[HN Gopher] I built something that changed my friend group's soc...
___________________________________________________________________
I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric
Author : dandano
Score : 484 points
Date : 2025-06-28 11:49 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.danpetrolito.xyz)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.danpetrolito.xyz)
| dangus wrote:
| Do you have a link to the bot?
| dandano wrote:
| I don't sorry - I could clean up the repo and make it public.
| But if you follow the discord py tutorials it's very simple to
| implement.
| xyst wrote:
| It's literally in the post, m8.
|
| Perhaps read it, use one of the many discord wrapper apis, and
| replicate it. He just hooks into one of the many events discord
| emits and bot sends a message.
|
| Even one of the LLMs can very easily vibe code this...
| taraindara wrote:
| This was a fun read. Being experienced in various methods of self
| hosting, it was cool to learn of coolify. Seeing more people get
| into self hosting always makes me happy.
| udev4096 wrote:
| What? This has nothing to do with it. If author was interested
| in self-hosting, he would have used mumble or something instead
| of signal/discord
| dnrvs wrote:
| i built the same thing (though only the notifier, not all the
| stat tracking) for my friend group back in 2017 when PUBG came
| out and we were trying to play together as often as we could. can
| confirm it worked great.
|
| i eventually moved the bot to glitch.com (rip) where we could
| collaborate on it and it evolved into a monster of in jokes and
| utilities. it's going offline this week unless i can find the
| time to migrate it off glitch
| mordae wrote:
| Watch Years and Years (2019).
| Aachen wrote:
| s/something/a Discord bot/ to unclickbait the title..
| tetris11 wrote:
| genuinely unbelievable that the story is so highly voted with
| such a vague title
| timerol wrote:
| The clickbait makes you click, and the story is about a cool
| hack, so you upvote. I don't see how this is unbelievable
| tetris11 wrote:
| hn readers aren't usually so easily baited
| udev4096 wrote:
| normies are online! let them fade, along with the post
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Yes, they absolutely are. HN is not as niche as it used
| to be, and clickbait works on everyone.
| codingdave wrote:
| I completely disagree. The point is the impact it has on lives,
| not the tools used to build it. I would enjoy it if more people
| focused their writing on the impact their work has on people,
| and less on the tools and processes used. Or at the very least,
| clearly delineate the build from the impact.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| I see where you're coming from, but I like the way the story
| is formatted.
|
| There's plenty to doom and gloom about with the state of tech
| right now, but this is a good reminder that sometimes even
| Big Internet tools, with a little ingenuity, can sometimes be
| repurposed to serve the users and not some corporation's
| bottom line.
|
| It's kind of a throwback to the olden days where you might
| stand up an IRC server or something similar just for your
| friend group. I like seeing people returning to the small
| internet where it serves as a substrate for real people doing
| real things.
| codingdave wrote:
| It sounds like we agree. I wasn't dissing the article - I
| was saying that I like this article's writing and want to
| see more of it, and that I appreciated the title _not_
| being about the tech stack.
| aCodeCrafter wrote:
| This is really interesting as a way to keep people connected on a
| regular basis. I wonder if something similar could be done for
| groups who aren't necessarily into gaming: like say a "virtual
| fireplace" where folks could just pop into a call and talk
| mebizzle wrote:
| Discord is already like that for a lot of niche communities and
| fandoms that aren't necessarily gaming; it just all evolved on
| a gaming-focused platform.
| donatj wrote:
| Mildly reminds me how being online on AIM or ICQ was an actual
| invitation to chat. I had so many interesting conversations with
| people I barely knew.
|
| There's no source of that signal that someone is open to chitchat
| these days, and it's in my opinion kind of killed what was once
| great about online communication.
| ljlolel wrote:
| You can on Hangout.fm since it's about live music
| kqr wrote:
| Huh, coming from an IRC and email background I have the
| opposite reaction. Rather than having to wait until someone is
| online it is much nicer to just type to them and they'll
| respond once they can. Everyone is open all the time!
| al_borland wrote:
| Some people used AIM like this as well, at least I did. I
| left my computer on all the time, so I was always online.
|
| I was in college during the peak of AIM and it was useful to
| know who was at their computer or not, which I believe was
| still viable. Around meal times, we could quickly scan for
| who was around to see if they wanted to head down to the
| cafeteria. If they weren't around, there was no point it
| asking. For time sensitive messages, online status matters.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| AIM also had useful states. If you were away for a decent
| chunk of time (And you could configure what that amount of
| time was!) it would mark you as idle, and you could set
| custom away messages (That were actually visible) so folks
| could know why you were away, or more realistically, what
| song was on your mind.
|
| Nowadays the status is completely meaningless. It's a small
| dot that doesn't accurately reflect your status, and if you
| choose to set a message, most of the apps hide it anyway.
| dkersten wrote:
| I remember the early days of Skype and Google talk, calling
| random strangers and... actually having a conversation with
| them. I remember they were always confused and surprised to get
| a random call from a stranger, but were almost always happy to
| chat anyway!
| donatj wrote:
| I've used the username "donatj" basically everywhere since
| the late 1990s with just a couple exceptions.
|
| Dude beat me to it on Skype, I called him just out of the
| blue and had a nice conversation with him, lived in Denmark
| as I recall. Really friendly guy. I can't imagine doing that
| now though, let alone the person on the other end actually
| picking up.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Sounds exactly like ham radio operators.
| jedimastert wrote:
| Wait hold on, I think you're genuinely onto something here.
| bartread wrote:
| Yeah, and the channels that are available... well, here's an
| example. I'm a member of a couple of professional WhatsApp
| groups... both of which are so notification heavy that I've
| permanently muted them, and therefore never visit and as a
| result derive no benefit from. And, at least for me, there's
| something about WhatsApp that makes it unamenable to the kind
| of dip in and out interaction you used to get with IM services.
| I want to be there when I'm there and not disturbed when I'm
| not.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| That's the problem with phone apps. They either spam you with
| notifications or you forget to open them. Desktop IRC clients
| were more available for passive checking whenever you glanced
| at the window, but out of the way otherwise.
| nottorp wrote:
| You can treat whatsapp as an irc client, it's all in your
| head :)
|
| I have multiple friend groups on whatsapp - i just check
| them once in a while to see if anything interesting was
| posted. All the chat apps I'm on are muted and the mute is
| muted again to make sure.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yes, If you purposely turn off all notifications on your
| phone, and/or live on DND mode 24/7, you quickly learn to
| adapt to this world where using the internet is a
| deliberate action. Sanity sets in: you are deciding when
| to use your phone or computer, not an algorithm, or other
| people. You're back in the driver's seat, like it's 2002
| again! It's very freeing.
| nottorp wrote:
| In 2002 i was still turning icq notifications off i think
| :)
| shark1 wrote:
| I have a theory: what was scarce once, is not anymore.
|
| Social networks make people tired/satisfied/overwhelmed of
| "interacting online", and in the worst possible way: passively,
| not producing anything and just consuming it.
|
| It sucks.
