[capableweb]

> AWS and Microsoft are very, very different from Discord. Discord originated in gaming and caters to a largely non-paid user base, that background alone is enough to be skeptical.

AWS originated in providing servers for a book business that grew from there, Microsoft originated from writing a interpreter, but both of them excel in other areas today as well. It's not impossible to start with something (chat for gaming), gain expertise (chat for large groups) and then apply it elsewhere (chat in the workplace).

[acdha]

AWS and Microsoft were both much larger companies with many years of successful operations by the time they launched cloud services. Discord is both younger as a company and still recently raising new funding founds. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t rely on them but they’re definitely less proven.

[MichaelZuo]

Of course, which is why Discord charges much less then the several hundred dollars per year per seat that Microsoft does?

What is the complaint here, that they're offering a much cheaper service with less credibility?

[ivanmontillam]

The complaint here is that Discord is too popular among a generation of young business owners that put their livelihoods on the line in such an unreliable service, business-wise.

Discord's marketing is too powerful for these business owners to consider safer, more reliable alternatives. Same story with Stripe, and similar services that cut lifelines with no recourse other than outcry in public forums like HN and Reddit.

If they have to learn the hard way, so be it.

[posguy]

If your planning to use services that are ban happy like Discord, Stripe and ilk, make sure to document and communicate a fallback plan.

For example, ensure you have a backup email address for those you communicate with on Discord, and convey an alternate communication method (Meet us on Matrix at XYZ!), or on the payments side plan on how to handle a PAN Data Export with a pre-selected vendor that is experienced in ensuring Stripe exports this data to them. From what I have heard, nearly half of all data exports from Stripe fail to occur, so you need to be your own advocate to ensure the stable hosting of your payment card data.

[ivanmontillam]

That's what I'm talking about, yes. Being fully aware of the platform risk, and managing that risk actively.

One could always understand the tradeoff (this ban happy service brings me more public, exposes me to leads, as opposed to: they ban on the slightest mistake and are misunderstanding), but as every risk: It should be managed with any of the four basic risk management actions:

- Elimination: which in this case, would be to not use that service at all

- Mitigation: reduce the risk the most (your example of backup exports, etc)

- Acceptance: being aware and recognize maybe alternatives are more costly than accepting the risk

- Transfer the risk: let someone else handle the risk for you (insurance, for example)

[acdha]

It’s not a complaint as much as a caution that they’re not coming from a business services world and have less experience with things like paid support or SLAs. That doesn’t mean you should never consider them but it does mean you should have serious conversations about what you’d do if they suddenly nuked your account & won’t even give you a way to contact them – plan for Google-level support, not AWS.

[ivanmontillam]

> It's not impossible to start with something (chat for gaming), gain expertise (chat for large groups) and then apply it elsewhere (chat in the workplace).

I understand what you meant, but it's not quite applicable in this case. Chat for gaming (and approach) is not an adjacent market of workplace/enterprise chat.

Just imagine Slack or Microsoft Teams going for gaming chat; you can quite imagine that repurposing of product not happening.

[capableweb]

> Just imagine Slack or Microsoft Teams going for gaming chat; you can quite imagine that repurposing of product not happening.

If that ended up being more popular, they definitely would. But I don't think that'd happen either.