this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
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Not sure how to unpay wall this if someone knows please inform.

The chat platform, which has long avoided advertising, is latest tech company to lean into paid promotions

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[–] [email protected] 66 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

How can we make our product worse? The latest pop-ups aren't annoying users enough. We really need to kick things into high gear if we want to lose users.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 8 months ago (3 children)

To earn rewards, users must stream themselves, completing an in-game task from the advertiser while at least one friend is watching. Users who watch their friends can then set off on quests of their own.

Yeah this won't go well at all...

[–] [email protected] 51 points 8 months ago (1 children)

God damn it, is this literally "drink verification can" come to life?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

It's the captcha phase.

The "viewer" confirms action complete, the models are fed this so that they can begin to independently verify.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

That just sounds like april fools BS.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

Isn't this micro transactions but with more steps

[–] [email protected] 29 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Discord in March announced plans to launch the new ads, which it calls Sponsored Quests, and they will become part of the platform beginning in the coming week. The ads will be targeted to users based on their gameplay, age and geographic location data, and they will appear in the bottom left corner of users’ screens, said Peter Sellis, Discord’s senior vice president of product, in an interview.

To earn rewards, users must stream themselves, completing an in-game task from the advertiser while at least one friend is watching. Users who watch their friends can then set off on quests of their own.

The only Sponsored Quest I'm interested in is a blowjob by Peter Sellis, lmao. There are myriad alternatives to discord. Their hamfisted attempt is gonna drive away users. Move your office away from San Fran or something if the budget is tight.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago

Move your office away from San Fran or something if the budget is tight.

Its basically never a tight budget and always the eternal quest for number go up.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

There are myriad alternatives to discord.

Honest question, what alternatives are there that have community management tools (ruling out WhatsApp, etc), are non-poweruser friendly, and preferably don't require self hosting an instance?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Interesting, that looks like it might actually be a viable alternative! Wish I had known about it a month ago.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago (1 children)

hahahaha, come to steam voice chat. it kinda sucks. but at least it's not discord

[–] Blxter 13 points 8 months ago

To be honest I actually like the steam text messages. I often lfg using steam discussion boards etc and then you just message in steam as well. Actually convenient.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I seldom use discord .... but every time I do I have to take two minutes to update the damned thing before I can even use it.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 8 months ago

And yet they refuse to update the infrastructure it uses, it uses such an old version of Electron that things that Google solved years ago are still issues on Discord, especially for Linux users.

I understand we're about 4% of the user market, but why do Linux users not get to have audio with screensharing? macOS isn't gaming focused at all, but has support for it. You have to essentially trick discord to get support for it on Linux.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

The article states that it is opt-out and that there would be a toggleable setting to turn it off, but if they are going this way it does not bode well.

For anyone like me looking for an application with the same aesthetic feel and general functionality as discord (if Matrix chat does not suit you), then take a look at revolt chat https://github.com/revoltchat.

It's basically an open source discord clone that looks almost identical, but lacks some of the more advanced features of discord in its current state.

Furthermore if you have a discord community and are worried about the future like myself, note that you can get discord/revolt bots which will clone content from your discord into your revolt. If you are worried about discords future, it may be wise to implement this now as an alternative backup.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Appreciate the recommendation. Discord has replaced most social media use for me.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

For sure, in my case it is important to me as I am heavily involved with a lot of small streamer communities, and discord is the all-encompassing product which nearly all streamers use for announcements and updates, community projects, and sharing any non-stream content that is not a video.

Depending on how this goes with discord, this could be incredibly damaging to so many of these communities and I would really hate to see that.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Really hoping adblockers for discord become a thing

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)

discord web is a thing ya know..
And we have webcord which is basically fancy discord web.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

yea I'm not sure what the benefit is for the app compared to the website, I tried both and they seem identical except the app is using an older and less secure version of Chromium and in a separate process so it uses more RAM, and it doesn't benefit from my browser extensions

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The benefit is that it's not situated inside your chrome user interface, with the toolbar and the tabs, so there's more screen real estate. Also most people don't know how to make desktop/startmenu shortcuts to web addresses.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

yup yup, i try to keep a clean, decluttered interface, and having all my browser stuff around the discord stuff is not a clean or enjoyable look. I'll deal with it if it's really the only way but I'll try everything else first.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

true, but I don't wanna have to log in every time I use it (I have my browsers set to clear cookies and history on close). If it's the only way I'll take the inconvenience, but trying to keep the startup process smooth if I can.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If you're on desktop: BetterDiscord. Supports plugins, and themes (I use an AMOLED theme), which make life so much nicer.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Thanks, I'll look into it!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago

Discord has been driving me nuts with the constant communications and upselling of their nitro and other lame services. So much so that I am looking at alternatives for my VR theme park discord.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago

Here's the archive copy of the page, to bypass the paywall:

https://archive.is/zpmHj

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Is there a fediverse-like equivalent alternative to Discord?

Is there a chat app that can be self hosted, but interact with a web of other instances, and has web, mobile, and app interfaces?

Something with dm, group, voice chat, screen sharing capabilities?

[–] Blxter 24 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I believe it's called matrix. Only problem is there is no 0 percent chance I'll convince anyone I play games with to switch off discord unless the ads hurt there frames lol.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago

Thanks!

I've been wanting to move off of discord for a while

Discords been showing signs of Skype-ification for a while, and the ads seal the deal.

I imagine the same feeling for a number of others too, I'll be convincing my friends to switch.

Fuck ads in my chat.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

i bet they would move to another proprietary platform instead.

and then act surprised when the next one enshittifies too. rinse repeat, as is tradition.

[–] Levsgetso 14 points 8 months ago (2 children)

The most popular such alternative is Matrix.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (4 children)

What client would you suggest and why?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Element because its the most feature complete.
Element X is in development for mobile, not sure how far they are, but already works.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Thank you. I ended up going with Element.

[–] Levsgetso 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The site has all current clients so I’d recommend checking it. As for me, I use Element X. It’s not bad, the only annoying thing is that it’s always asking me to turn on chat backup but when I do it encounters an error. But besides this, it’s alright, it does everything I need it to do.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If you want a client that looks like discord, you may check out Cinny.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I appreciate the suggestion. I've actually never been a big fan of Discord so finding something that's a bit different will be nice.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I use element, I like the interface, and the option to opt into beta features. Though I did use Fractal for quite a while, since it is lighter than electron, and I usually use gnome so it integrates nicely. Though I can also recommend Nehko if you used irc a lot. It was my main irc client back in the day and I loved it, I just kinda fell off when everyone moved to Discord though I might switch back to it from Element at some point after the spec is more stable, Element is still the fastest way to get updates, and is pretty much the best mobile client.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I appreciate the response! I ended up trying out Element.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

Your best chance at a proper replacement would be Revolt, however it is not in the fediverse sadly but still worth checking out IMHO.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

Revolt, as a Discord alternative, looks very promising.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

Hey Discord, tell us how you don't respect your users without actually saying it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

You can bypass paywall with archive.ph https://archive.is/zpmHj

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Wouldn't nextdns help block these kinda ads?