6 mo. ago • 95%

Discord starts down the dangerous road of ads this week

arstechnica.com Discord starts down the dangerous road of ads this week

Discord's first real foray into ads seems minimally intrusive.

Technology @lemmy.ml Discord starts down the dangerous road of ads this week

51 comments

"Choose not to engage with them..."

No. The first time I SEE an advertisement, I'm removing Discord and telling my friends to find other paths. Fuck greedy morons selling my time against my will.

48
- Exactly! Ads are designed to force you to engage with them. Even noticing the ad at all is engaging with it, and they've got teams of psychologists figuring out how to make that second of engagement influence you.
  
  People who dismiss the influence of advertisements seem to forget that companies wouldn't spend a combined $615 billion globally every year on something that people can just "choose" not to engage with.
  
  25
  
  Genuine question, no snark: what do you think a company like discord should do for revenue? I agree that ads suck, and selling of personal data is gross, but are there good examples out there of orgs generating revenue in an agreeable way that doesn't violate their customers while maintaining or surpassing their expenses?
  
  2
- Would you pay for Discord? That is the problem everyone thinks everything is free but running stuff costs money.
  
  9
  
  I'm donating 5€/month to Signal because as far as I'm concerned they're doing good work.
  
  I wouldn't pay for Discord.
  
  4
  
  I've paid for Discord Nitro for at least a few years now. Primarily I wanted to do my part to stave off exactly this sort of thing.
  
  This feels bad. I don't like this whatsoever.
  
  4
  
  I paid and still get peppered with their promotion. So I stopped paying, then if it gets worse I will uninstall and use the web app as you can block elements with the ad blockers. (so even site hosted stuff you can single out elements to block. )
  
  edit: yeah, unfortunately I can't really just stop using it entirely, until my regular group server and some of the game's server move somewhere else.
  
  4
  
  I don't have to pay to use Matrix/Element.
  
  Also, how much money? Their entire purpose is to maximize profit. It's not about keeping the lights on.
  
  0
  
  I don't have to pay to use Matrix/Element.
  
  Also, how much money? Their entire purpose is to maximize profit. It's not about keeping the lights on.
  
  I don't think you're capable of understanding this, though.
  
  0
- Sucks because yeah, we're now used to being on Discord by default. Makes me miss the TeamSpeak/Ventrilo days.
  
  7
  
  Ventrilo
  
  holy shit, it's still around
  
  https://www.ventrilo.com/
  
  Same with teamspeak
  
  https://www.teamspeak.com/en/
  
  3
- I am in 25+ Discord servers for various topics/projects, and sure speaking to friends is one of them and we could migrate away, but that's about 5% of my Discord usage. What am I supposed to do about all the others? I don't have a choice in what platform a given thing has chosen to use. Sure I can just refuse to use it, but then I'm just cut off from the communities I'm part of, which is a much worse outcome.
  
  So what's the solution? "Just delete Discord, and with it half of your social life" doesn't sound great. I would love for everyone to migrate away, but they aren't.
  
  2
  
  Don't choose to be a victim just because they've managed to tie a carrot on a stick.
  
  2
- I mean, it is a free service that costs you nothing so they have to cover their costs somehow
  
  0
  
  I'm a developer and see their stories about moving databases and it's quite cumbersome at their scale. So there are real costs and covering those costs aren't always easy. Most people don't want to pay. Not sure what the alternative is either.
  
  1
If people accept this now, it'll only get worse. Give a company an inch and it'll take a country

18
- Of course they will, people stuck with Windows, people stuck with Google, people stuck with Reddit, people will stick with Discord.
  
  8
  
  I know. I already bailed Discord since they personally screwed me over. This'll just be a standard roll over and take it for most people.
  
  1
Why is discord a business in the first place, what even is their product, my data?

15
- I mean most probably yeah, but they have also been progressively locking more and more functionalities behind paid tiers.
  
  Now that they have fully penetrated and locked the market, killed any potential competitors, and become the default, I assume their "product" will be to make the free tier become less and less functional while also getting monetized in more annoying ways. If people don't like it maybe they should have known better than to make it the default.
  
  Unfortunate.
  
  17
  
  this is normal enshittification, we just move on to the next shit.
  
  16
- No doubt it does. especially damning if you look into the history of the founder. Discord's data is worth too much not to be used. They even have it on the ToS that they can transcribe voice calls.
  
  5
  
  Do you mean “transcribe”, maybe?
  
  2
- The paid subscription.
  
  2
  
  I don't know anybody that uses discord and pays for the subscription. They're gonna be really sorry when they try to force the subscription stuff onto people, and it backfires.
  
  I've seen it slowly being pushed on me in increasingly intrusive ways. So far I've been able to ignore it, but we'll see how long that lasts.
  
  1
- Sit down boomer.
  
  -1
I wonder if Pi Hole will be able to block the ads.

4
- I’ve had success with a mix of snort and pihole. Lots of ads seem to violate some RFC and snort blocks it. It’ll even break ads in the Apple TV YouTube app. You just get a black screen while ads play.
  
  8
  
  If you use an android device, like a fire stick, you can block 100% of those YouTube ads with a simple app. It doesn't break them, they just don't show up at all.
  
  1
  
  Thanks for the info!
  
  1
This is the best summary I could come up with:

Discord had long been strongly opposed to ads, but starting this week, it's giving video game makers the ability to advertise to its users.

The introduction of so-called Sponsored Quests marks a notable change from the startup's previous business model, but, at least for now, it seems much less intrusive than the ads shoved into other social media platforms, especially since Discord users can choose not to engage with them.

Discord senior product communications manager Swaleha Carlson confirmed to Ars Technica that Sponsored Quests launch this week.

On Saturday, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that it viewed a slide from a slideshow Discord shows to game developers regarding the ads that reads: "We’ll get you in front of players.

Sellis told WSJ that Discord will target ads depending on users' age, geographic location data, and gameplay.

In 2021, Discord enjoyed a nearly three-times revenue boost that it attributed to subscription sales for Nitro, which adds features like HD video streaming and up to 500MB uploads.

The original article contains 966 words, the summary contains 166 words. Saved 83%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

3
IRC still exists.

3
- That doesn't help much. Maybe if your friend group is around 40+ years old, and has been on the net since the 90s. But it's not a comparable product. Matrix with element is the closest foss alternative, but even then it has clunky ux, and spaces are a subpar replacement to discord servers.
  
  I wish that wasn't the case but it is. The world needs a foss discord/slack option with an open protocol like matrix. If anyone knows of any projects in progress please let me know!
  
  16
  
  i dont fully know revolt.gg 's protocol but i think its open source and basically a discord clone
  
  4
- I think Matrix/Element is the proper replacement for Discord.
  
  3
On the one hand, I'm pretty anti-ad and I do my best to avoid seeing them - on the other hand I'm a game developer and this specific implementation sounds pretty cool

My friends and communities are all pretty entrenched in Discord, so I'm stuck with it for better or worse

3
Would you even call these "ads"? It's more like a sponsorship or something

2
- What would you call an ad?
  
  1
  
  The clear visual the headline is trying to convey is like a banner ad taking up space in the ui; not a sponsorship.
  
  1
I don't love this, but I use it for free. What can I say really?

1

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