2012
Internet forums are disappearing because now everything is Reddit and Discord. And that's worrying. (www-xataka-com.translate.goog)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [A] to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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What are we going to do about it?

Sorry for the Google Translate Link. An easy alternative is much appreciated.

Edit: thanks to @Xamrica@lemmy.dbzer0.com for this translation alternative: https://translate.kagi.com/translate/https://www.xataka.com/servicios/foros-internet-estan-desapareciendo-porque-ahora-todo-reddit-discord-eso-preocupante

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[–] [S, A] 13 points 2 years ago (80 children)

How do we get them to switch to something like Element?

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  • [–] 58 points 2 years ago (36 children)

    Element needs to be better. Discord is awesome with the way it auto-plays looping videos/gifs and has animated emojis.

    Seriously: That's all they'd need to do. The element devs need to focus on fun.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    Isn't that a client side issue though? Element is just one Matrix client. I haven't used it myself but heard from others that Fluffychat (another Matrix client) is more like Discord.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Yeah it's probably just a client side issue but the OP mentioned Element, specifically 🤷

    I just wanted to point out that Element is no fun! No fun at all!

    It works and it works great for what it does. Even voice and streaming are great with Element. It's just got a terrible, no-fun interface and pointless limitations on things like looping videos. You can't even configure it to make them play properly (as in, automatic and endlessly, the way they were meant to be played! 😤).

    Looping videos and animated emojis are super fun ways to chat with people. Even in professional settings! It really breaks up the humdrum and can motivate people to chat and share more.

    Element is all serious all the time and going into a chat channel there feels like a chore.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    What would likely help a lot if it was easier to get set up, particularly on a VPS or something like that. Small businesses and or larger community projects would be more likely to jump on possibly.

    Another thing is ability to easily join, a lot of the above just have an easy link to join their discord server, not sure how easy matrix on boarding is currently as I still haven't gotten my instance functional yet (not even half done with synapse configuration seemingly)

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    I mean, there are quite a few such providers: https://etke.cc/

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Fair enough, I do mean moreso for self host in a way, like I've seen some game hosting servers, they have a VPS they already paid for and use Pelican or Pterodactyl to host it all, being able to throw matrix into the mix easily would be great in those cases. Seems like this would be a separate situation, which is definitely fine, just not exactly what I meant.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (18 children)

    Fun is the least of my concerns. I don't know why people compare the 2 when they have almost nothing in common. One is a chat app and the other is a voice/streaming/community app. Matrix is slow as hell and the way "spaces" are implemented is a joke.

    Honestly outside of the incessant pop-ups and upsells and the whole selling everything to AI companies, it's pretty great for private communities.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (17 children)

    Your view of Matrix seems a bit weird. AFAIK I can do all the voice/streaming/community in Matrix as well as it's done in Discord.

    Also, no, my server isn't slow. matrix.org might be, I don't know.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    Matrix is notorious for its poor performance with large/numerous groups. They keep claiming to improve it, but it's still bad.

    I mean, it's great that it works for you, but be honest: isn't your tolerance for technological friction a bit higher than the average bear's? People complain that Mastodon is too hard, and Matrix is ten times worse to sign up for and use.

    I hate to say it, but Matrix is never going to be mainstream. Its UX is bad and it seems like it's too bloated to fix. If I tried to get people to move from Discord to Matrix, they'd never take me seriously again. It was hard enough getting people to move from Facebook Messenger to Signal.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (9 children)

    I have a Matrix server. I've also used a half a dozen others. Every one of them you have sit there and stare at it for 5-10 secs and watch the messages roll in every time you open the app.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Also, people forget that Discord's streaming capability is, unfortunately, absolutely top-notch; no other community-screensharing platform has fewer issues, and my friends and I like to watch each other play games often.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago* (10 children)

    Or Matrix?

    According to history:

    • Wait till it’s so enshittified it’s unusable, or…

    • If it reaches a critical mass… You can't. See: Facebook.

    The Fediverse can adopt a few nice communities, but honestly bringing the larger population seems hopeless.

