People over on Reddit are very toxic anytime Discord is discussed. Even my friends seem to think Discord is awful because Nitro even exists. While I don't agree with everything Discord does, they...
People over on Reddit are very toxic anytime Discord is discussed. Even my friends seem to think Discord is awful because Nitro even exists. While I don't agree with everything Discord does, they need to make money somehow and they already offer you so much for free. The screen sharing, audio streaming, file hosting features must cost lots in just hosting, nevermind the development and maintenance costs they must have.
I don't know what my point is. I don't love everything Discord does but people seem so entitled to want everything for free and are offended that evil Discord dares try to make any money of it 乁( •_• )ㄏ
My dream is to live in post scarcity society where the idea of money is just this funny little thing we used to do. Fully automated luxury gay space communism in short.
My dream is to live in post scarcity society where the idea of money is just this funny little thing we used to do.
Fully automated luxury gay space communism in short.
This sounds very bad for the environment and for all non-human life. There will always be and should always be scarcity. The Earth has limited resources even if energy is solved. Yes, everyone...
This sounds very bad for the environment and for all non-human life.
There will always be and should always be scarcity. The Earth has limited resources even if energy is solved.
Yes, everyone should should have a reasonable standard of living, but beyond that our current standard of living (us all writing on the internet for leisure) isn't sustainable without huge changes in how society functions.
I mean, assuming we're talking about full-on Star Trek utopia here, matter could easily be mined from elsewhere or probably even created given infinite energy.
I mean, assuming we're talking about full-on Star Trek utopia here, matter could easily be mined from elsewhere or probably even created given infinite energy.
A true post scarcity society would not be limited to single planet, but also have easy access to all the resources in the asteroid belt, and other planets. Of course some sort of system would be...
A true post scarcity society would not be limited to single planet, but also have easy access to all the resources in the asteroid belt, and other planets. Of course some sort of system would be necessary to ensure overconsumption doesn't happen in a closed environment.
...Too bad we don't have something like that on Earth lol.
Do you have any thoughts on what I'll call "the contentment problem" for post scarcity societies? A description of economics I've heard that stuck with me was "allocation of finite resources in a...
Do you have any thoughts on what I'll call "the contentment problem" for post scarcity societies?
A description of economics I've heard that stuck with me was "allocation of finite resources in a landscape of infinite need". Some pithy way for expressing the idea that what people want or expect expands based on what others have or is available/possible.
Personally I'm content at a low threshold. I'm fine with boring food, basic shelter, good conversation, and 1080p with an internet connection. I can appreciate that this isn't true for other people, though. They may want to have lots of kids, travel across the globe for holidays, or buy a McMansion to keep up with the Joneses.
Take the same variety of people and drop them in a world with auto-fabs and Dyson Spheres and all that, and the person that wants kids-that-want-kids will add ~10^24 new people who want things in 50 generations, with 3 kids on average. Each wanting and deserving a good quality of life. The person that wanted 120Hz 8k monitors hunger for more triangles will never be slaked.
It feels like you very quickly end up in rationing, or an ugly past of Malthusianism/eugenics.
I don't think authors have to try to solve "the contentment problem" if they don't want to. They can just point to things like how Malthusianism played out and say when society advances good behavior will naturally emerge.
You could introduce contentment as something softly imposed by society/technology. "Most people choose to take Soma/Drooz which makes them love retro games and confined spaces."
You could also explain a lot of it away with something like simulation. You want an infinite wilderness to explore? Games with lazy evaluation/procedural generation already do that.
As someone who hasn't checked out a lot of sci-fi media I'm curious if there's stuff I'm not thinking about?
Those are some very good points. One thing that immediately comes to mind is an excerpt from a book in the The Culture Series by Iain M. Banks. In the books, resource management (along with most...
Those are some very good points. One thing that immediately comes to mind is an excerpt from a book in the The Culture Series by Iain M. Banks. In the books, resource management (along with most other things) is controlled by Minds; highly advanced artificial intelligences that would scold you for referring to them as an artificial intelligence.
So, a guy wants to create a vast interconnected cable-car system about the size of a small city. So he asks the mind for all the things he needs, which the mind obliges to but limits the size of the system of and number of cars because it needs resources for the daily functioning of the planet. That's only as I recall it.
So, there will never be an "ideal" post-scarcity society because no matter what you do, resources will always be finite; so there must always be a mediator, something that controls the flow of resources and makes sure nobody is going insane and building thousands of McMansions for their thousands of children.
I really wanna read these books. I tried Consider Phlebas two times and stopped. I keep wondering if those are books that are better to read, or read about... And I think I'm addicted to Greg Egan...