| 1980phipsi wrote:
| Also that a bunch of the time you're contacted by a random
| online it eventually leads to them trying to get your credit
| card info.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Lol, I got contacted by a stranger and even after like a
| year of occasional contact I was waiting for the scam to
| trigger :D
| ryandrake wrote:
| True in real life, too. Whenever someone random comes up to
| me and tries to engage in a conversation, my guard goes up
| because 9 times out of 10, they are trying to sell me
| something or scam me. I can't imagine what it's like to be
| a woman, where your "safety" alarms are also sounding.
|
| Spontaneous, innocent chit chat is dead, both online and
| offline because everyone's hustling now.
| albumen wrote:
| Counter example: yesterday I took the train and ferry
| from london to dublin. Trains are a great way to meet new
| people, especially if you're sitting facing each other.
| Person opposite me was interested in the maths book my
| son was reading. Turns out he's an interrailing applied
| maths student from Scandinavia. We had a great chat for
| hours and exchanged numbers. My faith in humanity is not
| dead yet.
| conductr wrote:
| The "satisfied" part is the most harmful imo. This is what
| causes lack of actual social interaction and real
| friendships. Loneliness is on the rise as friendships are on
| a decline, this is a byproduct of social media gratification
|
| The other more obviously negative components
| tired/overwhelmed are more of a hangover effect people have
| after over indulgence. But they're addicted so ultimately
| always go back for more (most people).
|
| It's weird for me to witness as I never indulged in social
| media and could always see it for what it is. I watched my
| wife use and just classified it as a huge waste of time (and
| had some not so fun, "get off your phone" conversations along
| the way). Some people are finally coming around to it but a
| lot of damage has been done and a lot of social fabric has
| eroded.
| nvesp wrote:
| I'm not sure the tired/overwhelmed hangover effect is
| necessarily from social media. I like to think most of my
| time spent on the internet is productive,reading
| documentation and cs articles/papers for the most part and
| i still get that hangover feeling.
| conductr wrote:
| That's mental fatigue from learning and being engaged on
| a topic for a duration. Maybe some additional from screen
| time/blue light fatigue. But it used to happen after
| studying for hours pre-internet.
|
| Just my hunch, but post student life, I think many people
| are not actually using the internet regularly the way you
| describe. Only a small percentage of people are doing
| productive tasks, it's mostly leisurely consumption
| Drew_ wrote:
| There's a noticeable difference to me between exercising
| my thinking skills and feeling mentally exhausted versus
| consuming lots of media and feeling "hungover".
|
| I get that exhausted feeling after any hard day at work.
| On the other hand, scrolling through reels for about 30
| minutes gives me a headache. If I spend over an hour on
| YouTube, I also get a similar feeling, but only if that
| time was spent watching many different videos. If I
| watched one 2 hour video, I feel fine.
| j45 wrote:
| Taking more time away from it and coming back to it gives
| perspective on what to interact with, and what not to
| interact with.
|
| Seeking novelty and fulfillment from scrolling vertically are
| all individually and collectively patterns, including
| notifications.
|
| Creating is different than consuming when it comes to
| screens. Separating consuming onto a separate consuming
| device physically helps.
| burningChrome wrote:
| > It sucks.
|
| It sucks because the social aspect of social media has been
| bent and twisted into squeezing every bit of money out of it.
| In some regards, people are being forced to consume.
| Companies do anything they can to manipulate users into
| continual consumption because it generates money for them.
|
| Even worse now? Companies are rewarding people when users
| interact with their content. Now people are enticed to create
| content that purposely angers people so they comment on their
| content.
|
| I've deleted all of my accounts now - it was just too
| fatiguing to try and weed your way through the constant
| pushing of content to get you to watch or interact with
| instead of what YOU want to see or watch. YouTube is
| notorious for that. How many times have you gone to the site
| and instead of searching for something you went there for,
| you get completely sidelined into something because they
| present you with a ton of videos that fit what you're
| interested in?
|
| In the immortal words of Joshua: "A strange game. The only
| winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?"
| fragmede wrote:
| > I've deleted all of my accounts now
|
| except for this one
| munificent wrote:
| It's the social equivalent of eating potato chips until
| you're stuffed but never actually feeling nourished.
| 101008 wrote:
| This is something I've always wanted to write about, and I
| imagine that someday I'll end up with a long article, but
| basically, it's the idea that the internet used to be offline
| by default, and now it's online by default.
|
| People used to be offline by default. You had to "connect to
| the internet." Open MSN, go into forums and check the latest
| unread messages, come back from a concert and manually upload
| the photos to your Fotolog or wherever. Now it's the opposite.
| We are online by default. The expectation is that we're always
| connected and respond quickly. Going to a sports event or a
| concert? You have to post a story to Instagram from that very
| place, not when you get home. Someone sends you an email or a
| WhatsApp message? You're expected to reply as soon as possible.
|
| That's what I miss most about the internet--the idea and the
| feeling that I would go online when I wanted to, not that I
| lived inside the internet 24/7.
| nemomarx wrote:
| The Internet used to be semi literally a place you went - a
| desktop in the corner of some room, not central on a desk,
| not in your pocket. And with a ritual to access it on top of
| that and the dial up sounds and all.
|
| It's more present but also more invisible now, yeah.
| RugnirViking wrote:
| honestly ive been thinking about this stuff too. a
| hypothetical forum you could only log on to read if you
| idled on a certain page for 15 mins or something would
| probably have a lot higher standard of discussion and be a
| lot better for peoples lives, for example.
|
| The most minute of barriers requiring you to deliberately
| and consciously join and leave...
| reg_dunlop wrote:
| Reminds me of https://diewithme.online/ which I just
| learned about.
|
| Not exactly the same as your idea, but definitely in the
| same vein of "only available under a certain condition"
| xp84 wrote:
| This is most definitely an invitation to abuse your
| phone's battery, but at the same time I absolutely love
| this idea. It's hilarious to imagine someone eagerly
| awaiting the chance to log onto the site as the battery
| dips from 8, to 7, to 6. "Just a couple more minutes..."
| 98codes wrote:
| It's funny -- before social media, I was more likely able
| to go find someone to chat with on IRC, a Usenet group, or
| some purpose-built forum. I knew where my friends were
| (ICQ, then AIM, then Skype, then GChat), and it worked.
|
| Now, it's all fragmented into 1000 Discord servers, and who
| has the time to dig through it all?
