Discord in Early Talks With Bankers for Potential I.P.O.
The app has become a mainstay of the video game community and young internet users.
I guess it's back to ventrilo.
That explains all the AI crap they've been chasing for a while now. They've been trying to juice up the value to make it look appealing to potential buyers because you can basically slap "AI" on anything and it instantly shoots up in value.
Discord is effectively dead if this goes through.
If they're courting buyers, it's already dead. It's just not started to stink yet.
They also put ads on the screen and have been shilling their apps for a while now. There is not even a button to go to the webapp on their mobile site, you have to switch to desktop mode just to get in.
It has been in the works from the very beginning. They dropped their mask when things got put behind paywalls and they started censoring criticism. Hell they artificially pumped up emote slots on servers they were secretly running just to get the most users on them. why? To control the narrative. Those servers had the most users for this reason and their owners were thrilled about becoming essentially redundant over night which was more than just a little suspicious until they got found out. They also run their subreddit where they also censored any criticism for this weird bait and switch.
To those who say „who cares about emotes?“ I can only reply: You‘re missing the point. It‘s not about the what but the how. Discord is a sleazy company that gaslights their users to an extreme degree sometimes.
much like reddit its other counterpart is doing right now. Juicing up its value by "eliminating tons of accts regardless of the status of those acc"
Start making your plans for a replacement because it will be going to shit soon.
Now is the time for Matrix to improve usability and whatnot, because I think that's the most credible replacement.
I really wish Matrix had been more successful, but it has some pretty core problems that prevented it from gaining more traction.
It fell into the same trap as XMPP, though perhaps even worse, with a focus more on its protocol and specification than a single unified product vision. The reference server implementation is slow, and using a language not optimal for its purpose, with alternative server implementations left incomplete and unsupported. It took a long time for them to figure out voice and video and for it to work well, and the "user flow" still isn't at Discord levels.
I've rooted for Matrix for a long time, but as a former XMPP evangelist, to me the writing on the wall says it isn't suited for success either. I'd love to be wrong, but I don't see a way through.
Although, I'm honestly surprised that there isn't a Fediverse equivalent/Alternative to Discord.
IK that platforms like Matrix exist, but what I'm talking about is a federated platform that's a clone of Discord.
I tried revolt a year or so ago and it was pretty rough
The trouble with relying on each community to self-host is that it's unlikely to ever make it to the masses that way. Self-hosting is a significant barrier.
gentlemen start your enshittification.
Great time to start working on a replacement... if you have several million hanging around.
Well, it was a good run.
I can't wait for Discord to enshittify so that lazy devs can't say "join our Discord for updates and support!" anymore.
Hate that shit.
It's quite shit already
Fiiiiiiiiiinally.
How can it not be awful for them too? Like users may even try to ✌️search Discord✌️ for their issue only to come up short and have fo ask a question asked a million times already. Gross.
It seems unlikely that will stop, at least with any speed, TBH.
Somehow this post has negative down votes and I'm all for it.
Welp, there goes the neighborhood. If they want to do an IPO they'll probably enshittify the hell out of the platform and jettison all remotely raunchy communities. Because nothing says "good investment" than a service that just drove out a fair chunk of its user base.
I just hope further Enshittification will cause devs to ditch it and start using proper forums instead. It‘s always tragic when a software has no other way of giving feedback and answering questions than Discord where you can‘t find anything, let alone with an external search engine. The abandonment of internet forum culture and searchable discussions has been one of the biggest losses in the virtual space.
Devs using Discord instead of forums perplexes me as much as it annoys me. It's just the wrong tool for the job.
Finally, I hope Discord's inevitable enshittification will be the kick in the ass that will launch a platform that doesn't gargle donkey balls - preferably someting fediverse capable.
I always liked TeamSpeak, is that still around?
Matrix
Like IRC?
So, tell me about matrix and how to use its full basic potential…
here it fucking comes, if you thought it was enshitified you haven't seen anything yet!
Enshitification is on the horizon...
