They supposedly can be disabled in settings- but we all know that won’t last. They’re going full Microsoft Skype mode and it’s only a matter of time.
What do the Lemmings recommend as a replacement for discord?
I’m happy to revert back to teamspeak if need be, I heard it’s app recently got an overhaul (or at the very least a facelift).
I’m disgusted (though not shocked, I fucking called it years ago), that discord would go down this rabbit hole being that their main demographic is gamers. The stats are in, gamers (among every other living being) hates ads.
In fact, I pay for YT music because I think it’s good value, but ive never once had YT premium, and I haven’t seen an ad on their site for close to a decade now. (Still no pihole, that’s likely next).
To circle back, if possible Lemmings, I would like to find a discord replacement that my folks would be willing to install/try out. I’ve got a couple people who have said “hey man, find a better spot and we’ll tag along”, however I have yet to find a suitable replacement on my own time.
I’d say Matrix / Elements is a good alternative.
It’s based on an open and interoperable protocol, similar to the fediverse. So it doesn’t matter the client, as long as your friends are on something that support Matrix they’ll be able to join the group.
As an added bonus, if elements start going down the enshittification path you can just drop them. Also, you can host your server just like teamspeak
I’m shocked they’re moving to ads when I’ve been paying them $4/month for Discord Nitro for several years now. Surely, that revenue is enough for their upkeep???
I assume that’s sarcasm, but no, they almost certainly aren’t anywhere near probably from nitro subscriptions. I don’t know how many employees they have, but they surely have a lot of developers working on all their features. And that cloud server time isn’t cheap either, especially when you’re handling video.
Okay, I was expecting something a lot worse than what the article describes. I hate ads as much as the next guy, but at least these ads seem somewhat topical and also give tangible rewards for doing something that you might do already anyway (stream a game to a couple of friends in a private Discord server). Maybe I’m misinterpreting the change, but this doesn’t seem that bad?
I’m not sure what everyone’s hangup is about Discord. My group that I play video games with swapped over to Discord from Skype years ago and it’s still a good experience. You want to hear about enshittification? Just look at what they did to Skype over the years. That platform is completely unusable now.
I doubt Discord will remain totally useable forever, but at least there are budding alternatives out there that might be able to carry the torch if Discord can’t continue it’s freemium service. One that I’ve tried in the past is Guilded and they are sort of like a Discord clone if you really want the same general user experience - pseudoforum live chat with VOIP lobbies, streaming capabilities, etc. I tried it out and it was fine but not worth swapping everyone on our Discord server to the new one since it wasn’t substantially different or better in any way.
