Submitted 3 weeks ago by neme@lemm.ee to technology@lemmy.zip
Step One: Provide an exceptional but unprofitable service.
Step Two: Drive out all competition because business model is unprofitable. Become the only service users want and become invested into.
Step Three: Enshitify to show the model can be profitable to investors. Users will not leave because they are already invested and competition is not strong.
Step Four: Go public, while continuing to Enshitify.
Has Discord really done Step Two? I’m not saying they haven’t tried to drive out competition, mind you, I’m just unaware of any attempts to do so. Unlike Facebook or Google or Apple who have long, stories histories of driving out or purchasing any competition they could.
Regardless, every other part is true. My friend group uses Discord all the time, for its initial intended purpose - quickly and easily hanging out with friends with chat and voice and sometimes video. Bunch of us even have Nitro.
Despite being relatively early adopters and genuinely enjoying Discord, we’re all very wary and actively seeking alternatives for when it inevitably becomes unbearable to use.
Skype is dead, sites like ooVoo are long gone, TeamSpeak seems to be held up in part by game clans.
While I can’t say they actively killed the competition, they certainly gave plenty of services little reason to exist. Discord created such a good and new service, that there wasn’t any reason to leave it for a different service.
I wondered what they’d do next to make discord even worse. That’ll do it.
I can’t wait for more ‘quests’ and notifications about how I’m failing all of them 🫠
Are there alternatives? I hardly use it except for dnd once a fortnight and the occasional call with my brother when we game
Revolt is an open source alternative with a near 1:1 feature parity. I just migrated my PF2e group to Revolt for lack of a better option.
Is it completely foss? I thought there were parts that weren’t
Also it lacks federation and has one big central server
I am also to relocate my gaming and PF2e groups to either Revolt or Matrix. I thought Revolt was also US based and so consensus was it will likely follow in Discord’s footsteps a few years down the line. I guess then you just migrate again which isn’t the end of the world.
Except they are missing voice calls on Android, and don’t (as far as I have seen) have video or screen sharing yet.
Those two alone make it a poor replacement at the moment for my friend group. I appreciate the simple setup and all the 1:1 features they have so far, but video and voice are the main things we use discord for.
I have it set up and will try to get some techy friends on board to play with it, but it’s not really there yet to move everybody over. Hopefully the eventually self destruction of Discord will give Revolt the push it needs to finally be a suitable replacement.
How did you get the voice chat to work? I want to like it but my experience so far has not been good
RedSnt@feddit.dk 3 weeks ago
Let the enshittification begin!