"The company is going to have to find ways to monetise more aggressively" Would Discord going public be good or bad for its users? We spoke to an expert to find out
www.eurogamer.net
Eurogamer speaks to George Osborn of the Video Games Industry Memo to learn about what could happen if Discord does go public.
  • m-p{3}@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    It will inevitably focus more on pleasing its public investors than anything else, therefore enshittification.

    Maybe Steam/Valve is a unicorn, but it’s not publicly traded and it’s doing just fine.

    • JigglySackles@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      It is a unicorn. I dread the day Gaben dies and Valve ends up going public. It feels like the last bastion of decent online services.

  • Em Adespoton@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    How that MIGHT change things?

    Just look at every other tech company in the space that’s gone public to see how it WILL change things. It’s not a mystery at this point.

    • panda_abyss@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      Is discord not enshitty?

      I open it and it updates 6 times, then I get a full page ad for nitro. Then all the settings push nitro. And all the “servers” push nitro.

      • BassTurd@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        It’s the best at what it does, but had been getting shitty in the way you described. However, it’s free and they have to support it somehow. I’ll put up with the nitro pushing and understand that’s my cost of doing business. If they go public, I’ll probably actively start looking for an alternative, because that always kills a product and it will for sure mean “AI” will be forced into it.

        • W98BSoD@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          It’s the best at what it does…

          Locking data away from search engines so that unless you’re in that little fiefdom you don’t get the information.

          • BassTurd@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            Probably that too, but specifically the ability to spin up a private space to communicate with people for things like video games. Anyone that’s using it as their means of customer service is an idiot.

            Apparently I struck a chord with my post, so I’m curious what is better than discord, and free that made my statement controversial?

            Also, I don’t see locking data from search engines as a bad thing. The fediverse isn’t search engine searchable either and Google, bing, etc, don’t natively have the right to index private data.

            • Credibly_Human@lemmy.worldEnglish
              0·
              2 months ago

              Also, I don’t see locking data from search engines as a bad thing. The fediverse isn’t search engine searchable either

              The fediverse not being searchable is one of the biggest flaws with it, and make it similarly ephemeral to Discord, except its actually worse because the sizes of communities are just in that goldilocks area of awfulness where there are echo chambers, and people are rude and toxic. Whatsmore, availability due to the small size is relatively mediocre.

              • Auth@lemmy.worldEnglish
                0·
                2 months ago

                fediverse is search engine searchable. They’re public webpages being crawled.

                • Credibly_Human@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  11·
                  1 month ago

                  In that individuals can be, and that its very difficult to actually do a broad search because content that might exist in one might not exist in another, and that the types of people to run them often dont want search engines indexing them

  • VeloRama@feddit.orgEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    what practical alternatives are out there? every gaming and streaming community seems to use discord, but i hate it on the basis of it being an enshittified, proprietary walled garden.