Technology

You mean auto deleting?

discord on FOSS projects

I don't understand why this was even a thing to begin with. FOSS projects using non-FOSS platforms is kinda weird, especially platforms with unclear financial situations like Discord.

Matrix is nice, but it's still very bad UX wise.

I've used it on and off for years now, and about 2-4 times a month it loses my chat view encryption keys, and loses me my entire chat history. It also regularly has sync issues between devices signed into the same account, and is relatively slow sometimes to send messages.

Of course, that's just my anecdotal experience, but I've tried many messaging platforms over the years, and while Matrix (and multiple of its clients, primarily Element) is the most feature-complete compared to Discord, it's nowhere near properly usable long-term for a mass-market audience.

Same here, honestly. I would have thought they'd say something like "hey, we're going to delete anything 1 year or older starting next month, and reduce that amount slowly down to 6 months with time" just to give people a general warning in case there was anything they were storing through Discord that they wanted to keep.

There's also just a ton of optimizations they could have done. Are people repeatedly uploading the same file, with the same name and contents? merge them into one CDN link. They'd probably save hundreds of terabytes of data just from reposted memes alone through a hash matching algorithm.

Da fuck is your resolution?

That makes no sense. The 24MP RAW files from my camera at 25MB, no way a PNG or JPEG of a 4K (8MP) monitor are anywhere close to that big.

Discord got big in online gaming because they offered a VOIP and text chat browser cliemt. Just copy or type the short link and you're in in a minute. They also did free hosting which was huge.

Compared to Teamspeak or Ventrilo, literally just eliminating the steps of downloading a client, installing it, and typing in an IP address caused them to explode overnight. Also you could "host" without changing router settings (most kids/students have to ask their parents or jump through hoops for this).

Technically there was stuff like Skype but that never had the convenient team speak style chat rooms to drop in and out of freely.

Within months of suddenly getting popular, discord had a huge userbase that everybody was using already, and that momentum got us to the point where in some aspects its even replacing the role of wiki's and forums even though its terrible at it.

Its really convenient if you've got a group of friends spread out across the country for gaming. The voice channels allow people to jump in and out at will. No calling each other. That and bots are really eady to build for it. Sure its all unencrypted but im not putting anything of real value into it.

We've found it to be the "least bad option" for DnD. Have a Discord window open for everyone to video chat in, have a browser window open with Owlbear Rodeo or Foundry / Forge for your tokens and character sheets, all works smoothly enough. The text chat is sufficient for sending the DM a private message; for group chat to share art of the things you've just run into or organise the next session.

Completely agree that for anything "less transient", then the UX is beyond awful and trying to find anything historical is a massive PITA.

What an overreaction. Also FYI the free file limit was 8MB two years ago before they raised the limit to 25MB, so if anything it's gotten better.

Anything that wants to meaningfully compete with Discord will probably also need to be able to near-seamlessly port over existing Discord servers to the new platform, since it's so established now. Is there a competitor that can do that?

Ok but why are you so angry about it?

I’ve been using it for years and haven’t had to pay a dime.

How have they harmed you with their free app?

It took me a lot of convincing to get my friends on Signal instead of WhatsApp. I believe WhatsApp was talking about adding advertising or charging money, and I used that to get people to switch.

This reminds me of the argument I see from Linux users that Linux is just as easy to set up as Windows. I think it doesn't occur to people making that argument that most people never even set up Windows. It's just on their computer when they get it.

The setup needs to be fast and easy for people to consider it. Nobody will spend even 5 minutes figuring something out these days.

Edit to add that a bunch of younger people have never had a computer or laptop. They do their computer stuff on a phone or possibly a tablet and they definitely never did anything technical like reinstall the OS.

My vote is for Matrix