Discord Is Changing, These Leaks Tell Us Why

Bellular News
423K subscribers
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206K views 3 days ago
Discord is entering a new era. Waves of changes to the platform are incoming right as the Financial Times reports what goal they have in mind. 00:00 Discord's Next Phase …...more
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going public = costs go up, quality goes down. rip.
3.8K
Never be afraid to remind corpos that no app is irreplaceable
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I think the problem with Discord trying to hyper-scale their business is that we've seen the end-state of this before and everyone is tired of it. When the news of the IPO started going around, everyone I know started looking for suitable alternatives because "They're going to Skype themselves"
3K
Discord needs to realize it is a chat platform. It is incredibly easy to remake. If it goes too hard, the cost to switch to something else is literally 15 seconds of one's time.
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The Problem is "we have seen this before". Every Single Company that goes PUBLIC, their products end up become worse and more expensive. Private Companies simply need to be Profitable, Public Companies need to make ALL DA MONEY IN DA WORLD for their Shareholders who demand constant, unending growth. In short, Going Public never ends well, it doesn't help that the people running said public companies don't even have any skin in the game, so they don't care what happens to the company.
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it's ridiculous how repetitive this is and how common the "explode population, enshitify, sell out, get replaced by new exploding service" is
2.3K
Valve has the opportunity depending on how enshitified Discord gets, to do major overhauls to their voice chat system and make a discord like thing built into steam and further the whole "Valve makes good product, Valve maintains said product, competition shoots themself in the foot" thing.
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We, the gamers, will do what we always do.. move on to the next platform..
1.7K
I wish Steam had bought them in 2016 or so. No denying Steam group and community chatting could use improving and Discord could use direction without needing to heavily monetize. Discord could be so much better if they designed solely for the user.
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infinite growth in a finite system is impossible and corporate jackoffs will never understand that fact.
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Gonna have to watch a 2 minute ad in the middle of trying to lead a raid while on the final boss.
1K
Advertising is the best way to make sure i never want to engage with your product.
1.1K
discords priority will shift from customer satisfaction to shareholder satisfaction.
523
Deviantart did that and boy did the site fall apart. Discord is chasing after its own death
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I don't really get who is foolish enough to invest in Discord. Gamers are not a good audience for monetizing previously free services. They've already ditched Discord equivalents several times in the past. They killed Skype, they killed Ventrillo, they killed AIM, they killed, ICQ, and they even basically killed IRC at this point. Discord is not irreplaceable.
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Discord competitors this is your time to shine.
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I have been PC gaming since the 1990s. We always used these group platforms to coordinate our games and playtime. I can't tell you the graveyard of programs we have used over the years. Discord will join them and this IPO will be trash soon after.
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When ads disrupt voice channels, check how fast we can move to another platform 🚀
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Loot Boxes, Ads, Worsened UI, going public... Yup, we are seeing another company chase the line dragon again. If they are not careful, they are gonna become roommates with Skype.
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Switching from Discord is absolutely trivial for me. We use it to communicate via voice when we game. There are a gazillion options for that. They need to be a bit careful here.
34
I went from Ventrilo to Skype to Teamspeak to Discord and now I'll have to find a new home again. Sigh
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Revolt is out there. Functions just like discord but open source. Discord if they take a dump, they lose users and losing users is fatal. "It's hard to make people move" yet people left Skype rather easily the moment things started to get ugly. Revolt is that key. I'd encourage people to make a side Revolt account. Call it a life raft in case the Discord Ship sinks.
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Can't wait for Discord to reveal their LLM trained on every server data. Wonder how many people stored private information on their servers.
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compared to the general public, gamers are more on alert for enshitification and are more likely to go out of their way to reject it. good luck discord
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I teary eyed look forward to a future where the public all follows a list that shows products and foods going thru Enshittification and we all choose at once to stop spending money on them. I have a dream.
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The problem with Discord thinking they are going to take over other parts of my life is the issue I have with all these live service games: I don't have room for your "service" in my life so stop trying to force yourself in! I have my group of friends, a couple servers where I can talk to like minded folks on a given topic, but amazingly enough - no one is playing games and these folks aren't on my other socials' friends lists! So yeah, no thanks!
