Android

As much as I'd like to argue otherwise, it's easily one of the most accessible versions of live chat around currently. I'm still on IRC and also on Matrix, but neither is as user-friendly as the centralized single-account, single-app, single-server setup of Discord. That's absolutely not to say that it's the best option, but it's the simplest to explain by far.

My fellow Matrix nerds can tell us all day about how they got their whole family using Matrix and it's great and everybody understood it, but I strongly suspect there's a level of one dedicated user doing things like app and instance selection (or self-hosting) for the entire group, while everyone else is pretty much along for the ride.

Matrix does solve some of the issues of IRC, like using a single account to interact with basically any server, but room discovery is still not great, the mobile apps lag heavily behind desktop, there's persistent basic usability bugs like unread notifications getting permanently stuck, and privacy is an afterthought with most Matrix apps broadcasting your presence to all other users at all times without any option to stop that behavior. Plus, the heavy reliance on bridging with IRC for many communities also kind of loses you the benefit of the single-account approach since you end up having to register an account for your bridge user anyway (and I can hear the eyes glazing over at this point).

Then there's the network effect, of course. Most of the stuff you can reach via Matrix is super nerdy: Linux distros, fediverse support rooms, Wii U homebrew development channels. This part isn't Matrix's "fault" per se, but it's definitely a reason why people would choose to use Discord or maintain a presence in both. At this point, unless there's just nothing that interests you on Discord, switching to Matrix really has to be an ideological choice.

I feel like it's an issue of bloat more than anything. Discord was much easier to use back when I first joined, but now it's gotten to the point where where you have the ability to make twitter/reddit-style posts inside what is supposed to be a chat room.

It's okay for very small groups of people in my experience. I use two servers with like ~10 active users in total. We use the server as a way to keep group text-like conversations more organized in different channels based on topic and the added benefit of voice calls and chat bots.

Large communities for it are awful, it becomes an even harder to read Twitch chat in active channels.

Maybe it’s kids who have never experienced forums?

That's a good point, maybe.

Discord is basically the modern equivalent of the old school IRC chat rooms. Though I think it's biggest draw is the ease of doing voice chat for people who want that.

Honestly the only saving grace is they don't show ads. But that only works while the users keep a stream of money flowing their way. It's a lot like the paid Reddit award scheme, except Reddit still shows loads of ads lol

The sad thing is that they used to be better than this, but enshitification came for them too and they felt the need to cram features into the client that nobody uses to appease shareholders.

Look, look, we're creating value, look!

I do use Discord, but have never seen it look like that. I didn't know it supported posts/threads and stuff... does it really?

I forgot about this feature and how Discord started out. While it might be great as a platform for discussing while streaming, I still don't get how it's being used for so much more by now.