someone with knowledge could port scan you and
| actually attack you to gain a foothold in your network.
| ripdog wrote:
| Of course, but it seems fairly unlikely that the average
| gamer is running public-facing internet services.
| jfim wrote:
| There are some games that run peer to peer connections,
| and for those to work, they require inbound connections
| to work. As far as the security of the average game
| codebase is concerned, I'd say it's pretty terrible as
| nobody really audits these codebases for buffer
| overflows/RCEs.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| Discord has the same issue, essentially everyone who
| works in a somewhat technical role has access to their
| moderation tools that have zero auditing and reports of
| abuse (reading people's DMs "as a joke") are not
| uncommon.
|
| Discord also refuses to delete any data you give them.
| Deleting a Discord account sets a lockout flag, changes
| the nickname to "Deleted User" and resets the avatar to
| default. That's it. They don't even bother setting the
| user ID on your messages to something common, to a bot
| (and anyone who turns on developer mode) all your
| messages still contain your Discord ID.
|
| I also learned from personal experience that they ignore
| any requests for deleting data coming in via GDPR. These
| people need to get slapped in a lawsuit.
| uzakov wrote:
| > Discord has the same issue, essentially everyone who
| works in a somewhat technical role has access to their
| moderation tools that have zero auditing and reports of
| abuse (reading people's DMs "as a joke") are not
| uncommon.
|
| This is the first time I hear of this, can you please
| link a source?
| sascha_sl wrote:
| The Discord subreddit has a few threads about this, but
| it has always been an open secret back when the Discord
| Developers guild still existed. I'm pretty sure it got
| axed because some staff members got too memey about
| abusing their database access.
| 2iP1zbR wrote:
| this is true, but also goes for every internet-connected
| service that i choose to use, as far as my IP address goes
|
| i've been invited to random, huge discord servers to play
| just one game, and after the games over i usually leave the
| server unless i know everybody. i never have to worry about
| the server admin or one of his buddies deciding they didn't
| like me for whatever reason and DDOSing the shit out of me
| for weeks, forcing me to change my IP address because i
| didn't use a VPN.
|
| that's just personal; it could even turn a profit if a
| professional gamer joined a server, several users recorded
| the IP address, bet against them in an upcoming game, then
| DDOS'd the shit out of them.
| cma wrote:
| Like anyone together in a discord voice chat, since it is p2p
| webrtc, right?
| johncolanduoni wrote:
| It is not P2P. The place where they most clearly state that
| as far as I can find is actually the documentation for
| their game SDK[1], but you can check that this is the case
| with netstat. In general it's hard to get good voice or
| video chat with P2P connections because of the low upload
| of most residential internet connections, so few serious
| chat apps do it.
|
| [1]: https://discord.com/developers/docs/game-
| sdk/networking
| lrvick wrote:
| Why not matrix?
| y2bd wrote:
| AFAIK there are no Matrix clients with voice channels.
| pyr0hu wrote:
| Discord is free, no need for maintenance and much easier to
| onboard non-tech friends IMO.
| kevincox wrote:
| There are also many free Matrix severs. But I agree that
| Discord has much more UX polish right now. (Especially
| around onboarding).
| O_H_E wrote:
| Not @fish45 but as someone in a similar situation, probably
| because "people our age" where already using it for gaming.
| Simple network effects. Nobody got out of their way to
| compare the best alternative from a technical and privacy
| related perspectives.
|
| People just started using what they were used to, and now
| Discord is freaking emourms in that area. High school
| classes, university cohors (ie. CS'24), university program
| (ie. Electrical Engineering), specific sources...etc
| everybody around me is using discord.
| upofadown wrote:
| Wouldn't Mumble be closer to the described use case?
| gsich wrote:
| correct
| echelon wrote:
| My username and favorite aliases were taken.
|
| Discord allows anyone to share the same username. It appends
| a nearly invisible hash to disambiguate, and you can even
| change it.
|
| Discord does usernames right.
| rakoo wrote:
| They were taken on one server. Matrix is a federated
| protocol so any account on any domain works anywhere. If
| @echelon:matrix.org is taken, you can have @e:chelon.org if
| you want.