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| See, I'm the opposite. I've got a Discord server, which
| are very much "where my friends are": If I make an
| acquaintance (or any of my friends do), they get added to
| the server. Some stick around, and get woven into the
| social fiber. Some never come back, and eventually get
| removed from the server during our annual purge. There's
| maybe 10-20 active people (i.e., people we see at least a
| couple times a month), a handful of regulars that are
| that multiple times a week, and then maybe twice all that
| again of people we hear from once in a blue moon. If I
| want to chat, I'll hop in voice. If I want to share
| something I found, I'll stick it in a text channel.
|
| There's still plenty of communities on the internet. It's
| just that the communities worth belonging to are not wide
| open to the public. Community building does not scale.
| juliansimioni wrote:
| It's wild, and absolutely worth writing about, that at some
| point in recent years, the concept of "AFK" basically ceased
| to exist.
|
| Yes, we aren't technically near a keyboard most of the time
| today, but we are never AFK in a conceptual sense. Even when
| sleeping.
| Deebster wrote:
| I play badminton, which has games that are about ten
| minutes long. I've noticed an uptick in the number of times
| I've had to stop and wait for someone I'm playing with to
| read a message on their smartwatch. I'm terminally online,
| but I can disconnect long enough for a game or a film - I
| seem to be increasingly in the minority.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Honestly I don't hang out with people like that. If you
| can't put down your Distractify 9000 to play a game with
| me, then clearly I am not very interesting to you and
| it's better for both of us to do more engaging activities
| with more engaging people.
|
| People bristle at this sometimes- they'll ask why we
| don't hang out as much and I'll explain- and like, I get
| it, nobody likes feeling called out or criticized, and I
| don't even mean it as criticism, not really. Your
| behavior in reaching for your phone tells me that you
| have more important things to do, and I don't want to
| obstruct you from them. If those things aren't actually
| more important, well, then your priorities are clearly
| out of wack and you should sort that out for yourself.
|
| Like just... stop responding to stimuli. Put things in
| the order in which they are meaningful to you, and then
| keep that. You're a conscious being, act like one.
| joules77 wrote:
| Back then Broadcast/Multicast (1 to all/1 to many) was
| expensive. It quite often resulted in routers and switches
| catching fire. The chips were too slow.
|
| A side effect was we didn't have to deal with what Claude
| Shannon told us happens if everyone is broadcasting - noise
| increases - no one is really heard - people speak louder -
| people repeat messages - everyone is getting their energy
| drained.
|
| Today Broadcast is free. And thats what we see happening.
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| We used to relay messages in a mailbox once per day and got
| all new ones (called "Maustausch"
| https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MausNet). It was pretty
| cheap because all group and personal messages came in one
| compressed batch and you had stuff to read and respond for
| a day. The BBSes exchanged all messages in a tree call
| hierarchy, you could reach everybody within that one day
| hop.
| andai wrote:
| No matter where you are, everyone is always connected...
| gausswho wrote:
| Like many who lived through this inversion I can absolutely
| relate.
|
| I've culled my notifications substantially and my life is
| better for it. But I miss that feeling of firing up AIM and
| seeking out someone to chat with. Or someone spotting my
| arrival and immediately saying hi.
|
| I realized yesterday that I don't use phones like others do.
| I want to be in airplane mode whenever my phone is locked.
| Not Do Not Disturb mode. I want my modem off. I don't want
| any phone calls, ever. I'll get to your messages when my flow
| state has subsided.
|
| But when I unlock the phone, I want the modem to
| automatically come back on. I am subliminally tapping into
| the heyday of AIM. I'm expressing "i'm free. what's up?!".
|
| Problem is, it's not an occasion to anyone else out there.
| Most people always want to be available and I have a hard
| time understanding why.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Definitely of a similar mindset... my text notification
| chime is about as subdued as I can make it... I mean I
| don't want to miss a text entirely, but would really rather
| push it all off. I disabled email notifications and other
| app notifications entirely. I wouldn't disable my actual
| phone calls, though I don't like that nearly half the calls
| I get are either spam, or bots notifying my of dr appts.
|
| It's all gotten so dysfunctional as a whole. My SO gets on
| Tiktok live chats (whatever they're called) and I'll get
| into an X space now and then. Once in a great while, I'll
| pull up IRC. I really do miss the days of AIM an Yahoo
| Messenger chat groups though. It was fun. I also miss the
| locality of BBSing back when. With the internet, we tend to
| segregate based on interest, and you lose the local aspects
| and actual interaction, get togethers, etc.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > I realized yesterday that I don't use phones like others
| do. I want to be in airplane mode whenever my phone is
| locked. Not Do Not Disturb mode. I want my modem off. I
| don't want any phone calls, ever. I'll get to your messages
| when my flow state has subsided.
|
| You're not alone. Here's how I solved it: Last year I
| really wanted a new smartphone just for the better camera.
| My existing phone from 2018 was still working fine, but the
| camera sucked.
|
| So I bought a used, but only few months old, new
| smartphone.
|
| And I never got it hooked up to the cell network (i.e. no
| SIM card). I now typically carry two phones on me. The old
| one is for texts/phones. The new one is for everything
| else. A clean separation. At times when I do groceries or
| something, I leave the SIM phone in the car so no one can
| contact me.
|
| When the old phone finally dies, I'll just find the
| cheapest smartphone to replace it and maintain the
| separation.
|
| For app notifications, I use the Buzzkill app to keep them
| down. For a long time I had it set up such that I would not
| get any notification for texts - other than a vibration. No
| sound. No flashing LED. _And no notification in the task
| bar_. If I wanted to know if I 'd received a text, I'd have
| to open the app. I strongly encourage this set up.
|
| Before I got a smartphone, I would turn my cell phone on
| only for emergencies and the occasional coordination
| (picking someone up - call him and let him know I'm
| downstairs). I told people they wouldn't be able to reach
| me on my cell phone, and to call my home phone (landline,
| and then VoIP) if they needed me.
|
| Then I finally got a smartphone. I still have that home
| phone. But boy, I often tell people that my life is
| definitely worse because of that smartphone. I like the
| portable computing device, camera and GPS. Just not the
| phone part!
| gausswho wrote:
| I have been considering this. I even came up with a name:
| Good Phone, Bad Phone. Your experience is instructive,
| thank you. Other than the additional cost, I think it has
| lots of upside.
|
| I daily drive a Pixel on GrapheneOS and most of what I
| install is from F-Droid repos. I'm wondering if I should
| just de-SIM that one to make it 'Good Phone' and my 'Bad
| Phone' should just be a Light Phone or maybe something
| more featureful.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I should also add: I don't install apps like
| Signal/Whatsapp on the SIMless phone. No one should be
| able to call me on it. Period.
|
| I do have a mail app on it, and it checks mail only when
| I tell it to (i.e. not running in the background giving
| me email notifications).
|
| At home, I keep the phone with the SIM in one room. I can
| use the SIMless phone around the house and not worry
| about pings.
| pests wrote:
| > firing up AIM and seeking out someone to chat with. Or
| someone spotting my arrival and immediately saying hi
|
| The best was when that hi came from the person you had
| steady started typing to
| gausswho wrote:
| yes! before typing indicators.
| Zak wrote:
| Phone makers keep touting AI features in their phones, but
| I haven't seen anyone applying it to notifications.
|
| Here's my holy grail: the phone should, using on-device
| processing determine whether I want to be disturbed with a
| given notification now, when I'm not busy, at a specified
| time of day, or never.
| bdangubic wrote:
| you gonna sacrifice a shitton of privacy for a very small
| convenience here...
| citizenpaul wrote:
| Privacy is long dead and you are not getting it back. If
| someone wants to buy comprehensive data about your
| personal life there is literally nothing you can do about
| it. The data broker economy is absolutely booming and no
| one is even making a token effort to curtail it. The
| government that is supposed to stop it wants it for
| themselves so they won't ever do anything.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| Here reveals the crux of the engagement economy. You want
| to use your phone less and more meaningfully. EVERY
| SINGLE COMPANY wants the exact opposite for their bottom
| line.
| j45 wrote:
| Usable mobile data that was fast enough was one of the
| tipping points, meeting with the first smartphone that was
| for the many, the iPhone around the same time.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > You're expected to reply as soon as possible.
