Alexia

Background by Maxim Tajer (unsplash), logo belongs to Discord Inc.

Recently, news about Discord looking into an initial public offering made the rounds online.

Usually, an IPO does not mean anything good for end users, especially for software products or anything-as-a-service situations. For us, it only means that external investors will gain more control over the platform than they do now and will demand a return on their investment. If they did not already have a grip on Discord through its venture capital roots, they will definitely have a grip once Discord goes public.

I expect existing features to become paid, new features to become increasingly egregious, and the platform as a whole to become more hostile toward its everyday users. They will likely leverage the network effect even more aggressively to lock users in, and I believe already established a tight gripthey may even introduce true advertisements—unlike what they have done already, which some are still defending as “not ads”.

All in all, one would think that people would get tired of Discord and finally want to move. That is easier said than done though.

So, why hasn't anyone done so yet?

This question is not a new one, and the search for a replacement has been a long one.

If you're anywhere even remotely adjacent to digital privacy or tech, especially around decentralized technology, you've probably heard about Matrix or—God forbid—XMPP as potential replacements. Some may have advocated for Signal, while others might have even mentioned Revolt.

The issue with all of these platforms—aside from their unique challenges—is that none of them can truly compete. Not because they lack the resources, but because of the network effect.

The network effect is, in itself, a neutral force. It simply means that the larger a network is, the more well-integrated and functional it becomes.

Companies understand this, which is why they will exploit it. They will make it difficult to leave the platform or create an illusion of a utopia where users have no reason to leave.

You can bet your ass that if Discord weren't already trying to guilt-trip users into staying because they have a long-lasting Nitro subscription with a funny badge, or due to the various reward and gamification systems they've implemented over the years, the new shareholders would find a way to exploit network effect.

In other words, people have tried and failed to do it because Discord has already established a tight grip on its users.

but even if we imagine that network effect didn't exist...

What got people here in the first place?

If you were part of the gaming scene in 2015-2016, you’ve probably used Skype or even Teamspeak to hang out with friends until a new option started to become more prominent. More and more forums replaced their IRC and Teamspeak links with Discord ones. With the promise of not needing to pay to host a server, the best option became clear for many.

No longer would one hear the Skype ringtone, as it was swiftly replaced with the Discord ringtone as people started to move.

Over time, Discord got robust moderation and community-oriented features, customization, custom emotes, and so it quickly became not just the home of many friend groups but also of larger online communities. Nowadays musicians and content creators alike find their home there.

In other words, for a long while, Discord simply provided a good product. It works, it works well, it has many features and allows you to stay in touch with friends.

Sunshine does not last forever

Eventually, Discord needed a way to make money. After all, they had to pay back the venture capitalists who got them here in the first place, right?

So, they got to work on implementing Discord Nitro. Higher file size limits, the ability to use emotes anywhere, and streaming in high quality—the whole shtick that you probably already know.

These are all paid of course, monthly or yearly, and now all that Discord needs is a way to make people use it

So, they started putting references to it everywhere. Click on an emoji? It tells you about Nitro. Open the emoji picker? It tells you about Nitro. Open your profile? It tells you about Nitro. Open someone else's profile? You get blasted with an animation, and then it tells you about Nitro. The point is, they became very aggressive in reminding you every couple of minutes that Nitro was a thing. Not to mention the full-screen pop-ups that would appear every once in a while after an update, along with all the A/B tests they conducted to see what they could do to encourage more users to purchase Nitro.

Even in just trying to make VC investors happy, they already began sharpening their game in upselling. And so, more and more users became upset with the platform and started to look for alternatives

What little options we do have

Let me just say this from the get-go: our options kind of suck.

They are buggy, too early in development, just as VC-ridden as Discord, underfunded, or simply a hobby project by a few students. Or any combination of the above.

Optimally, we would have something that could replace discord in it's most fleshed-out and core features, whilst also making it easy for developers to port their software, offer some of Discord's most egregiously advertised features for free, provide stronger privacy guarantees, and all that whilst being decentralised to a reasonable degree.

One possible candidate for many is probably going to be [matrix], but as much as I'd love for that to be a good option, it simply is not—especially not for larger communities (e.g., 500-1000+ members). This is primarily due to the fact that significant specification work must be done by the Matrix Foundation before it becomes viable. Element also needs to step up and undertake serious refactoring of their client and UX across the board—some of which is happening—before it becomes viable.

Content Warning: Mention of CSAM and torture of animals

As it stands, moderation in public channels ranges from incredibly hard to impossible. Projects like grapheneOS have stopped trying, LibreWolf is getting spammed with CSAM and images of animals in extreme pain or being tortured and Matrix itself gives zero tools to protect from this. Even Matrix.org's main communities have to deal with spam (often of the above kind) every single day.

There are few tools available to protect against this spam; even matrix.org's own moderation tool, Mjolnir, offers little to no protection. The same goes for downstream forks like Draupnir, which significantly improve the situation but are not a complete solution to spam either.

---

There is another up-and-coming project, namely Polyphony / Polyproto that meets most of the criteria above.

It has a simple model to decentralisation in which authentication across servers is simplified, does not try to do complex data replication across servers, does not have a complex DAG or state resolution, and has goals to have Discord API compatibility (to some degree). It has history in the Spacebar.chat project which has previously attempted reverse-engineering the Discord API

This makes it a really good candidate for fulfilling both the decentralisation and Discord-Compatibility check-boxes. Sadly it does not really compete with Discord yet as most of the work is currently in backend, nothing for the end-user yet. They also did not get the NLNet grant they were hoping for, which would've accelerated their work on Polyphony as a whole massively.

What I wanna say with that is if you have a project you wanna contribute to, it's probably Polyphony. If you know rust, go help them out!

A Dire Situation

All this is to say, we desperately need a good replacement. We need something that the average user can pick up where these qualities we want to avoid another Discord situation are met without them having to think much about it. Where the user is better respected, their privacy protected, where they are given choice and control.

And we just don't have it yet. That is the reality of the situation.

I have hope this might inspire some to take action, help these projects which are trying to build something better or maybe even build something of their own. Whichever way this goes, my hope is that this might inspire change in the landscape of...whatever category Discord belongs in nowadays.

---

If you wanna support me, check out my Ko-Fi! → https://ko-fi.com/cyrneko