I’ll never touch Discord again after their Palantir ID verification bullshit
And Google play started doing it with a do you want to do this pop-up prompt, they don’t say that,it’s very vaguely just verification and looks normal and not new but traffics you to the id verification thing and then make it impossible or very difficult to back out without doing it.
Discord requires ID verification. It is dead to me.
Not where I live
I think it is just GDPR. I uninstalled the shit immediately when I saw the prompt. Just like my reddit account.
They do it if they think you’re underage and it’s optional. If you don’t do it, you can’t see nsfw. That’s pretty much it. They also switched away from the sketchy id checker. I’m not saying it’s good, but you can avoid it.
Probably. But every server I was investrd in migrated, so why not ditch that horrible murican company alltogethet…
Understandable. I do think it’s one of the better ones, but the bar is low.
To be fair, I wasn’t an avid user. I had 2 or 3 important communities there that I was active in on and off for a long time. It wasn’t a big sacrifice… reddit feels bigger.
It doesn’t, you just can’t view NSFW channels if you don’t. Which is a problem if that’s something you want to do, but “requires” is a strong word.
Almost every server was nsfw tagged for nudity and profanity when they rolled it out. It was a shitshow. I have no interest. Same goes for Reddit now.
Edit: missing an N in nsfw botched my comment completely
Hmm, I’m at the server limit (in 50 Discords) and none of them were marked in that way. Some of them have NSFW channels that I can’t access anymore, but I don’t care about that.
Maybe I’m in different kinds of communities.
I heard a cousin of a friend saying if you connect via a Moldavia VPS there is no age verification for Reddit (there is, however, for Discord).
how else will I use it
Ideally you won’t, the requirement sucks
And by “rewrite”, they mean point Claude at a vague spec and hope for the best.
This is the way
How the fuck is anyone still using Discord.
Because not everyone has the know how or resources to self host an alternative that only a small amount of people are going to use.
Also, trying to move an entire friend group to a different platform is hard, especially when they are part of other friend groups that are also using discord.
Yeah I get it. Not everyone is as ideological (not a putdown). I just left all those groups. They know how to reach me when they want to chat.
I don’t know your situation, and more just for the sake of a debate, but doesn’t that just silo you or put you in a bubble?
You just know it’s basically vibe coded
I’m torn here because I didn’t know what’s worse… Electron shit or AI shit.
On the plus side, the AI shit will at least be a proper application and not a web browser pretending to be an application.
I wonder how long it will take for Vencord to work on it though.
AI shit is worse cause of the issue with AI being trained on everything?
The flip side is that Electron shit is worse because it’s bloated to high hell, and it’s literally just a browser. It’s completely unnecessary.
Tough question. I hate electron so much that I might be leaning towards AI shit.
I kinda feel the same way and I don’t know how I feel about feeling that way.
I think I might actually hate Discord more then both, so my hope is that this just makes them leave my communities alone somehow
Electron isn’t a problem when it’s used well, eg VS Code. At least you know what you’re getting.
You have no idea what the code is doing is when some numbnut vibe codes it without a thorough review.
Electron is a problem in the sense that it’s completely unnecessary - just run a website and leave it at that. Who wants to install a bunch of useless chrome instances pretending to be other programs? If you want to make a program, make a program. If you want to make a website, make a website. Simple
The JS in your electronic bloat could be just as vibes as the code in your standalone app, too.
You wouldn’t run a website because a website doesn’t have the capabilities of a desktop app. No one wants to run VS code from their browser. People don’t even want to run outlook or teams from their browser. A desktop app results in far superior UX in most cases for tools that people need to use frequently.
Electron allows you to use existing webdev teams to build apps for basically every platform in existence, which is exactly why companies use it.
Alternative platforms exist but not every company has the right people to build on top of them and it’s difficult to argue against the cost savings of using electron.