I really wanna read these books. I tried Consider Phlebas two times and stopped. I keep wondering if those are books that are better to read, or read about... And I think I'm addicted to Greg Egan right now anyway.
I'll one up you: The Culture series by Iain M. Banks. IMO even better then Star Trek because there aren't any hot alien babes (genetically modified humans don't count imo). They break my immersion.
I'll one up you:
The Culture series by Iain M. Banks.
IMO even better then Star Trek because there aren't any hot alien babes (genetically modified humans don't count imo). They break my immersion.
Yeah Nitro was fine. I was one of the earliest subscribers to it, even. I feel that much of what Discord does nowadays completely goes by me, like using it for non-gaming purposes, activities,...
Yeah Nitro was fine. I was one of the earliest subscribers to it, even.
I feel that much of what Discord does nowadays completely goes by me, like using it for non-gaming purposes, activities, etc. But then, who cares? Not my problem, and hey I'm happy they have a free tier. The software as it originally came out would have been fantastic even if it were paid-only. Still is.
I guess if I had to pick something to criticize, it'd be super reactions in particular and stickers (of which I think super reactions are ultimately a very specific type) in general, as they're quite garish and cannot be fully disabled - which makes business sense as they're a paid-for feature. But that's only because they are garish, not because I dislike others having them. If they allowed me to disable animations only for those I'd be perfectly okay with them existing.
And that Discord nowadays gets used as a very crappy type of forum... that's hardly on the devs. That's on companies wanting to save costs for a separate Discourse instance while also shedding much searchability so they can control how/where people find their information on official pages instead of stumbling upon old or criticial forum entries. It sucks, but it's not something I'd criticize Discord for.
Like I said, pretty much Nitro since day 1. Was always useful for the uploads and the other-server-emoji.
Regarding people wanting to use Discord as a forum... I've seen people on Reddit suggesting migrating from Reddit to Discord which leaves me flabbergasted. How they can even be compared is beyond...
Regarding people wanting to use Discord as a forum...
I've seen people on Reddit suggesting migrating from Reddit to Discord which leaves me flabbergasted. How they can even be compared is beyond me. Discord does have some forum-like features (with the relatively new threads and stuff) but their discoverability is not great. But the real deal breaker is that they're not indexable by search engines. I can't be the only one adding "reddit" to my searches for better results - not possible with Discord.
A lot of game communities and even non-game communities (e.g., Godot) use Discord as a Q&A or support forum which is understandable because it's quick and easy to get help, but then everything is lost to the ether. Any questions you have asked will not be discoverable and will just end up being asked again, and again, and again.
They just released a full-blown forum channel, where each top level post is like a forum post of old. I commend them for having integrated so many community functions in one service, with a good...
Discord does have some forum-like features
They just released a full-blown forum channel, where each top level post is like a forum post of old.
I commend them for having integrated so many community functions in one service, with a good API to boot. The admin possibilities are astounding.
Haters can prop up their Matrix servers and try to convince people to use them.
For sure, I've used them. Great, but my problem with it remains that it's unindexable by search engines. Knowledge put on there is not very discoverable.
For sure, I've used them. Great, but my problem with it remains that it's unindexable by search engines. Knowledge put on there is not very discoverable.
Discord replaces Reddit's Chat feature, but that's it. They are very different beats that do very different things. We are going to lose so much knowledge because of Discords ephemeral nature.
Discord replaces Reddit's Chat feature, but that's it. They are very different beats that do very different things. We are going to lose so much knowledge because of Discords ephemeral nature.
I don’t think it’s necessarily that people expect everything to be free. But when we’re all used to the “give them a good service now to draw them in, then extract money once we’ve gotten a user...
I don’t think it’s necessarily that people expect everything to be free. But when we’re all used to the “give them a good service now to draw them in, then extract money once we’ve gotten a user base” tech phase, that changing and all our apps we’ve built established things around al starting to squeeze us for subscriptions and purchases is just beyond exhausting.
Hm, I think it's unfortunate that the consensus in this thread has fallen on "but they have to make money, don't you see?" Of course Discord has to make money, we don't live in a society where...
Exemplary
Hm, I think it's unfortunate that the consensus in this thread has fallen on "but they have to make money, don't you see?" Of course Discord has to make money, we don't live in a society where they can offer such a large, expensive service for free for long. Jes's article is more nuanced than that though.
