Gaming chat platform Discord in early talks with banks about public listing
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Look for the companies that lead by example. Valve comes to mind. But there’s small businesses out there that do as well.
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“Obviously better” this isn’t obvious to me at all. Just because you don’t use the many features it offers doesn’t mean other people don’t.
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It's still information. I agree that it should be available publically, but information available to few is still more than information available to none. I agree that you shouldn't have to join a Discord server to get that information, but eliminating it entirely so that not even those who do join can access it doesn't help anybody. It would only hurt a few, but a few is still more than zero.
It's an issue of culture, so simply eliminating one repository doesn't fix anything. They'd find some other messaging service to congregate on.
That's not to say Discord are saints and there is nothing wrong with either their business or their platform. That is a separate issue I think we all agree on.
My point is strictly about the hypothetical deletion of Discord over the drift towards opaque information silos: It won't help.
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assuming Discord wouldn't be replaced by something equally closed off from easy public access
That's what I mean by issue of culture. I don't think the habit of gathering on discord-like services to quickly exchange info will change, and if the explosion of bsky is anything to go by, people will just find the next shiny, pretty and well-funded platform that totally definitely won't enshittify somewhere down the line to pay back their venture capital investors.
We'd be cutting the weed without pulling the root.
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They probably don't intentionally use it to store information so much as quickly and conveniently exchange answers and questions. Forums have evidently proven inadequate for that purpose, so unless people find a better solution and make it stick, the lesson sure won't.
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Catch me firing up Mumble again
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information available to few is still more than information available to none
If discord didnt exist, that information would just be elsewhere like proper forums, it doesnt disappear magically.
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I agree, but I understand the temptation. It can take your company from 0 to 100 almost instantly, since you have the budget to hire social media and SEO experts to take you to that magical "viral" status. Not doing this often means toiling in obscurity and never going anywhere. If you do manage to make enough money for your whole team to quit their day jobs, then it almost certainly took longer.
Quick and easy path leads to the Dark Side.
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"We have these delicious carrots."
"I ONLY WANT CABBAGE THAT'S BEEN SITTING OUT FOR A WEEK!"
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Gotta go for the ventrillo rofflecopter going soi soi.
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It's about money, specifically with a near-term "exit strategy" for investors.
It lets them push the company into choices that will pump up the stock price so that early shareholders can sell their stock and walk away with profits... without any concern over how those choices will impact the company, its employees, its customers, or the new shareholders in the long term.
I won't shed a tear for Discord, though. They are a parasitic corporation that extracts profit from the world's online communities by using the network effect to lock our communications and collected knowledge behind their terms of service. No company should have control over so much of humanity's cultural development and history.
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It's an actual platform. It's basically FOSS discord.
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it can't. it does most things ok, but if I had to move my communities there, it would be hellish to get stuff running the way discord runs them.
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Matrix needs more time in the oven before it's ready for widespread adoption.
I really did try to make it work (for months) but it's a buggy and unpolished experience, everyone that tried it with me ended up going back to Discord and Signal for communication.
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Discord probably not, but there are many that could.
