As for how it got its foothold, it comes down to having an easier onboarding than the solutions it competed with. With Mumble (or Ventrilo, etc) someone has to pay for a server. Then you have to download the client, get the host and port to connect to, enter credentials, and so on. Repeat for every server you might join. With Discord, once your account is set up you just click on a link and join the server. You don't even have to use the client if you don't want; you can join from the browser just fine. I don't think the friction of using previous solutions was actually bad, but it was enough to give Discord an edge even without the integrated chat+voice angle (which is something that those other programs never did and still don't do).
Alright, I'm exaggerating but I've never had as many problems with such a popular app of that class. I'm literally locked out right now due to a known bug (confirmed by support) and this isn't even the first time. Then there were months when recording voice notes (of all things) didn't work on Android. So many other little random things. If YouTube or something behaved that way I'd be shocked. It's a ghetto in comparison.
Yeah, I get what you're saying about friction. I'm complaining as someone who's fine with Signal and IRC, so not the target audience. Someone else also mentioned that the performance may have been better early on as well. I find that hard to believe but I'll trust ya'll for now.
I have worked with people who have this attitude and I wonder how they're doing these days.
I hope they haven't ran into any problems they cannot simply dismiss as not problems that don't have solutions.
In short: all problems back than could be solved at home.
And yeah, I know that barely anybody cares _how utterly_ wasteful software has become.
leakycap•2h ago
Time to rethink.