this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/17617609

They supposedly can be disabled in settings- but we all know that won't last. They're going full Microsoft Skype mode and it's only a matter of time.

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[–] Zworf@beehaw.org 102 points 7 months ago (6 children)

Good. I hope people will move away from it soon. I hate Discord for banning third-party clients and datamining my system for installed apps. So I've never really used it.

It does mean I'm excluded from some FOSS projects' support like Home Assistant but to hell with that :P

[–] Zetta@mander.xyz 33 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Hopefully those FOSS projects will gain some sense as discord becomes more shit and will leave. One can hope.

[–] ErilElidor@feddit.de 21 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I never understood how a chatroom took off as a tool to document stuff. Who seriously thinks this is a good idea? 😵

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[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 11 points 7 months ago

Most projects still haven't left GitHub...

[–] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 7 months ago

ideally such changes to advertising and the ToS arbitration clause removing consumer rights will help give a lot of the open-source communities a gentle push to get off of discord. It's become far too central to too many communities and is impossible to search for knowledge.

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[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 73 points 7 months ago (2 children)

this will always happen unless we move to FOSS

[–] Kaldo@beehaw.org 15 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Hope we get some comparable options yet, I only know of matrix and that one allegedly has tons of security and performance issues.

[–] reddthat@reddthat.com 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Mattermost does most of the required discord features. (Pun intended)

Is open source and is selfhost-able. I think there are some SaaS hosters if you need them too.

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[–] baseless_discourse@mander.xyz 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Can you list some security/performance/feature comparison between matrix and discord? I don't have the need for these class of product, but I am trying to get the hype behind discord.

[–] Kaldo@beehaw.org 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I don't know about discord issues, the hype behind is it mostly that it's free, very convenient, feature rich and can easily integrate bots. Its the go-to place to build communities nowadays.

Matrix issues that I read about can be seen here https://telegra.ph/why-not-matrix-08-07 . I haven't done my own research tho so I don't know if all of this is (still) true

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 7 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Almost all of those issues are due to federation. Lemmy shares most of them. Considering that we're on Lemmy, I'd say it's mostly a non-issue for us. Maybe use something else for encryption-required communications, but other than that it sounds fine to me.

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[–] GadgeteerZA@beehaw.org 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's often not the cost of the software, but the hosting costs, especially on a growing platform.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

platforms can be peer to peer too, with maybe a cheaper to host tracker. i think its viable for a chat app, like matrix, for example.

overall yes though, i wonder when lemmy is gonna start having these issues, its still mostly run by unpaid volunteers....

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[–] shirro@aussie.zone 50 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Most of these platforms make no money but have taken huge amounts of VC funding which they have burned through. For the VCs to unload it and cash out they need to show the product can be monetised and them try and shift it before the users leave the platform. Idiot users want all the features of a product developed by lots of talented full time paid staff but don't want to pay for it themselves so they leap from startup to startup then complain when the inevitable happens while dismissing open source alternatives as inadequate for their needs. Why should we care? I don't.

[–] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 21 points 7 months ago (2 children)

While I don’t disagree with the sentiment, the Discord Nitro subscription has been around for a long while. From what I’ve seen using the platform it seems relatively popular. I’d guess adding ads to the free tier is as much about enticing people onto the subscription (which presumably won’t have ads).

[–] tlf@feddit.de 13 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Ubtil they go to the Netflix model where users can experience both a subscription and ads at the same time.

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[–] rinze@infosec.pub 50 points 7 months ago (1 children)

IRC still rules. No ads in my irssi.

[–] Vodulas@beehaw.org 15 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Does IRC do voice nowadays? I think that is the main reason people use Discord

[–] rinze@infosec.pub 15 points 7 months ago (3 children)

If you mean that in some channels only some people can actually "talk", I think it depends on the configuration of the channel, but it's a possibility.

I thought people used Discord because you could have video / audio chats (not sure about this, I've used it very sparsely.)

And then there are Open Source projects that use Discord as the documentation repository. Hell is a place on the Internet, apparently.

[–] jarfil@beehaw.org 38 points 7 months ago

Discord became popular because it's a more convenient integration of audio chat for gaming, with text chat: no need to set up a server (like TeamSpeak or Mumble).

People using Discord for official documentation, or bug reporting, are in a circle of hell just slightly below the ones doing the same on Reddit. Community support... they may get a pass.

