Because it's actually a good experience in some ways. I mean, it's not great, but as a chat room it's fine.

It used to be. The core offering is still functional. But with every update it becomes less usable. Orbs, badges, glittery avatar borders, aggressively animated, rainbow gradient text usernames, and now ads embedded directly into the UI.

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tancop 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

For me all these things are good except the last one (if you mean partner games in the bottom left corner, I hope they're not A/B testing Google Ads in the app). My profile is more low key but I don't hate others for going heavy on the effects. It's just self expression.

What I don't like is the way they used to sell Nitro before they came up with the flashy cosmetics, restricting features that used to be free. And how they used a third party service for UK age verification that ended up hacked. And their security record in general. And being closed source with no official export tools.

I guess its all subjective.

	▲	jacobgkau 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> no official export tools. There actually is technically an official method to request a copy of your own data (think Google Takeout): https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/360004027692-R... I've used it once. It worked to recover some messages from DMs that were far enough down in my history they were no longer shown in the web/desktop UI. However, it only included my own messages in each DM/channel, without the context of whoever I was talking to.

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keithnz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

none of that makes it less usable. That side bar where its shown is mostly just to see who is online and I found for many users, they don't even have that bar showing. The core chat/voice/streaming is just as functional as ever.

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andrewflnr 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's actually not just as functional as ever. Quality of voice and video chat took a noticeable dive this year, maybe coincidentally right as vibe coding really took off in the industry. And all that extra crap might not make discord unusable but it does suck. Like I said, not great.

	▲	marshray 38 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I haven't noticed that.

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jacobgkau 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Animations from peoples' names and from their super reactions playing over other content after happening to move my mouse over them is something I'd consider a slight usability issue.

	▲	andrewflnr a few seconds ago \| parent [-]
		FWIW there are settings (maybe in the accessibility section) to avoid playing animations until you've actually clicked on something.