Discord

[xandra]

@xandra, that's great to hear! I had been super happy to find 32-bit.cafe but I didn't have enough time to keep up with the flood of messages on the various channels and eventually gave up. A forum would be nice as that doesn't require a constant connection to keep up with what's going on.

Do you know how the pubnix is coming along? Seems like that's been in development for some time.

totally understandable! discord can seem like a flood, and especially so when folks get a good groove going conversationally. it can be so easy to get lost, especially as a new person. it's one of the reasons why we're hoping that the discord will be a good point for folks to introduce themselves to our concepts if they're used to discord being "the" chat service they use, but ultimately moving them away to slower forms of communication that can be more fleshed out thinking without completely depending on forum software. we're making a mix. (right now, we direct folks who are looking for a forum to melonland!)

the pubnix is up & running! reach out to qt at qt@32bit.cafe, he'll get you all set up. (he also mentioned he'll be changing the signup page so you don't have to message him on discord to get set up.)

[m1k3]

the pubnix is up & running! reach out to qt at qt@32bit.cafe, he'll get you all set up. (he also mentioned he'll be changing the signup page so you don't have to message him on discord to get set up.)

Sweet! I'll message him - thanks!

[grubbyfox]

Now that Discord will be stopping support for Win7 on the 15th of March, are there any win7 users here? I reckon it will still work, but it may become unstable after each update, from my understanding.

I think I will try the AeroChat when/if Discord feels buggy after 15th of March. Has anyone tried that?

[azalea]

i use discord frequently, but essentially out of obligation to do so. i wouldn't be able to stay in touch with a lot of my friends otherwise. i also keep up with many final fantasy xiv-related servers trough discord, and am on a few friend servers. i'm also in some pokemon-related server since i have an interest in that.

[Melooon]

Two links I wanted to post:

Discord are going to void your right to sue-them, but you can opt-out? I imagine this only applies in the US but I'd still say it's worth emailing that address from the same email you use on Discord and just say "I wanna opt-out" just to annoy them 

"Users can write an email to arbitration-opt-out@discord.com within 30 days of April 15, 2024 or when you first register your Discord account, whichever is later.”

Also here's an interview with the Discord boss/founder where he says the small web is the future, except the small web is Discord in his eyes  https://megaphone.link/VMP2694474455

It's always interesting to put a voice to the technologies you use - and he sounds very excited to develop the service, and overall like a thoughtful guy. I also think that for the majority of people, Discord is a good analogous to a small web experience - particularly in the sense that when you're chatting on Discord it's about the personal interaction more than broadcasting content like an influencer.

But while he's very happy to talk about how much he wants you to have fun conversations with your friends, he doesn't mention that he's also very happy to analyze and data-farm your fun conversations with your friends  I also believe his focus on small groups is because small groups have less ability to fight back in the way we saw big Reddit groups fighting Reddit.

On a more positive side; he seems to be interested in allowing Discord chats to be publicly accessible (maybe by generating websites??) that would be interesting!

I also think he secretly wants games to reach a point where you must connect discord to your game in order to play your game or get its full feature set - almost like steam but from the inside out - that's an insidious plan!

Overall I agree with his analysis that cozy spaces and larger social media will ultimately have to co-exist, and that cozy spaces are going to grow a lot. I just disagree about exactly what those cozy spaces should be and what people should expect from them ^^

[Memory]

I mostly use it to keep in contact with friends I met out of state. I also check in on server for bands/platforms I like for updates and whatnot.

[Memory]

I have sort of a weird way of using Discord so my opinion might be different. I use it like some sort of advanced notes app where I have a personal server that I am the only member in and use it to make notes to myself, create lists, share photos between my devices, etc. I saw someone else online with this idea a while back and it's really worked for me. I like that it's searchable, so if I drop a link for something I want to remember I can tag it and search for it later. Bonus is that I can use it interchangeably between my phone, iPad and computers so it's really helpful for art related things. It's maybe not the most practical solution but it works great for me. My girlfriend and I also have a server for just the two of us that we organize similarly with channels for things like grocery lists, recipes, reminders, etc.

I love this so much , I'll have to start doing this as well

[petrichoran]

i use discord a lot! i'm really only active in small servers because big ones are intimidating. i mostly use it to connect with other alterhumans [i mod a few small alterhuman servers!], but i also use it for talking to others about lostwave [music lost media] searches. i'm definitely willing to migrate to an alternative eventually, because i'm frustrated with a lot of the company's actions, but i think it's the best option for me at the moment.

[Memory]

for a while I was going through a cycle of feeling lonely -> join a discord server -> post an introduction -> never post anything else -> leave. to me it feels too much like going to a party where I don't know anyone so it's really hard for me to join in any conversations. it doesn't help that I'm super shy and find instant messaging with strangers overwhelming.

I've pretty much given up on joining new discord servers unless someone I actually know invites me to join one (which hasn't happened yet haha).

I much prefer posting in forums where I can take my time with what I want to say~

Yeah discords 'community' sucks.

