Matrix is an absolutely pale imitation of Discord.

Yes it is very upsetting that the most popular chat platform in the Western world is in league with Sauron, but Matrix as a replacement is a glorified ICQ client that regularly yells at you that your device is untrusted now and there's no hope of fixing it, you loser.

Screen-sharing is part of chat apps nowadays. You're fully within your rights to stay on IRC and pretend that featureful chat is not the norm these days, but that doesn't mean society is going to move to IRC with you. Like it or not, encrypted chat apps have to become even more usable for the average person for adoption to go up. This reminds me of how all the old Linux-heads insisted that gaming was for children and that Linux didn't need gaming. Suddenly now that Linux has gaming, adoption is going way up - what a coincidence.

Edit: Also for the record, I have a tech-savvy friend who refuses to move to Signal until there are custom emoji reactions, of all things. You can definitely direct your ire towards these people, but the reality is some people have a certain comfort target, and convincing them to settle for less is often harder than improving the app itself.

Yeah no, sometimes you need screen sharing in the "chatting app"

A lot of university clubs are on Discord, and my cyber club does tutorials and labs on the weekends where the leader screen-shares. It's nice because you can see the video in real time and ask questions whenever, rather than watching a pre-recorded video and having to hope you have no issues while following along.

I mean, this is literally why Zoom blew up so much during COVID. Real-time learning works more than asynchronous learning for a lot of people.

I don’t know why people keep saying this. You either pay for a service, or you get a company extracting as much data as they can from you for advertiser or VC money. Servers and bandwidth cost money

1. Some people pay for Discord and they still exploit their data.
2. Some people pay for Lichess and their whole website is free of charge without tracking/advertising.

Yes, things cost money. Yes, ideally those who can pay for it should. No, something being free doesn't legitimize unethical means to make a profit.

⚜︎ arscyni.cc: modernity ∝ nature.