God, why does everyone use Discord?

It feels like it should be a known fact at this point that Discord just absolutely blows chunks, but for some reason nobody I talk to seems keen on giving a fuck. I thought I would write down everything I can think of off-the-cuff to convince people to replace discord with something else, just like they replaced Skype back in the mid-to-late 10s.

Okay, firstly, it didn’t USE to be absolutely terrible. In fact, I appreciated it a lot at the time for being my introduction to online communication. Even at the time, they had Discord Nitro, but it wasn’t shoved in your face nearly as much as it is now. It was like, 10 a month for a bigger upload limit, a little badge, an animated profile picture, and that’s about it. It was very friendly, the UI was perfectly suited to the Windows architecture, and figuring out a time to play with people was easier than ever to coordinate. Screen-sharing was also pretty nice. Maybe not the smoothest, but very easy to do.

And it was like this for a long while, until the changes started rolling in.

Minor at first, the colour of blue subtily shifted (HEX #7289DA) from a subdued to a brighter blue (HEX #5865F2). Minor, but signifigantly worse on the eyes. Your eyes adapt over time, but a fix of “you get used to it” isn’t a fix, that’s just cope. The new font (ggSans) is also absolutely terrible. The new logo looks like every other logo now, rounded, soft, even the font that it uses now is horrendous. The little divit in the D is gone, and it’s just W I D E.

And then it started turning into problems manifesting in worse and worse ways. The UI got fucked up, quests are just an advertising spot, popups begging you to buy Nitro, basic features being removed and put behind a paywall, it’s gotten bad enough that client modifications are basically a requirement for everyday use (both on PC and Mobile), along with custom CSS to remove all the garbage, and people STILL won’t switch back to forums. Some people will say to do how it worked in the 90’s, but I don’t think that’s feasable in the modern era.

What are our options? Not many. Bringing back the old internet would be basically impossible - most people don’t even care to try and use the internet how it used to be. The best option we really have right now is to use alternatives. Revolt is probably the best right now for FOSS but still close enough to the “DISCORD EXPERIENCE” that most people would probably be happy with it (except Kyros, quit whining you fucking baby), but it does have a few issues, notably that notifications refuse to fire sometimes, and it’s STILL an electron app (like Discord, ironically) which means it loads just as slow. People should feel right at home there, then.

The better option is definetly Matrix. Not a thing by itself, but rather a protocol that other apps can implement… Oh, and it’s decenteralized, meaning you can host your own and keep everything on YOUR OWN server (or at least, someone you can trust), everything is properly encrypted, the whole shbang. The one problem is that the whole idea is mildly complicated, and most people basically… Don’t care to learn. Unfortunate, but true.

If you do decide to try Matrix, use a homeserver other than Matrix’s. In fact, if you want to go all in with FOSS, you can find someone who is already hosting some of the bigger stuff, and join their little ecosystem, if you wish. Alternatively, make your own! I would, but I’m a bit too broke.