They aren't just saying that Discord shouldn't charge money for features to support the rest of the service - they say at the beginning they are only talking about the aesthetic perks. Their criticism has two points, which I think are rather sharp:
Art and creative works are good for the world and good for people, and they should be shared freely to maximise that positive impact. Selling them - or, more precisely, letting people use and enjoy them only if they pay to do so - misuses that positive impact in a way that makes the world worse.
Discord makes aesthetic things - avatar decorations, profile themes and so on - and sells them, which divides users visibly into haves and have-nots, and they lean on this division to make money. They want users to feel left out for not having the cool decorations, a psychological need, and offer to meet that need if you pay them.
it is a system that intentionally makes people feel longing
& worthlessness to sell them something. it's selfish.
You can quibble with that argument - for instance I think it's taking the whole thing a bit too seriously - but we know that it's a very common anxiety for people to not have the shiny, fashionable, popular things that their peers have. I think it's reasonable to say "Discord shouldn't create that anxiety so they can exploit it for money". I think it's not quite fair to collapse that down into "Discord shouldn't sell features for money." I mean, come on, the article's not even that long.
I am far more in favour of locking aesthetics behind a paywall than function. If Discord is free and everyone can use the actual functions for free - they can create their own discord server,...
I am far more in favour of locking aesthetics behind a paywall than function. If Discord is free and everyone can use the actual functions for free - they can create their own discord server, speak on it, chat on it, at the same quality - isn't that better than having to pay for actual features?
For example, I loathe twitter's model, because twitter actually treats you differently based on if you pay or if you don't. Your tweets are seen more if you pay, and thus there's an actual divide between "haves" and "have nots". But on discord, that doesn't happen.
Yea I agree with this. Creating psychological reasons to pay is better than creating physical reasons to pay. In fact, if you re-framed this argument in terms of games, in which lots of ink has...
Yea I agree with this.
Creating psychological reasons to pay is better than creating physical reasons to pay. In fact, if you re-framed this argument in terms of games, in which lots of ink has been already been spilled, I think you’d find a hard time convincing people otherwise.
Yeah, I get that, and people say it a lot - let features be free and fund them with aesthetics. It probably makes for a more usable service. Maybe it doesn't make for a nicer, more chill...
Yeah, I get that, and people say it a lot - let features be free and fund them with aesthetics. It probably makes for a more usable service. Maybe it doesn't make for a nicer, more chill community? I was interested to read someone take the opposite stance.
I didn't have time to really type of my thoughts after posting this, and was surprised as well to see the consensus land so quickly and overwhelming on, as you say, "Discord needs to sell things"....
I didn't have time to really type of my thoughts after posting this, and was surprised as well to see the consensus land so quickly and overwhelming on, as you say, "Discord needs to sell things". Because I think the article quite intentionally draws a distinction between selling things that are functional — larger upload sizes, better voice quality, etc — and things that are purely aesthetic, and focuses on the latter. The distinction to the author seems to be that the former category costs discord money and it makes sense that they need to charge for it, presumably even with a premium.
The specific thing that the author takes issue with is charging for things that don't cost Discord anything, because ultimately they don't do anything other than to satisfy some psychological need. And as Jes (and you) point out, the conditions giving rise to that need in this specific case are artificially created by Discord and exploited by them for a profit. Specifically
this fosters two feelings in the basic user:
a sense of envy
(i wish i could do that. i want to look like that.)
a sense of self consciousness
(why can't i do that? why can't i look like that?)
Now you can argue that this isn't actually the case, and that most users are unaffected by these (even subconscious) feelings. I personally find that a bit hard to believe. We see this dynamic all the time in the "real world" as well as online. Luxury items are often sold at such a high premium not only because of quality craftsmanship (which is often true), but also because of the social status conferred upon the customer by having that item. You see it online too. The rise of paid skins in video games is another example of a purely aesthetic feature being leveraged for money because of its exclusivity. All of this is exacerbated by the demographics of some of these services, with both Discord and skin games (thinking specifically of Fortnight) skewing younger and more impressionable.
I agree that the article is probably a bit over the top, but I do think that the core point rings true. That the aesthetic features are superfluous doesn't mitigate the issue; in fact, that is the issue being raised by the author.
Thanks, yeah, you get to some key points there. Like I said in my other reply the usual argument is always that features should be free and nice aesthetic things should pay for them, so it's...
Thanks, yeah, you get to some key points there. Like I said in my other reply the usual argument is always that features should be free and nice aesthetic things should pay for them, so it's interesting to see someone saying "actually it makes sense to pay for features, you're providing a service to me, but paying for aesthetics that don't cost you anything to make might actually be a net bad".
