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Comment by bad_alloc | Hacker News Reader

Maybe we do, but the mass of people who are just learning is enormous. The idea of keeping this information open and searchable is a cultural thing, and big companies actively undermined this culture with their walled gardens. They became the norm for a vast part of the population. The question is: Can this be reversed?

The mess with Twitter moved a lot of people to Mastodon, we need more events like that.

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I think it is purely a technology problem. Discord software is good and for text/voice chat nothing really compares to the ease of use, features and ecosystem around it.

Is it though? Is it exceptional? There are plenty of alternatives with feature parity, and the tech like Opus for low-latency audio and overlays for video games was freely available and good in Mumble ages ago (and still good though). Discord isn't particularly lightweight or cross platform compared open options which limits accessibility.

Discord is surprisingly lightweight and snappy considering it's Electron.

I don't know about the voice and video features, but it's the best chat program... that I know of - also note that libre software typically doesn't have half a billion dollars in investment money nor 600 full-time jobs !

But I now have to boycott it because of all the other issues (though I got advanced warning considering it's a platform, it's still a shame...)

> considering it's Electron

It runs in a browser just in general (considering browsers have better access to ad/tracking blocking and other features to its sandbox, it likely wiser to skip the Electron bit) which helps get access to a broader range of devices (like Linux and BSD) in some cases, but there a a wealth of underpowered devices that can't run something this heavy. It seems all attempts at alternative clients for TUIs or native ETD up with cease and desists. Compare to Matrix and XMPP who both offer browser-based clients (both heavy and lightweight) as well as native clients, TUIs and you have a recipe for greater accessibility. Throw in that you can get E2EE and it's decentralized (and by proxy self-hostable) that you'd have to have literally the best UX to compete with that… and to me it's just meh (granted I only used it briefly, containerized, and for a specific client that that Discord without bridging was a good idea).

Yes, my point is that it's much more snappy than any (somewhat complex) software that I've used that uses Electron (that I know of) : Element (though it's getting better) and Atom (vs Spyder running on Qt) specifically come to mind.

I disagree, the network effect is its only draw. For text with images in, Element is just as good, as are Discord's competitors. For voice calls, it's pretty good, but not the best. Can't comment on video calls as I've only used Zoom recently, which sucked.

edit: I've got to learn to reload the page before commenting :P

What do you mean by Zoom doesn't let you comment on video calls? There's an in-meeting chat.

I think he meant that he didn't have an opinion. But speaking of that feature, last time I used Zoom (at height of Covid lockdown), that chat was ridiculously lacking in features, IIRC there were various issues with text not showing up / disappearing on window resizing ? (Ideally one would use a different chat program anyway.)

Note how it took a decade for most people to realize that Twitter is harmful after the 2013 APIpocalypse (when Mastodon got started).

And in the mean time we even had Trump showing every day just how bad it is !

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