discord bad

#1

this is a sticky for common discord Ls so this doesn't constantly come up in other topics. post new grievances here.

i'll start with everything i know.

discord is a morally terrible, and untrustworthy company

see here, here, and here. no, i will not summarize them for you.

this likely won't improve. discord's new ceo was previously actiblizz's vice chairman. you're likely aware of the harassment and discrimination controversy from a few years back, and of the aggressive monetization practices actiblizz's games have. even outside of that, the previous ceo explicitly stated this is in anticipation of the company going public, which we already knew beforehand.

even before the new ceo, they obviously don't have qa testers.

not indexable

this isn't necessarily something discord has to fix, but i'd be remiss not to include it here.

discord servers are not indexable by search engines, and cannot be opened without a discord account, making the platform an information silo. for chatting, this is whatever, but when using software projects, this becomes very annoying, very quickly.

discord servers are created for open source projects like archipelago, because making a forum board on an already existing infrastructure is too hard people are already on discord and it's very easy to create a community on there.

because people are lazy, they then put a good portion of their documentation only in their discord server. this puts the information in a veritable black hole, forcing people to create a discord account and join the server to get what they need. not everyone can (discord isn't available in all regions) or wants to (i.e. you may not agree with privacy policy) do this, so some people are just SOL.

despite not feeling welcome in the archipelago discord server, i'm forced to join it to find some linux-specific scripts, get important information on logic, etc, because the documentation i'm looking for regarding various games is either not on the githubs/website or not very well exposed.

answer overflow exists and is a decent stopgap, but that's all it is, a stopgap. the real solution is just to not lock your documentation on discord and use something public instead so people can actually find it.

discord is a chat platform. discord is not a documentation repository. discord is not a forum board, despite how much it'll try to convince you otherwise. if you develop open source software, please make your documentation public in some way. a readme is easy to create and include in your repo, and i consider that the absolute bare minimum. for temporary problems, you can even just write a github issue and call it there, that's fine!

not everyone is comfortable with their conversations being fully public and i can respect that, but for the purpose of open source projects, there are objectively better alternatives to this use case, which in most situations they literally already have and are using.

terrible customer support

customer support has historically been trash. tickets often go unanswered, and sending too many chase emails to bump your ticket can get you blocked.

discord now uses AI to respond to support requests. as if their customer support wasn't already terrible as it stood.

have a problem with your account that you can't self-solve? go fuck yourself i guess, because you won't get an answer from support.

ads and monetization

some days, i've booted my computer, opened discord, and been greeted with popup ads, some of which being fullscreen. they're annoying. here are some examples.

► Show Spoiler: screenshot

i also frequently get red numbers next to the shop and the nitro button when something new is happening there. i have to click on it and view the promotion to get rid of it.

it will worsen. starting next month, the mobile app will get video ads. discord is not profitable and they will do anything within their power to seem profitable so that people will invest in them when they go public.

ok we get it. what are good alternatives?

listed in order from "i daily drive this and can recommend it" to "i've never used it before"

for text: XMPP, Matrix, phpBB+mChat, IRC, email/DeltaChat, Rocket.Chat, Revolt, Mattermost

for voice: Mumble, Jitsi, Jitsi+Matrix, Peer Calls

i daily drive XMPP and highly recommend it; it can act as a gateway to other services like matrix, irc, and (albeit temperamental) even discord. Matrix is also very good, though the foundation that does most development has had some financial woes and the main client is a bit unstable. you're reading on a phpBB forum right now! IRC is still in widespread use today and is very stable (have you heard of a small website called twitch.tv? it uses irc for chat). everyone has an email address and DeltaChat is a chat app that's powered by your email.

Mumble straight up has better voice quality and mobile apps than discord. if you need video and screen sharing, Jitsi is your best bet.

everything i've listed is free (as in freedom) and open source.

Disroot offers free XMPP, Jitsi, and email services, among other things. if you decide to use their services, please consider donating to them, as the services are provided out-of-pocket. either way, centralization is bad, so consider self-hosting if you know how.

