this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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I'm curious as to how many here choose to use Discord over Matrix and pay them for the Nitro subscription.

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[–] [email protected] 73 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (5 children)

Yes, though just nitro basic. Discord doesn't show ads and claims to not sell my data. While I can afford to do so, I'd much rather pay a few bucks a month to keep it that way.

The number of people in this thread aggressively against a free-to-use service having any kind of way to pay employees and server bills makes me fucking depressed, and helps to explain why most free services I enjoy never seem to stay afloat with just an optional payment-based membership thing.

Edit: To people suggesting less corporate-based (whether FOSS or not) alternatives, that's totally cool! Just remember that the people behind these projects need some way to pay the bills the same way the corporate ones do, so I encourage you to contribute to them, whether that's through e.g., code improvements (which doesn't pay bills but is still helpful!) or plain old donations.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago

Same. I'd rather pay than have advertising.

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

Likewise, pay for full Nitro, I can afford it and it's a platform I use frequently and enjoy, I'm glad they let others who can't pay for Nitro have a pretty much equivalent service for free.

It's not free to run a platform, and it's unreasonable to demand everything for free. It could be more reasonably priced (basic is not too bad), but honestly I'm okay with subsidising others for something like this.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Exactly this. Every one demands everything to be free to use and then wonders why everything gets crammed with ads and micro transactions and data gathering. You want quality software? You have to pay for it somewhere. Even FOSS. Developers have to eat too. Either pay upfront or be enshittified. I'd rather pay up front.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

I dislike the way discord promotes their paid subscription which is nitro. Not to say, discord went the regular way of all of the social apps from the very niche tool for one exact thing to becoming all in one app and trying to justify it as a reason for pressuring users into buying subscriptions.

While discord tries to be something for new generation of users it is still deeply rooted in partly old - partly new management view of what success is. And i, honestly dislike it. And disliking something doesn't make me feel better about paying for it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

For me personally, while Discord doesn't outright state that it sells my data, its monetization model is not as transparent as I'd like.

I highly doubt that Nitro subscriptions cover all of Discord's expenses.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Don't they make money by charging massive servers a fee ?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Where did you get this from?

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I’m not really sure what the point is. I use Discord regularly, but have never seen any ‘must-have’ reason to get Nitro.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Same here, couldn't care less about cosmetics on an app that I use to chat with friends while playing games. Non-cosmetic advantages aren't really that great either, there are always better ways of file sharing when you get caught onto that 25mb limit. I guess it may differ for people frequenting on public servers though.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I used to be fine with Nitro because I didn't mind supporting a service I liked being free for everybody else. These last few months I have been seeing big red flags of enshittification with the introduction of a layer of cosmetic microtransactions you can only microtransact if you're a Nitro subscriber

It's probably time to start planning my exit, but I haven't dug into the details of what next steps are gonna look like for me.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Lmao no

It's a chat room app. So long as I can chat in the rooms, I don't need anything else. All the stickers and doodads they offer with the subscription are completely meaningless to me.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No, because I hate Discord and only use it because many people refuse to communicate with anything else.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Yeah. It replaced message boards of old but it doesn't fill the same purpose. It's next to impossible to build a knowledge base there, for instance. It is optimised for an endless stream of shitty memes, though.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

No, I dislike discord and only use it because friends use it. Half the time it seems to switch inputs or beg for subscriptions and I can't even upload a screenshot because "your files are too powerful" lmao.

It's basically Microsoft Teams for gamers. But teams at least allows full file uploads.

Eagerly awaiting a superior platform to take over.

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

I've been using discord since mid 2018, and got Nitro shortly after. Loved longer messages, bigger file uploads, and HD screensharing, especially after Mixer went down (FTL streaming was the only service that let me share my gameplay to friends fast enough for them to react).

That moved to Discord Classic, I kept those things that I use daily, and its worth it to me. It took a lot of convincing to get my friends to migrate from my self hosted Mumble server to Discord for voice chat... Before Steam revamped it's friends interface, there weren't a lot of good options. What were you gonna use, Skype? Teamspeak?! Discord isn't nearly as valuable today, in 2023, but at the time it was worth it. Till it starts to come apart at the seams, not sure why to switch.

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

No. Hell no.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Yes, basic for the emotes.