|
| I am happy to disappoint these expectations. I feel no
| pressure from it whatsoever. Of course, I'm of the age of
| default offline, so that has a lot to do with it. Remember
| coming home to a "machine" to check messages? That was
| glorious even if it too had a glowing red dot that wanted
| your attention.
|
| The always on mentality is not worth it and quite tiresome,
| figuratively and literally. I know it's different for women,
| but I've met a few that are _really_ into the always on
| concept where they never leave the house without full war
| paint because "you never know who you might meet". I'm
| exhausted just thinking about it.
| liotier wrote:
| > The expectation is that we're always connected and respond
| quickly
|
| As someone who twenty years ago published his XMPP presence
| to his web page (http://serendipity.ruwenzori.net/index.php/2
| 006/02/27/jabber...) among other oversharing excesses, I have
| now swung opposite: online presence indicator is the first
| functionality I disable when I join any sort of forum and my
| tablet is almost always silent... Asynchronous interrupts
| least and unbroken concentration is most valuable, so
| asynchronous mostly - with exceptions for eligible
| professional contacts and sentimentally close people.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| > Now it's the opposite. We are online by default. The
| expectation is that we're always connected and respond
| quickly.
|
| I've been reading this on HN for years but I've always been
| puzzled by it because it's both so different from my personal
| experiences and seems so divergent from the types who hang
| out on HN.
|
| From around my mid-20s the expectation to be always on in any
| of my friend groups just evaporated. Until we hit our 30s
| there was still a general expectation to read socials after
| work hours but even then as we got older many of us were too
| drained after work to do much. Then once we hit our 30s the
| expectation was that our partners, homes, and often kids took
| precedence. None of my friends are posting Stories on
| Instagram with their newborns.
|
| Now some of my friends do still love being always on their
| socials but a lot of these friends of mine when not on
| socials are constantly hanging out at social events or on
| calls with each other. They'd probably be the neighborhood
| gossips in an era before telephony.
|
| So I'm curious: is this a real problem or is this a bit of a
| strawman? What sort of social pressure do you actually
| receive to be always on your socials? Is this related to
| going on dates?
| dymk wrote:
| Furries are keeping this dream alive on Telegram
| mock-possum wrote:
| There are a billion communities using discord and telegram to
| do basically what you're describing - topic rooms, hangout
| rooms, you can change your online status to signal your
| willingness to ge sociable.
| joseda-hg wrote:
| My group of friends gets something really close to OP, because
| of our music bot (Which only pings everyone on specific events,
| like the music queue running out, uncommon enough that it
| doesn't get annoying, and never more than once a session)
| deltaburnt wrote:
| Our friend group's social contract is to sit in a discord
| channel (even if empty) if you're open to chatting.
| Unfortunately we have no real equivalent for text.
| cronelius wrote:
| might have to put a green dot on a hat or tshirt and try this
| irl
| cgannett wrote:
| well part of it was there wasnt ^{10}10 =
| 10^{10^{10^{10^{10^{10^{10^{10^{10^{10}}}}}}}}} more
| interesting things than chatting with your friends to do online
| godot wrote:
| Would anyone still use a desktop-only (no mobile) messenger
| where you have to run/turn on intentionally (not always-on like
| most mobile-first messengers nowadays), lists online/offline
| friends the way AIM/ICQ did, and you can only send messages
| with online friends?
|
| I get that most leisure computing has moved off of desktop to
| mobile in modern days, but there's definitely enough of us
| nerds who're on a computer a lot (even if just for work, if
| nothing else). It can't be any less than in the late 1990s when
| ICQ was popular.
| jrmg wrote:
| I think it probably is less. I'd hang out on my laptop in the
| evenings and mornings (like, while watching TV or reading
| news when eating breakfast) in a way I don't now. I use my
| iPad or phone now.
|
| I do wonder, though, if there's a gap for a messenger app
| that runs only while in the foreground in your phone [edit:
| or tablet or computer!] - or maybe until you next lock the
| screen, so you can 'be online' only while reading, playing a
| game, or doomscrolling.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| This might interest you, it was posted on HN early last year:
|
| _Show HN: Coffeehouse, one-on-one voicechat with random HN
| users_
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39067496
|
| (I have no association with the post, the people, or the
| project.)
| mkl wrote:
| Clickable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39067496
| caned wrote:
| I might relate to this, but I also spent more time talking to
| friends on the phone 20 years ago. The perception of this
| greatness can't be disentangled from the experience of youth.
| vjk800 wrote:
| Now that I think about it, that's true. The same of IRC and MSN
| Messenger. Since being online all the time was not the default
| state of things, people only turned those applications (or even
| their computers) on when they actually wanted to chat to other
| people. When you saw your friend online on one of those, you
| immediately wrote _something_ to them, even if you didn 't
| really have anything to say, because what was the point of
| having the application on otherwise?
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I'm open for chitchat and you opened it 9 hours ago
| midtake wrote:
| Disagree. There are people open to chitchat right now. They are
| just young. We just grew old, most of us are having families,
| and it would be weird to idly chitchat instead of playing your
| family role.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| s/life savior/life saver/
| pyfan878 wrote:
| hogged to death :/
| thedanbob wrote:
| > I also had this idea to turn this into an IoT device that has 5
| RGB lights and sits on your desk. It would light up when each
| friend you have delegated joins your Discord voice channel and
| you could customize the colour for each friend. If I get some
| traction I might turn it into a real product, so email me at my
| email address in my about page if that seems something you'd
| like.
|
| Hah, I'm also building something like this for notification
| purposes. My wife's tablet sometimes doesn't show notifications
| and she's often not near her phone, so I ordered some ESP32's and
| LED boards[0]. Going to scatter them around the house and link
| them to a switch in Home Assistant so I can light them up if I
| need to get a hold of her. I'm planning a back-and-forth scan
| effect to make sure they're eye-catching, already named them
| Cylons.
|
| [0] https://ae-pic-a1.aliexpress-
| media.com/kf/S9b244caf41934a5eb...
| f3b5 wrote:
| While this is a pretty cool hardware project, I would be quite
| annoyed to be your partner. No offense, but it almost reads as
| satire that you want to flash LEDs in every corner of the house
| if your wife doesn't look at her phone notifications quickly
| enough.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| No offense, but your privilege is offensively visible.
|
| Deaf people need this.
| stndef wrote:
| Yup! I have significant hearing loss to the point that I'm
| useless without hearing aids.
|
| I'm going to take this idea for my partner to use to get my
| attention if needed. Having it tie into Home Assistant is a
| win for me as well.
| cogogo wrote:
| I don't have hearing loss but the best way I've found to
| not miss important notifications is a smart watch. Game
| changing to ensure my wife and I don't miss each other's
| messages around school pickup or anything else important.
| With an apple watch you can make the vibration pretty
| unmissable. We both have almost all other notifications
| silenced so it's not overly noisy either. I never use
| sound for any kind of notification anymore - even when
| expecting important calls.
| bombcar wrote:
| Why back in MY day we just had 5-7 kids stationed throughout
| the house. A simple "Joey, go tell Mom" was all you needed!
|
| /s
| c22 wrote:
| I remember the year my dad installed an intercom system in
| the house and then disabled it within a month or two due to
| its use by children.
