[jerbear4328]

Discord runs in the browser, same as HN. And the HTTP APIs they use aren't officially documented (except HN's read-only ones via Firebase and Algolia) (though both are easily reverse engineered and OSS frontends exist). There's not much difference.

[littlestymaar]

The big difference is that Discord is a third party here. Nekoweb, like HN, could implement their own first party forum, but instead rely on a centralized third party from which they cannot migrate. It's very far from the “passionate for the old web and personal websites” stance they are marketing in their pitch.

Also AFAIK you cannot be banned from HN for using the API, whereas Discord will ban you for any “misuse”. You also don't need to be logged-in to access HN, which is also indexable by search engines, whereas Discord isn't.

[anthk]

Discord it's a cage. HN can be accesed by JS-less browsers and the content will be indexable by any web search engine.

There's a huge difference.