Why I still use Discord
Recently, I found out the Yesterweb
Discord server was closing down.. I was absolutely
shocked to find out, especially after it was suggested to
me as a replacement for another community I was part of. At
first, I did not give much thought to this until one thing
hit me: I use Discord more than any other platform, or at
least it is the one I use the most. This post is structured
in a Q&A style, where hypothetical questions could be
asked of me.
A bit of backstory
As a kid born in the 2000s, I am old enough to remember
using forums. Forums existed before Discord, and Discord
didn't even exist when I was a child. The main forum I
visited was the Plazma Burst 2 forums. Sadly,
all my old posts are gone due to a weird bug with the
forums that made it impossible for me to even load them.
Social media did not dominate my life as I was too young to
have accounts on Facebook or Twitter until later, so I
either used that one forum or talked in online games. It
wasn't until 2017 that the Plazma Burst community created a
server called the Plazma Burst Community (or known as PBC).
The server was created on June 26, 2017, and my Discord
account was created just three days later. My account was
also created well before Discord began to crack down on
underage users. Initially, this place seemed like the best
thing in the world, but looking back, I realize how naive I
was, though I was just a minor. I believe months later, I
was banned because people kept white-knighting, but by that
time, I was in other servers. I ended up creating my own in
2018 with a group of people I had met. Fast forward to
2023, and I am in several servers, my server is dead, and
many updates have happened to Discord. I realized Discord
is not as perfect as it claims to be.
If Discord isn't all fine and dandy, why
use it?
You see, the main reason why I use it is because I
can't just leave it. There are several other
reasons:
- My friends still use Discord. Although my friends
list is small (only 21), many of them are more focused on
social media. Social media has its positives and
negatives, but the toxicity that accompanies it makes it
difficult for me to use. Despite being more focused on
social media, only one of them has actually stopped using
Discord. The rest don't seem to want to leave Discord and
see the other platforms I use (Matrix, Mastodon, etc.) as
niche or "hipster platforms." To me, it seems that other
people think these smaller places are not as good as the
big ones. Leaving would mean cutting off many people I
talk to in servers.
- Some communities won't leave Discord for other
platforms. When Discord became mainstream, I had already
been a user for several years. Everyone used to have
their own place, but now they all run to Discord because
it is the hot new thing. Why should I have to join a
Discord server just to get support on a program or
something else? I have seen this with one thing, and even
though it is not a problem for me, it is for users who do
not like Discord.
- History will be lost for me. I could archive every
server I am in, but that would take too long, especially
since some servers have a lot of messages!
- Stupid Discord addiction. I must admit, I hate having
this "addiction." It's not healthy at all. One server I
used to be part of largely contributed to it, and I
didn't even realize it until I looked back at the
messages with the server owner who thought I was getting
addicted to their server. I brushed it off as them trying
to expel me from their server, but I was a stupid
teenager, and they were right.
- You feel like you are screaming into a void. If you
look in the discover section in Discord, big places like
Genshin Impact, Midjourney, and OpenAI have over a
million members. Who can keep up with that many people,
let alone talk in a server that has a rapid chat where
your messages get lost so easily? When Discord servers
get so large that the moderation team can't keep up with
them, the servers might feel impersonal. It doesn't feel
like a close community when the server is that large and
has so many active members that people start having to
ration the attention they give. I used to be used to
large servers, but it slowly became too much to manage as
I just can't keep up with it.
Can't you convince people to join the
other places you are at?
Well, no, not really. At first, I did not like platforms
such as Matrix because one person made it look bad to me.
They said it was a hipster platform at first, but when I
started using Matrix, it wasn't so bad after all. It may
have some limitations compared to Discord, but I got used
to it. They even made it seem like FOSS (Free and Open
Source Software) is all this bad stuff, although going
completely FOSS isn't so easy. I'm using good software I
didn't have to pay a dime for... oh the humanity! The only
annoying thing about Matrix and Element is that it freaks
out with encryption when I go on another phone. If you like
Discord that much, then stay on your platform which
has inconsistent stuff. What is the inconsistent stuff you
ask?
- The server region selector is always light
themed.
- The download apps screen is always light themed.
- The add server dialogue is always light themed.
- Ghost pings! FREAKING GHOST PINGS! If you ping
someone then delete it, they still get mentioned
regardless.
- Having to use a modified client for stuff. Why is it
that if I want a vaporwave theme I have to modify the
client which is against TOS? Or even add useful stuff to
help a user's experience.
- The report function is useless. I tried to report a
user who told me to kill myself in the most complex way,
and despite reporting it, not much happened. They are
still on Discord. This may be a small thing and not a big
thing, but it is just annoying to me.
- Deleting your account does nothing at
all! I realized this a while ago in 2022 when I
planned on making a new Discord account. If you are
someone who doesn't clear their server lists or has a
group chat with a deleted user, their account really
isn't gone. If you can find their account as something
like Deleted User XXXXXX, you can still friend them, let
alone access their DMs. Why should this even be allowed?
One could argue it is so they can look it back up for
something like a police investigation, but I can still
see old DMs with people who deleted their account. The
data is never really gone. You could use a script to
remove the messages, but that would set off the automatic
detection systems. If you already deleted your account,
you are screwed since you can't remove your account.
- Phone numbers. Now this has never personally happened
to me, but it seems Discord gets picky if you don't
provide a phone number. A friend tried to make a new
account to stop using their old one, but a few days later
she was locked out of her account because she did not
have a phone number. Why do you want my phone number?
Discord claims it is for "verification," but I have never
once received a code sent to my phone when I logged in;
it just makes me check my emails.
Why do you use a custom client?
I use one because it is useful for me. I used to use
Powercord as a custom client was suggested to me, but with
Powercord reaching EOL, I now use Replugged. Since
Replugged is being rewritten, I use OpenAsar. Some of the
plugins I use include custom user tags.