It’s not really that complicated. Many of these apps simply wouldn’t exist on Linux or Mac if it weren’t for electron or similar frameworks. Companies might build a website (if it makes sense) and a Windows app and that’s it, depending on the target audience
And yes, you might get vibe bloat in the framework code but that isn’t an argument against electron, since literally any framework could be and probably is infected with AI bloat at this point.
Why wouldn’t people want to run them in a browser? Running an Electron app is literally just running them in a browser, it’s just that the browser is disguised as not a browser.
It’s unnecessary bloat. They’re cross-platform because I hey are literally just webapps masquerading as actual programs.
vencord is unlikely to continue unless they reverse engineer the new binary, and if they do, guess how they’re probably gonna do that.
They probably will continue by just using the web version of discord which is basically the same as the app.
Has this been proven or is it speculation?
It’s closed source so can’t really prove it
But when a bunch of companies suddenly have native versions of their apps which they haven’t bothered with for 15 years because it’s too hard to maintain you can put 2 and 2 together
Looks like the RAM crunch is starting to affect more than just greenfield projects.
Good. Electron is a bloody memory hog. We don’t need to squander 300Mb of memory just to display 15Kb of text. And then rinse and repeat with multiple other apps like BitWarden Desktop.
You listening, BitWarden? The browser add-ins are fine, the full-fat desktop app needs to lose some serious weight.
This is the creator of BitWarden and we hear you! Because of this we’re getting to release an update and give you what you want. AI, AI everywhere inside BitWarden for your convenience!
I’ve begun switching from jetbrains IDEs to Zed because of the memory usage. I want snappy.
I have 64GB of RAM and I will damn well use it.
I just finished setting up my matrix homeserver and got my friends to use Sable. So. Yeah, fuck discord and their AI “age estimation,” their promises of “we don’t store ids” before leaking tens of thousands of them, and their “our trusted partners are the best” and it’s literally Palantir in a trench coat.
Fuck all of that. AND they’re enshittifying with all the quests and ads. Discord has some real problems but violating everyone’s privacy is not the solution. Hire more people, actually investigate, and listen to the community. Don’t be a Roblox.
i’ll never understand how discord became the standard for gamers. Back in the day we used to use Teamspeak + IRC and that was great. Decentralised, low latency, etc. I still use teamspeak occasionally. Still works great. The discord app was just a mess from the very beginning. Resource hogging electron nightmare. Still everybody thought it was great. And now all sorts of communites, even open source and maker communities are on there. Makes 0 sense to me.
Because discord made their app user friendly for the masses and team speak was slow to adapt.
Kinda says something that team speak now looks a lot like discord.
Yeah I hated it from the word go. It was always the poorest option. Everything about its UX makes me cringe. Even fucking slack by now Salesforce is somehow better.
Every moment I deigned to use Discord I felt like there was friction between me and the people on the other end of the application. Like typing while wearing gloves and getting interrupted every time I wanted to do anything.
You mean they asked Claude to rewrite their app in Rust like fucking everyone else is doing rn?
The real question is which is the greater evil, AI or electron…
One steals ram you don’t have, one steals ram you already own.
Sam altman interest piqued
Ngl I would rather use an awful Electron app than an AI slop “open source” rust slop.
Well, right now you can use the existing web client in Firefox.
In the future you may not.
It looks like it might be possible to target wasm (at least GPUI can), so hopefully Discord won’t kill their web client.
If I have to use it, I’d much rather run their software in a sandboxed environment like a web browser than install a program that can then do whatever it wants with my user data.
Well, if they kill the web client, they will lose tons of users. I am on the web client right now, since their app is not working - again. This has been a common occurence on multiple machines, with different operating systems… They really should rewrite that shit.
