[malwrar]

tl;dr it looks like Discord is working to introduce paid servers, channels, etc intended for content creators to monetize fan interaction.

The vibe their docs give off makes it feel similar to how Patreon allows you to get exclusive content and chat direct with creators, but it does feel weird putting a direct price tag on participating on an instant messaging app. Discord is pretty explicit about creators governing their tone so users don't feel a free thing is suddenly not free, but this move does feel like they're just going to encourage more and more of the net to be blocked off behind a paywall. What if I run into financial trouble or simply can't afford to access certain high-value communities like AI/Engineering/etc ones? What if this corrupts the culture and makes it harder to find & create indie, fun communities? What does this look like if they expand it to allow toll meters to be attached to more and more of the Discord experience?

[natdempk]

I think the way this will work out in practice is basically how the bridges between Patreon + Discord already work, but with better integration to Discord features. Basically the way most of these work today is if you become a Patron you get a role and get added to some private discord channels with other subscribers, but the base server remains accessible to all. This makes sense from a marketing/activity/alignment perspective for everyone and seems likely to continue. Some creators have Discord servers only accessible to subscribers/Patrons already, and there wouldn't be a change there. I think the reality is that nothing really changes here wrt. server operating structures and that a bunch of stuff just becomes more tightly integrated/featured on the Discord side so Discord can make money off it.

[thatguy0900]

Seems like this would be better served with just patreon and only fans integration. Discord could charge the creators to turn it on. Why would I subscribe to someone once on there and then again to them on discord.

[MattDemers]

It depends what the "primary" place is. If poeple go to Patreon to receive a product, and Discord is a sidebar to that, then yeah, keep it to Patreon. If a Discord community is funded with a Patreon, this can be a replacement.

[matai_kolila]

My assumption here is that this is built to replace Patreon entirely.

"Sub to my Discord or sub to my Patreon to get exclusive content!" eventually becomes, "Sub to my Discord to get exclusive content!" and cuts out Patreon entirely.

[unity1001]

You can connect more things to Patreon - your website, custom apps, even software and provide patron-only features from all of those thanks to Patreon. To compete with Patreon, Discord needs to provide all of that.

[rcxdude]

discord is easily the most common integration with Patreon, in fact it's often a strict superset of the value of being a patron (i.e. discord contains all of the content which then gets posted to patreon shortly afterwards). Discord can easily replace patreon for a lot of creators with this.

[hisnameishank]

Not really, the Discord API will probably supply some sort of status per user in a given discord channel.

Discord is already setup for users to interact with server bots on a rich command palate. Bots at this point are just server extensions.

Webhooks have been a thing for ages.

Discord is arguably one of the easiest services to bind to from a developer's perspective.

[unity1001]

> Not really, the Discord API will probably supply some sort of status per user in a given discord channel.

They definitely could. But their rate-limiting schemes cripple any large-size integration. When you have up to a few hundred users, that may work. But if you have thousands of users triggering calls to the Discord API through all the apps that you can connect if Discord even allows it, then you will hit their brick-like rate limits way too fast.

Patreon is much better with that - people can connect all their apps, websites, Vimeo, Discord, Discourse, even desktop software that they distribute, and get them work with their membership at Patreon. There are even GTA servers, GTA mods that distribute member-only benefits to their users via Patreon. I'd even say that its a very good way for desktop software makers to monetize their apps too. Like the PC benchmark software maker OCCT does. (https://www.patreon.com/occt)

[lmm]

I'm sure they will. All those Patreon integrations had to be built too.

[unity1001]

Yeah but Discord's complicated and stringent rate-limiting cripples all integrations. Especially when you try to update guild members' roles en masse - which is critical to any membership based integration.

[notatoad]

"access to the discord" seems to be a pretty common perk to see on patreon. it's not like this is a new thing discord has invented, they're just trying to be the ones collecting the money for a thing that creators are already doing.

[lmm]

A lot of discords are already paid, or invite-only secret clubs (even worse IMO). It doesn't seem any different from a paid forum, or heck, a lot of the reason people pay for OnlyFans is messaging.

[weego]

Their user overlap with Twitch is so strong that it makes sense to replicate the Twitch model of creator subscriber 'rev share'.

I'm not sure it'll pan out as successfully though, but we will see.

[PaulsWallet]

>...this move does feel like they're just going to encourage more and more of the net to be blocked off behind a paywall.

On a personal level I have no problem with this. It's just one way of moderating and curating your community. Not everyone has the time and resources to deal with a free for all.

[Gigachad]

Paid servers have also always existed. They just run through bots and crappy integrations.

[matai_kolila]

Agreed. It's hard to create quality content, and even harder to do it without being able to monetize that content.

"The Internet should be free!" that's just not sustainable. I'm sorry but it isn't.