SuperStarKin · #2

discord bad

ok captain obvious

jokes aside, i wish people cared more when they are taken advantage of. if it wasn't for the fact people are too comfortable to do shit, we'd be so far ahead.

#3

it's so frustrating. like, i get it, but at the same time complacency is part of the reason why this keeps happening

#4

there's a new discord quest asking users to try an AI browser for 5,000 orbs. (for those who aren't aware, discord quests are ads you can watch or tasks you can perform for a discord-specific currency, orbs, which you can spend in the store)

: Screenshot_20251006_164349.png (111.68 KiB) Viewed 1187 times

this is more than enough for six days of nitro credit, or a profile decoration, so it's very enticing.

DO NOT DO IT THOUGH. this browser has been subject to scrutiny for malicious code injection and potential for phishing. (not that you should be installing software you don't trust anyway, but still)
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-indus ... ai-browser
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/s ... ng-emails/

so now, not only are we getting curated ads in discord, they aren't even being responsible with what they DO advertise.

EDIT: i'm seeing likely-fearmongering that this browser intentionally steals files to feed to its AI. i've seen no proof of this. i wouldn't trust it regardless of what it does or doesn't do though.

#5

discord has begun blocking VPN users... but only if they're on linux.

even better is they just check the user agent which is very easy to spoof, so it's not like they're even trying

https://x.com/vencordapp/status/1976622260162314292

#6

discord MAY be sharing the people you are in vc with to youtube/google to feed recommendations. this is unconfirmed as of now

someone in an archipelago sync i was participating in last night, was later recommended someone else's vod channel on youtube. both were in the discord vc. the other person was new to the server and no youtube links were posted in the vc text channel during the sync.

the person's youtube was linked to their discord account. the other person has no youtube linked.

this 100% had to be a targeted recommendation. there are millions (probably more) of small channels on youtube. you don't just randomly get recommended a channel from someone you were just talking to. the odds of that happening are astronomically low.

i personally believe discord may have shared this information. however, this may not be true and there is no way for us to know for sure (it may have been another app or device scraping info). so take this "discord bad" post with a giant rock of salt

(if you are in the screenshot and would like it to be removed, lmk)

#7

got an ad popup for hardware discounts with nitro.

: Screenshot_20251120_101648.png (29.9 KiB) Viewed 142 times

what this tells me is that, even if you are paying discord directly, you will still be advertised to. (for the record i was gifted nitro and don't plan on renewing)

this is probably a good time to point out that i've opened a mumble server. better voice quality and tts support, and no ads

#8

will this be the smoking gun? please??

discord probably processes all server messages for AI usage. this is a conclusion i'm drawing based on things i'm seeing and it's possible this isn't actually accurate. i'm pretty confident though.
i personally am not much of an AI fan. my friend group is mostly similar. depending on your beliefs, you may have different opinions on this. come to your own conclusions in that case.

remember discord summaries? yeah that AI thing they did that one time in 2023. well it still exists. there's a vencord plugin to enable it in all channels, and it works flawlessly in said channels.

this has to be server-side message processing on discord's end. besides the fact we already know this is powered by OpenAI, there isn't any noticeable increase in resource usage, and the summaries themselves are synced between users.

what i think is even worse, though, is the fact that the english privacy policy does not mention AI, once, at all. ctrl-f "AI", whole words. zero results. same goes for the english support article. meanwhile, in a few other languages (i checked hindi and traditional chinese), it is mentioned in both the privacy policy (in that language) and in the support article (in english).

so what this tells me is essentially:

discord wants to incorporate AI, and still is.
they are hiding it from their english-speaking users. backlash?
they still want to show that they use AI, or maybe they didn't do a good job of hiding it, so they showcase it on other language pages still where they believe people would be more tolerant of it.

the problem with this is that, despite their processing of that information for that purpose, they are failing to adequately inform users.

it's up to you if you trust discord's word on this (obviously i don't): they have stated that user data is not used to train AI models. that doesn't mean they aren't still processing your messages using AI, of course.