Ask HN: Why do so many people love Discord? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why do so many people love Discord?

I see many people recommending Discord as alternative to Twitter, slack and similar platforms.

Can someone explain what is so attractive about discord in simple laymen terms?

Discord is proprietary. Does it not bother anyone? What if discord bakes anti competitive features into the protocol? What if someday discord decides to pack their bags and leave? Will all user data be lost?

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I don't know. I vastly prefer IRC. Maybe it's because using discord takes virtually zero skill and a lot of non-techy chatrooms are on Discord? Most Discord people I know are not aware of IRC, Mumble, or other (older) chat softwares...

Like any platform, there are pros and cons. But there are a few key positive features I like about Discord. Most notably the ease in which you can link to a group and people can join automatically in contrast to how difficult it is to get up and running in a new Slack group. This is a huge plus in my opinion. It removed the need for a complicated sign up process and for you to quickly engage with a community or remove yourself if that community isn't quite what you are looking for.

I've poked around Discord a bit, and I just don't see the attraction. As another commentor said, maybe it's the audio channels. But I can't think of a reason I would ever personally want to tune in to audio rather than reading information, it's just faster to read than to listen to someone 'ummm' their way through a thought.

Of course, I still have a hard time using YouTube as a learning resource because of my preference for reading, so I'm probably an outlier here.

Discord is a much more community focused, external communication platform compared to Slack.

Slack is priced on per person economics, while Discord is oriented on individual usage. People can choose to pay a subscription to unlock better emojis and other server privileges, which allows Discord communities without any budget to have thousands of users.

I agree with you. I also find it difficult to use, not ergonomic.

Maybe is it because they have the audio channels. But I find the audio quality to be bad!

"Discord is proprietary."

Aren't Twitter, Slack, and other platforms also proprietary?

Yes, Twitter and Slack are proprietary.

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