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
Yeah I remember voicing this concern when all online communities seemed to be going to discord and people seemed to mainly laugh at me in response at the time.
Fuck Discord
Companies putting their stuff into discord is like all the businesses that ditched a dedicated website and moved to facebook however many years ago. Yay, now it is on a format that doesn’t work well for presenting static information and will inevitably require account registration!
Newest iteration of “this meeting could have been an email” has become “this Discord could have been a wiki”.
I despise discord from a user interface and business practice perspective. What a piece of shit
This is exactly what I was gonna say: I’m amazed that so many millions of people can tolerate its atrocious UI. Even now, the amount of notifications I get from the constant text channels across “servers” (which is such a misnomer for merely “communities”) is so ridiculous that I ignore 99.9% of it.
I think that naming was fully on purpose. People argumented with me that they had their own “servers” so that was good, right?
Grrr.
I quite like Discord, but I really only use it for it’s original purpose - a place for groups of friends to hang out, play video games with voice chat, and maybe watch shows/movies together. For these purposes, Discord is great!
I have found very little value in how Discord gets used for anything and everything else - forums for video games, support channels for businesses, 1000+ member communities, etc etc. All of those use cases feel better served through traditional websites and forums… but it’s so much easier to set up a Discord server for the average person it has turned into a weird default.
In that regard, fuck Discord.
In my head Discord = toxicity. Not sure how it got that rep for me but it has gotten it. Thus, wont lose sleep if it dies out. Perhaps I am wrong. Reviewing rationality of this prejudice is on my ToDo List after a million other things…
Discord isn’t like reddit though, you don’t have the userbase spread out across the same space regardless of the users. For discord every server is a standalone community and they’re each going to have their own standards of civility.
How do we get them to switch to something like Element?
I tried element a week ago after a similar discussion. Afaict, it does not fill the same niche. I’m very open to being corrected, but it doesn’t seem like element has support for multi-room communities.
Also, multi device login was extremely wonky. I’m not going to recommend something that’ll end up with me having to play tech support to get it working.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I can’t speak to your server but I don’t have that issue. It was solved with Sliding Sync quite some time ago.
Sliding sync did nothing.
Sorry but this sounds like a skill issue.
Loading times are a skill issue? You could at least try to make sense while you’re being a dick.
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.
I run a Matrix family instance. My elderly parents use it as their main way of communicating with us.
Sure, I set up their accounts - but all that difficult to use UX seems to have passed them by completely since they’re very happy with it.
I set up their accounts
Setup is the hardest part. Syncing multiple devices and device migration are also hard. I’ll bet you’re going to act as tech support every time they get a new phone. That’s fine for your family, but it’s hardly going to scale.
The performance issues show up when dealing with large groups syncing between instances. You might just not be using it that way, but that’s what needs to work seamlessly for a viable substitute for Discord.
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.
It is, but Element is still the “Gold standard” Matrix client and the most popular. And if you’re going to create a brand new chat protocol, you should make sure that your flagship client measures up to the competition.
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.
If I’m talking with people about the topical thing which is why I joined a room in the first place, the last thing I want is a looping autoloops fruityloops annoyance. Plus, not autoplaying and autolooping them saves battery.
I hate to break this to you but that means you’re not normal. If all you ever do in chat is talk about serious things that are of such earth-shattering importance that it would be incredibly rude and obnoxious for someone to post a silent looping video you’re not normal, and no fun at all.
The way Element currently works, it’s made for people like you… A strange minority that probably only thinks about “chat” in terms of communicating for an end goal and not for the pleasure of conversation.
Plus all this stuff can be disabled in discord too, if you want to be that serious. There are per-role and per-channel settings that let you disable images, link embedding, external emojis, etc.
It gives you choice. I have no choice in Element, it’s always unfun all the time.
Oh, do cry me a river while you’re at it. Pretty much every community everywhere has a
generalormemesroom, those are for the meme gifs (or wait, these are webp these days…).
Tell me about Element. This is the first I’m hearing about it.
It’s a secure messenger
What are its pros and cons? What does it offer that telegram or similar don’t offer? Is it good for group chat? Is it available on multiple platforms?
Telegram is not a secure messenger.
Yes to multiple platforms, groups etc.
