> Discord is the 9,000lb gorilla of this form of social media, and it's actually quietly one of the largest social platforms on the internet. There's clearly a desire for these kinds of spaces, and Discord seems to be filling it.

The "former type" had to do with online socializing with people you know IRL.

I have never seen anything on Discord that matches this description.

And you won't. I will NOT invite anyone from "social media" to any of the 3 very-private, yet outrageously active, servers, and that's why they have less than 40 users collectively. They're basically for playing games and re-streaming movies among people on first name basis or close to it. And I know those 40 people have others of their own, and I know I'll never ever have access to them either. Because I dont know those other people in them.

And I know server like these are in the top tier of engagement for discord on the whole because they keep being picked for AB testing new features. Like, we had activities some half a year early. We actually had the voice modifiers on two of them, and most people don't even know that was a thing.

I'm in multiple Discord servers with people I know IRL.

In fact, I'd say it's probably the easiest way to bootstrap a community around a friend-group.

You're essentially saying you haven't seen anyone's private chats.

I'm in a friend Discord server. It's naturally invisible unless someone sends you an invite.

Yeah same as sibling comments, I'm in multiple discord servers for IRL friend groups. I personally run one with ~50 people that sees a hundreds of messages a day. By far my most used form of social media. Also as OP said, I'll be migrating to Matrix (probably) when they IPO, we've already started an archival project just in case.

Idk most of the people I "met" on the internet happened originally on IRC. I didn't know them till a decade or more later.