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Wait till it’s so enshittified it’s unusable

    Discord is going public soon, so start the timer...

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  • [–] [S, A] 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    larger population seems hopeless.

    But what is the barrier? We have a functioning infrastructure. We need to solve the last piece of the puzzle.

    People need an easy way to join!

    Mastodon has already shown that this works. Even if they aren't as big as others yet, they still make up about two-thirds of the Fediverse. Now we need to replicate this for Lemmy, Pixelfed, and so on, and share our findings along the way.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    You mean drag them from platforms that have a vested interest in keeping them locked in and squashing competitors like the Fediverse?

    In platforms that spend billions on engagement optimization algorithms, with the sole purpose of keeping users addicted, basically with government and business landscape backing?

    Look, I’m optimistic about the Fediverse, this is a great refuge in the hellscape that is the internet. But you can’t make people want to change. I've learned this IRL, but see it with (for example) persecuted people continuing to use Twitter even though its owner basically has a gun to their heads. There’s a big gulf between being a fantastic refuge and taking the internet from Facebook and Google. Even if every phone on the planet had an easy button to switch to Fediverse alternatives in one click… many would not take it, and that’s an utter fantasy.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    This pretty much. At some point one has to accept that the people who want to be saved can be saved, and those who don't, can't. We shouldn't (reasonably or not) waste ourselves for the latter in spite of the former.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Most of these communuties using Discord are better served by something that isn't a chatroom. So, so, so confusingly many of them use them as a store of permanent information. Like a website+forum.

    Many times the benefit of Discord is the ability to paywall parts of it with Patreon integration. We need more foss and federated options that do this.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

    Rant

    I don't think you can for most people that is what is so infuriating right? In my experience people who are entrenched in Discord are completely and utterly entrenched in it, to the point that I have lost contact with a lot of these people effectively since I don't use Discord.

    The important choice was with all the community leaders who decided to make the move to Discord at crucial moments where they could have NOT done that.

    I think any shift off of Discord is also going to have to come from community leaders of organizations, projects, game development communities etc... deciding to move off the platform at crucial decision points.

    However, and this is something people who happily pushed their entire lives onto Discord would confidently tell me we could easily do if Discord got bad, everyone isn't just going to straight up leave once they have built their entire digital communication around Discord...

    Now I frequently see game developers complain that they can't accurately get a picture of their playerbase because large categories of players aren't on their discord!! and I have to keep my palm from blowing a hole through my face when the two loudly meet.

    The brainworms are so bad that these developers will conclude the issue is with their playerbase not wanting to use Discord instead of it being an issue with DEVELOPERS DECIDING TO COMMUNICATE WITH THEIR PLAYERBASE WITH A SHITTY, EXCLUSIONARY TOOL THAT HAS AWFUL SEARCH.

    I can't express how much this gets under my skin, it is like this assumption that if you are even slightly a gamer than you are on Discord all the damn time has become rheified and cemented into place so rigidly that developers are literally tossing away large swaths of their playerbase feedback because they refuse to use a different tool to get feedback and communicate with their community. No forum, no custom website, nothing, Discord or bust.

    I have seen the effects in games like Battlebit where it is clear that the developers were catering to only a small subsection of the playerbase that was very active and prominent on Discord and it ended up torpedoing the game because changes kept happening that clearly signalled to large portions of the playerbase that they were basically invisible to the developers.

    I have watched this problem, stewing in my frustration, evolve from a minor personal annoyance to being a serious systematic issue causing community organization to become dysfunctional and broken because Discord is clearly a shitty tool for that community (that clearly a lot of people refuse to use or check regularly).... and YET everybody in those communities behaves like it was always a foregone conclusion that the community would have to move to Discord, that is just the way it is.

    screams into void

    Gamers are so confidently stupid.

    Also before anyone says "well it is a good tool for communicating with friends in a DnD group or something" ... yes I know it is good for that, you know why I know that it is good for that? Because that is the easiest usecase for any communication and organizational tool to tackle, Discord isn't good at this usecase, it is just a laughably easy usecase compared to how mindbendingly difficult it is to wrangle larger communities of... not necessarily friends.

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