I Hate Discord

I remember the early days of Discord when it was a fledgling chat app that blew Skype out of the water. Things were simple back then, there was no emojis or Nitro or profile decorations. You could trust that your messages on Discord were private.

As Discord grew, it added more exciting features, and I was always eager to read their latest blog posts. Back then, they went into the technical deets of how their backend system worked and scaled to millions of users. The creators of Discord really cared about their chat app for gamers.

But in recent years—and especially in recent months—I am seriously starting to hate Discord.

• Their Nitro advertising has become increasingly intrusive, and they are adding more ad systems like quests and orbs.
• Their reporting system is highly abusable and violates one’s own privacy, and their automated moderation systems are dogshit. I’ve received two account strikes for “spam” by using a server invite a friend sent me in DMs :| It gave me a captcha, I solved it, and I get locked out of my account. What the fuck.
• Their mobile app has started chewing an insane amount of battery on my phone, easily at least double my YouTube app in the same time frame.
• And now Discord is sharing your private chats to law enforcement, allegedly without any warrants or emergency disclosure requests.

And this is all before Discord has finalized their IPO * Initial Public Offering for shareholders. (a.k.a. it’s going to get worse)

I can’t stand this shit anymore and I want a new chat app to rise up now. We need something new, something that would be resilient to this enshittification, like a federated chat app that we can self-host and be in full control of our data and user experience. Please.

I know there are numerous open-source chat app projects out there, but many of them are in the very early stages or half-baked. * Looking at you, Matrix. There are some genuinely cool projects out there that I want to support, like Polyphony, Spacebar, and Roomy.space, but it can’t come soon enough :(