Enshittification Continues: Discord to begin showing advertisements on it's free platform - eviltoast

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.

  • kaitco@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I’m shocked they’re moving to ads when I’ve been paying them $4/month for Discord Nitro for several years now. Surely, that revenue is enough for their upkeep???

    • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      7 months ago

      It’s never enough. Growth must be un-ending. Also gotta pump them numbers up for an IPO so they can bail with a pocket full of cash.

      • EvilLootbox@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        It’s like how Netflix ended the basic no-ads plan to force people to either pay way more or pay a little less but be bombarded with ads. Serving ads is more profitable than letting people pay a little bit to skip them, apparently.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      I assume that’s sarcasm, but no, they almost certainly aren’t anywhere near probably from nitro subscriptions. I don’t know how many employees they have, but they surely have a lot of developers working on all their features. And that cloud server time isn’t cheap either, especially when you’re handling video.

        • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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          7 months ago

          There’s some weird corporate obsession with always constantly “innovating” and “improving”. Adding complexity for the sake of complexity. Completely blind and oblivious to the fact that most consumers actually want something consistent that just does what they ask it to without much fuss, not just additional complexity.

          Discord has added probably a hundred features since I started using it- ultimately, the only things I ever touch in the app are the same set of 5 that existed back in 2015 when I switched. Text, voice, basic file and image sharing, group servers, and (after they added it) video+screen sharing. Literally everything else is total fluff.

          • Boozilla@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Yup, it’s sometimes called box-checking. “Look boss, I did a thing.”

            Often a thing nobody wanted or asked for.

    • eco_game@discuss.tchncs.de
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      7 months ago

      Streaming, especially video, is quite challenging and expensive. The fact that discord’s video streaming was so cheap was always somewhat suspicious.

    • antler@feddit.rocks
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      7 months ago

      $4 is probably way more than enough to cover the cost of your account, but the problem is what percentage of people are paying. If it’s 1 in 100 or 1,000 and $4 covers 75 average accounts they might be in a bind.