[_cenw]

> voluntarily downloading an app

that's all true until an app becomes the only way to interact with certain groups of people. i certainly wouldn't call my usage of Discord voluntary. it doesn't actually matter how often i read their privacy policy and shake my head. either I break off contact with a large part of the internet that's important to me or I begrudgingly agree "voluntarily" to their terms and conditions.

[Loquebantur]

People miss the forest for the trees here. Democratic society needs a way for people to communicate freely. Those ways are dying out fast.

In modern life, people don't discuss politics in townhalls, pubs, or whatever anymore. Online communication is by now far too siloed and supervised to the point of being unusable. Media are one-way streets, pushing the agenda of billionaires.

But you need to be able to have controversial discussions about "heavy" topics without fear of being ostracised. You need to have a back-channel to give feedback to "higher ups". Etc.pp.

A society where the individual is degraded to a mere drone (even if only loosely via framing) controlled by the "hive mind", without any recourse to voice constructive criticism is a lot of things, but certainly no democracy. There looms a dystopia on our doorstep.

[hn_throwaway_99]

To be honest, I think you've got at least part of it backwards.

> But you need to be able to have controversial discussions about "heavy" topics without fear of being ostracised.

Uh, why? People should have freedom of speech, but it feels like a lot of people want freedom from the consequences of the their speech. If anything, I think a lot of our current social disharmony is a direct result of the extremely recent development of people being able to mouth offline with very little social constraints.

Mike Tyson probably said it best: "Social media made y'all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it."

[alfonsodev]

Not even that, if I’m not mistaken Facebook imported contacts from users agenda and then allow third part apps to access the information, so even if you didn’t have a Facebook, you data was leaked.

https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-data-leak-contact-impor...

[dmbche]

May I ask, what compels you to use discord if it's not voluntary? It's absolutely impossible to use keybase or signal?

[_cenw]

Have you ever actually tried to convince a non-technical friend or family member to use a different platform for communicating? Now try that with 10 people at the same time. The only reason Discord ever became successful is the huge vacuum of good UX that existed before it. A fragmentation of Skype, Steam, XFire, Teamspeak, Vent and Mumble. Jabber if you were playing certain MMOs. Signal and Keybase aren't even close either. Matrix is a little better, but still far off, and they have the Mastodon problem where explaining federation turns off normal peoples brains.

And aside from that, a lot of software communities are on Discord now. People are gating download links behind it, use their threading feature for support and put their knowledge base in channels. And not just small communities and developers. ASUS has made their main communication channel Discord too.

[dmbche]

I understand! It's just that I never had to download Discord for anything.

I agree it's difficult. I've had success showing keybase to people because of how barebones simple it is - but it's not a solution for everything of course.

[scarface_74]

> Have you ever actually tried to convince a non-technical friend or family member to use a different platform for communicating

How many non technical people have heard of Discord?

[_cenw]

Essentially everyone my age and down? I'm a late millennial.

If the number in your name is your birth year I'm not too surprised, but don't assume you can project from your own experience onto others 1:1.

[scarface_74]

How many millennials on down are “non technical” at least to the point that they can’t download an app?

[_cenw]

You are a very ignorant if you think there is no barrier to getting someone to try an app with a substantially less good UX than what someone's currently using, and that that barrier doesn't border impossible in a group of 10.

I can't even get my wife to install Element - and she works in tech as a senior python / automation engineer. People want neatness on their phone and low total complexity, and installing a messenger for a single person is over the line for most.

[bloqs]

You clearly dont have many friends or relatives that you actually interact with

[dmbche]

I sure wonder how anyone interacted with friends and family before discord eh?

[1shooner]

This isn't compulsory, it's just personally beneficial. There are plenty of beneficial contexts you need to opt into, and include some cost or compromise.

[rjsw]

I have a mobile phone SIM which only provides customer support over WhatsApp.

[scarface_74]

Someone is forcing you to use Discord? An app that I personally have never used?

[_cenw]

You are rude enough that I'm tempted to say "OK Boomer" because you clearly are a different generation with no insight into mine.

[scarface_74]

So is there now a law saying that you must use Discord?

[_cenw]

I'm flagging this, this must be trolling.

[scarface_74]

So his use of Discord is “not voluntary” even though it doesn’t rank as one of the top 7 messenger apps?

[hiatus]

So what you're really complaining about is that other people will not follow your choices. If your relations have such a hard line that a single app is "the only way to interact with certain groups of people", they are the ones to blame, not the maker of the app.

[throwmeback]

I'm afraid life (at least mine) is way more complicated than that.