4 pane comic of dolan on the left and spooderman on the right
pane 1 (dolan): cum join opensurce cummunity!
pane 2 (spooderman): shure! how joyn?
pane 3 (dolan): Here discord! (with discord logo)
pane 4 (spooderman with tears in eyes): y u do dis?
Sure.
No other app has these two points along with the incredible amount of features and QoL Discord has. This is objectively true.
Good for you, you have a short list of requirements out of a chat service and discord perfectly fills your niche. But different people have different requirements for chat, and they don't align. And network effects force people who have differing requirements to use the service with the most users which sucks.
For instance here are things that I require from any chat service that I use that discord completely falls flat at:
At the end of the day all of the reasons you stated maybe <1% of people care about and most of the points have nothing to do with the chatting features itself. If I’m honest it’s basically paranoia and fear for the insanely low chance something goes slightly wrong. It’s like refusing to leave your house because you can spontaneously get struck by lightning. 🤷
Whatever solution you’re using I would bet most people would find incredibly annoying to use from a usability perspective. As it would lack the 8 years worth of features and QoL discord introduced.
So we have a philosophical difference and that’s that.
Agreed, but my point is with a centralized network the lowest common denominator wins. There is no reason you can't have QoL features on an open network, and thusly let everyone have the features that they care most about.
Can you imagine what a shithole the internet would have been if email wasn't federated an open? There is absolutely no way that whatever centralized bullshit would have spawned instead would already be either long gone or enshittified to the point of being useless.