[_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.

[scarface_74]

You have insults I have numbers. We are not the same…

> 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.

Yet many people do have multiple messaging apps.

And Discord the one you think is so popular is not even in the top 10…

https://www.statista.com/statistics/258749/most-popular-glob...

They aren’t counting iMessage as a separate app. But do you really think it wouldn’t rank above Discord?

> I can't even get my wife to install Element - and she works in tech as a senior python / automation engineer.

Maybe your enlightened millennial friends and family aren’t as willing to change as you think they are?

> People want neatness on their phone and low total complexity,

Yet the average person has 35 apps on their phone

https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and...