Post length capped unless you pay
Emotes can’t be used between servers uses you pay
Tiny Image upload limit (unless you pay)
Profile decoration requires payment and is basically a blaring ad
Can’t readjust UI size
Nitro and server boosts as a whole
Ads. So many fucking ads. You dont notice them until you try another platform, but i needed to pop in to check a post history thing and my GOD the amount of ads
This very post showcases one of the ways it’s crappy.
Centralised control inevitably leads to enshittification (lemmy isn’t immune to that either, but at least the damage will be contained to a single instance; the only way to avoid that is a fully distributed service, or at least the ability to fork communities with their whole comment history like you would a git repository.
More importantly, though, while it might be passable as a chat app if it weren’t for the aforementioned centralisation bullshit (though IRC was completely fine in that regard and there’s no need to reinvent the wheel, much less to put a clamp on it), it’s being used to replace forums and wikis despite not being designed to or adequate for the job, locking up information that should be freely accessible and searchable into an unsearchable account-locked black hole, violating the founding principles of the world wide web and becoming a parasitic cancerous growth upon it. When a seemingly interesting project tells me to go fuck myself, sorry, to go to their discord for information instead of pointing me to their forum or wiki or even FAQ page, what I’m reading is that they couldn’t give less of a flying fuck about their users, that they’ll embrace enshittification as soon as possible, and that I should look for a better alternative.
Also, as others have already pointed out, it’s a web page wrapped in electron bloatware. If you’re embarrassed that your “app” is merely a web page, either deal with it, close it, or make a proper native app, but hiding it under a locked down browser in a trenchcoat doesn’t make you any favours, it just highlights how little you think of your users, which just corroborates the previous points.
TL;DR: It’s malware all the way through, and was always designed to be, and it’s actively harmful to a free web. Kill it with fire.
That’s kind of by far the most important class of problem though. I could complain about the complexity of its notifications system, or how all the ‘servers’ are represented with image icons and it sucks to navigate and find the one you’re thinking of if you add a lot of them, but it’s all small potatoes compared to being run by an enshittifying company complying (often in advance) with terrible laws and moving to use their accumulated leverage against their users. By developing a reliance on their service you put them in charge of you, but they cannot be trusted with that.
it’s all small potatoes compared to being run by an enshittifying company complying (often in advance) with terrible laws and moving to use their accumulated leverage against their users
I don’t disagree there! That’s why I was specific in referring only to their software quality.
It was, but I made it explicitly clear that I was referring to software quality only. They’re free to clarify if they actually mean the company instead of the software.
I don’t know what you’re installing, but it takes 255MB on my phone. If you’re on a desktop, use your browser. Not that it should be much different.
Edit: Also the same size on desktop according to Google. The fact that a statement as incorrect as yours is so heavily upvoted tells me there’s no actual logic and reasoning at play here in this argument.
The problem with electron apps are that they’re literally just browser windows, which require a lot of overhead that you wouldn’t need with a native application. What you’re recommending has no benefit.
The issue is that Electron apps are an acceleration of Wirth’s Law.
Still calling BS on ‘multi-GB’. Runs on mine in a few hundred MB. Not to mention you’re using the wrong terminology if you’re referring to memory usage and not storage space.
Even on Linux desktop browser with fine-tuned uBO and API blockers and with several settings disabled it takes 560 MB and ~15% CPU on its tab plus whatever it is slicing from the general context thread. I can only dread what more it eats if you are not trying to restrict what it can do. Comparatively, the entire IRC client process I’m running (connected to various things) takes 65 MB + shared context.
Right?
I used Discord for about 15 minutes (OK, 6 months) before I could no longer tolerate it’s crappiness.
How is it crappy? Company policies aside, the software is reasonably decent.
Edit: Highly controversial and downvoted, yet the only reply is misinformation. Way to go lemmy, we’re catching up to reddit quick.
Post length capped unless you pay Emotes can’t be used between servers uses you pay Tiny Image upload limit (unless you pay) Profile decoration requires payment and is basically a blaring ad Can’t readjust UI size Nitro and server boosts as a whole Ads. So many fucking ads. You dont notice them until you try another platform, but i needed to pop in to check a post history thing and my GOD the amount of ads
Decent client? An Electron client that weights like a motherfucka to just display some text?!