[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 27 points 7 months ago (1 children)

they meant voice chat, audio

[–] rinze@infosec.pub 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

You're right, I completely misinterpreted the comment. The thing is that "voice" is a very specific term within IRC, and I got confused :D

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[–] ezchili@iusearchlinux.fyi 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

You mean does the 80s-based protocol that doesn't even support encryption support voice?

It doesn't support having messages received while you were offline

IRC supports one and one thing only: N-wise chats to connected clients. That and delusional nerds who like to think they're better than everyone else. Huge support for that too.

People who actually have sane standards for their instant messaging use the Matrix decentralized chat protocol when they need non-proprietary coms, or revolt

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 8 points 7 months ago

Mumble exists

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[–] northendtrooper@lemmy.ca 29 points 7 months ago (10 children)

slowly moving myself to https://revolt.chat/.

Its sad since I've been with discord since almost '15.

[–] jarfil@beehaw.org 27 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Compared to Matrix, or any E2EE chat, this doesn't sound good:

we take your privacy very seriously. And with end-to-end encryption coming to DMs and group chats soon

Compared to Discord, or other established voice chat systems like Mumble, this doesn't sound great either:

We are currently rebuilding the client and the voice server from scratch. The old voice should work in most cases, but it may inexplicably not connect in some scenarios and / or exhibit weird behaviour.

The "app" on Android seems to be just the webapp running in a standalone window.

I'll concede them the OpenSource and self-hosted factors, and it does look like Discord, but it doesn't seem like a suitable replacement for average users... yet. Then again, the ads might push them over.

Guess it's worth to keep an eye on it.

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[–] politicalcustard@beehaw.org 15 points 7 months ago

Oh, this looks great. Honestly, I am very happy when closed-source apps become worse, these are all just opportunities for open source to move in and take over.

[–] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

so this Revolt project is open source, which is nice, but still seems to rely on centralized servers. Does it use P2P for voice+video+fileshare so that the original devs aren't on the hook for insane bandwidth requirements? I can't see anything about their networking systems in the FAQ or info pages.

I may consider getting my friends to switch sooner or later if it's more P2P based. But I don't really want something that runs ALL traffic through central servers, because the bandwidth costs will inevitably just lead to the same situation that Discord is now in.

[–] jarfil@beehaw.org 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

It's self-hostable, and they seem to be switching to webrtc-rs, not sure whether with P2P or not:

https://trello.com/c/Ay6KdiOV/1-voice-overhaul-and-video-calling

In 2022, they claimed it was using minimal resources on the server:

https://developers.revolt.chat/faq/monetisation

They also don't seem to consider federation as a priority, but then again neither does Discord.

https://developers.revolt.chat/faq/federation

[–] krash@lemmy.ml 9 points 7 months ago

What made you choose revolt chat over matrix? Just curious.

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[–] excel@lemmy.megumin.org 14 points 7 months ago (3 children)

“Discord said users will be able to turn off the ads in their settings.”

[–] smb@lemmy.ml 22 points 7 months ago

usually at first you can do such, and later on, when a ceo wants more money, you then can buy that together with the new "pro" features actually nobody needs nor wants.

maybe better look for more stable solutions before they start acting like a broadcom ;-)

[–] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Sure, but you really expect that option to stay available for very long after 90% of users turn it off and ruin it's profitability?

[–] FrostyPolicy@suppo.fi 11 points 7 months ago

For now. I'm quite sure that option will disappear at some point in the not too distant future.

[–] Megaman_EXE@beehaw.org 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'm so tired man. I just want it to stop. It feels like everything nice is slowly being squeezed in all aspects of life.

Anything that capitalism touches or influences has begun to choke us out. It just seems to continue and doesn't seem to ease up or improve. Maybe I'm just noticing it more, but the past 4 years felt like things accelerated quickly

[–] anachronist@midwest.social 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This is the definition of late-stage capitalism. Capitalism starts out by finding useful things that improve lives for at least some people (potentially by ruining it for others). For instance, it invents assembly lines to make manufactured goods cheaper but in so doing makes the worker's job dull, repetitive, stressful, and robs him of his agency. This is early stage capitalism. Things are getting worse for some people but broadly better for many.

But then later on capitalism runs out of things to improve. You can only invent the assembly line once. You only get that boost when you implement it. So you have to come up with something else. Maybe you computerize things. But eventually you can't wring any more profits out of production and profits must go up, so you have to take them out of the customers. You roll up all the competing firms into a monopoly and then start jacking up the price, slashing the quality, etc. This is late-stage. It becomes more and more parasitic and the snake eats its own tail.

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[–] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 12 points 7 months ago (2 children)
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