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Enshittification Continues: Discord to begin showing advertisements on it's free platform (archive.is)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

384 comments fedilink hide all child comments

They supposedly can be disabled in settings- but we all know that won't last. They're going full Microsoft Skype mode and it's only a matter of time.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Several messaging services that started on PCs already had mobile apps when Whatsapp got big so there must be a bit more to it than that. AIM, Skype, and several others were viable options with existing userbases.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

But all those you listed weren't available internationally I believe. Atleast in the US, ask anyone who came to work how they keep in touch with people back home, and they'll likely say whatsapp.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Skype certainly was. It would make an interesting case study - what drove adoption when there were established competitors with more resources?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Phone numbers, phone apps and the international market. Skype was in a lot of places only popular for business, Whatsapp was everyone's very first doorway into a modern messenger app.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

there must be a bit more to it than that. AIM, Skype, and several others were viable options with existing userbases.

Once upon a time in a messenger landscape far far away there lived a king called XMPP. It had a lot of powerful children, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Google+, and even Skype amongst them. And they all worked together in a big federation towards the commonwealth of all, freely sharing their metadata. But then some of the children grew greedy, jealously guarding their own gardens behind higher and higher walls, breaking down the federation. And thus the era of the warring messengers began. But prophecy foretells of a prince to unite all the disparate standards in one big Matrix again, completing yet another revolution of the XKCD 972 wheel of time.

For real though it was phone numbers. WhatsApp always worked based off of phone numbers, which is an identity confirmation method that was immediately familiar to most people at the time, even more so than email.