On the horizon? They crossed that horizon a long time ago. It's just going to accelerate now
Bet they'll go the way of Slack and put old messages behind a paywall
First thing they will do is put in some AI that can talk to people for you or something.
There are already bots for that. I've seen them in less popular channels
Duuude. Discord is a dumpster fire right now. I'm interested to see how much hotter that fire can get.
Enough to power cities that run out power because Canada cut them off.
I want to adopt Matrix but getting started is the hardest part
Getting my friends to shift over is a pain in the ass for sure
It was hard to get everyone off aim too but it happened.
Then again there is always IRC.
I have my friends and family on Matrix.
My instance is over 7 years old.
Love it, can't imagine being without it.
That's where a Ulysses pact can help: https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/
I have a friend who is just so damn stubborn when it comes to mixing up their "comfortable" things if they aren't the one to come up with the idea
Very frustrating
The hardest part of using Matrix is basically everything about Matrix. They're an unholy combination of Slack, Discord, and Signal... And not very good at any of those things
I wonder if Flotilla on Nostr will be ready in time. The nostr community can unfortunately be a bit iffy right now, but I like the tech, and I'm always excited to see someone taking a good stab at Discord.
Soon as you hear the term instance, most people are out.
Call it a server, then. Tons of people already call them Discord servers. And it'd be a lot more true of Flotilla than Discord. Functionally, from a UX perspective, there'd be VERY little difference to an end user. You'd get an invite somehow, probably through a link, maybe combined with whitelisting your identity for more private communities, and you'd be in, using a client remarkably similar to Discord once it's in a good spot. For most users, they can fully ignore the technical complexities.
I don't think Nostr can take on Discord. A big part of Discord is the voice chat channels, which, as far as I know, Nostr just isn't built for.
It's true that nostr as a protocol doesn't seem to have any real capacity for voice, but given a Discord-like community would probably "live" on a fixed relay, that server could also very easily provide something like a TURN server like Matrix clients use for voice and I think video support. The client could integrate support for it, and the typical clueless user wouldn't see the difference. For the more ephemeral nature of most voice communications, there's no real need to publish voice chat through Nostr events. It could be done, sort of, for any talks that need to be archived, but it's not a requirement for the vast majority of the voice chat happening on Discord anyway.
What's the best alternative software to gear up to transition to? I'm pretty pissed because they finally got decent integration for PS5. I was playing Space Marines with a couple friends, one of whom is playing on PC, so we've been able to crossplay with voice chat.
Simplex is cool, but it's more of a Signal/SMS replacement than Matrix. It doesn't really do rooms as you might want, and discovery of peers is pretty manual.
Cool tech, just not a Discord replacement.
Could we add Zulip? I think it even has IRC integration if I’m not mistaken.
Maybe Revolt or Matrix?
I see everyone suggesting revolt but what about teamspeak?
XMPP, IRC....
You can try matrix if you're a masochist.
Revolt chat
Discord, the social chat app popular with the video game community, has met with investment bankers in recent weeks to discuss preparations for an initial public offering as soon as this year, two people familiar with the talks said.
[...]
The people, who requested anonymity because the conversations are confidential, cautioned that the talks were still exploratory and that I.P.O. plans remained subject to change.
Discord knows everything about its users. Why don't its users get to know about the future of their app
Privacy for Me but not for Thee.
Unfortunately this is probably going to be a buy for me.
Seeing how the market reacted to the enshittification of Reddit, means that Discord probably has a lot of upside on the share price. The parallels between the two services can’t be ignored.
reddit and discord goes hand in hand, since they often are used in conjuction with each other, where they are censured on reddit they go and complain discord.
Run away.
💩
It's good timing that I've been learning Docker to run Jellyfin and arr. Guess I'll look into throwing matrix or mattermost on there now, too.
I'm glad I deleted my account a while ago.
Another tough but not impossible migration for my crew, but there isn't a good enough alternative yet. Plus they finally got around to fixing streaming on Linux, apparently, and I'm about to swap back once my new m.2 is installed.