>I genuinely have zero idea why anyone uses it.

it's a super low-friction text, voice & screenshare program with support for your whole WoW guild (or whatever communities) and you have "genuinely zero idea" why people use it?

▲

plant-ian 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think you could probably just say "it became popular because it's free and everyone could use it to game with friends". Those of us that have fallen out of gaming or people that don't game might not literally have any idea why anyone uses it. So you could both be right. You are taking their zero to one by providing the answer.

I think there is a whole generation of people that have very fond memories of discord and everyone outside that window does not have that connection at all.

An addendum to that might be that other people have used other services before discord even existed that had better (?) feature sets but didn't win out and that can create confusion because neither group of people understands what the other group is talking about because there is no shared experience.

	▲	morkalork 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There are discord communities around hobbies and shared interests that have nothing to do with gaming and have thousands of users. But half the good is that they are not some wide-open, forever-indexed forum like reddit.

▲

WheatMillington an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It certainly started that way, but the bloat is getting horrendous. Having said that, I still use it weekly.

▲

Yiin an hour ago | parent [-]

what bloat? unless you're specifically looking for it, default view has none of it, it's just chat, video and memes

	▲	bevr1337 21 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Here's an easy example. Every discord client now ships with Krisp, and many clients squelch settings were automatically changed from standard to Krisp when this feature launched. https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/360040843952-K...
	▲	LoganDark 32 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		In vaguely-non-chronological order - Remember to gift Nitro to your friends! - Have you played any Quests to get any Orbs? - Did you know about Discord Nitro? - Did you know there are server tags now? - Did you know this server has a server tag? - Did you know this server has a server tag? - Did you know this server has a server tag? - Did you know this server has a server tag? - Did you know this server has a server tag? - Subscribe to Nitro to use these emojis! (Every time you open the emoji picker) - Did you know there are username styles now? - Subscribe to Nitro to use animated avatars! - Did you know there are per-server profiles now? (If you subscribe to Nitro!) - Boost this server! (With Nitro) - Here's a GIFs button that is forever part of the textbox buttons. - Here's a Stickers button that is forever part of the textbox buttons. - Here's an Apps button that is forever part of the textbox buttons. Just kidding, now it forever sits next to the textbox! (A third of your horizontal screen estate is now textbox buttons) - Here's a dedicated Gift button so you can buy Nitro for your friends too! In the textbox buttons. - We have polls! Not in the textbox buttons though. It's in the same submenu as opening the file picker! Oh, did we mention you need an extra click to open the file picker now? (Why would we put it in the textbox buttons when we only put things there that upsell Nitro?) - Did you know our new noise suppression is sponsored by Krisp? (Plasters Krisp logo everywhere) - Have you played this game in Roblox yet? - Verify your phone number to keep using Discord. - Verify your ID to keep using Discord. - Did you know which of your friends are playing games right now? (You can't turn this off) - Earn Orbs by joining your friend in this sponsored game! - Subscribe to Nitro for increased stream resolution! - Did you know Nitro subscribers get 3 months of Xbox Game Pass free? - Did you know Nitro subscribers get 1 month of Xbox Game Pass free? - Did you know Xbox Game Pass subscribers get 3 months of Discord Nitro free?? - Did you know you can get a longer message length limit with Nitro? I say this as someone who's used Discord basically daily since 2016. They are so much more bloated than they were, it's insane. And a lot of these are things nobody wants, not just stuff I personally didn't ask for.

▲

anthonypasq 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

i think a certain brand of hackernews user just likes being completely obtuse in a bid for superiority.

how could anyone possible enjoy x mainstream thing, i only use y hyper niche thing that signals my status to tech nerds.

queue the guy talking about the most obscure linux distro you can possibly imagine.

▲

RHSeeger 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Discord is a mediocre chat medium - I don't mind using it, but it wouldn't be my first choice.

But people use it to store all information about some games - effectively replacing a wiki. And it is AWFUL for that. Everything about Discord makes it bad for that

- Can't be found in search engines

- Abysmal search functionality

- Abysmal discoverability

▲

nantangitan an hour ago | parent [-]

What do you find so bad about Discord's search functionality? Because I see this complaint a lot, but I've personally never had any real problems with it, and it seems to cover pretty much all of the bases I'd want in a search for this kind of platform.

▲

desolate_muffin an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Because it's not semantic search, it's text search. You don't search Discord like you search Google, which is a problem when it is used as a wiki replacement.

	▲	LoganDark 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It's not even text search. I can know the exact text I'm looking for and get messages that use completely different words just because Discord tries to group related words together when indexing. It's like some lobotomized collated word search, since it doesn't support symbols or quotes either.

▲

LoganDark 15 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Discord's text search is a simple intersection-of-all-words search, with some filters slapped on top. And it's not even the word you typed, it's all words that seem maybe semantically equivalent or similar. When I know the exact word I want to search for (e.g. "loves"), it sucks to always get results for every other related word (e.g. "love", "loved", "loving"). Maybe it'd be a useful feature if it had a toggle, but it doesn't. Some other words that have problems with this are time/times, caring/care, wanting/want/wants, and fucking allowance/allow/allows. Seriously?? Allowance is treated the same as allow??

Can't search for or with symbols. Lots of search engines have this issue. Just ignores them. Want to search for instances of ":3"? You're actually searching for instances of "3". Not much else to say on this other than it's annoying.

▲

lrvick 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Hey, I am that guy that founded that one obscure Linux distro. And yes, it is better than whatever one you use at supply chain security if nothing else. ;)

Really though, I do think people often equate popularity with being a healthy default solution for society.

A lot of people enjoy mcdonalds, and hell even I cave and buy it once in a while, but popular does not mean it is a healthy default for society.

The corpos are incentivized to addict you and trap you. Not to give you the best solution.

If one actually does research beyond "but all my friends use it" they would see Discord is objectively one of the worst things to happen to sovereign and privacy preserving communication on the internet in a long time. Tech communities using it should know better.

Whenever I see an open source project that says "Join my Discord" without any alternatives, I close the tab. If a technical project cannot find an hour to figure out how to setup a chat with their community without mandating use of a surveillance capitalism product, our goals are already too far apart.

	▲	esseph a minute ago \| parent [-]
		[delayed]

▲

keithnz 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

yep, many previous discussions on discord tend to result in many HNers poo pooing discord. All the things they say would happen never happened.

▲

yangm97 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

But NixOS is not obscure once you get into it.

▲

lezojeda 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

▲

justsomehnguy 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> low-friction

is the key here

the same reason WhatsApp and Telegram won on their markets

▲

lezojeda 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]