there are so many problems with discord, sure, but it also might be the last bastion of the idea of online spaces that actually belong to their users and not to the Company, among the big social media services that are not user-owned-and-operated

hikari 🌟 (falling into the sky)

reddit has become more like that too.

and then there's twitter and its many clones, and they… well, at their best, allow us all to participate in this frighteningly, beautifully democratic shared space. but it's just one space. it belongs to everyone. it's not your own

hikari 🌟 (falling into the sky)

‪discord, to their massive credit, realised that sometimes what you want is not a Microblogging Site or a Instant Messaging Service. discord realised that sometimes what you need is a clubroom for you and your friends, where you set the rules. and somehow they still get this.‬

Erin 💽✨

@hikari I just can't stand it because Discord isn't a part of the web. It's a walled garden accessed over the internet.

And for private communities that's not a problem; but for public ones it creates this entire separate ecosystem inside those walls that's invisible to everything outside it. It's utterly hostile to the open web, and Discord structurally encourages it

hikari 🌟 (falling into the sky)

@erincandescent oh, i can't disagree, it does also sadden me, but i also feel like it might be the only way they're able to make this work while being a single large corporate platform, tragically

hikari 🌟 (falling into the sky)

@erincandescent

quoting my reply to someone on twitter (sorry if it's not entirely relevant but):

the silos are sad but i also think they're the deal with the devil they have made to allow it to exist at all
all the sites that allow things to be truly public inevitably fall victim to the eye of sauron saying they should take away users' ability to moderate themselves and instead impose the Ultimate Truth on them
discord is a lot like twitter in that if you do not use it you have no idea what the appeal of the site is and that's what allows it to be good

hikari 🌟 (falling into the sky)

@erincandescent reddit has struggled with this very hard. there is an endless stream of journalists and pundits and whoever else to ask why there can be a Suicide Subreddit or a Fascism Subreddit or a Problematic Media Subreddit etc etc etc

Erin 💽✨

@hikari the eye of Sauron is upon them anyway. If you follow the news all you'll hear about is exactly the same set of discord servers

And worse, the people who don't use the platform can't see the other things that are there

hikari 🌟 (falling into the sky)

@erincandescent certainly, but it makes their enemies have to work a lot harder

hikari 🌟 (falling into the sky)

@erincandescent i do wish there was something in the space between discord and reddit. i don't know what it would be, though

Erin 💽✨

@hikari can you imagine if they allowed you to make a guild truly public? As in, messages are on the internet, searchable; you can look at what's within without joining?

But they won't, not because they fear the Eye of Sauron, but because making you join dozens of Communities is in their interests. For the same reason that the default notification settings are "bloop so often it'll cause a meltdown"

Erin 💽✨

@hikari and maybe in doing so you have to opt into stricter moderation guidelines. That's fine. You can not do so if you wish.

hikari 🌟 (falling into the sky)

@erincandescent I'm honestly not sure that public chat message history is a good idea for any service. I've only used a handful of things that attempt this, and it's very very weird. maybe the forums-like thing they added could be public, but…

Erin 💽✨

@hikari It doesn’t seem that odd to me, the IRC logs of a channel I participated in heavily 14-8 years ago were publically logged and are still on the internet (and occasionally show up in my search results!)

I don’t necessarily think its the ideal form factor for things but given what Discord is. And also given its ancilliary features (it is also a web forum now)