It kind of reminds me of MMOs with skins, as you mentioned - anyone who's playing something like WoW or RuneScape knows that there's a lot of frustration and teeth-gnashing over how garish and eye-catching the paid-for stuff becomes so that it continues to stand out, and how it clashes with the game's base aesthetic and is distracting and annoying even if you don't envy it. Actually, that's starting to happen with Discord too! Some kind of aesthetic treadmill.
I'm confused as to what the OP of this article wants Discord (and platforms like Discord) to do? Server costs aren't free, app development isn't free, marketing isn't free, trust and safety...
I'm confused as to what the OP of this article wants Discord (and platforms like Discord) to do? Server costs aren't free, app development isn't free, marketing isn't free, trust and safety specialists aren't free.
There are a lot of reasons to hate on Discord right now, but their monetization schemes aren't one of them. They provide an insanely valuable platform for free with very few functional limitations which can be easily circumvented with outside resources.
Sure, but sharing that idea through complaining about... discord nitro... just feels really odd haha. Maybe adequate food, water, shelter, and healthcare should take priority in our raging against...
Sure, but sharing that idea through complaining about... discord nitro... just feels really odd haha. Maybe adequate food, water, shelter, and healthcare should take priority in our raging against the machine.
Attacking discord of all things is what doesn't make sense to me here. Discords free usage is incredible for a free service. Nitro is pretty reasonably priced and is a notable improvement if you...
Attacking discord of all things is what doesn't make sense to me here. Discords free usage is incredible for a free service. Nitro is pretty reasonably priced and is a notable improvement if you use a lot of the media services on it. There's so so many more websites I have beef with before even considering discord a problem. There's no ads. How do people think they keep the servers turned on?
I couldn't care less about the Nitro perks but servers and network infrastructures are expensive so they have to get their money somewhere. People want fancy stuff, they want to look cool, people...
I couldn't care less about the Nitro perks but servers and network infrastructures are expensive so they have to get their money somewhere.
People want fancy stuff, they want to look cool, people are buying older accounts in order to get the username they want... I'm probably going back to TeamSpeak and buy my own server.
Hm, I actually like Nitro. I was on Classic forever, but recently downgraded to their Basic plan, because it was cheaper and had everything I wanted. The only perk I really care about is the...
Hm, I actually like Nitro. I was on Classic forever, but recently downgraded to their Basic plan, because it was cheaper and had everything I wanted. The only perk I really care about is the emojis, which is completely superfluous. I use Discord a lot, and it offers so much for free already. Unlimited messages, unlimited image uploads, infinite search history. I'm happy to pay a couple dollars a month for it, because I would be devastated if it shut down!
I also like nitro. Muscle memory at this point knowing what reactions are best for what situation and being able to use all of them across servers is good. Seems like a small thing but I find it...
I also like nitro. Muscle memory at this point knowing what reactions are best for what situation and being able to use all of them across servers is good. Seems like a small thing but I find it fun to appropriately kekw something.
Discord has become, for me, personal scale forums. I don't see a lot of value in servers with, say, 20 or more people using it as such, but for 8 (a group of gaming friends), 3 (myself, my...
Discord has become, for me, personal scale forums. I don't see a lot of value in servers with, say, 20 or more people using it as such, but for 8 (a group of gaming friends), 3 (myself, my partner, and a friend we meet up with weekly online), and 2 (my partner and myself), it's incredibly useful. A place to share links, news, files (and yes, memes) throughout the day is fantastic.
As for Nitro... as others have mentioned, it's a free service, they need to monetize it to keep the lights on, and it's ad free. So I don't mind power users footing the bill, given that the base product is unhindered in just about every way.
I am not averse to paying a bit to help keep the lights on, my issue with Nitro is the pricing is the same if you have 2 people or 20,000 people on a server. I would like the nitro features, but...
I am not averse to paying a bit to help keep the lights on, my issue with Nitro is the pricing is the same if you have 2 people or 20,000 people on a server. I would like the nitro features, but there is no way I am paying what they are asking for my tiny server.
Nitro is there to pay for the free tier they offer. OP has to realize that things cost money, and I much prefer a company to ask money for something superficial like a skin or "super reactions"...
Nitro is there to pay for the free tier they offer. OP has to realize that things cost money, and I much prefer a company to ask money for something superficial like a skin or "super reactions" rather than something essential, like being to use a core function of the app.
I don't care that people have nitro, I care that I can't block it. I find the various nitro effects to be really garish and distracting. I wish there was a setting to make discord look normal again.
I don't care that people have nitro, I care that I can't block it.
I find the various nitro effects to be really garish and distracting. I wish there was a setting to make discord look normal again.
