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Lemmy.world announces blocking communities via Discord [update] (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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This is in regard to Lemmy.world blocking piracy communities from other instances. This post is not about whether you agree with the decision. It's about how the admins informed their users.

A week ago Lemmy.world announced their Discord server. This wasn't very well received (about 25% downvotes, which is rather bad compared to other announcements). The comments on that post were turned off, presumably to avoid backlash.

Before that, announcements about the instance used to be posted to [email protected]. This time, the information was posted on the Discord server instead.

I don't agree with this. Having to use a proprietary platform to participate in an open-source one goes against the very purpose for me, especially when the new solution isn't really an improvement (as before the information about the platform was closer to it).

Edit: Corrected the announcements community name.

Update: Lemmy.world finally released an announcement and promised they would inform about similar actions and gather feedback in advance in future.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

I think Discord is great, as long as you account for its shortcomings:

It should be treated as ephemeral - up to the point of "the service could completely shut down tomorrow"
It should not be treated as fully private or secure

I love how snappy it is (I never have to wait minutes for messages to load, as I do in Matrix), and also how there are a ton of Lemmy users who have Discord open in the background anyway. While I wouldn't ever propose moving something like the main Lemmy communication channels to Discord, I do think it's much easier to have IMs with regular Lemmy users on Discord than it is to do so on Matrix (as in my experience, most regular users do not have a Matrix client installed).

By the way, lemm.ee also has a Discord server. It's only treated as a secondary channel, all announcements are posted in our meta community on Lemmy itself, and just linked to from Discord, but it's still nice to have IMO.

[–] Anafroj 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

as in my experience, most regular users do not have a Matrix client installed

I understand your point, but by that logic, we should use Reddit rather than Lemmy, as most users are there. It's not only about ease of use, it's about being sure users won't be abused. Discord is still in its acquisition phase, but you can be sure enshitification will come next.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I like discord as a communication platform (as long as you keep the spying in mind) as the devs truly believe in their product and as such have created something truly amazing. It will be a sad day when the enshitification phase begins. It somehow hasn't yet which is very shocking in all honesty. Guess that nitro revenue still more than makes up for the dev and hosting costs.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

The issue people are having is the announcement was made exclusively in lemmy.worlds discord server. Beehaw has a discord server as well, but they relay announcements to there, not from there usually

[+] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The problem at hand is not about the usability (UI/UX, performance, etc.) of Discord but rather it’s private, closed source for-profit existence being used as a “support” channel for a free and open (source, platform, communication) environment.

I agree with you in principle, but on a pragmatic level, it's very hard to disconnect UI/UX/performance from everything else. I think it's OK to acknowledge that Discord has a weakness when it comes to not being OSS, but a strength when it comes to UX, and I also think it's OK to take advantage of that strength for users that want to do so.

Just to be fully clear, I am never planning to make Discord the main communication channel for lemm.ee announcements, nor to make users feel like it's in any way necessary for them to use Discord just for lemm.ee communications. I am also active on Matrix constantly, and read most of what happens in the Lemmy Matrix channels. Any user that wishes to reach me over Matrix can do so.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Just to be fully clear, I am never planning to make Discord the main communication channel for lemm.ee announcements, nor to make users feel like it's in any way necessary for them to use Discord just for lemm.ee communications.

Thank you! Not being a fan of discord aside, I believe announcements of a platform shoud be done on the platform itself, with the only exception being uptime/downtime status pages (obviously).

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

And for those that don't know (most of you probably do), this (sunarus) is the main/head/founding admin of lemm.ee (and, last I checked, a substantial contributor to the lemmy source code too).

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

(and, last I checked, a substantial contributor to the lemmy source code too).

I think not a substantial contributor yet, but I hope to become one eventually 😃