| feanaro wrote:
| This sounds wrong. Since Matrix is federated, you can still
| be echelon, just not @echelon:theserveryoutried.com.
|
| Furthermore, this is just the MXID, the Matrix ID. This is
| usually de-emphasized in the UI and only used to
| disambiguate and add users (as you say).
|
| What is usually displayed to users are display names and
| these are allowed to have collisions, in which case they
| get disambiguated via MXIDs.
| hpfr wrote:
| Usernames don't even matter that much thanks to nicks
| (display names) which are available in Matrix (and unlike
| Discord, they are available in DM's), and furthermore, you
| can get an account with a smaller provider that federates
| if you really want a username taken on matrix.org.
|
| Other Discord features like servers aren't there yet, but
| "usernames" doesn't seem like a real deficiency.
| toolz wrote:
| hmm, so on public discord servers if someone copies my
| nickname and pretends to be me, someone might not easily
| notice?
|
| Seems like a pretty readily used vulnerability. I remember
| back in high school on AIM someone made a username very
| similar to mine and said some nasty things to a girl I was
| talking to - she told me to stop talking to her and I
| didn't figure out why until years later. I imagine the same
| exploit could be done more easily if you can use the same
| username and discord actively tries to hide the hash.
|
| Maybe I'm just overly sensitive since impersonation has
| hurt me, though.
| kemitche wrote:
| I'd argue the opposite - it's harder to get away with
| impersonation.
|
| In the AIM situation, users go in "knowing" that
| usernames are unique, so if you see a message from user
| abc123, you "know" it's that person. Which means user
| abcl23 ("el" instead of "one") can impersonate the real
| user.
|
| In Discord situations, (1) the user is more likely to
| know that usernames can be reused, since they weren't
| required to make a unique one to start - so they can be
| more cautious of impersonation attempts, and more
| importantly (2) the Discord devs know names can be
| reused/abused, and can build better mitigations if they
| so choose to (like e.g. putting a disclaimer at the top
| of any message from a user you've never contacted before,
| etc.)
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Depends on the setup of the Discord server.
|
| Many servers have different "roles" created, though often
| they're just nothing more than a title and a different
| color for your name when chatting on the server. If you
| don't have the default role on your server, then anybody
| would probably notice the fake person is a fake because
| they'd have the default role color.
|
| Second, servers can require that your account have a
| verified phone number for you to join or chat on it,
| which raises the barrier a bit for creating fake
| accounts.
|
| Finally, even if they join a mutual server and send you a
| private message, when you view the message, you won't see
| the private message history of the conversation with the
| real account, giving away that it's at the very least a
| new account.
|
| Overall, it's harder to impersonate on Discord than it is
| on AIM, but still certainly not impossible.
| rakoo wrote:
| Matrix the protocol is not there yet. Element, its main
| client, lacks too many features to have the same experience:
|
| - No concept of servers (in discord parlance). Its equivalent
| (matrix spaces, in https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-
| doc/blob/matthew/msc177...) is in progress
|
| - No included audio/video calls. You have to link them
| manually and use a third-party stack, such as Jitsi
|
| - Even if you have Jitsi the experience is not the same.
| Discord's experience is like a chat room, except with audio
| and video. In Element it's more like a standard call
| lbotos wrote:
| > - No included audio/video calls. You have to link them
| manually and use a third-party stack, such as Jitsi
|
| To be explicit, no group audio/video. I run my own Matrix
| server for my partner and I and it uses webRTC based audio
| out of the box for 1:1 calls which we use every day, and
| sometimes video. No Jitsi enabled in my config. (I only
| share this so other readers can gauge if Matrix can meet
| their needs.)
| kevincox wrote:
| It is also worth noting that the WebRTC calls are E2E
| encrypted and look fantastic as they are often peer-to-
| peer so you can get an amazing connection if you have the
| bandwidth available.
| pkulak wrote:
| I'm blown away by the audio and video quality of my
| Matrix calls. I always thought it was because, as I run
| my own server, there's no bandwidth limit, but I hadn't
| considered the whole peer-to-peer thing.
| miketery wrote:
| What client do you use on your devices to talk via the
| server?
| lbotos wrote:
| For now element, but I hope to add the functionality to
| Ditto and switch to that.
| Jonovono wrote:
| What do you feel is missing from Discord?