Maybe, if people were more willing to pay for Reddit gold, then Reddit Corporate would not be destroying itself right now chasing an IPO. The utter harmlessness of Nitro is is exactly what we...
Maybe, if people were more willing to pay for Reddit gold, then Reddit Corporate would not be destroying itself right now chasing an IPO. The utter harmlessness of Nitro is is exactly what we should be after. It allows people to contribute to a service they like, it does not create a caste system, and it might keep the companies people like from selling ads, selling data, and doing other dirty stuff to make bigger profits.
Someone said it best, Capitalism is bad. Commerce is not bad. Commerce is fine, people need to trade goods and services, that is natural, it is the capitalism part of commerce that is bad. If Discord makes a good product that people like then they should make a bit of profit off it. they should not being trying to suck their users dry and willing to burn down what they've made o do so. But if we want these things then people should be able to make a living off making them.
Computing itself is a caste system by that logic. The more money you have the greater access you have. Those whom don't have broadband (there's still lots!) are the lower caste. Or those whom have...
Computing itself is a caste system by that logic. The more money you have the greater access you have.
Those whom don't have broadband (there's still lots!) are the lower caste. Or those whom have metered connections.
Running even a moderately specced server at home easily costs $10/mo in electricity (for me locally closer to $15). That's a higher cost than Nitro, though i guess you could force your users to pay equally for costs.
Nitro is no caste system. Hell most of the features I don't give 2 cents about, and if paying for Nitro would let me remove them from my UI i'd probably pay.
I too am mad some random nitro user snatched my discriminator-free username before I could, despite being a Discord user since 2015 (so much for prioritizing older users), but there's no need for...
I too am mad some random nitro user snatched my discriminator-free username before I could, despite being a Discord user since 2015 (so much for prioritizing older users), but there's no need for such vitriol ;)
I know it’s a styling choice but I found that article extremely annoying to try to read. Anyway, about the actual content: It’s trying too hard. It’s not that deep. Really, it’s not. Comparing the...
I know it’s a styling choice but I found that article extremely annoying to try to read. Anyway, about the actual content: It’s trying too hard. It’s not that deep. Really, it’s not.
Comparing the use of custom emojis and background colors for your profile to a caste system? What a stretch. Yes it’s intentionally designed to make you want to pay for it, that’s how every product or service to ever exist has been. If you feel “longing and worthlessness” because you see someone else with Discord Nitro, you should probably go ahead and get off the internet.
People over on Reddit are very toxic anytime Discord is discussed. Even my friends seem to think Discord is awful because Nitro even exists. While I don't agree with everything Discord does, they need to make money somehow and they already offer you so much for free. The screen sharing, audio streaming, file hosting features must cost lots in just hosting, nevermind the development and maintenance costs they must have.
I don't know what my point is. I don't love everything Discord does but people seem so entitled to want everything for free and are offended that evil Discord dares try to make any money of it 乁( •_• )ㄏ
My dream is to live in post scarcity society where the idea of money is just this funny little thing we used to do.
Fully automated luxury gay space communism in short.
This sounds very bad for the environment and for all non-human life.
There will always be and should always be scarcity. The Earth has limited resources even if energy is solved.
Yes, everyone should should have a reasonable standard of living, but beyond that our current standard of living (us all writing on the internet for leisure) isn't sustainable without huge changes in how society functions.
I mean, assuming we're talking about full-on Star Trek utopia here, matter could easily be mined from elsewhere or probably even created given infinite energy.
I hope for Star Trek future, but know in my heart we'll get The Expanse future instead.
A true post scarcity society would not be limited to single planet, but also have easy access to all the resources in the asteroid belt, and other planets. Of course some sort of system would be necessary to ensure overconsumption doesn't happen in a closed environment.
...Too bad we don't have something like that on Earth lol.
Do you have any thoughts on what I'll call "the contentment problem" for post scarcity societies?
A description of economics I've heard that stuck with me was "allocation of finite resources in a landscape of infinite need". Some pithy way for expressing the idea that what people want or expect expands based on what others have or is available/possible.
Personally I'm content at a low threshold. I'm fine with boring food, basic shelter, good conversation, and 1080p with an internet connection. I can appreciate that this isn't true for other people, though. They may want to have lots of kids, travel across the globe for holidays, or buy a McMansion to keep up with the Joneses.
Take the same variety of people and drop them in a world with auto-fabs and Dyson Spheres and all that, and the person that wants kids-that-want-kids will add ~10^24 new people who want things in 50 generations, with 3 kids on average. Each wanting and deserving a good quality of life. The person that wanted 120Hz 8k monitors hunger for more triangles will never be slaked.
