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points by andrewflnr 2 days ago | 0 comments

Because it's actually a good experience in some ways. I mean, it's not great, but as a chat room it's fine.

It used to be. The core offering is still functional. But with every update it becomes less usable. Orbs, badges, glittery avatar borders, aggressively animated, rainbow gradient text usernames, and now ads embedded directly into the UI.

[–] tancop 2 days ago

For me all these things are good except the last one (if you mean partner games in the bottom left corner, I hope they're not A/B testing Google Ads in the app). My profile is more low key but I don't hate others for going heavy on the effects. It's just self expression.

What I don't like is the way they used to sell Nitro before they came up with the flashy cosmetics, restricting features that used to be free. And how they used a third party service for UK age verification that ended up hacked. And their security record in general. And being closed source with no official export tools.

I guess its all subjective.

[–] jacobgkau 2 days ago

> no official export tools.

There actually is technically an official method to request a copy of your own data (think Google Takeout): https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/360004027692-R...

I've used it once. It worked to recover some messages from DMs that were far enough down in my history they were no longer shown in the web/desktop UI. However, it only included my own messages in each DM/channel, without the context of whoever I was talking to.

[–] keithnz 2 days ago

none of that makes it less usable. That side bar where its shown is mostly just to see who is online and I found for many users, they don't even have that bar showing. The core chat/voice/streaming is just as functional as ever.

[–] jacobgkau 2 days ago

Animations from peoples' names and from their super reactions playing over other content after happening to move my mouse over them is something I'd consider a slight usability issue.

[–] andrewflnr 2 days ago

FWIW there are settings (maybe in the accessibility section) to avoid playing animations until you've actually clicked on something.

[–] andrewflnr 2 days ago

It's actually not just as functional as ever. Quality of voice and video chat took a noticeable dive this year, maybe coincidentally right as vibe coding really took off in the industry. And all that extra crap might not make discord unusable but it does suck. Like I said, not great.

[–] marshray 2 days ago

I haven't noticed that.

[–] andrewflnr 2 days ago

Both the groups I have regular video calls with noticed, to the point that one of them switched back to zoom. It seems to have gotten better the last few months, though I don't think it's quite back to the near-flawless peak it was on in, say, 2024.

[–] bananzamba 2 days ago

That stuff is so easy to ignore I struggle to understand how it could make it unusable

[–] jamesfinlayson 2 days ago

Yeah most the channels I'm in are meant to be forum replacements and it's terrible at that.

Chat room is fine though.

[–] fallingbananna 2 days ago

It feels like overmonitized free to play Slack.