[Netisneverfree]

That's just it. The internet was never free. There has pretty much always been some method that people have been making money off of creating content for it, in some format or another. Whether it be basic ads, affiliate links, sponsorship spots, or web stores; the internet has always been paid for somehow in some way. And that's before we discuss things like ISP's providing that connection to it in the first place.

People who think the internet is or should be free, are disconnected from reality. I grew up with what we called farmer vision, but others would know it as rabbit ear or aerial tv. You had 3 to maybe 5 basic channels in your area if you were lucky; and they were all paid for by ads... er... commercials. The idea was that the content was technically free, since you didn't really need to watch the commercials. (You could just go to the bathroom, make a snack, get a drink, etc.) But the paid advertisement was paying for that broadcast, and so you ultimately had to put up with your shows being interrupted.

YouTube does nothing different, really. Yet look at all the flak they get for their usage of the same methodology.

The internet was never free, has never been free, and never will be free. You will always be paying for it somehow; whether it be out of pocket, via attention, or your data. TV was no different, up to the data part; and set-top boxes changed that too. Once those could phone home and report usage, especially to thwart piracy; your data became another potential sales figure for even the tv stations.

I personally would much rather we have an internet culture where we don't mind paying for the things we like, and want to see continue to exist. This would essentially democratize the internet; though it may also induce a segregation of the unwealthy from being able to participate... but those people tend to be children and the poor. Children don't pay for anything, their parents do. And if the poor or their parents don't have enough money to pay for 1-10$ subscriptions on a monthly basis; then they have much more serious things to consider. Like getting a job, or a better paying one. Not their usage of the internet.

Besides, if they already are paying for a basic connection, they shouldn't have much trouble paying for the few things they enjoy to use. Alternatively, they could opt-in to be a data source for free access or something like that. Or see more ads per hour. Keep it more open for everyone.

But that still goes to prove the point. The net is not free. Never has been, never will be. So we would be wise to setup a good culture around it while we still can, before the greediest of us start to make it terrible for everyone, and not just the poor.

I like the concept that Brave browser uses for this reason. It's just too bad that with the way things are going with crypto right now, that it's going to get some bad rep from it likely. Also doesn't help that the devs behind it are... less than stellar. But that's another can of worms aside from this giant one.

[lmm]

This is just false, and profoundly ignorant of history. There was a time when the net was free, and it worked well; whether to allow commercial use of the net at all was a big debate in the early days.

[Netisneverfree]

Actually, it's not ignorant of history. "The Internet" as most people know it today, and for easily multiple decades now, has always had ads. It's only back when the BBS boards were the big thing that perhaps you would be correct, but even then you had people trying to make money somehow; usually to pay for the gear they were using to run their own websites, etc and so forth.

Now to be fair to you, by comparison to today, the 'original' internet was by far much "free'er" than it is now since subscription fees and such didn't really exist; but it was never completely free. (*for anyone not just hijacking someone elses connection somehow via wardriving for open wifi and such like that.)

Ultimately you still had to pay a ISP of some sort, or going back far enough your telephone provider for dial up. Though that might be somewhat redundant to split them up since most telecoms tend to provide internet, and ISP's tend to provide some form of telephony now too. I say tend to, since it's not 100% across the board with all of them.

Now to be fair to you, you are technically correct that the internet that was made available to us all back in 1993 was technically 'free', but this is not the kind of technically correct that is the best kind of correct, because ultimately people still immediately started trying to use things like affiliate links and advertisements to pay for their hardware or lifestyles.

That said, there is one caveat I must make clear. In 1993, I would have just been 4 years old, and not using the internet yet. I didn't get on the net until I was roughly 10 years old in 1999, though there was some exposure to it prior due to school and extended family.

But my experience of it back then was that there were ads, and affiliate links. Especially in forums.

But again as I was saying before; a connection to the net required that you pay a middle man such as an ISP or telecom company. So even if 'the net' itself was free in some fashion without all the ways to pay for things and etc; the 'net' itself was not free to access. You still needed that middleman to provide some form of connection for you, provided you weren't joining a local lan or something like that (if I understand correctly) and even that isn't 'the internet'. It's just a personal network between friends.

So for all intents and purposes, my argument is basically correct. The internet has never really been 'free'. CERN may have given it to the world for zero cost to the world, but even that doesn't qualify as 'the net' being free.

For the internet to be truly free, ever, would require that there be zero money being paid to absolutely anyone to be able to access it. This may seem pedantic, but it's important that we use the right words for the right things. To portray the idea that it was ever completely free to access for anyone, anywhere; is to mislead those people.

My older family members certainly did not have access to the internet for free when they got their first computers. Neither did our schools which would gripe about how much it cost them to get decent connections capable of handling the computer labs they had built.

So I digress, but the net was never really free. IT may have been really cheap at one point, and not hounding you for money constantly; but not free. Just like how aerial based NTSC tv in North America also was never really free; but paid for via advertising companies. Sure, you could find ways to watch it for free and never watch a commercial; but it was still paid for somehow by someone.