This very post showcases one of the ways it’s crappy.
Centralised control inevitably leads to enshittification (lemmy isn’t immune to that either, but at least the damage will be contained to a single instance; the only way to avoid that is a fully distributed service, or at least the ability to fork communities with their whole comment history like you would a git repository.
More importantly, though, while it might be passable as a chat app if it weren’t for the aforementioned centralisation bullshit (though IRC was completely fine in that regard and there’s no need to reinvent the wheel, much less to put a clamp on it), it’s being used to replace forums and wikis despite not being designed to or adequate for the job, locking up information that should be freely accessible and searchable into an unsearchable account-locked black hole, violating the founding principles of the world wide web and becoming a parasitic cancerous growth upon it. When a seemingly interesting project tells me to go fuck myself, sorry, to go to their discord for information instead of pointing me to their forum or wiki or even FAQ page, what I’m reading is that they couldn’t give less of a flying fuck about their users, that they’ll embrace enshittification as soon as possible, and that I should look for a better alternative.
Also, as others have already pointed out, it’s a web page wrapped in electron bloatware. If you’re embarrassed that your “app” is merely a web page, either deal with it, close it, or make a proper native app, but hiding it under a locked down browser in a trenchcoat doesn’t make you any favours, it just highlights how little you think of your users, which just corroborates the previous points.
TL;DR: It’s malware all the way through, and was always designed to be, and it’s actively harmful to a free web. Kill it with fire.
That’s kind of by far the most important class of problem though. I could complain about the complexity of its notifications system, or how all the ‘servers’ are represented with image icons and it sucks to navigate and find the one you’re thinking of if you add a lot of them, but it’s all small potatoes compared to being run by an enshittifying company complying (often in advance) with terrible laws and moving to use their accumulated leverage against their users. By developing a reliance on their service you put them in charge of you, but they cannot be trusted with that.
I don’t disagree there! That’s why I was specific in referring only to their software quality.
That’s your own addition though, it isn’t entirely clear that the person you questioned was talking about issues separate from its power structure.
It was, but I made it explicitly clear that I was referring to software quality only. They’re free to clarify if they actually mean the company instead of the software.
A multi-gigabyte Electron app should not be a requirement for chat, even with voice and video, for one.
someone should reverse engineer it. i bet its full of spyware
I don’t know what you’re installing, but it takes 255MB on my phone. If you’re on a desktop, use your browser. Not that it should be much different.
Edit: Also the same size on desktop according to Google. The fact that a statement as incorrect as yours is so heavily upvoted tells me there’s no actual logic and reasoning at play here in this argument.
The problem with electron apps are that they’re literally just browser windows, which require a lot of overhead that you wouldn’t need with a native application. What you’re recommending has no benefit.
The issue is that Electron apps are an acceleration of Wirth’s Law.
deleted by creator
You are familiar with the concept of RAM, yes?
Still calling BS on ‘multi-GB’. Runs on mine in a few hundred MB. Not to mention you’re using the wrong terminology if you’re referring to memory usage and not storage space.
Must be a windows problem. Discord is neither larger than 500mb in size, and never uses more than a gig of ram on my machine.
There’s a million good reasons to not like discord. Age verification, the advertising, the paid nitro for emojis. Why lie?
Even on Linux desktop browser with fine-tuned uBO and API blockers and with several settings disabled it takes 560 MB and ~15% CPU on its tab plus whatever it is slicing from the general context thread. I can only dread what more it eats if you are not trying to restrict what it can do. Comparatively, the entire IRC client process I’m running (connected to various things) takes 65 MB + shared context.
OpenSuse Slowroll using the Flatpak shows it at 1.1 GB of RAM doing nothing. Screen sharing pushes it close to 2 GB.
Because hive mind absolutism. Discord bad, everything about it must be bad.
well it isnt? just open the website in a browser.
Websites still use RAM.
You can’t be serious