Stop Using Discord for Your Open source Communities | mattcen's mumblings (blog.mattcen.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by noodlejetski@beehaw.org to c/foss@beehaw.org

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Recently I accidentally made a Fediverse post which went viral:

stop using discord for your open source communities

That post is short, punchy, opinionated, and prescriptive, which I suspect is the cause for its virality.

Unfortunately, like many micro-blog posts, it lacks nuance, which many replies highlighted. I made the post to vent my frustration at needing to join a Discord server to interact with a community, so it is far from a measured critique of the subject.

This blog post is an attempt to address those nuances in greater detail. This is not an exhaustive analysis, and I’ve resolved to not let “perfect” be the enemy of “done”.

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[-] LiesSlander@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago

I think we already know what would have to happen to get people to move. Discord needs to screw up and drive people away. Like why most of us are here. Lemmy was around for years, it had most of the problems you list, less software support, fewer communities, higher barrier to entry, it still has most of that actually. Reddit gave Lemmy its chance, by screwing up their own platform, Discord will need to do the same thing to see an exodus.

That isn't all though, Revolt needs to be ready, to have communities and people talking about it, while Discord pisses its users off. Matrix already has that capacity, the question is if/when will Discord screw up?

[-] ArcticCircleSystem@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago

That's another major problem. Waiting for that is like waiting on the lottery to read your number. Well, maybe not quite the lottery, more like some sweepstakes that's kinda popular but not really? I don't know, you get the point. ~Strawberry

[-] LiesSlander@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I absolutely agree. We have no idea if its ever even going to happen, Facebook has never had an exodus the way Twitter and Reddit have, for example. There are also a variety of scenarios where Discord fails and no one migrates to decentralized FOSS platforms. Some AI product steals our attention more effectively than social media, or the infrastructure supporting the Internet breaks down, or climate chaos upends all our lives and no one has time for Discord or anything like it. Frankly, I expect something like that to be what does in most online platforms.

I think you're right in your original comment, it's probably not gonna happen.

this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023

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