Some interesting attitudes in this thread towards people who pay from people who don't pay.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Wtf is that?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

I paid for it for a few months. I did it mostly to throw them a few bucks because I have heavily used their video calling for years.

The only feature I found remotely valuable was 1080p streaming. My friends and I often do movie night on Discord, and being able to watch full-res at higher bandwidth was nice. I also used the feature that let's you post longer messages, but I consider that bullshit because that's just an arbitrary restriction they impose on free users to try and drum up cash.

I've since cancelled because I'm unhappy with the features they've been using my money on. I don't care about animated profile gimmicks or crappy video call games. And I don't like the way they shove them in your face when you open the app.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Surprised to see the people here not using Nitro.

I’ve been paying for Nitro for about a year, I use the features frequently. Gif Display Picture, Banner, large upload size (500mb), high quality streaming. I’m pretty much streaming my games to my mates any time on my machine and they do the same, so better quality stream really increases our quality of enjoyment. I boost several friends large servers with the boosts we get. I like my profile to be flashy and care about it, and discord is on 99% of the time while my machine is on, on my second monitor along with YouTube. I use most of the features Nitro advertises, so I don’t mind paying 20m of work a month for it.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

I sometimes gift it to friends I run a discord server with around 150ish people, so discord tends to be a platform I spend a lot of time on. As it stands now, I don't have major qualms with the developers of Discord, so for now, I don't mind spending money on it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

I had free Nitro for a few years because I was a partner. Only ever used it for making my username end in #0001. Nothing else it offers is really that useful, imo. Especially for the price.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Of course not why would I?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Dollars are a luxury here so no.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

I'm on Matrix because I want to be, I'm on Discord because I have to for certain communities. I'd never pay for Nitro.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Not anymore

When they took away the ability for custom usernames I canceled. I had a 4 letter for years, and now I can’t anymore.

However I do use it exclusively over matrix

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Vencord is a thing, so no 🤔

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Never heard of it. Looks really great !

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

FakeNitro really comes in clutch here

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I used to years ago, but I haven't recently. I don't hate it, I just decided I didn't wanna pay that much per year anymore - I actually think it's quite nice that Discord still operates off of people paying for non-essential features instead of paywalling actually useful features.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

No because it's a waste of money like Netflix etc. To be fair I saw recently on discord about new features, like pfp animation and looked great, but way way down it was written that I have to pay extra for it after I get Nitro. I wish I could buy it without Nitro.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

No. Only have it when some free month thing comes my way. I use matrix though too.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Man I wish my friends were still using teamspeak.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Nope. It's a bit kitschy, but it does its job. Nitro though, nah.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Nope. Never had it and probably never will.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I don't see why anyone would

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I use discord almost daily but don't need any of the nitro stuff so no

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I currently do because it's not much of my current budget. Now that I'm not running any server actively I have considered cancelling. I would reactivate if I need the server boosts though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Usually I bought it when it was buy one get one free ever since they cancelled the $5/month Nitro Classic most people had (and replaced it with that pointless "oh please buy the more expensive nitro!" $3/month Nitro Basic).

This month, I accidentally forgot to cancel my Nitro and canceled it the day I was charged but didn't get my money back and had to keep Nitro for the month. Lesson learned, I likely won't be paying again. Maybe my memory is hazy, but I swore it was supposed to give your money back if you cancel quickly after being charged again.

I use Discord heavily, so I didn't mind paying the $5/month for Nitro Classic back when it was a thing. Discord was quite good at the time and wasn't in the process of enshittification like it is now. I can't wrap my head around paying $10/month for Nitro though.

Matrix sounds great and all and I'd love if the communities and people I know were on it but that just isn't the case, and this isn't a part of my internet usage where I can use FOSS unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

HELL NO! I use betterdiscord!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

It was hard enough getting my mate to use discord, I'm not gonna try to teach him how to use another one.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

discord is just somehow very unfriendly to use for me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I did at one point, but it's ultimately a waste of money, considering Revolt (a much smaller, donation funded chat platform) gives you most of the worthwhile features for free. I've been on Discord for almost 7 years and I could never justify buying nitro again. But, if Revolt isn't your thing, or is just too small, Matrix is a very good alternative.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I use discord to do a few text channels and chat with friends. Every nitro popup gets dismissed because I don't know what it is and have no interest in spending time figuring out some new thing I probably don't need.

Didn't even know it cost money.

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