One of Reddit’s biggest communities is suggesting users move to Discord r/malefashionadvice, the biggest Reddit community still inaccessible in protest of Reddit’s new API pricing, is encouraging its users to congregate on Discord and view guides on Substack.
Not only is Discord a bad replacement for Reddit, it is another monolithic platform struggling to find a business model. The enshitification of Discord is real, and is going to get worse.
I disagree. Discord is one of the only non-federated social platforms resisting enshittification.
Back at the very beginning they said that any monetization they offered would be optional add-on purchases (not ads) and that those add-one would never involve removing the existing core features to sell them back.
Almost a decade later and they haven’t show any indications of straying from that promise.
Resisting enshittification seems a bit stretched, just a few weeks ago they made the username case worst by going back to traditional unique usernames instead of discriminators allowing anyone to have the username they want. They also tend to change the whole UI/UX every few weeks it seems, 2-3 months ago, swiping would reply to a message instead of opening the members list, etc. I’m still using it to keep in touch with friends and school, but I would ditch it in an instant if I could.
I agree with the username change and I wish they had changed it earlier. If you’ve ever tried adding friends on using the old names, you would know how painful it was and how much better having a “normal” username is.
Anyway, whether or not you think those are “good” changes, I find it hard to argue that those specific changes could somehow be interpreted as driving shareholder value at the expense of users.
I’ve used Discord since 2016, never really had issues with discriminators but I can understand how someone new to this concept can have a hard time to grasp how it works. I think Discord could have explained it better instead of removing it.
Fair enough, I saw enshittification not only as driving shareholders value but also the user experience. Discord keeps making questionables UI/UX changes. I’ve found less enjoyment using the app the past years.
It’s not just about understanding, it’s about being harder to remember. Can you honestly say you remember what your discriminator was without having to look it up?
And even if so, do you really expect that most people would remember it without having to look it up?
The reality is that most people aren’t going to remember a 4-digit number that they didn’t pick.
I have to add people every week and never had a single person that knew their number. If it wasn’t for the “nearby scan” feature, I imagine a lot of those people would have just said “fuck it,“ because looking up the number is so annoying.
But people are used to remembering a username they chose, especially if they can reuse the same one (or two) in multiple places.
I’ve never really though about this aspect, it’s been easy for me but that doesn’t mean it is for everyone. Most people I added over the years where already on Discord so it was as simple as clicking the invite button. Never had much trouble IRL too because they were pretty active on Discord and knew their discriminator, or I would simply give mine.
Even if I’m still a bit sour about the change, I can totally see why it would be easier for most people.
Anyway, my initial comment wasn’t to bash you or anything. Clearly, my exemples weren’t the best. I now have better outlook on this username change. Thanks! 🫠