I can’t say they didn’t, but at least they have a track record of doing Rust rewrites from pre-LLM days. As a fan of Rust, I wish it weren’t a company like Discord getting the headlines for doing this type of thing.
https://discord.com/blog/why-discord-is-switching-from-go-to-rust
The UI framework is literally vibe coded claudeslop by a guy who didn’t know anything about graphics rendering by his own admission: https://youtu.be/j2goZBL156Q?t=2012
just checked this talk and holy shit, this is exactly how I imagined these kinds of meetings, just a bunch of guys that agree on everything they say and probably feel so smart about it
And yet the app that uses it (zed) is one of the most polished editors out there
My first thought also
Man why everyone gotta bitch on lemmy? I came to the comments looking for a bit more clarification on what this means by people who have knowledge, and the comments are just hating on discord for AI use.
“Why do people hate something anti human”
The one good thing that’s come out of the RAMpocalypse is devs finally considering writing their software in more efficient programming languages and systems. Every app that gets away from web browser-based backends is a plus in my book, free memory on my system, and less energy usage to save my electric bill and CPU cycles - plus, it very lets older compys be useful again.
does it help at all if I only ever use it in my browser, never found a need to install it on my system
Doesn’t matter whatsoever since Discord as a company is total garbage.
I wish i can use Matrix but my friends force me to use Discord :(
The problem is that Matrix doesn’t allow you to opt out of video streams when you’re in a voice chat. And Revolt doesn’t even have video-streaming. Discord’s video-streaming is incredibly robust on average, though I, too, long for a competent, free competitor.
You can’t opt out of video streams when you’re in a voice chat. Is it really that big of a deal though? I mean it’s a problem, but not something to discard Matrix over… Unless of course you have some other complaints you haven’t metioned. Regardless, it depends on what client you use. Matrix being decentralised means you have to choose a client, and it’s up to the client devs to have the features you want implemented.
if your data is limited, yeah it’s a huge deal. voice takes a smalll fraction of the data video does.
Fair. If this is the Element client they’re talking about, I don’t know why they haven’t implemented that yet because they’re the biggest one. If it’s another client though, it’s a problem with the client, not Matrix.
Oh, Matrix can do it in general? Hmm…
Gets in a Discord VC on mobile
One person turns their camera on
5 minutes later
You’ve exceeded your 2GB monthly data allowance. Purchase more data at $10/GB
Yeah, not good to force on video, especially on a mobile client.
Have you tried Kallisti? It’s built on top of Mumble
Oh cool, this is new to me. Seems pretty recent and heavy on AI-assisted code, but the features look awesome. Definitely keeping tabs on this one. Appreciate the share!
Never heard of that, thanks…
Me and some friends have been using fluxer recently and it’s been pretty good, streaming works like discord so you have to click into it. It’s very similar to discord UI wise so it’s been easy to get people to swap over, and it supports self hosting which has been nice. Only complaint is that it’s missing the built in soundboard discord has but that’s a pretty minor thing.
Stop using Discord.
My dnd group plays on discord, they ain’t switching and I’m not gonna just stop one of the few joys I have in life
I use vesktop, a heavily customisable and privacy friendly Discord app for this exact reason.
I literally want to video chat my friends for D&D and the occasional Minecraft and get one of the most tedious and bloated pieces of software in existence. Why does my calling program have mini games, paid emotes and lag like a truck? I genuinely don’t believe I have a hope in hell getting my friends off it, so that’s my compromise.
Discord being used like a wiki or forum can die though. Who thought a chat log was a good place to have guides and news, and how the hell has that not died long ago?
Discord being used like a wiki or forum can die though.
I miss being able to find good guides on forums.
Vesktop is not privacy focused.
That’s news to me. I’m not overly cautious with privacy so I’m not expert. My general ethos isn’t to maximise privacy but to minimise advertising, and get as much customisability as possible.
Often that ends up with me using privacy focussed software by chance, and I may have applied that here, but looking at desktop, it blocks discord telemetry and limits system access, which is at least something.
Yes, but it can’t block AI message scanning. And the developers don’t seem too motivated to work against Discord’s privacy violating bot.
Your D&D group can get fucked. So can you if you use that as an excuse to stay on a platform actively participating in fascism.
I can see why you don’t struggle with the network effect.
No, you don’t see some things are more important than your own personal convenience.
