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>Most people use Discord for its community features and being able to join massive servers with 1+ million people Do they? Personally I've never willingly join

>Most people use Discord for its community features and being able to join massive servers with 1+ million people Do they? Personally I've never willingly joined one of those massive servers, only when forced to by some projects that refuse to host their content anywhere else- and its always a terrible experience. 99% of my discord usage is just a group chat with my IRL friends, so when looking for alternative I dont really care about roles and moderation and bots at all. I just want a group text chat, a mobile client for it with notifications, and drop-in/drop-out voice calls

scyzoryk_xyz 7mo ago
Agreed 100%, can confirm same here. All true. Not for most users who are blindly following their communities, seeking lock-in, tasteless design, eating rat poison, driving off cliffs so on and so forth.
BowBun 7mo ago
They have >200 million DAUs and guesses say they have >10K servers with >10K users. Assumptions from a tech crowd who were used to IRC should be taken with a grain of salt. Now if we're just looking for alternatives for ourselves, cool. But I think the reality is that most normal users do fully lean into the social aspects of Discord. A server like Marvel Rivals has literally millions of users. Players join that discord to socialize with all of those players and build a community around the game.
- cheeseomlit 7mo ago
  I'm just questioning the 'most users' aspect- just anecdotally among my 'normal' peers those big servers dont seem like the most common use case. For every big million-user server there could be a million private 10-user servers
  - cheikhcheikh 7mo ago
    By definition it should obvious the million-user server is a popular feature since it has a million user.
    - gusgus01 7mo ago
      Not necessarily, if Discord has more than 200 million Daily Active Users, and there are a few million-user servers. Those million-user servers could mostly be made up of the same million users (or only a small percentage still actively engage but they never left because there's no disincentive to leave servers instead of just muting them) meaning it's used by less than 1/200th of the total users of Discord. Realistically, that's probably not the case, but it's impossible to know the true popularity without more statistics.
    - AceyMan 7mo ago
      obligatory citation: "Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded." —Yogi Berra, MLB HOF catcher & manager
- forgotaccount3 7mo ago
  > A server like Marvel Rivals has literally millions of users. Players join that discord to socialize with all of those players and build a community around the game. Going back to something you said earlier: > Rocket chat is a Slack alternative for people wanting to host a server for a community. It's not a platform, you need to register and login to each server manually. So the primary thing is that there is no SSO for each server? No centralized auth system? Because everyone I know that uses discord 'found' the discord via some official means of those million person discord's like the official Marvel Rivals one. If the only purpose of the centralized system is not requiring a new login for every server, then a centralized auth system could be implemented by relying on people's other social media accounts. Login with Google/Facebook/Apple etc.
  - elendee 7mo ago
    you could sign into A and your friend could sign into B using the single sign in, but you wouldn't be able to message each other is the problem, there is no platform bridging the logic gap, so you would both need to have A and B open. (afaik. didn't read about Rocket yet)
- secabeen 7mo ago
  > A server like Marvel Rivals has literally millions of users. Players join that discord to socialize with all of those players and build a community around the game. That is totally true, but is that server really going to be one with NSFW content or channels? Those huge servers are great spaces, but every one I've been on is fully functional if you are on a "teen account" without doing ID/Age verification.
- giancarlostoro 7mo ago
  I have said many times, Discord isn't just chat, it is 100% a social media app. I think there's definitely more than 10 thousand servers... Unless they mean active? Even so... there's 3.2 million Discord servers with the Disboard bot installed, that's just Disboard, a way to advertise your Discord. There's likely millions more with no bots.
  - price 7mo ago
    I think the gp is saying that out of those millions of total Discord servers, there are >10k of them that each have >10k users. In other words there are >10k large servers, in addition to the much larger number of smaller servers.
- jsbisviewtiful 7mo ago
  > Do they? Personally I've never willingly joined one of those massive servers Large community servers are plentiful. I'm in a few that are definitely several hundred if not a few thousand users. It's pretty common to have a public server for cities too.
  - pseudalopex 7mo ago
    The question was 1+ million people. Any alternative in the article but Signal could handle 100s or 1000s to my knowledge.
    - jsbisviewtiful 7mo ago
      Multiple sources cite different totals but it does seem like there are multiple 1+ mil servers. https://www.deepcord.com/leaderboard/top-members/all/all-sizes https://www.deepcord.com/leaderboard/top-members/all/all-siz...
      - pseudalopex 7mo ago
        The question was not are there Discord servers with 1+ million people. The question was do most Discord users use Discord to join servers with 1+ million people.
orwin 7mo ago
Any multiplayer game that doesn't have an integrated matchmaking have _big_ discord servers. Basically most paradox games, civ5 and civ6, probably others. All the organising that used to happen on forums now happens on discord servers
w4rh4wk5 7mo ago
From personal experience, yes. Most of my friends are part of multiple large servers, often interacting with a small subsets of these communities. At this point, I don't think there is a comparable alternative.
colordrops 7mo ago
"Discord alternatives aren't needed because I'm different from the majority of millions of people that use it differently than me."
- Redoubts 7mo ago
  nobody joins a million person discord, it's too crowded
neutronicus 7mo ago
I don't join massive servers, but I use Discord almost exclusively with strangers. All my IRL group chats are WhatsApp. Discord is for the local board game bar, various regional tabletop gaming scenes, my favorite basketball podcast, my favorite miniatures game, etc. When I want to get into a community, these days I get a Discord link (which I guess I prefer to the Facebook Groups of a decade ago).
davkan 7mo ago
My experience using discord for technical projects and communities is largely similar to IRC. I jump in, ask a question in the appropriate channel, someone answers quite quickly, i say thanks, I leave. I’d prefer having openly searchable forums and chat archives and to use IRC but I can’t say the experience is that onerous.

scyzoryk_xyz 7mo ago

Agreed 100%, can confirm same here. All true. Not for most users who are blindly following their communities, seeking lock-in, tasteless design, eating rat poison, driving off cliffs so on and so forth.

