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Comment by LexiMax

10 hours ago

> the former type is all but obliterated now.

Discord is the 9,000lb gorilla of this form of social media, and it's actually quietly one of the largest social platforms on the internet. There's clearly a desire for these kinds of spaces, and Discord seems to be filling it.

While it stinks that it is controlled by one big company, it's quite nice that its communities are invite-only by default and largely moderated by actual flesh-and-blood users. There's no single public shared social space, which means there's no one shared social feed to get hooked on.

Pretty much all of my former IRC/Forum buddies have migrated to Discord, and when the site goes south (not if, it's going to go public eventually, we all know how this story plays out), we expect that we'll be using an alternative that is shaped very much like it, such as Matrix.

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LexiMax

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PaulDavisThe1st  9 hours ago

> Discord is the 9,000lb gorilla of this form of social media, and it's actually quietly one of the largest social platforms on the internet. There's clearly a desire for these kinds of spaces, and Discord seems to be filling it.

The "former type" had to do with online socializing with people you know IRL.

I have never seen anything on Discord that matches this description.

  • LexiMax  9 hours ago

    I'm in multiple Discord servers with people I know IRL.

    In fact, I'd say it's probably the easiest way to bootstrap a community around a friend-group.

  • nitwit005  8 hours ago

    You're essentially saying you haven't seen anyone's private chats.

    I'm in a friend Discord server. It's naturally invisible unless someone sends you an invite.

  • thot_experiment  7 hours ago

    Yeah same as sibling comments, I'm in multiple discord servers for IRL friend groups. I personally run one with ~50 people that sees a hundreds of messages a day. By far my most used form of social media. Also as OP said, I'll be migrating to Matrix (probably) when they IPO, we've already started an archival project just in case.

  • andyouwont  3 hours ago

    And you won't. I will NOT invite anyone from "social media" to any of the 3 very-private, yet outrageously active, servers, and that's why they have less than 40 users collectively. They're basically for playing games and re-streaming movies among people on first name basis or close to it. And I know those 40 people have others of their own, and I know I'll never ever have access to them either. Because I dont know those other people in them.

    And I know server like these are in the top tier of engagement for discord on the whole because they keep being picked for AB testing new features. Like, we had activities some half a year early. We actually had the voice modifiers on two of them, and most people don't even know that was a thing.

  • esseph  8 hours ago

    Idk most of the people I "met" on the internet happened originally on IRC. I didn't know them till a decade or more later.

dartharva  10 hours ago

I'd say WhatsApp is a better example

  • Ekaros  4 hours ago

    WhatsApp really feels to me more like group chat. Not really breaking barrier of social media. But then again I am not in any mass chats.

    Discord is many things. Private chat groups, medium communities and then larger communities with tens of thousands of users.