this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
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Has Discord ever been remotely profitable though? I can't imagine enough people put money into it that they haven't just been bleeding cash for 10 years. It's hard for me to exactly call it greed if they're just trying to get back to even. I could imagine it being completely enshittified in the name of profit in the future though.
We have no clue if they're profitable since they're private... but given they've laid off quite a few employees and are now scrabbling for pennies through these ads, we can only assume they've been, at best, net zero, and likely running a deficit ever since their inception. And interest rates have turned off the VC faucets.
bro, they employ literally like 200 people, most of those aren't devs, based on the sheer amount of people that pay for nitro there is zero way discord isn't profitable.
I mean they're almost certainly VC funded, the entire strategy is grow big, fast, burn a lot of money doing so, but establish such an aggressive market spot that you can 10x the profit and nobody moves anywhere. You're telling me we aren't in the latter part of that scale?
They would probably be fairing better in terms of profitability if they didn't have to host every instance themselves, but apparently that's too difficult to conjure up. Or if they implemented actual features, but whatever.
Exactly. Everyone wants an ad-free platform that's free to use. Either you pay for the product or you are the product.
I don't think paying will stop enshitification.
Line.
Go.
Up.
It's not a publicly traded company smh
They're probably trying to IPO like Reddit.
Maybe they are, but they fought off a Microsoft buyout only a few years ago, seems if they wanted to sell out, they would have done it then. Meanwhile, we don't have financial figures (since it is a private company) but reportedly they are profitable Regardless, it's just speculation and the "line must go up" meme generally refers to increasing share price to enrich investors and c suite, which... Doesn't make as much sense for a private company who's shares do not trade on an exchange.
Was the Microsoft offer before or after interest rates rose? That has been the catalyst for a lot of the enshitification online recently.
2021, which was before the rate hikes which started in 2022, my conjecture would be Discord wouldn't be hit as hard as some other online sites that are enshittifying, simply due to one fact... They're not ad-based, they make money from direct subscriptions from users, there is something to be said for the other issues with cost of living rising so people have less spending money in general, it is possible they've taken a hit, but it's impossible to say as they don't have to publicly disclose that sort of info.
Does Discord make a profit? A lot of big tech has historically operated at a loss, even with subscriptions. Not sure if that data is available since they're private.