It feels like you very quickly end up in rationing, or an ugly past of Malthusianism/eugenics.
I don't think authors have to try to solve "the contentment problem" if they don't want to. They can just point to things like how Malthusianism played out and say when society advances good behavior will naturally emerge.
You could introduce contentment as something softly imposed by society/technology. "Most people choose to take Soma/Drooz which makes them love retro games and confined spaces."
You could also explain a lot of it away with something like simulation. You want an infinite wilderness to explore? Games with lazy evaluation/procedural generation already do that.
As someone who hasn't checked out a lot of sci-fi media I'm curious if there's stuff I'm not thinking about?
Those are some very good points. One thing that immediately comes to mind is an excerpt from a book in the The Culture Series by Iain M. Banks. In the books, resource management (along with most other things) is controlled by Minds; highly advanced artificial intelligences that would scold you for referring to them as an artificial intelligence.
So, a guy wants to create a vast interconnected cable-car system about the size of a small city. So he asks the mind for all the things he needs, which the mind obliges to but limits the size of the system of and number of cars because it needs resources for the daily functioning of the planet. That's only as I recall it.
So, there will never be an "ideal" post-scarcity society because no matter what you do, resources will always be finite; so there must always be a mediator, something that controls the flow of resources and makes sure nobody is going insane and building thousands of McMansions for their thousands of children.
Not if we got a Dyson Sphere, or something to that effect. And why would we restrict ourselves to Earth or the solar system?
That sounds awesome!
Read the Culture Series by Iain M. Banks! That's where the saying's from, well it was created by fans, but still.
I really wanna read these books. I tried Consider Phlebas two times and stopped. I keep wondering if those are books that are better to read, or read about... And I think I'm addicted to Greg Egan right now anyway.
Maybe start with The Hydrogen Sonata, or Excession. Those are my favourites.
But not until you've finished reading Greg Egan!
I ❤️ Egan
I would say Player Of Games as a starting point, although Excession is another great one.
You had me at luxury gay space
We have a phrase for that, Star Trek.
Not gay enough though.
The Culture?
Better!
Umm…it’s pretty gay.
I'll one up you:
The Culture series by Iain M. Banks.
IMO even better then Star Trek because there aren't any hot alien babes (genetically modified humans don't count imo). They break my immersion.
Yeah Nitro was fine. I was one of the earliest subscribers to it, even.
I feel that much of what Discord does nowadays completely goes by me, like using it for non-gaming purposes, activities, etc. But then, who cares? Not my problem, and hey I'm happy they have a free tier. The software as it originally came out would have been fantastic even if it were paid-only. Still is.
I guess if I had to pick something to criticize, it'd be super reactions in particular and stickers (of which I think super reactions are ultimately a very specific type) in general, as they're quite garish and cannot be fully disabled - which makes business sense as they're a paid-for feature. But that's only because they are garish, not because I dislike others having them. If they allowed me to disable animations only for those I'd be perfectly okay with them existing.
And that Discord nowadays gets used as a very crappy type of forum... that's hardly on the devs. That's on companies wanting to save costs for a separate Discourse instance while also shedding much searchability so they can control how/where people find their information on official pages instead of stumbling upon old or criticial forum entries. It sucks, but it's not something I'd criticize Discord for.
Like I said, pretty much Nitro since day 1. Was always useful for the uploads and the other-server-emoji.
Regarding people wanting to use Discord as a forum...
I've seen people on Reddit suggesting migrating from Reddit to Discord which leaves me flabbergasted. How they can even be compared is beyond me. Discord does have some forum-like features (with the relatively new threads and stuff) but their discoverability is not great. But the real deal breaker is that they're not indexable by search engines. I can't be the only one adding "reddit" to my searches for better results - not possible with Discord.
A lot of game communities and even non-game communities (e.g., Godot) use Discord as a Q&A or support forum which is understandable because it's quick and easy to get help, but then everything is lost to the ether. Any questions you have asked will not be discoverable and will just end up being asked again, and again, and again.
They just released a full-blown forum channel, where each top level post is like a forum post of old.
I commend them for having integrated so many community functions in one service, with a good API to boot. The admin possibilities are astounding.
Haters can prop up their Matrix servers and try to convince people to use them.
For sure, I've used them. Great, but my problem with it remains that it's unindexable by search engines. Knowledge put on there is not very discoverable.
Thats fair. Sadly not a way to bridge that outside of some sort of archival bot
There are some services that solve this.
None of it is indexed by search though, which is a big problem for any tech support kind of stuff.
