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Enshittification Continues: Discord to begin showing advertisements on it's free platform (archive.is)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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They supposedly can be disabled in settings- but we all know that won't last. They're going full Microsoft Skype mode and it's only a matter of time.

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[–] 146 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Remember the emails from 2015? The plan was to have a platform, that just works. No bullshit, no issues, just functional features.

Even when Nitro was originally added, it was 5 bucks to optional support, if you'd like to help the company. Now the same sub is 10 a month, and half of the client is unusable without it.

Not to mention all the paid account banners and borders they're selling for an egregious amount of money

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  • [–] [S] 80 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Everyone is optimistically altruistic until the corporate greed comes a-knockin'

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  • [–] 38 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    The best approach to "free" things is to understand that it's never sustainable. Eventually it will have to become a paid subscription or ad supported or both.

    And regardless, you're going to end up being the product if they can discern anything marketable about you from your use of the "free" product.

    But just be ready to jump to the next free product.

    (Obviously it's possible for there to be FOSS but that comes with some challenges as well.)

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago

    Eventually it will have to become a paid subscription or ad supported or both.

    The 3rd option is FOSS with donations... But everyone expects everything on the internet to be free (as in beer) these days

    Nothing is truly free/gratis...

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    It all comes down to capabilities, and expectations. Under current circumstances, they fail to meet the expectations, but vastly exceeded their capabilities, by trying to chase the hype, rather than provide what the users needed. It costs them next to nothing to create a new profile border, but fixing issues from 2019 takes engineer hours

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The best approach to "free" things is to understand that it's never sustainable. Eventually it will have to become a paid subscription or ad supported or both.

    It will become enshittified unless that new service is open source and "free as in beer". With no profit motive, it can grow gradually and be supported by it's users. Like Lemmy/ kbin / Mastodon.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I don't get why micro transaction are never micro transactions. If a cosmetic item/feature in a game or sth. like discord would be 50ct up to a Euro, I would here and there buy sth. But they always want 5-15€ and that isn't money I'm willing to spend. Take Signal for example 5 € for a badge for 30 days is just stupid. I recently donated 20 euros still 30 days. The thing is I don't care for the badge but I think it could be beneficial to promote the ability to donate via the badge but the system they use, is really stupid.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I think the reason they’re not micro has to do with whales. I bet the whales outbuy normies at a rate that means companies make more selling 1/10th the volume, for 20x the price. The whales go hard. Did you hear that some games will task an artist with creating game-skins for a single person, because they know they can get that person to buy even at a really high price

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 2 years ago

    it's also about sustainable income. 50c one time purchases are garbage for the bottom line, subscriptions look amazing to investors because it's effectively guaranteed income that you can assume a current subscriber will remain subscribed until the service shuts down.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Genuine question, but what's unusable without Nitro? I don't use Discord very often, and the only thing that I've seen Nitro pushed for is reactions from other communities, and that's pointless anyway.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    video calls and screensharing is very, very rough (locked to 480/low frame rates) without nitro, for one. the file sharing limits are also extremely restrictive.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    its actually locked to 720p/30fps w/o nitro

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Fair enough. I tried video calling with it at the beginning of the first lockdown, and it was fine for what I needed, but most of the video calling programs were a bit rubbish then.

    I very rarely share files with people outside of an already set up organisation, so I haven't had a reason to try their file sharing.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Vencord is pretty decent as an alternative to nitro if you haven’t heard of it. It pretty much is a modded client that unlocks most of the nitro locked features

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