| sgarland wrote:
| They said a status board on top of their monitor, not every
| corner of their house. This seems like a very unobtrusive
| signal to me. Plus, some people like to hide or obscure their
| phone from their field of view during work, to minimize
| distractions. Honestly, the only person I immediately check
| my phone for is my wife. If I could have a priority indicator
| along with that, I'd love it. There are some things I need to
| know immediately (a kid is sick and one of us needs to pick
| them up, etc.) regardless of what I'm doing, and there are
| others where it can wait until I'm done with a meeting.
| thedanbob wrote:
| I thought it went without saying that she's on board with it,
| and that "need to get a hold of her" meant e.g. "I'm trying
| to call her but she's out in the shop". 99% of our
| communication during the day is asynchronous.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| My partner is disabled, and my home office is far enough from
| the bedroom/her work desk that I sometimes can't hear her when
| she could use, wants, or needs help. These very different
| priorities make messaging me difficult for her sometimes, not
| to mention that I can't know what the urgency is if she
| messages me over SMS/Signal/etc.
|
| As a result, we were looking into a very similar system where
| we each have an LED signboard, speaker, and priority lights on
| the top of a small device that lives on top of our monitors
| along with an app where she can select "not urgent, but you
| should know", "when you have a moment", "as soon as you can",
| and "urgent, right now" in an app, with an optional message,
| and the device makes a tone and lights the lights associated
| with the most recent, highest priority message as well as
| reminding every five minutes.
|
| I'm playing with an ESP32 right now to implement, but it's nice
| to see that the entire concept isn't entirely unprecidented.
| sgarland wrote:
| That's a great idea! I remember on an Android phone - maybe
| Galaxy Nexus, or the original Pixel - you could blink an LED
| with different colors for different app notifications. I had
| blue, yellow, red, and green for various apps, and so without
| ever having the screen turn on or the device make sounds, I
| could tell if I should bother to check.
|
| To me, not having any sensory disabilities, that's a lower
| cognitive load than banners or other text/icon-based
| notifications.
| LtWorf wrote:
| I had a samsung with this over 10 years ago.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| The first Android phone I owned also had this feature, and
| it was super helpful.
|
| It's a shame that our phones are becoming more and more
| voracious surveillance devices without the common courtesy
| of doing things that are helpful for the user.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| The Nexus One [1] from 2010 had a little trackball that
| could light up for notifications.
|
| While the trackball was understandably nixed in later
| models (though it was still useful for fine control!), its
| notification feature is dearly missed.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_One
| Pilottwave wrote:
| It is so useful, for me a must have on every phone. on
| Android the app aodNotify is what I've been using to
| recreate it.
| latexr wrote:
| If you have Apple devices and share your locations in Find
| My, she could use the Find My app to make your devices beep
| loudly and optionally show a message. Great for urgency,
| since the beep is really loud and doesn't stop until you tell
| it to.
|
| Your current setup is, of course, much more interesting.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Or just get a $5 radio doorbell. You know, when it's 'urgent,
| right now' you don't want to learn what you are too late
| because for whatever reason internet/wireless/cellular wasn't
| working.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| This ^ anything else is just wanting to play with tech
| instead of solving the problem immediately. Which is fine,
| sure, but that radio doorbell (or better, 3 different ones
| for different priority levels, since it seems important)
| will fix the issue right now.
| heeton wrote:
| I've built a few things like this using Nerves / Elixir on a
| pi. It's got a really nice dev experience through to useful
| deployment and over-the-air updates.
|
| I highly recommend it to anyone building little functional
| prototypes of this sort.
| bell-cot wrote:
| I've not looked at this space - but with flexible control
| software, such devices could serve a very wide variety of use
| cases. And perhaps multiple uses cases simultaneously, far less
| intrusively than dealing with a variety of alarm & alert
| systems.
| eveld wrote:
| This reminds me a lot of the days when we would just hang in
| ventrillo and teamspeak to just hang out even when not playing
| games. Especially around the time when communities gathered
| around dedicated servers were still a thing. Miss those days :(
| ZeroCool2u wrote:
| I have a similar friend group that hangs out on discord now due
| to the post college diaspora and we even use a Signal group chat.
| However, it sounds like it's a smaller group, because we've taken
| to literally sending bat signal gifs into the chat when someone
| gets online and it works well enough for us :)
| russellbeattie wrote:
| Interesting. But in my experience, the Australian need for daily
| social interaction with a group of peers - preferably including
| some sort of large alcoholic beverage - is quite a bit above
| average. Not sure how a group of Americans would respond.
| Pyrodogg wrote:
| "Scheduling" can become a four-letter word when it comes to
| adults organizing for game nights. In many groups game night
| rarely seems to rise to the formality of scheduling sports with
| organized practice/play sessions.
|
| It's nice to hear that this group found a way to maintain the
| spontaneity.
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| TIL about "four-letter word" as an ESL speaker. If anyone else
| is confused about the linguistic compression algorithm that
| squeezes "scheduling" into just four letters, the magic is, of
| course, profanity! And "four-letter word" seems to be a polite
| way of saying something is or can become a PITA.
| wavemode wrote:
| yeah calling something a "four-letter word" is intended to
| evoke the idea that, people react negatively upon merely
| hearing the word (as though it were an expletive)
| ksynwa wrote:
| If folks don't want to understandably install the discord app
| perhaps notifications could be sent through something like ntfy.
| Like create a dedicated channel for notifications for this and
| have the interested people subscribe to it. Can't say for sure if
| the discord.py library will allow for something like this but I
| think it should be possible.
| turbopasi wrote:
| Reminds me of our Teamspeak Server, that we have already running
| for over 2 decades. Not only for playing games but more for just
| come online and hang out, quietly sitting next to each other,
| "lurking". We do this almost every evening, someone is always
| there. Probably couldn't live without it T.T.
| johndhi wrote:
| I had the idea of making a website where anyone of a group of
| friends can post their evening plans - go to trivia, play tennis,
| etc - and others would be able to sign up to join.
|
| Never made it but glad to see these things can work.
| johndhi wrote:
| Anyone know if something like this already exists I could buy
| or use?
| gorpomon wrote:
| This was the original purpose of Twitter-- it was advertised
| as a network where anyone could post what they're doing and
| notify their friends immediately. Even until recently tweets
| could be received via SMS (not sure about the current status
| of that feature) so you'd see in real time what they're up
| to.
|
| Of course, Twitter/X/etc are a far cry from that now-- but it
| could be worth trying where you and your friends use the
| service like that.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I do think this is an interesting idea. Lemme see if I can do
| this. How do you think the UI/UX should look like.
|
| Here's what I am thinking. You sign in It asks you what you
| want to do And at what time (hour) in another column and
| (date) in another column And then it asks you the location
|
| And then we can have a contact-me: which could lead to
| discord or signal. Or, if you aren't comfortable sharing that
| info, then you could have a shareable link that you can share
| with anyone and then they can write their email or whatever
| and you would get live notifications through mail or whatever
| platform you decided.
|
| Lemme know if we are on the same page?