BowBun 7mo ago

They have >200 million DAUs and guesses say they have >10K servers with >10K users. Assumptions from a tech crowd who were used to IRC should be taken with a grain of salt. Now if we're just looking for alternatives for ourselves, cool. But I think the reality is that most normal users do fully lean into the social aspects of Discord. A server like Marvel Rivals has literally millions of users. Players join that discord to socialize with all of those players and build a community around the game.

cheeseomlit 7mo ago
I'm just questioning the 'most users' aspect- just anecdotally among my 'normal' peers those big servers dont seem like the most common use case. For every big million-user server there could be a million private 10-user servers
- cheikhcheikh 7mo ago
  By definition it should obvious the million-user server is a popular feature since it has a million user.
  - gusgus01 7mo ago
    Not necessarily, if Discord has more than 200 million Daily Active Users, and there are a few million-user servers. Those million-user servers could mostly be made up of the same million users (or only a small percentage still actively engage but they never left because there's no disincentive to leave servers instead of just muting them) meaning it's used by less than 1/200th of the total users of Discord. Realistically, that's probably not the case, but it's impossible to know the true popularity without more statistics.
  - AceyMan 7mo ago
    obligatory citation: "Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded." —Yogi Berra, MLB HOF catcher & manager
forgotaccount3 7mo ago
> A server like Marvel Rivals has literally millions of users. Players join that discord to socialize with all of those players and build a community around the game. Going back to something you said earlier: > Rocket chat is a Slack alternative for people wanting to host a server for a community. It's not a platform, you need to register and login to each server manually. So the primary thing is that there is no SSO for each server? No centralized auth system? Because everyone I know that uses discord 'found' the discord via some official means of those million person discord's like the official Marvel Rivals one. If the only purpose of the centralized system is not requiring a new login for every server, then a centralized auth system could be implemented by relying on people's other social media accounts. Login with Google/Facebook/Apple etc.
- elendee 7mo ago
  you could sign into A and your friend could sign into B using the single sign in, but you wouldn't be able to message each other is the problem, there is no platform bridging the logic gap, so you would both need to have A and B open. (afaik. didn't read about Rocket yet)
secabeen 7mo ago
> A server like Marvel Rivals has literally millions of users. Players join that discord to socialize with all of those players and build a community around the game. That is totally true, but is that server really going to be one with NSFW content or channels? Those huge servers are great spaces, but every one I've been on is fully functional if you are on a "teen account" without doing ID/Age verification.
giancarlostoro 7mo ago
I have said many times, Discord isn't just chat, it is 100% a social media app. I think there's definitely more than 10 thousand servers... Unless they mean active? Even so... there's 3.2 million Discord servers with the Disboard bot installed, that's just Disboard, a way to advertise your Discord. There's likely millions more with no bots.
- price 7mo ago
  I think the gp is saying that out of those millions of total Discord servers, there are >10k of them that each have >10k users. In other words there are >10k large servers, in addition to the much larger number of smaller servers.
jsbisviewtiful 7mo ago
> Do they? Personally I've never willingly joined one of those massive servers Large community servers are plentiful. I'm in a few that are definitely several hundred if not a few thousand users. It's pretty common to have a public server for cities too.
- pseudalopex 7mo ago
  The question was 1+ million people. Any alternative in the article but Signal could handle 100s or 1000s to my knowledge.
  - jsbisviewtiful 7mo ago
    Multiple sources cite different totals but it does seem like there are multiple 1+ mil servers. https://www.deepcord.com/leaderboard/top-members/all/all-sizes https://www.deepcord.com/leaderboard/top-members/all/all-siz...
    - pseudalopex 7mo ago
      The question was not are there Discord servers with 1+ million people. The question was do most Discord users use Discord to join servers with 1+ million people.

orwin 7mo ago

Any multiplayer game that doesn't have an integrated matchmaking have _big_ discord servers. Basically most paradox games, civ5 and civ6, probably others. All the organising that used to happen on forums now happens on discord servers

w4rh4wk5 7mo ago

From personal experience, yes. Most of my friends are part of multiple large servers, often interacting with a small subsets of these communities. At this point, I don't think there is a comparable alternative.

colordrops 7mo ago

"Discord alternatives aren't needed because I'm different from the majority of millions of people that use it differently than me."

Redoubts 7mo ago
nobody joins a million person discord, it's too crowded

neutronicus 7mo ago

I don't join massive servers, but I use Discord almost exclusively with strangers. All my IRL group chats are WhatsApp. Discord is for the local board game bar, various regional tabletop gaming scenes, my favorite basketball podcast, my favorite miniatures game, etc. When I want to get into a community, these days I get a Discord link (which I guess I prefer to the Facebook Groups of a decade ago).

davkan 7mo ago

My experience using discord for technical projects and communities is largely similar to IRC. I jump in, ask a question in the appropriate channel, someone answers quite quickly, i say thanks, I leave. I’d prefer having openly searchable forums and chat archives and to use IRC but I can’t say the experience is that onerous.