The iOS storefront is also far behind your website in quality and attention to detail.
Edit: please accept this in the spirit of some quick feedback from one maker to another
What happens to building protocols? I am totally against being a slave to PaaS.
As far as I can tell, Echoed is also closed the same way Discord is?
I am in a niche market with both new gen workers and customers and discord is a really important medium to engage and connect with them. My soul dies every time I am there dealing with all sorts of psychological traps and baits to more spending coupled with the incessant advertising.
I don't even care anymore who wins that market, just get me out of it.
I believe I am not alone with things like https://betterdiscord.app/ having more than 56M downloads (and that being just one of the custom mods)
edit: grammar
To be fair, I put myself there and I voluntarily work with those audiences. I am aware I don't belong to the same level they do, and I'm ok with that. I just wish I could customize it my way too. In my view, if this was a protocol rather than a PaaS locked-in system, like IRC for example, we all would be winning.
Whole site is full of LLM-isms (em-dashes, stilted 'X. Y. Z. <Summary>.' constructions).
It's so boring. It says "We put one prompt worth of effort into our landing page". Just like all the others.
"No ads · No tracking · No ID verification · Free forever" - why would anyone believe this for a closed source application that, presumably, you want to monetize? Servers and developers aren't free, unless it's open source and/or self hosted.
Not interested
I say this as someone building a discord clone (https://flotilla.social)
2025 to 2026 full of slop signals, LLC reg number from April 2026 to the same address in multiple reports as ultra scammy:
https://malwaretips.com/blogs/30-n-gould-st-sheridan-wy-scam...
https://www.thesheridanpress.com/news/local/another-scam-rec...
https://www.wyomingnews.com/news/local_news/scammers-use-reg...
Lot of other red flags for me but those are even more vibe-based than everything about this.
It's not self-hosted, they are going to have to make money at some point to support the effort.
The only thing I was probably change is adding the ability to bookmark specific channels so I can switch to them in a single click no matter what channel I'm currently looking at.
I stand to gain nothing and I don't even think it's popular sentiment.
For a new user it's completely alien. Trying to get a coworker to try discord for the first time is a nightmare.
It tries to solve so much in such a condensed bar on the side. Why are DM listed "as" a server. I hate the notification system for transient server joins. I have no opinion of the channel system. Why can't you read discord threads of a public discord without joining the server and accepting the posting rules? They're trying to emulate forums but it's a huge PITA to just read (in a RO state, even).
Idk lots of complaints, network effect is a bitch.
Try using it at scale, for channeling communities, engaging with users, bots, marketing, and for work with streaming, video, rooms, voice rooms, moderation, etc.
There is an entire universe, even large businesses, built just around navigating Discord for good and for worse.
Turn it into a protocol.
The vast majority of chats would be be better off in a standard group chat UI with no channels.
Big question is how else would they make money? Monetise hosting "servers" directly? Would they have even gotten community if they did that?
This is one area where I can not muster the optimism to think that would improve the situation. You need someone else to somehow unseat them somehow.. they’re entrenched in this space so deeply though.
This is all pre-IPO, it's sure to get worse; hopefully one of the Discord alternatives will have caught on by then.
The big line they've crossed is collecting identification; much thanks to HN for linking to the bypass that worked for a day.
acley•1h ago
Varelion•45m ago
altilunium•35m ago
Is there a catalog of public, Echoed-based groups / communities that anyone can freely join? I'd like to explore the platform's full range of features before trying to persuade others to make the switch.