Discord doesn’t require a phone number to use it and there’s tons of servers that don’t require phone number verification. The vast majority of servers I’m in have no phone number requirement. Signal straight will not work without your phone number, in any capacity. I’m sure you’d trust Signal over Discord with your phone number any day of the week but as I said, that’s an irrelevant point because we’re talking about why people are more attracted to Discord over Signal. Slacks vs ugly cargo pants.

I said that the reason they DONT is because other platform dont have the advertising budget, nor the user base to make users jump ship.

Have you ever seen an ad for Discord? I haven’t see one before and I only know about it through word of mouth. There’s nothing stopping people from creating Signal groups for various hobbies and including a Signal link in their social media page.

Refusing to use Discord might be noble from a privacy/security point of view but from a broader perspective, you’re significantly limiting your social interactions and not because of the people but the app the people are using to communicate with. It’s like not using a phone at all because pretty much any phone is a privacy/security issue.

My guess is Telegram’s being bankrolled by entities that are willing to eat the cost of this kind of data usage.

Exactly. And they didn’t even give the 25 MB limit to every user. Some users were always stuck at 8 MB, and others 25 MB. I’m the latter and I was blown away at the decision to cut the file size limit down to 1/3rd of what I was used to.

https://8mb.video/

^ This website will compress videos down to 8 MB but the video quality ends up being awful, plus I’m not so sure how I feel about the privacy/security issues of uploading personal videos to some rando website so they can be compressed.

That’s a feature that was implemented what, 1 or 2 years ago when Signal’s been around for a decade?

You can’t possibly expect people to just jump from one social app to another that has such a relatively small user base and little familiarity. Entire Discord servers would have to jump ship and it would just be a nightmare for most people.

What Discord prioritizes, Signal treats as an afterthought. Things like group chat, video chat, GIF usage, etc, Signal has never really prioritized.

Discord’s mobile and PC apps both allow users to select GIFs within the application, whereas only Signal’s mobile app allows users to select GIFs within the application and Signal’s desktop app doesn’t allow for in-app GIF selection. If you’re reading this thinking "who tf cares about stupid stuff like that?", you’re completely missing the point because regular ass users care about stuff like that and they totally will say “fuck that” to an alternative if it doesn’t have features like this. Why doesn’t Signal incorporate in-app GIF selection for its desktop app? I’m sure it will be eventually implemented but dragging their heels like this for popular features and then having the nerve to ask "why aren’t people flocking to us instead of Discord/WhatsApp" is such an out of touch question to ask.

When open source developers ask for feedback from regular users and their response to said feedback is"ACKSHUALLY it’s your fault, not the application’s fault", as it often is, it’s no surprise that their software never gains traction. It’s like a guy who wears cargo pants to a formal affair and then gets into an argument over attire because in his mind, cargo pants = more pockets = superior, completely oblivious to every other factor.

Another thing-- Signal requires your phone number, Discord doesn’t. I know right away folks are going to rage about how Discord is the real privacy nightmare, not Signal. I don’t disagree, but the average user is just going to be more wary about being forced to give up their phone number in order to use Signal, even if the software now allows them to hide it.

I hope you’re right.

Signal isn’t an alternative to Discord. I use both and they’re used very differently. Group movie watching for example is pretty easy on Discord.

Digg had users and people jumped ship to Reddit because it was better.

If Discord was open source, I actually would not mind paying a fee for it. Fixed or reccurring, ideally the former. But that’s never happening. And forget buying that Nitro thing.

Until a viable alternative is presented, I doubt Discord will die anytime soon. Part of the problem is people have a hard time accepting that even if you make the best meal in town, you’ve gotta get people to step inside before they’ll try it. To an extent, this does involve winning a popularity contest of sorts if you want Discord to die.

I think often times folks are torn between enjoying a space/app as is, and making compromises to attract a larger group. IMO Linux has the same issue and that’s part of why die hard fanboys get so aggressively defensive when this is brought up.

It’s the software equivalent of being the bitter "nice guy" that simultaneously wants to attract a girlfriend (users) but is kind of an asshole to women. You might think you don’t stink but please wear deodorant.

Fruit of the Loom makes nice t-shirts too. Wore them as a kid and now as an adult.

I have 2 types of shirts-- shirts for when I go out, and shirts for when I’m at home or mostly at home. I like the former to stay completely clean, and I like the latter to be comprised of 1+ year old t-shirts that can get dirty/stained without worry.

I’m saying both arguments are speculative.

“All due respect”, this is pure speculation.

This entire discussion is pure speculation-- are you really going to be that guy who says "but not my comment!"?

I feel like you’re completely leaving out the gap that there will between what we’ve achieved now vs 1000 years from now. If there’s advanced life out there that’s been around for long enough, I don’t think it’s biased to say that there’s a chance their tech is far more advanced than ours. I understand what you’re saying, but let’s not pretend we’re the true generation where there won’t be any major breakthroughs. There will be, but they’ll just take longer than before. To make technological leaps comparable from the 1800s to now, it may very well take from now to the year 3000, but the point is the notion that we’re past the point of major leaps is unfounded and based on the false notion that I’m saying in 300 years we can expect technological leaps as large as we’ve seen in the last 300 years.

All due respect, our current theories are probably downright primitive to any advanced life form and there’s undoubtedly blind spots in modern day science, be it in any field.

The site you posted is damn near unreadable on my phone.

The future fucking sucks. I hate the enshittification of the internet.

T-shirts. Get a 5 pack each of white, black, and another color you like. There, you’re set for like a year for $30.

Talked a friend out of suicide when COVID first hit and a bunch of people lost their jobs and homes. Now he’s got a pretty sweet work from home job with full benefits and his own place again. Am very happy for him.

Just familiarity for me.

I use SoulSeek and have for decades. I have no clue what scene you’re talking about.

I’m bored so I’m just going to make a list:

• Lightroom Classic (I’ve tried Darktable, just not for me. I take a lot of photos on my DSLR and I’ve been using Lightroom since 2015 so for me it’s worth eating the awful monthly subscription that I split with someone else.)

• Anki (flashcard app, very popular among med school students and folks trying to learn new languages. Open source and tons of useful decks available. I’ve aced plenty of exams thanks to Anki.)

• Bitwarden (finally caved and got a password manager-- could not be happier)

• CHIRP (the best for programming handheld, mobile and base station radios)

• CrystalDiskInfo (great for checking the health of SSDs and HDDs)

• DaVinci Resolve (love using this for video editing-- pirated copy was easy to find)

• Deluge (great for torrenting)

• foobar2000 (I love it for music)

• Greenshot (useful screencapture software)

• inSSIDer (great for wifi analysis)

• IrfanView (very good for photo management)

• MusicBrainz Picard (amaaaaaaaaazing god tier music management software to get all the correct metadata/album art)

• reWASD ($7 but it’s so good for no BS macro’ing of keyboard/mouse/gamepad shortcuts and profiles. I have two PCs and two mice + gamepad attached to my PC and this software is very helpful. I think the license is for life.)

• WizTree (SSD/HDD visualization tool that is useful for figuring out what’s taking up too much space on your drive)