|
| EDIT: I have created a mvp but like, the problem is that it's
| just a form y'know and I just created something where you
| would input in this information and it would give html and
| then you can host it and using https://formsubmit.co/ you can
| use it. Though I guess one of the issues is that you have to
| validate each form in formsubmit (not good for ephemeral
| forms) and I guess it also shows email but there's a way to
| hide it too.
|
| Also, I guess the problems aren't of forms but of
| discoverability. How do you make people discover your forms
| but I guess one way could be of having a list of all your
| forms or just the current ones that you want to show (IDK?)
| on github pages for example and then you could just share the
| github pages link to anyone or just have it in a about me
| section of most messengers?
|
| Also.. Maybe then if you wanted to rather share it to anybody
| you could create a additional place where anybody can share
| their forms/such website. But I am not sure if what I've all
| said is the best user experience.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I just realized that I just reinvented a form generator or
| a form itself...
| rpgbr wrote:
| I always try to solve problems by using what people already have,
| so I wonder if having another group on Signal, where only "I'm
| playing!" messages would be allowed, couldn't fix the issue...?
| Ringz wrote:
| I've always thought this way and it's amazing what applications
| and problems you can solve or replace with text files (csv,
| TXT, md), calendars (shared) and email. If I had to estimate,
| 80-90%?
|
| I always believed in the power of simple tools and don't
| reinvent the wheel.
| rpgbr wrote:
| There's that theory that all apps are just glorified (and/or
| multiplayer) txt files or spreadsheets. Which is true in...
| 80-90% of the cases?
| fragmede wrote:
| what're the last 10-20%?
| dandano wrote:
| I think it was the fact that actions spoke louder than words
| for us. It's easy to say "I'll jump on" but then you get
| distracted and then 30 mins later you go online. Similarly to
| when people say "leaving now" and then they start getting ready
| to leave. Because we are notified that someone has taken the
| action of going online they are 100% available to chat or play
| a game.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Do discord events allow for connections to ifttt or zapier?
| Or even just trigger a webhook? If so then you can trigger a
| smart light bulb in each persons home via these services. To
| get this to work you create 2 applets triggered by the same
| webhook. One to turn the light on, then another to turn it
| off after a specified delay.
| leptons wrote:
| My friend group has multiple Signal chats for different
| purposes. One is a general chat, no politics allowed. Then
| there's a chat that is for politics. One is for live music, and
| there are other sub-groups for specific interests.
| braiamp wrote:
| Please, fix the contrast of the clicked links and your
| background. The discord.py link is unreadable. Same with supabase
| and coolify. Those I'm sure I haven't visited.
| drewtato wrote:
| This comment is so interesting because clearly, it's the
| unvisited color that's broken, you know this, and you even
| typed it out, but it is so common for visited links to be
| darker than unvisited links that it makes you assume the
| opposite.
| m-hodges wrote:
| This is great. For years I've been wanting to solve the "link
| problem" in my Signal group. My friends post a ton of great links
| that get lost in the scrollback and I'd love a way to get just a
| dedicated queue. I've thought about things like a private
| subreddit or even just a different link group; but everything
| just felt like moving the problem and change management. Great to
| see this type of solution worked for you!
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I think Signal should just create a pin option like how discord
| and a lot of others have.
|
| But in the meantime if I had to genuinely suggest a method
| without any friction if you are okay with using code like the
| author did, then I'd suggest something and lemme know what you
| think
|
| Why don't you just create a special emoji that would only be
| used for the purposes of Pin, like (Oh the irony), and then
| have a signal cli or signal-bot https://github.com/signal-
| bot/signal-bot where you could do something like /pins and it
| would show the pins but you would need a different mobile
| number or account for that and honestly just a big hassle. I
| could think of other ways but we would never reach the native
| User experience that signal could provide if it would allow pin
| natively
|
| EDIT: Even a more simpler way could be if we could just search
| the chat emojis and we could just search <the pin emoji> and it
| would show it
|
| Also I am surprised that HN doesn't allow emojis
| baby wrote:
| I tried that a long time ago with teamspeak, and then discord,
| but my friends are not big users of these tools and so it didnt
| work. Discords do too much. If whatsapp could do this it could
| work
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I do think that whatsapp could do this tbh if it would actually
| provide its api like discord does.
|
| Telegram feels like it can definitely do such stuff and I found
| in my opinion that its way easier to host telegram bot on
| cloudflare than it is on discord so theoretically you could
| even have it as a cf worker with a deploy on cf button so as to
| even people who don't know too much about deploying could use
| it.
| cubefox wrote:
| WhatsApp should totally add that as a feature! A voice chat
| room with join notifications.
| henryaj wrote:
| WhatsApp has this now -
| https://faq.whatsapp.com/1973730693032338
| Arainach wrote:
| I didn't see this in the article, but why not just organize the
| games in a Discord text channel? Discord has very granular
| notifications that seem the perfect solution here, so folks can
| see there are unread messages in #games, and the folks gaming are
| already on the server.
|
| One big noisy chat for everything is an antipattern, as any group
| of sufficient size eventually learns.
| bombcar wrote:
| One Big Chat is great for the terminally online. Everyone else
| gets horribly behind.
|
| Organized channels is the way to go and spending time thinking
| about setup is worth it. Otherwise they develop naturally and
| haphazardly.
| jedimastert wrote:
| The discord of '22 was, iirc, very different from now, or at
| least the culture around it. It looks like they just only used
| it for a single voice chat lobby
| Arainach wrote:
| The Discord of 2020 and before absolutely supported text
| channels, voice channels, multiple of the above, customizable
| notifications, and everything required here. Like OP and many
| others I found myself on a number of Discord servers during
| the pandemic for voice/video chat, gaming together, etc. and
| that app was the straightforward solution both for organizing
| and the actual event for groups of any size from 4-20.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| The piece was published this week, and yall seem to be
| missing the point. The goal is to let people know when a VC
| is happening amongst this group, not to do party matching for
| whatever game is being played.
| jedimastert wrote:
| Also this might be a premature optimization issue, it seems
| like the friend group is only five people and probably very
| unlikely to grow
| unethical_ban wrote:
| It seems to me a common enough use case that it should be built
| into discord.
|
| I think the "I am here, now" alert does more than the "hey who is
| around?" message.
| stevage wrote:
| That actually sounds really nice.
|
| > Over the next year, our group chat (in Signal) was drowning in
| notifications. A mix of general chit chat, talks on the ever
| changing news of COVID and the most important - when can people
| play games and chat. It really annoyed me when people would post
| on "hey anyone wanna play [game] in 15 mins?", for it to be
| buried in another 5 messages.
|
| My friend group's solution to this problem is...lots of different
| group chats. They're all on Google Chat, but we have tons of
| different ones for different topics: bikes, space,
| covid/infectious diseases, baking, craft, plants, wildlife, true
| crime, politics, depressing news, renewables/sustainability, tech
| geekery, board games, home improvement...
|
| I do miss video chat nights during lockdown though.
| mlok wrote:
| There is a very weird display bug on this site : when I access it
| in lanscape horizontal position, with my iPhone 8 on Brave or
| Safari : all the text is trembling, unable to settle on a size.
