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Comment by blueboo | Hacker News Reader

This is the natural next stage for enshittification as Discord starts to claw back value from users. It will get worse before it gets even worse

https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

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The reason I'd always resisted Discord as much as possible is because it was obvious it had no viable business model. Between a commitment to no ads and having nothing reserved for a paid tier worth paying for it was obvious it would either need to be acquired (I still am shocked Amazon didn't buy it) or ignore it's commitment to users and start introducing ads.

I agree with your thoughts about the paid tier not being worth it, but they seem to be making hundreds of millions per year through Nitro. That just begs the question of where all that money is going.

Why be content with enough money when you could have even more money?

The cycle completes itself and capitalism shambles one step forward like the rotting corpse that it is.

Is the paid tier worth the platform not turning into crap? It is to me. I also find some of the perks worth a few bucks a month - global (animated) emojis, per-server profiles, etc.

And that will, in due time, get ads too, until you upgrade to Nitro+

And that’s after the servers start paying for the privilege of supporting some significant slice of those features…

I agree in principle, I pay for many services and products that have workable free alternatives, but Discord is double dipping (with tracking, and ads in the future) like most companies.

I'm fine with "Pay to use our service, privately", but with these corporate products it's usually "Free with tracking and ads" vs. "Paid with tracking (and ads after a few years)", which I think is a disrespectful business model.

Reading the article it sounds to me a lot less like double-dipping than the headline implies: it's not planned to use a "typical" ad network but instead a sponsorship program similar to "Twitch Drops" (Twitch: watch a streamer play a sponsored game's streams get in game/in Twitch cosmetics; Discord: play a sponsored game while friends watch in Discord and get in game/in Discord cosmetics).

Even if it wasn't "opt out" (and the article claims there will be a button to turn it off, but does not know if that will only be a Nitro option or what), it's still specifically devoted enough to the "gaming" side of Discord that it sounds like these "ads" it will just bleed into the background for non-gamers that use Discord like most of the rest of Discord's gaming specific features. (Just like the Game Store that Discord briefly attempted and proved unprofitable and was just about as quickly dropped. Most of my friends at the time didn't even notice Discord had a Game Store.)

Looking for something else, I stumbled onto the first of these "ads" (for a game called The Finals) called "Quests". Their "home" where they display the biggest is User Settings > Gift Inventory. It may also sometimes appear as a banner just above the "voice chat status". Apparently it is more likely to show up if you've played the game in question or are streaming in a chat channel. You can hide an individual banner from the ellipsis menu and Hide Me. You can disable the Quests feature entirely from User Settings > Privacy & Safety > In-game Rewards (aka Quests).

Here's the full official documentation on Quests (with screenshots of all the above):

https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/22225719947543...

Thanks for the info! I'm a fairly hardcore opponent of ads, but this seems reasonable enough for now, especially if there's a setting for it.

As always, there's the possibility of the platform going to shit with ads and whatnot, but it seems like people are getting upset about something relatively innocent.

> "That just begs the question of where all that money is going."

It sure ain't goin' toward fixing bugs on Discord's user wishlist in features that users expect from Discord, or adding features that most users really want (as evidenced again by votes on the user wishlist. Discord's user wishlist gets pretty much ignored really, in favor of adding shiny new "Nitro" garbage (stickers and such crap) for the masses that came after, and trashy little "apps" to set folks up for the advertising nightmare that's surely about to ruin Discord for everyone who just wanted a simple voice and video sharing tool.

Just for one example of such ignored issues, if they're hurtin' for money, there's tons of folks who would pay for Nitro, if they'd just fix this one long-ignored bug [1] in their streaming feature. I would have been willing to pay a monthly fee if this feature worked, but the way they've handled it, I doubt I could be convinced to pay them a single thin dime for anything at this point. They clearly don't want my money.

[1]: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/3600509...

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