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Comment by MisterTea | Hacker News Reader

Discord is easy to use which is why its so popular. Install, pick a name and go. I don't even remember creating an account, just typing in a nick name. Even on Void Linux Musl you can install it via flatpack, scan the qr code and you're logged in with all your servers and channels already there. You couldn't setup an IRC client that fast.

My great gripe? No 3rd party clients. It's also massively bloated for my need of sending a few bytes of text. For this reason I use it for just one server and to communicate with two friends and my brother.

Otherwise I use IRC where I'm on three networks and 26 channels. IRC is much less convenient for sure in terms of nick registering (some SOB took my name!) "back scroll" and persistence across clients/systems but it does 99% of what I want from a chat client: chatting via text.

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> Discord is easy to use which is why its so popular.

I found this phrasing subjective because I don't find it easier to use. I tried Discord Web, Desktop & mobile, frankly they are not easier to use for me. I found it confusing because I suddenly need to have a role assigned to me. For that, I have to go through loops and hopping on subchannels to get myself a role for me to be able to have a conversation. One server that have like 5 different subchannel and I have to go through each of them to get a role. After trying to get figure out how to get that for half hour, I gave up. Simply too much work for trying to ask for a help. Discord is not designed AND substitution for general forums. I seen several game developers/publishers trying to tell their Steam users to go on Discord for any issues, requests, anything. I found that convoluted because Discord is not easier to use for first timer and plus there is Steam forum for this.

One thing I can't do in Discord (Slack & Signal included as well) is that I can't have multiple chat windows in my desktop like we can do in Trillan, Pidgin, AIM, ICQ, etc. My work is using Slack and it is a pain in the ass to go back and forth with various channel than having multiple windows for easier access. I prefer Slack over Discord because Slack don't make it complicated when it come to channels.

> I found it confusing because I suddenly need to have a role assigned to me. For that, [...]

Not every Discord server is configured like that. With many, you just add the server and start chatting. Some servers use the "role" thing to slow down spam and force an acknowledgement of the server rules.

Nowadays you have to create an account with you e-mail for using Discord.

The desktop client is spyware, and the chats aren’t e2e encrypted.

Technically there are third party clients, they just break tos and can get you banned if you're not careful. Ripcord has a lot of cool features, I just wish I could risk using it.

That's just it, they're so hostile they ban people for trying to use their service. Plus their API changes often enough to make it an annoying game cat and mouse for the devs. There are two discord clients for plan 9, both at one point worked, both are now abandoned. It's not at all worth it.

While discord supports text, the entire purpose of discord from a gaming perspective is voice chat, screen sharing and bot/server automation for players.

> You couldn't setup an IRC client that fast.

You can't today, there's no reason you eventually couldn't.

I know there are some attempts to fix those issues in IRC but at this point I'd rather Matrix as it already exists, works, open, is not user hostile (e.g. banned for using an alt client), and bridges to IRC and XMMP.

> No 3rd party clients.

I use a web browser to access Discord. But I would not use Discord for anything personal, only for public channels.

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