On the side bar it lists the following:
- [Matrix/Element]Dead
- Discord
“Discord” is an active link, but the Matrix link is completely inactive. Not only is it inactive (which could have be excused as a broken link), but it is also manually labeled as “Dead”, as if there is no intention of making it work. How can a community that is focused on privacy willingly favor a service that is privacy non-respecting when a perfectly functional privacy-respecting alternative exists?
I don’t understand why it’s so popular… It’s a fancy IRC that’s centralized by a single company
Because it has significantly more features than IRC and it’s dead simple to spin up your own “server” where you aren’t beholden much to “admins” or whatever.
IRC was already “caveman playing with sticks and pebbles” a decade before discord became a thing. It’s really not a good point of comparison and questioning.
Discord became popular for one simple reason: anyone could make a server, share it with a crossplatform link, and others could then try out that link without installing anything. In other words, it became popular because it literally copied Slack and because the Skype era was atrociously bad customization and ease of use-wise compared to the preceding.
If you legitimately don’t understand why it’s popular, you are seriously out of touch.
Don’t get me wrong, I wish that we could use a FOSS platform instead of Discord, but 1: people are already using Discord and it’s hard to get everyone to switch platform, and 2: there is no comparable alternative right now
The answer is in the question. Even the centralization is not a bad thing for most people.
I use it because some of my favorite games for the Nintendo DS that has Wiimmfi support use it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Too hard to regrow the, already tiny user base in those cases.