| Trapped in a resizing loop. If I rotate the phone verically it
| settles properly and then also horizontally. But if I reload the
| page (horizontally) it goes nuts again :)
| peterldowns wrote:
| Fun story. This reminds me of the summer my friends and I were
| all still around our small town -- we used the Yo! app the same
| way, as a bat signal to meet up and get into nonsense. Someone
| would start Yo!ing and then once there was a critical mass of
| return Yo!s we'd switch to text/phone and link up.
|
| Good times.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo_(app)
| subjectsigma wrote:
| I need the opposite of this. Some of my friends just want to sit
| in Discord and play the same three games all day every day. I
| either need a way to get them to do something different or to
| find new friends
| outlore wrote:
| This reminds me of the Houseparty app that took off with my
| friend group during Covid. It had a mechanism to notify others
| when someone had joined a party. Fun times
| guicen wrote:
| Reminds me of those old coworking circles I used to be part of.
| Not about being productive really, but more about giving people a
| reason to show up and talk. Friction gets replaced with rhythm.
| udev4096 wrote:
| Going from signal to discord is crazy. How can you be OK with
| knowing that your _personal_ voice chats are being monitored,
| recorded and sold to the next highest bidder? How can it be so
| easy to choose convenience over that? Or is it that we have
| essentially given up and wanna actively take a part in mass
| surveillance?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Not every decision is about opsec. If, for what you're doing,
| you want people to be alerted about your actions without your
| explicit say-so, then signal is not the tool for that job.
|
| Shame on discord for having a lousy privacy stance, but most
| people aren't on signal for the privacy, most people are on
| signal because that's where their friends are (and one or two
| of those friends is there for the privacy).
| udev4096 wrote:
| That's the difference between people who give in and people
| who don't. This is not about "opsec", it's about exercising
| your fundamental right to privacy. Majority of people are
| reckless, the ones who take a second to think about it are
| not
| otoburb wrote:
| I agree with you, but the trade off is real for most
| people. It's unfortunately a binary choice: 'privacy [?]
| social community', instead of 'privacy & social' community.
|
| It's interesting how opensource Zulip[1] hasn't been able
| to garner as much of a following or usage amongst the gamer
| crowd compared to Discord.
|
| [1] https://zulip.com/
| cptroot wrote:
| These two apps are not comparable. My guess is that 90%+
| of people using Discord are doing so for the low-latency
| voice conversations with optional screen/game sharing.
|
| Zulip does not have first-party voice chat. You would be
| more likely to get gamers to switch to a Teamspeak
| server.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > Not every decision is about opsec.
|
| Until you find that you _expected_ security and privacy and
| the developer /corporation/investors say, "too bad for you".
|
| This is the warning of Niemoller's famous paraprosdokian.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Is there some reasonable way to self host a (secure) voice chat
| channel?
| derkades wrote:
| Mumble!
| udev4096 wrote:
| Mumble is awesome but definitely difficult to properly
| configure. Especially the TLS certs for any reverse proxy
| won't work directly, there's a hacky way to make it work
| which I don't fully trust
| MattJ100 wrote:
| I work on a project in this space, and the endless
| insistence of people that they have to run clearly non-
| web things through reverse proxies always amazes me :)
|
| Not everything is a web app, and it's trivial these days
| to obtain certificates, even without a proxy (certbot,
| etc.).
|
| Of course I understand that if you host a lot of web
| apps, having all web requests routed through a universal
| proxy is nice for various reasons. But platforms like
| Discord and such are complex beasts and use more
| technologies than HTTP(S).
| c22 wrote:
| Depending on your definition of reasonable, you could just
| pipe the audio over SSH:
| https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/116919/redirect-
| sou...
| udev4096 wrote:
| Wow, I never thought you could ssh your audio. That's so
| fucking awesome
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Just create a second group in signal with your friends called
| "group X: call only". Then everyone mutes the group (which I
| think mutes calls as well). Then whenever someone wants to
| join the "voice chat" they can just initiate a call. If
| someone else sees and joins, so be it.
| Harmon758 wrote:
| Discord voice calls and channels do use E2EE now, as of last
| year:
|
| https://discord.com/blog/meet-dave-e2ee-for-audio-video
| excalibur wrote:
| You guys have friends?
| jrm4 wrote:
| Man. Reminds me when many years back I had about 10 friends
| collaborating on a movie and I needed something between
| asynchronous and synchronous, so I stripped Wordpress down to
| just titles and little avatars on a front page feed thing.
|
| About 2 years later Twitter came out and I was like "oh, I guess
| I was on to something." :)
| pizzathyme wrote:
| I wish discord would just implement this as a setting.
| alliao wrote:
| Now I feel old, back in my days we all hung out on IRC and we
| broadcast a wav file to call on friends to join game, and had
| crazy scripts and bots that did weekly summary, best engagement
| line and so on and so forth
| catigula wrote:
| It strikes me: is anyone else sick of people calling developing
| software "building"? Even as a software developer, it feels very
| supercilious.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Yes. Especially things like "solutions architect".
| Retric wrote:
| No, build "#3. To develop or give form to according to a plan
| or process; create"
|
| There's a line between baking a cake and building a wedding
| cake where it stops being about the ingredients and starts
| being about the desired form.
| https://shunbridal.com/article/how-tobuild-a-wedding-cake
|
| It's in that context where building software makes sense. You
| need to link a bunch of different components together to make a
| greater whole.
| catigula wrote:
| I figured someone would attempt to use the technical
| definition to make their case.
|
| The problem isn't one of technical definitions, it's one of
| performative definitions.
|
| I am technically an Online Communications Solutions
| Integration Architect, and also a guy posting on an internet
| forum.
| Retric wrote:
| I was going by vibes with building a wedding cake. I don't
| think writing a 3 line bash script is building software.
| subpixel wrote:
| > it was a life savior when my little one was a newborn to jump
| onto Discord for even 5 minutes to chat with my friends, watch
| someone play a game and then log off for another diaper change
|
| I'm afraid I can't relate to this at all. I may a bit older
| and/or I may have less close friends but I prefer a very
| different kind of social contact that is more like make plans,
| meet up, rinse and repeat.
|
| Back in the AIM/ORC days I loathed being pinged all the time for
| chit chat - this system reminds me of that!
| billdybas wrote:
| > The hardest part was convincing people to download the Discord
| app on their phone as most of us didn't have it downloaded.
|
| This was surprising to me - is this typical of most Discord users
| (primarily desktop users over mobile)?