So, I’m going to say that I don’t use telegram and only know it as being presented as a secure messenger platform. As a result, I am just asking follow-on questions to further discern what makes Element preferable. And this is no different because I feel like this is exactly the problem lemmy and other platforms like it have. There are people who love them, but when people ask about them, they don’t offer any really informative data to support why they like them.
What makes Element (matrix) a secure platform, and how does that differ from telegram or signal or whatever. Like. What is matrix good at? That’s what I’m asking. Why suggest it over something else?
As a result, I am just asking follow-on questions to further discern what makes Element preferable.
If you are against a change in the first place you won’t switch, anyway.
There are people who love them, but when people ask about them, they don’t offer any really informative data to support why they like them.
Please, ask.
What makes Element (matrix) a secure platform, and how does that differ from telegram or signal or whatever. Like. What is matrix good at? That’s what I’m asking. Why suggest it over something else?
Simple. It’s fully free and open source. The server as well as the apps. Therefore, you can trust it as a privacy friendly solution a heck of a lot more, than any other solution like WhatsApp.
Signal is secure as well, but the server is centralized.
And Telegram is not considered secure because of their implementation and shady practices.
Or Matrix?
According to history:
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Wait till it’s so enshittified it’s unusable, or…
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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.
Matrix/Element has shitty usability and reliability compared to Discord.
For lots of communities, they could use modern forum software like Discourse with better results.
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Forums are where I learned literally everything about technology I know now. Every hack, jailbreak, method of bypassing something, building, literally anything I’ve done around my tech hobbies. Pi hole, emulation in the late 90s, how to use Photoshop, how to run Linux from a USB, everything I’ve learned from forums. I’m sad to think that me joining certain discords help deliver the death knell to the concept of forums.
I actually just launched a PHPBB forum for specific interests in regards to the indie web, building websites, and sharing random banter (among a few other things). I find Reddit and Lemmy to be useful for seeing what’s going on in the world overall, and Discord has mostly just been annoying ever since its launch, and forums seem like a good answer to recreating actual communities. And if there are more people who feel this way, maybe they’ll make a comeback (because they definitely haven’t just started to be affected by corporations attempting to centralize everyone to one thing).
Do you have a link to your forum? Edit: nvm I just found it linked on your website :}
Haha sorry, would have responded earlier but am stuck at work
I’m sort of tired of articles describing some catastrophe that happened ten years ago and saying “it’s worrying.”
Agreed, this article would have made sense in 2020 or earlier.
And now we have the fediverse, which is causing a resurgence of content that is independent of Reddit or Discord.
Ugh, Discord is an information black hole. I despise how so many of my niches have fled there.
Reddit seems to be trying to destroy that “role” of theirs as hard as they can though. A few very niche subs I follow are drying from some kind of “bug” that deprioritizes their discoverability.
It’s not a bug. It’s absolutely a feature for making Reddit more generic, farmable garbage and noise.
Subreddits were not a problem before since they were accessible on the web without needing an account. But now reddit is gradually locking them down behind authwalls and things like not letting search engines index (other than Google).
Lemmy communities dont have this problem and because lemmy is federated, its resistant to such enshittification (plus you can easily create your own lemmy instance for only your team). So imo they are a good alternative to forums (and reddit) and a good solution to this problem.
What are we going to do about it?
Quit whining about it and make a good community outside of those.
Be a good community member yourself.
I see myself coming less and less to Lemmy due to how monotopic this place is. And how aggressively stupid people here can be.
It is a problem, but I think it downplays the reason those platforms got popular.
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No admin required. No updating of software to make sure you’re not going to get compromised by a vuln.
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No account management. You don’t have to make a new account, and manage another password for every community you use. Also, no worrying about 1 when somebody like me can’t be arsed to update that forum software. I don’t want an account for everything.
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It’s all in one place. You look at your “feed” of things and your stuff with a new post every week is right there with the stuff with new posts every ten minutes.
If you’re running a big community you shouldn’t be building it somebody else’s garden, but you do need to manage the garden yourself and it’s not super trivial and maybe your little Final Fantasy XIV group can make do with a corner of Discord and abandon it when it goes real shitty. If you’ve got 50,000 people, it gets a little trickier.
The Fediverse goes a little way to fixing things, but it’s all a trade off. Not having corporations involved is a damn good start though.