[GlitchyZorua]

Well, lets just say that i went from loving discord, to now hating it. 

[SeaSlugUFO]

I've been on discord for years now and I dislike it more and more. I also really dislike how there's so much knowledge trapped in discord servers because it's unindexed. 

There was some racing game, I can't remember the name, where all the mods and modding community moved to a discord server and everyone posted their mods onto the server and that's where you'd be sent if  you wanted to download anything. Apparently (according to some reddit post I read, so take this as you will), the mods had a fight and one of them just deleted the whole server. All of that information, the mods, etc, are just gone, unless people backed up stuff (you know not everyone does).

Discord is... okay when it's just me DMing friends but servers are actual hellholes to me. Gigantic chatrooms where discussion is impossible and enormous libraries of Alexandria except it can all burn down in a second and be literally irretrievable.

[ConnorTheVGFan78]

My experience with Discord started in 2017, when I noticed a lot of YouTubers were dropping links to their servers in their descriptions. Assuming that this "Discord" thingy was becoming the new, hot communications app that could surpass TS3, Mumble, and Skype in the gamer space, I decided to hop on and make an account. I never really talked a whole lot on those YouTuber's Discord servers, but at least I got update pings whenever they did something interesting, so that was cool for a bit.

Fast forward about a year, and I get the link to a Splatoon-related Discord server. The Splatoon-related Discord was good for about a week, then the mods started getting super strict out of nowhere and started banning and muting people for what felt like trivial things. It got to the point where I didn't even want to talk on there because I knew that someone would find someway to say what I'm doing is wrong, even if it's a simple "Hello, how's everyone doing?" Eventually, the server ended up dying due to over-moderation, and I moved on.

Fast forward another few years, and I meet a group of people on VRChat and they invite me to another Discord server. A few days after I joined, a group of people from a rival server decided to raid our server. No reason was given as to why they raided our server, other than there being a minor disagreement between our server's owner and the rival server's owner over something trivial. The rival server members just wanted to come in, cause chaos, make threats, and leave. I eventually ended up leaving the server due to some unrelated drama that started weeks after the raid.

I have not been an active member on any Discord server since then. I still maintain an account as a way for people to reach me, but my time on servers ended a while ago. I just couldn't stand the toxic environments most of them housed and enabled.

[JINSBEK]

Discord is a mixed bag. Back when it was focused purely on online multiplayer game voice comms and livestreaming, it was great. I think it’s suffered the same fate as Twitter wherein this one tool that’s really good at one specific niche (microblogging) has metastatised into an unholy multitool used for everything poorly and now it’s replaced indexable forums because it’s… easy. Extremely low barrier of entry. Want to make a Discord server? There you go! Pop! Insta-community. And now, like Twitter, because there’s no real vetting of accounts (vibe checks, let alone age verification), there’s a ludicrous amount of child sexual exploitation that is organised and committed on the platform. My co-worker took over his SMITE 2 server because the original admin cryptically parted ways and then ended up in the news over CSEM. Fun fact, I’ve also had less-than-happy contact with the police because someone I knew over Discord was distributing unholy amounts of CSEM, over Discord. The detective was very nice.

The HEMA Discord is great, though. Nice people, mature discussions, no crimes.

I like Discord because I can use the Tupperbox bot to communicate as a plurality. I use Discord solely as an instant messaging service with my fiancée.

[A5eel]

I have a love/hate relationship with discord, on the one hand, i met my bestest best friend from joining a discord server and it made me meet so many like-minded people who live in the same area as me, but, there was so much drama and stuff that happened that were so.....bad? lmao, that i kinda can't back into the the whole joining a server and then chatting cycle again

[bignoodleeee]

Hows your relationship with discord? Do you use it often? Are you on many servers? Do you check all of them? Or are you more of a server collector despite never accessing them again? Please share your usage habits, problems you encountered etc, I would like this to be a general discord topic specially because I know some people dislike discord because its a centered software with some issues but imo it's the lesser evil before we have to get into other esoteric options.

discord has benefits and drawbacks. i like being able to join communities. however i don't often CHECK said communities, only private servers with friends that are basically just glorified groupchats or rp servers. personally i hate the lack of customization on discord & how limited it feels in that regard. you can only pick from colors, can't even change the font or anything without 3rd party software. i have a few issues w/the rampant monetization but that's a different issue altogether that isn't exclusive to discord.

It work fiiiiine as a slightly more involved group chat for my close friends, but I also don't swear any loyalty to it: if a better alternative arises and it becomes practical to jump ship with all/most of my friends, then I might consider moving over to something else. I don't really have a problem with my Discord usage when comparing it to social media like Reddit and Twitter but that's because the main usage for me is either talking to my friends in a single server (just chatting without making use of most of Discords plethora of community management features) or having to navigate some server for information that COULD HAVE BEEN A WIKI!!! 

i do agree that an alternative would be so much better. i also hate keeping information in discord servers... please bring back wikis and forums... not everyone is going to have a discord account, but everyone DOES have an internet browser these days.