Discord replaces Reddit's Chat feature, but that's it. They are very different beats that do very different things. We are going to lose so much knowledge because of Discords ephemeral nature.
I don’t think it’s necessarily that people expect everything to be free. But when we’re all used to the “give them a good service now to draw them in, then extract money once we’ve gotten a user base” tech phase, that changing and all our apps we’ve built established things around al starting to squeeze us for subscriptions and purchases is just beyond exhausting.
Hm, I think it's unfortunate that the consensus in this thread has fallen on "but they have to make money, don't you see?" Of course Discord has to make money, we don't live in a society where they can offer such a large, expensive service for free for long. Jes's article is more nuanced than that though.
They aren't just saying that Discord shouldn't charge money for features to support the rest of the service - they say at the beginning they are only talking about the aesthetic perks. Their criticism has two points, which I think are rather sharp:
You can quibble with that argument - for instance I think it's taking the whole thing a bit too seriously - but we know that it's a very common anxiety for people to not have the shiny, fashionable, popular things that their peers have. I think it's reasonable to say "Discord shouldn't create that anxiety so they can exploit it for money". I think it's not quite fair to collapse that down into "Discord shouldn't sell features for money." I mean, come on, the article's not even that long.
I am far more in favour of locking aesthetics behind a paywall than function. If Discord is free and everyone can use the actual functions for free - they can create their own discord server, speak on it, chat on it, at the same quality - isn't that better than having to pay for actual features?
For example, I loathe twitter's model, because twitter actually treats you differently based on if you pay or if you don't. Your tweets are seen more if you pay, and thus there's an actual divide between "haves" and "have nots". But on discord, that doesn't happen.
Yea I agree with this.
Creating psychological reasons to pay is better than creating physical reasons to pay. In fact, if you re-framed this argument in terms of games, in which lots of ink has been already been spilled, I think you’d find a hard time convincing people otherwise.
Yeah, I get that, and people say it a lot - let features be free and fund them with aesthetics. It probably makes for a more usable service. Maybe it doesn't make for a nicer, more chill community? I was interested to read someone take the opposite stance.
I didn't have time to really type of my thoughts after posting this, and was surprised as well to see the consensus land so quickly and overwhelming on, as you say, "Discord needs to sell things". Because I think the article quite intentionally draws a distinction between selling things that are functional — larger upload sizes, better voice quality, etc — and things that are purely aesthetic, and focuses on the latter. The distinction to the author seems to be that the former category costs discord money and it makes sense that they need to charge for it, presumably even with a premium.
The specific thing that the author takes issue with is charging for things that don't cost Discord anything, because ultimately they don't do anything other than to satisfy some psychological need. And as Jes (and you) point out, the conditions giving rise to that need in this specific case are artificially created by Discord and exploited by them for a profit. Specifically
Now you can argue that this isn't actually the case, and that most users are unaffected by these (even subconscious) feelings. I personally find that a bit hard to believe. We see this dynamic all the time in the "real world" as well as online. Luxury items are often sold at such a high premium not only because of quality craftsmanship (which is often true), but also because of the social status conferred upon the customer by having that item. You see it online too. The rise of paid skins in video games is another example of a purely aesthetic feature being leveraged for money because of its exclusivity. All of this is exacerbated by the demographics of some of these services, with both Discord and skin games (thinking specifically of Fortnight) skewing younger and more impressionable.
I agree that the article is probably a bit over the top, but I do think that the core point rings true. That the aesthetic features are superfluous doesn't mitigate the issue; in fact, that is the issue being raised by the author.
Thanks, yeah, you get to some key points there. Like I said in my other reply the usual argument is always that features should be free and nice aesthetic things should pay for them, so it's interesting to see someone saying "actually it makes sense to pay for features, you're providing a service to me, but paying for aesthetics that don't cost you anything to make might actually be a net bad".
It kind of reminds me of MMOs with skins, as you mentioned - anyone who's playing something like WoW or RuneScape knows that there's a lot of frustration and teeth-gnashing over how garish and eye-catching the paid-for stuff becomes so that it continues to stand out, and how it clashes with the game's base aesthetic and is distracting and annoying even if you don't envy it. Actually, that's starting to happen with Discord too! Some kind of aesthetic treadmill.
I'm confused as to what the OP of this article wants Discord (and platforms like Discord) to do? Server costs aren't free, app development isn't free, marketing isn't free, trust and safety specialists aren't free.
There are a lot of reasons to hate on Discord right now, but their monetization schemes aren't one of them. They provide an insanely valuable platform for free with very few functional limitations which can be easily circumvented with outside resources.