If game developers would launch their own fediverse instances (maybe with devs + moderators as the only registered users), to which general purpose instances could freely connect, then problems 2 and 3 would be solved for users as well. Imo that would be a far better solution than having game forums on a walled garden platform like discord. That still leaves the devs with problem 1, but they would also regain control of their data + the data would also be searchable with proper search engines. I can dream :)
It would be solved for people who are primarily interested in tech and gaming. How about bellow challenges?
Gaming is huge so presumably lots of gamers are interested in the wider world, which is not exactly well represented here compared to the major platforms.
And we can’t ignore the inherent complexities of federation. If a user signs up to another instance but for some reason that instance (or game 's instance) is blocked by others or even goes offline, then it will be confusing if not ruining of their experience.
If a Lemmy-naut is registered with an instance that’s defederated from the game company instance, they can always register at an instance that is federated, either in addition to their main or to replace it. The company’s instance would likely act as an info hub, but the gamers wouldn’t be members of the instance directly, so it would be like any other content that could be opted into. If it became the norm that games or game companies spun up their own instance, it could become a community and marketing tool for the games. But even if the instances themselves retire, the content made is still around and the existing fans could just start channels to continue the community. Companies that arent complete assholes could even assist with transfer to new channels elsewhere.
I think theres an opportunity down the line for a company/companies to form that specialize in helping orgs to spin up instances and sell their them hosting. Hosting is expensive for small groups to manage, but multiple small groups together could make it viable. Plus having the hosting coupled with help overcoming the tech-knowledge barrier could lead to more orgs feeling comfortable spinning up their own instances.
The problem with your logic is that now you have to have multiple accounts across the “same bloody Lemmy”. That kills the whole purpose of a decentralised approach. Defederation should not be a thing at all.
We’re trying to have an intelligent discussion here.
You think every Lemmy admin should be forced to fed with CSAM instances, and therefor host on their own servers CSAM? Wow great plan you have for expanding the fediverse.
Oh, you’re one of those “think of the kids” nutjobs!
No I’m one of those “think!” nutjobs
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Internet forums will come back when AI overtakes Reddit and Discord goes awry because they go public.
I’ve been saying it for years. People should have stuck with usenet.
lemmy is similar to usenet, in a way.
I run a forum where the first post was started 23 years ago. Although the activity has drastically gone down during recent years, people still occasionally come by. I’m very happy I kept it up, even though a lot of people switched over to a Discord server.
Recently we had an incident where the sole admin of the Discord server was banned and the whole Discord had to be abandoned and created from scratch. People still keep using this trash! I’m not arguing with them, I’ll just keep an alternative up. One day, when Discord really enshittifies itself to a point where it becomes unuseable, people will be happy for my stubborness. I hope.
(It’s a forum for an obscure space pirate game for the PC - I-War 2. Its first post is here.)
Similar. I had a community from 2001 onward where I was variously an admin and a mod over the decades. A lot of us drifted apart from being kids exploring the internet to adults with families and careers.
But mainly the guy that took over the code maintenance became the sole admin in 2018 and he just chased everyone off the site debatebroing with increasingly racist and misogynistic rants. Dude I played games with and talked with online for 20 years started calling me a genocidal enslaver for trying to explain CRT and want solar power in America.
I’m getting two points from the article. One is addressed handily by the Fediverse, the other is not.
First the centralized (I prefer to say “urbanized”) nature of social media means a handful of companies control all the conversations. The Fediverse is a decent (though not perfect) solution to that problem, and I think everyone on here knows that.
However, the article also talks about the problems with the format of social media, not just who’s hosting the platform. On traditional forums, conversations can last for years, but on Reddit, Discord, etc. new topics quickly bury old ones, no matter how lively those old topics are. Sure, you can choose to sort by “last comment” which replicates the traditional forum presentation with topic bumping, but it’s not the default, even on Lemmy, so 90% of people won’t bother.
I get to know people on traditional forums, even miss them if they leave, but on Reddit, comments are just disembodied thoughts manifesting in the ether. That may be due to the size of the community rather than the format, though.
Every forum I used before Reddit even existed is still active (hell, PHPBB was updated as recently as November!) and new platforms, like Lemmy, pop up all the time . IDK what the fuck these articles are talking about. Maybe they just don’t know how to actually find anything on the web? 🤷🏻♂️
I think it’s more about the scale. 80% or more of the content gets created on Reddit or alike, probably.