A few final notes:

1. Anything prior to 1993 would constitute the internet as still being a project and not giving any credence to the idea of the internet being free; since it was still in its developmental stages at that point. It's most early ones at that.

2. The first web purchas through the net, was pizza, in 1994. The first banner ad was also used in 1994; which means the internet had maybe 1 year in total of being 'free' by some arbitrary standard which I do not agree with. Banner ads are a tool for getting attention for something or the other, usually to do with affiliates, or some form of purchase.

3. The same year that the 'internet' was donated by CERN, is also the same year that commercialization of the 'internet' began. So your argument really only applies to the years 1991 and 1992 really; which doesn't matter because ultimately the net was still in its developmental stages still at that point. It was only used mostly for academic purposes; and commercial purposes were not allowable. But because 'the internet' itself should not be seen as the same thing as the project that was the network that Tim Berners Lee was working on; that means that since it's donation in 1993, the internet has never really truly been free. https://community.cadence.com/cadence_blogs_8/b/breakfast-by...

> But in 1993, enlightened regulators and policy makers decided two things at the same time. They decided to amend the AUP to make commercial use legal, and in parallel they decided to hand off the internet backbone to the telecom companies, at the time AT&T, Sprint, and MCI. That solved the economic problem since the government no longer had to pay for it.

And there is pal. Even if you or I were not paying for it out of pocket, the government was. And the government pays for things via the taxes it takes from our pocket. So ... it was never free.

I rest my case.

[lmm]

> But again as I was saying before; a connection to the net required that you pay a middle man such as an ISP or telecom company. So even if 'the net' itself was free in some fashion without all the ways to pay for things and etc; the 'net' itself was not free to access. You still needed that middleman to provide some form of connection for you, provided you weren't joining a local lan or something like that (if I understand correctly) and even that isn't 'the internet'. It's just a personal network between friends.

The early net worked much the same way as a personal network between friends. If you wanted to join, you could run your own cable to someone who was connected; charging for connections and data transfer came much later. Of course someone had to rig and maintain a cable (or make regular phone connections, or what have you), and wires don't grow on trees, but this wasn't on a commercial basis in the early days; it was a research project for some but mostly just a thing cool people did; those who could contributed and those who couldn't didn't, like a potluck.

> 1. Anything prior to 1993 would constitute the internet as still being a project and not giving any credence to the idea of the internet being free; since it was still in its developmental stages at that point. It's most early ones at that.

Nonsense; 1993 is decades into the development of the net.

> Even if you or I were not paying for it out of pocket, the government was.

The government was one entity among many that ran parts of the net in some countries. They may have ran the biggest and most important connections, but they weren't the whole thing; the whole point of the net is that it's a network, with no single point of failure.

> And the government pays for things via the taxes it takes from our pocket.

Nah, the government takes what it can and sometimes pays for things, but there's no real connection between those two actions. Government-provided stuff is free.

[satvikpendem]

Please don't make new accounts just to reply to a particular comment.

[Netisneverfree]

For what reason do you figure this is the case?

[sverona]

You and GP are conflating libre and gratis.

The Internet is probably the most ambitious infrastructure project ever conceived. Of course it's not free the way sunlight is free.

I dream of a world in which things like YouTube outright do not exist because everyone has the know-how to run their own servers, connected by mesh network. Maybe then we'd actually support the people who make things we enjoy instead of giving like 30% to whatever platform they happen to be advertising on.

Of course this discussion sidesteps all the various atrocities of late capitalism.

[Netisneverfree]

First of all, we dream of the same world. I myself am constantly teaching myself many things to achieve this dream for myself at the very least; but it's a long process.

That said, I would like to make very clear that I am not conflating 'liberty and thus freedom' or Libre as you put it with 'free of charge' or Gratis.

Thing is, anything government touches requires funds somehow, and pretty much (but not always) anything government pays for is being paid for via the populous somehow. Even in the case of 'printing money' or quantitative easing as they like to call it on the media; the incurred inflation is a payment we the populous must endure via higher prices and anything else that comes from it. So even if the cost via dollars is low or 'gratis', we still pay for it via some other form anyways/as well.

As I just said to the other fellow, "nothing, is free". I say that in double speak, because ultimately only nothing itself is free in entirety, but also nothing in life is ever truly free as in gratis as you put it.

Even the air we breath is not free, since by taking in a breath ourselves, we take a breath that could be the breath taken by someone else. it seems free (gratis) because we do not immediately pay for it out of pocket or in some mental or physical situation; but in due time with enough humans born and living on earth you can get ready to expect to pay to breath. Atmosphere will become a finite resource that we will need to pay for to breath, because we cannot get people to stop having children without stepping on their rights and liberty (libre).

