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Discord to start showing ads in the coming week after resisting for almost a decade
(www.neowin.net)
this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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Privacy
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Discord can do shit like this because they know many won't ever try to use an alternative. You need more than just "open source" "privacy" or "FOSS" to convince people.
To be fair, there was a time before Discord. People once used MSN, Skype, Teamspeak, IRC, etc.
They shouldn't get too comfortable with the idea that people won't just up and leave.
There has to be something to leave for
Closest I know is Revolt.
Matrix
Element.io
Discord has real advantages over many of those, and communities are slow to pick up and move. It'll take either a very bad decision from discord or a good competitor. I want that competitor to be Matrix, but it's far from perfect.
Well, adding ads could easily be that very bad decision, if anything can position itself as an attractive alternative fast enough
I don't think it will take just one of those, it will take both.
This. Open source apps are generally awful at presenting themselves to a broader audience.
Even for me, who's technical enough, an app being FOSS is not enough to even bother checking out. Yes, I've said it. Sorry, tinfoils, but I do put features above else. And, want it or not, general public does the same: if the featureset is not clear enough at first glance, and an app doesn't explicitly provide clarity on what it does and how it is better than competition, most people aren't even checking it out.
It's an unpopular opinion but I completely agree. I've tried Matrix, not only could I not get more than 2% of my community to try it, but it's horribly unintuitive and limited for server owners. Shut it down after a few months.
I have a rocket chat server going now, some similar issues, but at least it has more control than Matrix. Still only a fraction of my Discord and Telegram user base has joined, but it's similar enough that people are at least willing to try.
FOSS alone is not enough, the wider public doesn't care, they just want something easy and convenient.
Curious, what didn't you like about Matrix specifically? I'm in the process of evaluating it for my friends. With the Element client, so far it seems pretty dang similar? Space = server, room = channel, there are also access controls. Seems like there's voice and video chats too.
Speed was a big thing. Switching channels could take a few seconds to over a minute to load, on good hardware.
The biggest issue, and a huge glaring oversight imo, is that users can create their own channels, encrypt them, and instance owners have no way to know what goes on in there. Some of the channel names alone were enough to make your skin crawl.
Oh, and you want to ban somebody? Cool, just ban them individually from every channel, because there is no global instance-wide ban. Moderation is horrendous.
That sounds laughable. Gross. No thanks.
did you host your own matrix homeserver or use matrix.org? that can change how fast it feels massively and yeah built in moderation tools are pretty much nonexistant https://github.com/the-draupnir-project/Draupnir is the only moderation bot that you can run to ban users from all rooms at once if they break your rules and lets you subscribe to banlists so if a user spams in other rooms that have write access and gets added they'll be banned from your rooms as well
My experience as someone who has barely dabbled in Matrix, tried comparing clients, and knows a lot of people who stick to Discord: a lot of Discord users heavily use custom emotes, voice chat, and screen sharing. It's not even easy to figure out which Matrix clients support each of those features without installing everything and trying it out. There's a clients comparison on matrix.org that mentions Voip but not stickers or video.
For stickers alone:
Being able to freely use custom emotes without paying for a Discord Nitro subscription nor server boosts would be a great selling point but it's not something most users would be able to figure out before signing up. The limited client support isn't great; e.g. Fluffy is the only Android client that supports sending custom stickers but some people may dislike the chat bubbles style UI.
We need to fix people. This proprietary shit is dystopian.
Make the apps pretty, sure, but long term; fix people.
Steam supports direct voice chat. My friends use it for gaming.
Also, teamspeak.
Steam doesn't let me make my own survers with categorized groups and stuff
More, you need to convince the that this shit being inevitable is why you need FOSS.
Ads are not enough reason to stop using it for the majority. You need to offer more than just ad-free. You need to offer the same or better adoption, features, and overall user experience. Discord has these all nailed.
Discord has literally like one feature matrix doesn't; stickers. And it kinda has those. Stop talking shit and try it out with some friends. This is so much more important than just chat, and the hour is getting late as fuck.
The big thing is the network effect. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
I'm not leaving my communities for yet another app. When they migrate I will too.
Dude. You can install multiple apps on your phone. I'm pretty sure.