How Discord Won
There&#x27;s a lot to be said for low&#x2F;nonexistent barrier to entry. But like any large platform, such success comes at a price. Discord is privacy-invasive and heavily censored. It is not a viable option for secure communication, but instead tends to be a great place for fluff.<p>Discord is a running joke on comparatively less-frequented communication protocols like IRC (possibly just out of spite, but all the same).<p>They have done a great job, certainly, and have accomplished what they set out to do. But I have my personal reservations. I don&#x27;t like using closed, proprietary communication protocols and would rather stick to IRC or Matrix. Granted, I am not the target audience.<p>Also the author claims Discord is a &quot;multi-billion dollar business&quot; in the introductory paragraphs but the only figure I see is the 70&#x2F;120 million dollar estimate from Forbes.<p>Edit: this link&#x2F;thread (and lots of the hyper-positive replies that appeared as I was typing my comment) strike me as possibly dishonest, especially since there was a post just this morning about the RCE vulnerability[0] in Discord&#x27;s desktop application.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24822755" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24822755</a>