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The usual business model of free sign on the door till the hall is filled then lock everyone in and charge a fee to leave or stay
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Thank you for helping normalize the term enshittification
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I switched from Skype to discord for live chatting with my friends while gaming because it just worked better and wasn't over monetized at the time. I really hate seeing the patterns behind where Discord is going, and if they do end up putting ads all over the place and making it an awful experience to use, I'm just going to drop it. Apps are replaceable. When one becomes too heavily monetized, another will be created by people who hate the monetization to replace it. The cycle repeats, but at least they'll be good early on.
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I am almost convinced they made their standard voice activated sound gate worse so their Krisp AI option looks way better by comparison. My keyboard didn't magically get louder Discord!
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I left social media years ago and used discord just to connect to friends. Can't wait for my friend talk app to turn into a social media
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If I was in charge of Discord, I would immediately stop the IPO plan. Not because I care about the users, oh no. I would stop the plan because the current stock market is taking a major nose dive, mostly caused by big tech's stocks falling like rocks. Who's going to invest in a company like Discord if even Amazon and Microsoft's lines are going down?
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The ads are super annoying but man, i get the monetization factor. Also, I'm tired of having all my services getting ads, and getting ads on paid tiers is pretty awful.
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Discord is basically updated IRC. I never understood why people think it was so novel when it’s core functionality is from 40 years ago.
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The problem with going public is that, ultimately, no one is invested in the actual long-term health of the company except you. All investors care about is the current value of the stocks and whether they're going up and down, meaning you get a lot of people who are short-sighted and will pressure you to make short-term growth decisions that they can cash out on. This is why everything in the tech world turns to crap eventually, and it's why Discord going public will inevitably result in the product's demise, and since they don't have anything else going for them it will destroy their company.
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Discord was necessary 10 years ago, now its nothing more than a nice to have. As soon as my experience within my own server is compromised I'm out.
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Can't wait until my voice calls get suddenly interrupted "We interrupt your voice call for these messages from our sponsors!" "Now back to your regularly scheduled voice call!"
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I can't imagine Discord surviving this. Money ruins EVERTHING.
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I disagree that the public at large is somehow hypocritical for wanting free stuff but hating ads. These large "free" platforms were sold as a LIE to the public. We were told and shown products that were seemingly free, told were free, and brought in under the pretense of receiving something for free. The public, at large, considers watching an Ad to BE A COST: a cost of time and a cost of inconvenience. Thus, the product is not being given as free. When people are told that a product is free, they naturally assume what they are receiving negligible in it's cost compared to the revenue the company generates. This is because most people are good people and don't assume other people are lying to them about things which feel intuitive. When companies do not share their balance sheets we all have to assume everything is fine because they would change their policy if it wasn't. Calling customers hypocrites for wanting free stuff yet hating ads is misdirecting the blame, which is on companies for selling a lie to the public about the short and long term profitability strategy for the company actually works. The public was told this lie by the entire tech industry and somehow they are at fault for believing it? No. The fault lies with the liar, not the gullible. It's coming to a head because reality is slowly catching up to the hype train faster than companies can create new scams. A huge portion of the tech industry is built on false speculation, untenable promises, and shitty customer experiences. Sooner or later the tech industry is going to experience a monumental crash. They are built on the promise of infinite growth and the fundamental truth is that infinity is impossible. I would 110% pay a subscription for a service rather than deal with advertising or having my personal data harvested for AI training & psychological advertising. I've had nitro for a long time so I am willing put my money where my mouth is. I've paid subs for multiple services when I feel the product on offer is good. However, I also know that if discord goes public... I will have to pay both for nitro and with ads/data harvesting... because people won't invest in discord and NOT expect to get FAST returns on their investment. So if they do go public, I will leave. I will not be held hostage by someone trying to both empty my pockets and go through my diary. enshittification is not just a buzzword. It's an ironclad principle of public corporations delaying the inevitable truth: that nothing can grow forever in a finite world.
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Steam just needs to develop its own discord type service. It would kill the cycle of a new gaming chat client popping up every other year.
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