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Day to day the thing I dislike most about discord is that I
| can't have multiple instances of it open, or pop-out a
| channel to its own window. I'm in a bunch of servers but
| there are 3 channels and a DM in particular that I would love
| to just park on the second monitor forever and always have
| visible.
| ffpip wrote:
| You can always open discord in your browser and open each
| channel/dm in a new window. Infinite instances.
| eins1234 wrote:
| Not being able to choose a different avatar per server is a
| complete showstopper for many of my use cases (mixing
| gaming/work/personal personas in the same account):
| https://support.discord.com/hc/en-
| us/community/posts/3600293...
| dharmab wrote:
| Tracking multiple threads of conversation in text. I'm not
| saying it needs Slack, HN or Reddit style threading, but some
| way to separate multiple topics of conversation that form
| within a channel.
| dvh wrote:
| Mobile website. Back in the old day it was possible to join
| without registration. Just visit the project invite link and
| start typing. Then it required registration but still worked
| on mobile. Now it no longer works on mobile, you just get
| "install app or GTFO". I've stopped using discord then.
| snorrah wrote:
| It works fine on mobile.
|
| https://imgur.com/9PiRQTI.jpg
| dvh wrote:
| It does not work on mobile. When you visit invite (as new
| user would), e.g. here https://discord.com/invite/trbteNj
| it will automatically open play store with discord app.
| It cannot be disabled.
|
| Additionally, when you visit discord.com shortly there is
| login button visible but then it disappears and only
| install app button is visible, login is no longer
| possible.
|
| (It is possible that old users have some cookie settings
| that allows them to use mobile website but new users
| can't)
|
| Tested in chrome in Android 10
| brundolf wrote:
| The only thing I would change is small and weird: I wish you
| could make the window smaller on desktop. The min-width is
| almost half the size of my screen; it shouldn't be hard to
| gracefully collapse things further as you resize
| truth_ wrote:
| LaTeX support!
| aqfamnzc wrote:
| MathBot fills that void although in a bit of a hack-y way.
| Native Latex would indeed be nice
| rurp wrote:
| Their treatment of Linux is pretty terrible, where they block
| you from even launching the app after a minor update until
| you go download and install the new .deb file. I've had many
| times where I went to jump onto a quick Discord chat only to
| have to stop and jump through those hoops.
| MawKKe wrote:
| To be fair, the client forces you to upgrade on windows
| too, although automatically. Which in windows-land is
| business as usual...
| 3PS wrote:
| Personally, I wish the desktop client was a bit more
| lightweight. I understand why they went with Electron, and I
| don't think they could have afforded their speed of iterated
| development as a small company otherwise, but I still wish
| their app was a bit lighter on my laptop. I'm especially
| disappointed that cordless [1], a very usable third-party
| terminal-based client for Discord, was banned due to a ToS
| violation.
|
| Secondly, I wish there was better support for E2E encryption,
| even just in direct messages. I wouldn't even mind it as a
| paid feature.
| uncletaco wrote:
| and with this lightweightness the ability to customize the
| client more, maybe even create popouts to monitor multiple
| chats simultaneously or do one server per window.
| MawKKe wrote:
| Similiar issue with the browser client. I observed it
| eating away 40% cpu doing...nothing? I can't do anything
| else with my laptop If I want to be heard or understood by
| others
| O_H_E wrote:
| I [and household] are now in a similar situation.
|
| At first, students got to use what they were already use to,
| but when the pandemic got painful and everybody flooded to
| online, thing went crazy. Discord is freaking enormous in that
| area rn. Servers for High school classes, university cohorts
| (ie. CS'24), university programs (ie. Electrical Engineering),
| There is even a course I am taking at uni where we have an
| _official_ server with the teaching team, profs, auth with uni
| credentials, and a freaking ad-hoc ticketing system.