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Discord was originally a place to organize for playing
| videogames with people. If you're using it for that purpose,
| you're probably on your computer already (because that's where
| the games are). Thus, the mobile app ends up being more for
| checking in with your community while away from the computer,
| rather than a primary driver of your engagement with the
| platform.
| daedrdev wrote:
| They could have been using it in browser. One of discords
| underrated decisions is that the browser version is fully
| featured and doesn't force you to download the app, a new user
| can join a server in their browser with just a name which is as
| low friction as you can get.
| rockostrich wrote:
| I think Discord is the best chat app for friend groups and it's
| not even close. At this point I've written the following bots
| specifically for my friend group's server:
|
| # Music Quiz Bot
|
| Existing apps work ok. A lot of paid and don't let you use a
| specific Spotify playlist.
|
| The only thing annoying about this one is that none of the
| Discord API wrappers handle audio very well so I've found that
| this one gets a bit flaky if you're trying to play a lot.
|
| This one is probably like 500 lines of Typescript but a lot of
| that is for the Spotify API. The game logic is pretty minimal.
|
| # Birthday Bot
|
| This is like 10 lines of Python. It's a cron that reads from a
| Google Sheet my friends and I keep up to date with personal
| information. If it's someone's birthday then it'll post a happy
| birthday message to them.
|
| # Plex Bot
|
| I wrote this before I discovered that Overseerr just has this
| built-in. My Plex was set up with a webhook to hit whenever new
| media was downloaded. The bot would post to a specific thread
| with the metadata about the new media. This included another
| webserver for serving the cover art from the private Plex
| metadata server.
|
| # Movie Quiz Bot
|
| Similar to the music bot although I don't think existing apps
| exist that do this. Essentially it's https://framed.wtf/ except
| as a game in a Discord channel where random frames are pulled
| from movies in my media library and everyone competes to name the
| movie first. This one required some ffmpeg fun to make pulling
| the stills not take forever. I considered doing static stills or
| having a cronjob do it, but it's more fun when it's completely
| random.
| sneak wrote:
| The problem is that Discord isn't e2ee and logs all chats in
| plaintext for all time, including all DMs. This makes it a
| nonstarter for me; friends don't serve as honey in the
| surveillance trap for communication with their friends.
|
| Nothing that builds up an ever-growing surveillance database on
| private conversations between friends can be in the running for
| "best".
| rockostrich wrote:
| We're all aware of this and we have multiple people working
| in the defense industry with high clearances in the server.
| If something needs to be shared that can't be made public
| then it doesn't go in Discord. This covers about 99.9% of our
| correspondences.
| sneak wrote:
| The cognitive overhead of remembering where I can talk
| about what with which people seems exhausting. I deleted
| all chat apps except Signal from my phone.
|
| Signal really should support bots.
|
| > _can 't be made public then it doesn't go in Discord.
| This covers about 99.9%_
|
| Sometimes I forget that my friend groups are nothing like
| most peoples' friend groups.
| viccis wrote:
| >The cognitive overhead of remembering where I can talk
| about what with which people seems exhausting
|
| This is just part of life of having a clearance. If it's
| not Discord, then it's the happy hour where you have to
| worry about people getting a few too many beers deep and
| saying something stupid, and then others have an
| obligation to report it.
|
| Have some prudence about what to say in what settings is
| a life skill in general.
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| I'm 32 and Discord is the harbinger of getting out of touch
| with technology for me. It is clearly a great service, because
| so many people use it and seem happy with it, but it is _not_
| for me. And I wish that wasn't the case because Discord is
| pretty much _the_ spot for the communities I'd like to hang
| around with.
|
| But I wasn't able to get on top of its notification system or
| get past the gamer heavy UI.
|
| Does your friend group consist of mainly techies? If not, I am
| impressed you were able to get them to use it. Even more so if
| they were already on it. I tried to get folks to use Signal
| with me for a bit and it was the most futile endeavor I've ever
| attempted.
| Gamemaster1379 wrote:
| These all sound like a lot of fun. I've built a few discord
| bots myself as I've run a few online communities.
|
| 1) Reminder bot for scheduled events.
|
| We're all working adults who all played games as teens together
| . To actually get us together, we schedule our favorite games
| for once a month to play for a few hours. We all often forget
| when they start, so my bot posts a 2 week, 1 week 3 days, and 2
| hour notice.
|
| 2) RCON bot I run a TF2 server and a Minecraft server. You can
| manage both via RCON commands via slash commands in Discord.
| Also the tf2 one monitors player activity and alerts if players
| are in the server
|
| 3. Private server API bot
|
| I founded a private game server for a game that ended service
| in 2023. The bot reads from our API to make a central list of
| lobbies and status. It also creates voice channels for each
| public lobby.
|
| It's also used to help grant items and other admin commands.
|
| 4. For April Fools, I made a snarky bot that responded to
| random messages. It was backed by Gemini.
|
| These have all been fun and novel to make but I've never found
| a great way to productize them and make money from any of them.
| Wonder if you've found any avenues there.
| kadhirvelm wrote:
| Wow so cool, I feel like if I had a light near by desk that
| turned on every time a friend was on discord voice, I'd be so
| much more likely to hop in for a few minutes over getting an
| notification. Something about the physical affordance feels
| harder to ignore
| henryaj wrote:
| WhatsApp has a somewhat similar feature - pull up to start a
| group voice chat. You can ping others to let them know you're
| around.
|
| https://faq.whatsapp.com/1973730693032338
| fdgjgbdfhgb wrote:
| The only time I've seen this feature be used is when my grandma
| accidentally turns it on in the family groupchat - I just don't
| wanna hang out with my friends in WhatsApp
| vinceguidry wrote:
| God I'm so jealous you were able to get your friends to join
| Discord.
|
| My in-person friend group revolved around the bar we all went to.
| When the bar shut down, I floated the idea of a group chat but
| couldn't get anyone interested. No one wants to install another
| app and get notified more. In olden days, we'd just solve the
| problem with Facebook, but no one uses that anymore either. My
| friends are ordinary, normal, overworked people who need an easy
| option. The bar was that. Show up when you want to connect. Easy.
|
| So now there's nothing. I basically just lost all my friends. We
| all have each other's numbers but that's just not an option for
| coordination.
|
| Fuck you, Mark Zuckerberg, for making Facebook so shitty it's not
| even useful anymore for the one thing I ever found it useful for.
| I hope when we finally start coming for the billionaires, we come
| for you first.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| I'm confused about what this solution does. I'd expect that as
| people move to discord all the message spam that was happening in
| signal would just eventually move over to discord as people got
| used to communicating there instead of signal
| demaga wrote:
| It encourages people to speak rather than type.
|
| You don't get hundreds of messages per day by writing in email
| style. You get there if you have a lot of synchronous or near-
| synchronous communication in chat. It's kind of obvious that
| voice call suits this better, but there is friction involved in
| making an actual call.
|
| Discord voice channel might reduce the friction if you make
| this culture of hopping in and out of it.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| If you don't care about Security/Privacy, Discord has a great
| UI and is probably significantly better for free-flowing group
| conversations
| 725686 wrote:
| I was surprised to see that there was half a million more, and
| not less!
| thomascountz wrote:
| You've seen a cube hold a million dollars, but this server?--
| Well, it can hold a million friends :')
| anigbrowl wrote:
| tl;dr author finds Discord better than Signal for online
| socializing
| flooo wrote:
| I have several chat groups with friends and even with my wife to
| avoid this topic. With my wife, I have several now: one to share
| recipes, one to share the weeks meal plan, one to talk about the
| activities of our two year old and one to share houses we might
| be interested in buying.
|
| It's great to separate for record keeping, but mostly to avoid
| forcing the conversation on some organisational thing when the
| other just needs eg to vent about something at work
| asdf6969 wrote:
| This is why it's so hard to make local friends as an adult in a
| new city. Good inspiration for me to make something similar to
| keep in touch with real people!
| ohashi wrote:
| We just use a slack. The overwhelming single channel? nope.
| channels for all the hobbies, shitposting, news, games, etc. We
| even have a discord notification for gaming channel when people
| get on the gaming channel. Separate notification for the chat
| channel if someone wants to just chill.
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