I think OP just doesn't like the idea of money in general.
Sure, but sharing that idea through complaining about... discord nitro... just feels really odd haha. Maybe adequate food, water, shelter, and healthcare should take priority in our raging against the machine.
Yeah, I was just thinking that they don't know this about themselves yet.
Attacking discord of all things is what doesn't make sense to me here. Discords free usage is incredible for a free service. Nitro is pretty reasonably priced and is a notable improvement if you use a lot of the media services on it. There's so so many more websites I have beef with before even considering discord a problem. There's no ads. How do people think they keep the servers turned on?
I couldn't care less about the Nitro perks but servers and network infrastructures are expensive so they have to get their money somewhere.
People want fancy stuff, they want to look cool, people are buying older accounts in order to get the username they want... I'm probably going back to TeamSpeak and buy my own server.
Hm, I actually like Nitro. I was on Classic forever, but recently downgraded to their Basic plan, because it was cheaper and had everything I wanted. The only perk I really care about is the emojis, which is completely superfluous. I use Discord a lot, and it offers so much for free already. Unlimited messages, unlimited image uploads, infinite search history. I'm happy to pay a couple dollars a month for it, because I would be devastated if it shut down!
I also like nitro. Muscle memory at this point knowing what reactions are best for what situation and being able to use all of them across servers is good. Seems like a small thing but I find it fun to appropriately kekw something.
Discord has become, for me, personal scale forums. I don't see a lot of value in servers with, say, 20 or more people using it as such, but for 8 (a group of gaming friends), 3 (myself, my partner, and a friend we meet up with weekly online), and 2 (my partner and myself), it's incredibly useful. A place to share links, news, files (and yes, memes) throughout the day is fantastic.
As for Nitro... as others have mentioned, it's a free service, they need to monetize it to keep the lights on, and it's ad free. So I don't mind power users footing the bill, given that the base product is unhindered in just about every way.
I am not averse to paying a bit to help keep the lights on, my issue with Nitro is the pricing is the same if you have 2 people or 20,000 people on a server. I would like the nitro features, but there is no way I am paying what they are asking for my tiny server.
That article is probably pretty close to the internal document which first pitched Nitro as a monetizing feature of discord. Welcome to capitalism!
Nitro is there to pay for the free tier they offer. OP has to realize that things cost money, and I much prefer a company to ask money for something superficial like a skin or "super reactions" rather than something essential, like being to use a core function of the app.
I don't care that people have nitro, I care that I can't block it.
I find the various nitro effects to be really garish and distracting. I wish there was a setting to make discord look normal again.
"Enable Reduced Motion" in Accessibility settings helps somewhat.
Maybe, if people were more willing to pay for Reddit gold, then Reddit Corporate would not be destroying itself right now chasing an IPO. The utter harmlessness of Nitro is is exactly what we should be after. It allows people to contribute to a service they like, it does not create a caste system, and it might keep the companies people like from selling ads, selling data, and doing other dirty stuff to make bigger profits.
Someone said it best, Capitalism is bad. Commerce is not bad. Commerce is fine, people need to trade goods and services, that is natural, it is the capitalism part of commerce that is bad. If Discord makes a good product that people like then they should make a bit of profit off it. they should not being trying to suck their users dry and willing to burn down what they've made o do so. But if we want these things then people should be able to make a living off making them.
Computing itself is a caste system by that logic. The more money you have the greater access you have.
Those whom don't have broadband (there's still lots!) are the lower caste. Or those whom have metered connections.
Running even a moderately specced server at home easily costs $10/mo in electricity (for me locally closer to $15). That's a higher cost than Nitro, though i guess you could force your users to pay equally for costs.
Nitro is no caste system. Hell most of the features I don't give 2 cents about, and if paying for Nitro would let me remove them from my UI i'd probably pay.
I too am mad some random nitro user snatched my discriminator-free username before I could, despite being a Discord user since 2015 (so much for prioritizing older users), but there's no need for such vitriol ;)
I've been curious about when that is rolling out.. I've been on Discord since 2016 and I have no idea how old that is relative to other users
For reference, my friend group with 2015 Q4 accounts started getting to pick our usernames today.
I know it’s a styling choice but I found that article extremely annoying to try to read. Anyway, about the actual content: It’s trying too hard. It’s not that deep. Really, it’s not.
Comparing the use of custom emojis and background colors for your profile to a caste system? What a stretch. Yes it’s intentionally designed to make you want to pay for it, that’s how every product or service to ever exist has been. If you feel “longing and worthlessness” because you see someone else with Discord Nitro, you should probably go ahead and get off the internet.