Comment by bad_alloc
3 years ago
Maybe we do, but the mass of people who are just learning is enormous. The idea of keeping this information open and searchable is a cultural thing, and big companies actively undermined this culture with their walled gardens. They became the norm for a vast part of the population. The question is: Can this be reversed?
The mess with Twitter moved a lot of people to Mastodon, we need more events like that.
I think it is purely a technology problem. Discord software is good and for text/voice chat nothing really compares to the ease of use, features and ecosystem around it.
Is it though? Is it exceptional? There are plenty of alternatives with feature parity, and the tech like Opus for low-latency audio and overlays for video games was freely available and good in Mumble ages ago (and still good though). Discord isn't particularly lightweight or cross platform compared open options which limits accessibility.
Discord is surprisingly lightweight and snappy considering it's Electron.
I don't know about the voice and video features, but it's the best chat program... that I know of - also note that libre software typically doesn't have half a billion dollars in investment money nor 600 full-time jobs !
But I now have to boycott it because of all the other issues (though I got advanced warning considering it's a platform, it's still a shame...)
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I disagree, the network effect is its only draw. For text with images in, Element is just as good, as are Discord's competitors. For voice calls, it's pretty good, but not the best. Can't comment on video calls as I've only used Zoom recently, which sucked.
edit: I've got to learn to reload the page before commenting :P
What do you mean by Zoom doesn't let you comment on video calls? There's an in-meeting chat.
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Note how it took a decade for most people to realize that Twitter is harmful after the 2013 APIpocalypse (when Mastodon got started).
And in the mean time we even had Trump showing every day just how bad it is !