Discord @lemmy.world uselessauth @lemmy.world 12mo ago

Discord Shouldn’t Be Your Main Messenger.

uselessauth.btw.so [Opinion] Discord Shouldn’t Be Your Main Messenger. | uselessauth

Discord is a wildly popular voice and text messaging platform with >150 million monthly users. Many people use it as their primary messenger. But should they?

Discord is not meant to be a private messenger. And you really shouldn't use it as one!

17 comments

Things that Discord should be:

Small group voice chats (eg gaming groups)

Community chat, like IRC back in the day

Things that Discord shouldn't be:

IM client

Forum

Knowledge repository

Streaming platform
- Knowledge repository
  
  I die a little inside every time I see people posting documentation on locked discord threads
  
  I've come to find one of the most annoying things to read back on Reddit is "go look it up on the Discord." That's like reading a book that references to look up text scribbled on a napkin.
Security issues aside, it’s not designed to be a messenger app anyway.
I'm a bit confused at the article. Do people use Discord for things other than casual chit chat? Please don't tell me there are businesses working on Discord.

For the average user, I don't see issue with these things. It's a chat app and it's not that deep.
- There actually are businesses, schools and more using Discord for their communications. Some people also use it as their primary messaging app and that really shouldn't be the case. For anything nonsensitive, it's not that big a deal. I would still recommend checking out privacy respecting alternatives like the end-to-end encrypted client Element that uses the Matrix protocol
  
  There are businesses that use DISCORD for professional communication?? I believe you but that seems ridiculous. There are so so so many issues when it comes to what’s recorded, document retention, security, privacy. Maybe you discuss a court case on Teams or Slack or…ha…discord apparently…they can subpoena that as record. The software companies use has to be compliant on all of these areas. Crazy.
- There are businesses coming in. I found it from gaming. We used Teamspeak at first but discord quickly became the meta.
  
  It's been a real ride and it's great to see it evolve. However seeing big companies or the OF girls trying to capitalize kinda ruins the charm.
Discord is cool for organising voice calls with friends and for participating in open communities that are too small for social media. Everything else, not so much
Enter the Matrix now.
If you use discord for it's intended purpose there really isn't any issue. Choosing to imagine discord is something it isn't and then getting shocked about it later seems like a personal problem.

I myself use it for basic chat with some gaming friends and memes. It certainly isn't the place for sensitive materials.
Meh. I'm gonna continue using it for DMs.

The most "sensitive" info ever exchanged is...I guess we refer to friends by their names? Private game server passwords? Someone might mention smoking weed in their legal state? I've sent some Redfin links, too.

Should we really be using a completely separate program for text chat? We sacrificed latency switching from teamspeak to discord FOR the chat functions..
- You may want to check out Element. It's privacy-respecting free and open source software. It's also part of the fediverse. If you check your Lemmy account settings you can see a field called “Matrix”. Element also uses Matrix so you can even link it to your Lemmy account if you want to. I've been using it for quite some time now and it's very usable! Discord's voice channels are called “video rooms” in Element and are still in beta, though. You can easily activate and use them but they aren't quite there yet. Still, worth a shot. Everything is E2EE encrypted
  
  While I am very much into that idea, it's a hard sell migrate multiple servers worth of people whose needs are perfectly met by discord despite all of its misgivings.
  
  I call myself a beta software masochist as I'm often an early adopter but honestly....discord fits the bill even for me. I have no expectations of privacy when I use any messaging app so I just don't discuss anything sensitive online. And Discord allowed my tech-illiterate friends to join in on the conversations which I love.
  
  As much as I hate to say it, I'll have to sit this one out until mass adoption happens because it affects my ability to stay in touch with my IRL friends who have moved around the country

17 comments