I think this does well enough in showing I know the difference of libre and gratis. But you may still disagree. That's fine. I don't expect agreement on social media site and anything else of the like. I am merely sharing my opinion on the matter in language that is most likely to be understood by a majority of people. That means keeping things at a more understandable level for folk, and that means not getting pedantic about things like libre and gratis; though you are right that it matters.

See, I dream of yet another reality. One where no one is allowed to graduate high school until they can prove they have at least a grade 10 reading and writing level. As it is right now, most people only have something to sufficiently call a grade 6 level. And that's native speakers of the language, not foreign.

That's abysmal. And folk like you and me get to put up with it. That's the disgusting thing about it all.

But we instead focus on things like late stage capitalism; while people don't even know the proper definitions of the words they use. Example?

Proletariat, Bourgeoisies, and Sovereign; which of these are you? Which of these am I?

Due to the use of the French definitions by much of society today, and not the original latin ones from Rome, we get the confusion I am about to describe.

These words are used incorrectly by a lot of people, because they see themselves as 'the worker' and thus 'Proletariat'. But in reality, many of us 'workers' are living lives that put us in 'the middle class' in some form, which makes us 'Bourgeoisies' as per the original definition. And then there are the nincompoops who consider themselves Sovereign of the Land and stuff like that, but that's a whole new ball game. Sovereign by definition is 'the ruling class, or nobility'.

In reality, 'Proletarius' the root of Proletariat is the proper use of the term, which is 'lowest class'.

Many of us who would consider ourselves to be the Proletariat under the French definition would be incorrect by standards of the Romans, because we are not truly the lowest class. That belongs to the homeless. If you are sitting in a nice cozy abode with food in your belly and enough money to get by on a monthly basis or better; you are not the lowest class even if it feels like it.

Bourgeoisies doesn't have such a problem attached to it, since it's purely a French term as far as I understand. But it does have a root in the original term Bourgeois. The thing is that this is a good example of how words and definitions attached to them change over the times to suit the people, and not the original intent of the creators of those words. It has gone from 'middle class' to 'upper class'.

This is purely in my opinion just done by certain types in society who wish to push their agendas without coming up with good arguments to support them. So they change the rules instead. And it works, quite cleverly too; because many people aren't really that educated due to lack of paying attention in school and stuff like not holding kids back a grade or two when they really need to be.

And so we get situations like people mistaking corporatism with late-stage capitalism.

According to: http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/politics/diff...

> Capitalism is a social and economic system which recognizes individual rights, including the right to own properties and the possession of goods for the individual’s personal consumption. Corporatism, on the other hand, is a form of economy that was created as an option to socialism and intends to achieve social justice and equality without the need to take away private property from individual members of society. It stresses the positive role that government has in ensuring social justice while restraining social unrest as people look after their self-interests.

---

Which of these sounds more familiar to today's situation?

Should be Corporatism would be your answer. But then, you could also say that Corporatism is just another facet of late stage capitalism, and I would not be in entire disagreement with you; since unbridled capitalism combined with misunderstandings of things like Liberty under the guise of positive and negative liberty... (which I disagree with as notions since there are no such things; only neutral liberty exists) will result in the very existence of Corporatism.

Anyways. To finish off. Sovereign: Latin term is Sover or 'above/super'. French and English terms combined French Soverain and English Regin to create Sovereign.

It's only meaning really is to denote that something is far above other things. It can technically be used to say things like "This is the best method to do this thing" replacing 'best' with sovereign or even as simple as sover. But it's such a dated use, and not really part of our lexicon anymore to the point where even spellcheck thinks it's a wrong word lol.

But due to its constant changing and misuse by people too proletarius in terms of use of language, the rest of us sover speakers of language get to deal with the situations that our voted and elected bourgeois push upon us.

By the original definition, I just used bourgeois wrong, but by the way it is used today, I used it correctly.

So don't misunderstand me here. I understand why you draw the difference between libre and gratis.

But because most people aren't educated properly to begin with, I use the common tongue they understand instead. I hope this all helps explain it thoroughly.

[sverona]

That's a high horse you've gotten on. "Proper definitions" are subjective. Marx's definitions of proletariat and bourgeoisie --- colloquially, working-class and owning-class --- survive today more or less unchanged. In French bourgeoisie means something else. In Rome, thousands of years ago, proletarius meant something else. Definitions are social objects that change with society.

The folks that deploy this terminology today largely work in exploitative jobs at corporations owned by people with more money than they can dream of. They are forced to suffer because someone else owns the infrastructure. The same phenomenon happens with nonfree (gratis, but not libre) software full of adverts and dark patterns. YouTube, for instance, is what it is because Google has fuck-you amounts of storage to house everyone's videos and makes enough money to offset the cost of that storage. It's not hard to imagine a free (libre) alternative. That's all I'm saying.