|
| It is bonkers how much systematization is done through these
| bots.
| hemloc_io wrote:
| Haha love how people have rediscovered the functionality and
| joys of IRC and the like!
| holler wrote:
| Totally... If you enjoy the text/irc aspect, I welcome you
| to check out https://sqwok.im, a new realtime public
| discussion site very much inspired by growing up using aol
| chat/irc/icq/aim and others. I think we live at an amazing
| juncture of technology and ideas, where excellent
| communication software like irc that was always limited by
| it's own requirement of use, can now be made accessible to
| the masses, unlocking and hopefully creating entirely new
| experiences for people to enjoy!
|
| I'll be doing a livestream on AWS Twitch on Thursday
| discussing Sqwok.im if you're interested check it out.
| w0m wrote:
| We used Vent like this for a decade; we just always had a big
| call going at all times with my HS friends post graduation.
| Topgamer7 wrote:
| God there's a name I haven't heard for a decade or so.
| rvz wrote:
| Let's hope that Discord doesn't end up going the way of Slack.
| Since Slack got overconfident over Microsoft Teams and lost and
| got acquired by Salesforce.
| paxys wrote:
| I wish I could "lose" by cashing out with $30 billion.
|
| The truth is there is no room for a standalone service in an
| area as competitive as enterprise communication. Microsoft
| would be able to undercut them in price no matter what.
| Bundling is the only way forward, and hopefully Salesforce can
| put in the resources to keep it competitive.
| sz4kerto wrote:
| For almost 30 billion.
| jskrn wrote:
| Personally, I'm finding the transition from Slack to Teams
| absolutely maddening. Do people actually prefer Teams or is it
| that many large enterprises already had Office 365 licenses?
| nisegami wrote:
| >many large enterprises already had Office 365 licenses
|
| Hit the nail on the head.
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| The voice call part of teams works better in my experience
| and has a higher user limit.
| Epenthesis wrote:
| As someone who's never used Discord, what's it do better than
| Slack? Superficially other than aesthetics/integrations, they
| seem basically identical
| paxys wrote:
| Slack has a million enterprise focused features. If your
| company's Discord server has to go through eDiscovery for a
| lawsuit, for example, you are going to have a bad time.
| JakeTheAndroid wrote:
| Discord is more like a ventrilo replacement for gamers. It
| was primarily voice chat in its early days. They've done a
| lot of work to make the chatroom space on par with any other
| chat application you'd use otherwise. They also now allow for
| direct screenshare and game streaming.
|
| I wouldn't ever have considered Discord for Enterprise use at
| a serious company, but I guess it could do everything Slack
| can. For personal use it's more versatile for group stuff
| like gaming or group presentations (my friends have used it
| for music/video production meetings).
| joaonmatos wrote:
| Discord is still way worse in text chat.
|
| I (as a uni. student, so take it with a grain of salt) am
| involved in managing several large projects - overseeing 4
| teams of around 10 people each. We decided to use Discord
| as the university did not want to pay Slack workspace
| licenses and it has been a frustrating experience to say
| the least.
|
| Comparing to several experiences I have had with similar-
| sized teams and even a larger, albeit still small-ish,
| organization, there are many complaints to be had:
|
| - No threads. This one is Discord's Achille's heel when
| compared to Slack. If you have even two or three
| simultaneous conversations around the same topic, you
| either a) are unable to understand what's going on past a
| certain point or b) need to take the conversation somewhere
| private, essentially losing one of the main components of
| the experience.
|
| - No archiving channels. Seriously. I have categories in my
| Discord servers to archive stuff, and it just means that
| there is a dump of channels clobbering the interface for
| day-to-day operation. The Slack model where they are tucked
| away in a closet is much better.
|
| - Integrations. Discord bots are cool for music but
| everything productive, from /gcal to
| Doodle/GitHub/Trello/Google Drive integration is better on
| Slack.
|
| One thing I think is overrated is the search. Discord's
| sucks, and while Slack search works reasonably well, I do
| find it hard to remember relevant information to put in the
| search prompt. Essentially I think that you still need an
| external place to store persistent documentation and more
| durable information, be it VCS issues, wikis (Notion has
| been a product I started using recently and seems pretty
| cool), but even there threads help write the docs.