I’ve dropped people I’ve known for years over this. People I thought were better. But no, they, like you, like everyone else, don’t care about the lives of other people so long as you’re comfortable.
How is somebody using discord “contributing to fascism” to any meaningful degree? At that point you might as well kill yourself since buying food also contributes, since in most places the only options are all shitty companies that are way worse than discord.
The AI used for determining your age scans your messages and sends that data to training centres of which the data is used by ICE.
You’ll need to provide sources for any of those claims. Ofc we should be skeptical of anything a corporation says, but Discord explicitly said they don’t use messages for age verification: https://discord.com/safety/how-discord-is-building-safer-experiences-for-teens. I’d be hard-pressed to believe that if that weren’t true there would be leaks.
If there ever is an alternative that is also free to use, has (almost) the same features or more and has a at least halfway decent UI & UX, I’m more than willing to switch. But the only software I found that was pretty much on the same level as Discord (besides popularity) got bought and killed shortly afterwards by Roblox.
Edit: Thanks for all the suggestions, I now have my own Fluxer instance up and running. And also sorry for basically using Cunningham’s Law on you all lol
Matrix, use the sable (2.0) client
Sable Next >>
The upstream Sable is slop.
Fluxer and Stoat
Last time I used Stoat it still had the old name (can’t remember what it was) and it was miles behind discord. No idea how much changed since the rebranding tho.
Fluxer on the other hand sounds pretty promising, I’ll look into it.
Stoat has been working well so far, they have gotten even the mobile version usable (for chatting). The problem is just the same old - nobody else will stop using Discord. It is pretty hard, to use a communication platform, without anyone to communicate with…
Fluxer is primarily what I use. Iirc Stoat is more libre
Fluxer will get Federation and E2EE early next year.
Stoat’s also working on federation, using maybe Polyproto.
That is fanstastic
Fluxer is shit as it’s not-so-Libre and also asks you to pay for stuff that should be basic and free.
Apparently if you self host you can have everything be free. Its just on their own instance that has the premium which I think is a good way to fund the project
Yeah, and you have to pay for the hardware, for the stuff you need for the maintenance, etc., and it comes again to my point: if not everyone can pay for software or for a better hardware, then not everyone can pay for self-host either.
While I don’t know what the restrictions are on the official fluxer instance, I do think it’s worth noting that if you self host everyone on your instance gets everything for free and you can set the limits for file upload and similar stuff to whatever you want, plus self hosting was pretty easy compared to when I tried it with matrix.
There is. There are.
Matrix with either Sable or Cinny.
Matrix using Sable Next or Cinny, or Extera Next, or Nheko Reborn.
Or Stoat.
Have you tried Kallisti?
Sounds pretty good until you realize it’ll be Claude generating all that code.
To be fair they already adopted rust in 2018 so maybe not all of it
I just can’t imagine rust by an LLM, that must be wild to maintain.
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Fun! I’ll get to moderate a Discord server for blind people that blind people can’t use on desktop!
Seriously, anything on GPUI reads as “empty window” to screen readers.
Well that sucks. Do you know if Tauri is any better in that regard?
Unrelated to Rust, I assume Qt6 has the expected accessibility features wired?
Fun! I’ll get to moderate a Discord server for blind people that blind people can’t use on desktop!
How would a rewrite cause this to happen? Is there something about Rust frameworks for the desktop that exclude accessibility features?
I’ve been working primarily with C#, but none of their frameworks exclude accessibility features… would be shocked AF if Rust frameworks just left that all out.
I checked the gpui crate and it has an accessibility module that uses AccessKit, but I can’t say if it actually works.
Yeah, but this is Rust, not some single-dev pet project. You would expect a fully fleshed out framework to have accessibility features built in as first-class features, not some randomly bolted-on afterthought.
this is Rust, not some single-dev pet project
The programming language has absolutely nothing to do with the size or maturity of a GUI library using it.
Without knowing what framework is in use its hard to say. Hell electron had accessibilty issues for a while
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