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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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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!
  4. 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.
  5. 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.