|
| Where Slack falters is not-text. As ludicrous as this
| sounds, I have seen cases of teams using Slack for written
| communication and falling into Discord for voice channels
| and transient chat. I think this can be made better with
| good integration with some communication suite: Zoom?
| Google Meet? Anyhow, this is where MS Teams comes and eats
| their lunch. Worse at everything than everyone else, but at
| least it does it all.
| frozenlettuce wrote:
| their workspace separation and switching works better. you
| can also discover workspaces, so there's a bigger sense of
| community than small islands
| spullara wrote:
| Always on audio / video rooms. Like slack + clubhouse + zoom.
| munk-a wrote:
| I don't think they got overconfident at all - I think that
| slack was relatively well built but lacking too much of a value
| proposition to differentiate themselves. Then they got acquired
| before anyone realized how much of their usage was marketing
| driven and how little was driven by the quality of their
| application.
|
| I'm not saying it's bad by any means - in fact the search
| functionality is pretty sweet... but there is very little there
| that couldn't be out competed.
| mdoms wrote:
| > I don't think they got overconfident at all
|
| https://slack.com/intl/en-nz/blog/news/dear-microsoft
| richie5um wrote:
| Agree. They came out of the gates with a really well put
| together chat app, that made a massive impact. Then,
| basically, didn't advance it beyond that. It is still great
| for chat, but Teams is sooo much more useful for the virtual
| office, and discord waaay better for social. Slack is in an
| ever decreasing middle zone.
| AznHisoka wrote:
| And I think they're starting to regret that acquisition, as
| their last Q started to show signs of a turnaround. If they had
| waited and didn't cave in to Wall St pressure, I bet they
| would've figured things out eventually.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| Discord works well on Linux, Skype doesn't. None of the new
| Minecraft games work on Linux.
|
| This is the best thing I have heard today.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/lXyuZ
| btown wrote:
| Discord is starting to be a really interesting merger of non-work
| and work spaces, and their continued independence will allow them
| to lean into that. There are very few other platforms that
| encourage you to use a single account to join servers for work
| and gaming and anime and music? And users trust that Discord will
| allow them to keep their membership in spaces a secret unless
| someone is already a member of both spaces. That's a feat that's
| almost impossible to fathom. The interest graph alone is
| staggeringly valuable, and it's no doubt monetizable in subtle
| and trust-maintaining ways.
|
| And... some of it may be toxic to a company like Microsoft. The
| moment Discord needs to start censoring across platforms (not
| just blocking iOS access to certain content as they've needed to
| do to play in Apple's garden) is the moment it starts to feel
| unsafe for content creation. I'm not surprised they walked away.
|
| I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that the implementation of
| this is imperfect, and possibly endangering people in real life.
| If anyone from Discord is reading this:
|
| - not letting people opt-in to be prompted to set a username
| _before_ entering a server and having a bot announce our
| membership, and
|
| - not letting people set unique profile pictures for each server
|
| creates situations where one could either leak a real-world
| identity to a server on which they desire anonymity, or leak a
| pseudonymous online identity to coworkers.
|
| And this gets REALLY bad for people using Discord to explore
| their gender identity, where this could cause a profile picture
| or name that indicates identity to leak between spaces when
| that's not desired. I've met people who need to be incredibly
| careful to create multiple Discord accounts to avoid being outed,
| and Discord makes it incredibly difficult if not impossible to do
| this, with its deep browser integrations that forward to the
| native app. It is no joke that Discord's UX choices could hurt
| people, here.
|
| But it speaks to the strength of the platform that Discord is
| still an incredibly vibrant place for communities like gender-
| questioning communities that rely on pseudonymous identities.
| Because it puts natural conversations at people's fingertips. It
| was Clubhouse before Clubhouse, just divided into communities of
| like-minded people. In certain ways it's the superposition of
| Clubhouse and Slack. And the UX problems are solvable problems. I
| think Discord is really going places.
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