Ask HN: How is Discord a better platform than FB?

2 pointswaspight3y ago9 comments

Just curious since it seems to be a trend to switch to using discord for many communities. How do Discord earn money for instance? Do they sell user data as well?

9 comments

PaulHoule3y ago

See https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/how-discord-makes...

I've had my best Discord experiences when playing games like League of Legends where somebody invited me to a server so we could coordinate better.

I kinda dread "visit our Discord" because sometimes you find a bunch of people with nothing better to do hanging out who aren't knowledgeable or helpful. (I've been that guy in chat rooms before...)

On the other hand I have needed support for open source products like Jellyfin and got good service that way.

bitsavers3y ago

They are both walled gardens that you have to subscribe to. Since none of the messages can be seen by the public, they both are knowledge silos. Discord has some wonderful instances with smart people, but by its structure even Usenet threads or old SMTP mailing lists are better to search for answers. I'm sure it is against the Discord TOS for an aggregator to scrape and curate its contents. Unlike even HN, Discord messages have an unlimited time they can be deleted punching holes in timelines. Most of the Yahoo Groups that I follow ended up on groups.io

jamager3y ago

Why do communities even move to Discord? I can't honestly understand it. It has the worst UI ever. Does it have some killer feature others lack?

user-extended3y ago

1. Old people do not use it.

2. Very responsive, searching for previous messages takes seconds.

3. I remember back in '17, most other VOIP and especially video calling services sucked. Discord made gaming with your non-techie friends with a crappy laptop plug & play.

4. Lack of censorship (at the beginning).

5. Good UI when it was released compared to its competitors.

6. Gaming Centered Nature back when that was not common and/or alternatives were complicated and clunky (TeamSpeak).

7. Very good integration of GIFs, meme emojis, and the like.

8. Old people do not use it.

Blackstrat3y ago

A bit of ageism? Perhaps “old people” simply have better things to do than play video games and share juvenile jokes with their anonymous Discord “friends”, attempting to demonstrate their coolness. I would suggest that age or any other demographic category, whether race, gender, sexual preference, etc. constitutes a poor metric by which to judge the merits of a technology platform.

1 more reply

waspightOP3y ago

I can absolutely see that the UI is better than Facebook groups if that is the alternative. But I would like the Reddit style community UI more if that was an option.

graypegg3y ago

Discord makes (I would imagine) most of it's revenue from Nitro subscriptions. I don't think facebook has a paid tier.

bitsavers3y ago

and server boosts

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

9 comments

PaulHoule3y ago

See https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/how-discord-makes...

I've had my best Discord experiences when playing games like League of Legends where somebody invited me to a server so we could coordinate better.

I kinda dread "visit our Discord" because sometimes you find a bunch of people with nothing better to do hanging out who aren't knowledgeable or helpful. (I've been that guy in chat rooms before...)

On the other hand I have needed support for open source products like Jellyfin and got good service that way.

bitsavers3y ago

jamager3y ago

Why do communities even move to Discord? I can't honestly understand it. It has the worst UI ever. Does it have some killer feature others lack?

user-extended3y ago

1. Old people do not use it.

2. Very responsive, searching for previous messages takes seconds.

3. I remember back in '17, most other VOIP and especially video calling services sucked. Discord made gaming with your non-techie friends with a crappy laptop plug & play.

4. Lack of censorship (at the beginning).

5. Good UI when it was released compared to its competitors.

6. Gaming Centered Nature back when that was not common and/or alternatives were complicated and clunky (TeamSpeak).

7. Very good integration of GIFs, meme emojis, and the like.

8. Old people do not use it.

Blackstrat3y ago

1 more reply

waspightOP3y ago

I can absolutely see that the UI is better than Facebook groups if that is the alternative. But I would like the Reddit style community UI more if that was an option.

graypegg3y ago

Discord makes (I would imagine) most of it's revenue from Nitro subscriptions. I don't think facebook has a paid tier.

bitsavers3y ago

and server boosts

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse