- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
Discord isn’t exactly known for generous file-sharing limits, still, the messaging app offered a 25MB limit to free users. The company has now updated its support page to reflect the upload limit for free users has been lowered to 10MB.
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It’s a big lie. Why not offer the option to delete automatically after 24h if 15mb extra is so much storage?
Or is it about bandwidth? Why no automatic compression on desktop? Oh wait, that feature existed in the past was scrapped. They think you’re fools.
Does anyone know of a Discord alternative?
My vote is for Matrix
I haven’t heard of Matrix but I’ve heard of Revolt.
Matrix any good?
Revolt tries to be a discord clone/replacement and suffer from some of the same issues. Matrix happens to have a lot of feature in common, but is focused on privacy and security at its core.
Matrix is a laggy dumpsterfire. Messages take longer to send in Matrix than they do in Lemmy, and Lemmy isn’t even supposed to be a real-time chat app.
Try Element X if you have a mobile. It’s rebuilt on the new sdk and offers a new architecture that has messages come in way faster than on Element (original)
My homeserver is a one-person Conduit installation, and slowness is not something I have encountered. However, in groupchats that happened to be encrypted there were moments when my messages failed to decrypt for others. That might’ve been due to my own carelessness with the VPS though.
Homeserver issue most likely.
It works tho!
Did you blindly sign up for matrix.org?
Yeah, pick literally any other instance. I went with Mozilla’s, but there are plenty of alternatives. Or host your own!
The first time yeah, but I tried it again on another instance and it was better (at least it didn’t fail to load half the time), but still super slow. The 2nd time is what I was talking about.
What is the best instance with the largest user base?
Edit: and …yes I did
I don’t know. Why do you want a large user base?
Guessing at one reason:
It feels good to know that you’re not signing up for someone’s instance that they’re just trying out admining for the first time and maybe if they’re too busy to do the proper updates next weekend they’ll just close shop.
(And by shop I mean fantastic free volunteering effort of course!)
There isn’t a full alternative, but if you just want text chat with some voice chat added on there are options like Matrix.
Matrix is the closest replacement, and XMPP can replicate some functionality too.
Revolt is the only feature-rich swap in option.
“Storage management is expensive”
It’s really not, though. Discord has 200,000,000 MAU. If every single one of them uploaded a file every month (of pretty much any size) and Discord tossed it into an AWS S3 IA bucket, it would cost them $500 to store that data. Their total S3 bill for storage would be five hundred US dollars. Storage is dirt cheap. AWS doesn’t even charge per gigabyte on that storage type, it’s so cheap; they charge for downloads.
So, ok. Let’s talk downloads. If each of those files were 25GB and downloaded twice (probably an underestimate, but not everyone is uploading files, so I’m going to make the completely unfounded assumption that it’ll all shake out), it would cost them a couple hundred thousand dollars. Which, ok, that’s much more significant than $500. But Discord made $575 million last year—so the S3 download costs would be 0.03% of their total revenue. They probably spend 2-3 times more on coffee.
Storage management is emphatically not expensive.
My guess? They just saw that the higher upload limit was eating into their Nitro subscriptions.
If every one of those users uploads one 10MB file, that would be two petabytes of data. At S3’s IA prices that’s $25k/month. And people are uploading far, far more data than that.
I’ll have to check my math again. But are people uploading more than that? On my friend server, with 50 people, we’ve had about a dozen uploads all year, and they’re all pretty small PDFs and images. Everything else is rich links.
Pictures.
Which are automatically downloaded by every active user of the chat on every individual client, and many people do at least tens per day.
It’s heavily used at many universities. Think notes, images of whiteboards, full textbooks, pictures of tests, shared multiples times daily by tens of thousands of people. It adds up very fast.
You think they spend 400000 on coffee? You lost me there.
After looking at their number of employees and some math, I could actually see that as plausible.
Beware: old files sonner or later being removed is next. People use Discord like CDN(there are even bunch of clients for that usage) and that is never going to work indefinitely. Honestly, it’s very impressive that deletion wasn’t their first choice.
Same here, honestly. I would have thought they’d say something like “hey, we’re going to delete anything 1 year or older starting next month, and reduce that amount slowly down to 6 months with time” just to give people a general warning in case there was anything they were storing through Discord that they wanted to keep.
There’s also just a ton of optimizations they could have done. Are people repeatedly uploading the same file, with the same name and contents? merge them into one CDN link. They’d probably save hundreds of terabytes of data just from reposted memes alone through a hash matching algorithm.
I mean… couldn’t they just move the old files from the hot CDN to cold storage? I bet the few people that go check at old messages care that much about the loading speed of a screenshot. And honestly I think PR wise deleting memories from people makes for worse article titles than smaller files
I suppose they could, but even cold storage has a cost, and with the scale Discord’s operating at, they definitely have many terabytes of data that comes into the CDN every day, and that cost adds up if you’re storing it permanently.
I also think the vast majority of users would prefer being able to upload much higher resolution images and videos, to being able to see the image they sent with their messages a year ago. I don’t often go back through my messages, but I often find myself compressing or lowering the quality of the things I’m uploading on a regular basis.
They could also do the other common sense thing, which is to, on the client side of things, compress images and videos before sending them.
No it’s not
Next issue
Matrix works pretty good.
Yeahh no shit! Been using it for a short while now, glad Im able to find a couple groups to chat with, such an underrated service/protocol or whatever. I hope it and element keep getting better maybe I can get more friends to use it! Been tryna ditch Instagram cus half for the reason I use it nowadays is simply to keep in touch with friends and family as I don’t use any other messaging service ATM.
Is there a Matrix for dummies guide? It seems difficult to get started with, finding the right client etc.
I primarily use Discord as a one stop shop to play and run dnd campaigns. I first hopped on it around 2017, and its was way better than any other group chat app. Around the pandemic all my groups started playing on it and it became relatively seamless. I joined exactly one streamers discord but that is totally it. In general I wouldn’t expect it to be a good archive, or forum, nor do I expect it to be secure. I use armchord on PC. I started using it before it was enshittified. For what it does, it does it pretty well.
For the record, I have used matrix and Signal. I think both have the issue that a critical mass of my friends don’t use them. I liked Signal a lot when it had SMS support. I used it as a my primary SMS app, and some of my friends had signal as well, so that was cool. now its more like a specialized messenger app, and I fucking hate having yet another one of those on my phone. Matrix encryption keys are giant stumbling blocks to my friends who do give a fuck. I play ttrpgs with some people who could not give a fuck. I would have to set up the server, set up the account, and then I would have have to do the encryption key for them. And like people say, Matrix logs you out every little while. You can turn notifications off and totally forget about it. For my non techy friends, this is literally a bridge too far.
I literally have two friends who think Matrix is cool. No one else even has an account, much less a server. And the support to meet people who have this app is very limited. Cool, but I think it will always be a niche.
It took me a lot of convincing to get my friends on Signal instead of WhatsApp. I believe WhatsApp was talking about adding advertising or charging money, and I used that to get people to switch.
This reminds me of the argument I see from Linux users that Linux is just as easy to set up as Windows. I think it doesn’t occur to people making that argument that most people never even set up Windows. It’s just on their computer when they get it.
The setup needs to be fast and easy for people to consider it. Nobody will spend even 5 minutes figuring something out these days.
Edit to add that a bunch of younger people have never had a computer or laptop. They do their computer stuff on a phone or possibly a tablet and they definitely never did anything technical like reinstall the OS.
How do you understand this without falling into the defeatist mindset that the sheeple deserve to be imprisoned in the state of enshitification that their ignorance, laziness, and unwillingness to learn has helped build? Put down your iPhone, or go check into your local FEMA camp. I hate to be negative like this, but people really seem to be willing to give up everything for convenience and bling.
esstee
People can choose what to spend their time doing. Some of us choose to be able to install operating systems, other choose to become master gardeners. Who’s to say which one is right or wrong? The gardeners probably don’t have any issues using WhatsApp, even if there is advertising in it, because it solves the problem they have. Then they go back to the thing they’re experts at instead, saying things like “why can’t these tech sheeple grow a radish? send them all to jail.”
You dont have to be an expert, i barely know anything about the kinux cli but i still use linux daily
Most people have never installed an operating system, and I’ve never seen a laptop running Linux for sale at Best Buy or wherever, so there’s a huge barrier for entry for the average person.
I’m sure most people would be fine with Linux day to day if it was set up for them, but they’re not going to download an ISO, boot from it, and install an OS if they don’t have to.
These same people, to stick with my example, might grow delicious tomatoes, better than those you buy at the supermarket. Can anyone grow some tomatoes? Pretty much. Does anyone really have to? No.
It… Is?
Good, fuck gen z kiddos
It was a matter of time honestly
As long as cattle keeps using these white products, there will always be a merchant to sell their data.
We clearly have poorly educated population that can’t be bothered with anything besides blind consumption of whatever is trendy.
Plastic clothes, goyslop and data harvesting apps is essentially the condition of the modern wage slave and they appear to be satisfied.
Here we see the Common Incel in his natural habitat, trolling for reactions in his perpetually online state of being. Nature.
Proper Nomanclature is “wage slave”
Thank you :)
goyslop
You gotta be fucking kidding me with this antisemitic shit.
It makes me happy that I don’t even know what that means. Well, I didn’t until now.
I’ve never heard this word in my life and I somehow knew it was antisemitic?
just googled it
it’s apparently a conspiracy that jews feed non-jews (goys) something called goyslop that makes them submissive / slaves
absolutely bonkers
I didn’t know that, I assumed it was a corruption of “gay slop”
The “goy” is the giveaway. I had to google it to be sure, but seriously, what the fuck?
I recommend reporting the comment
Definitely not the kind of shit that should be welcome in this community
Also (after looking it up) I’m pretty sure that “goy” is a term used by jewish people to refer to non-jewish people. So in this case I think they’re saying that it is “non-jewish trash” by referring to it as “goyslop”.
I could be wrong though, they’re pretty incoherent and it’s definitely not the kind of comment reply I wanted to see when I woke up from my nap.
Yeah, already reported it.
And yeah, “goyim” is anyone non-Jewish, so the implication is Jews control the world and they only give out the barest minimum of sustenance to goyim known as “goyslop.”
Like the amount of time and energy people put into these fucking slurs is ridiculous.
Ah gotcha
On a related tangent, I think my least favorite thing about my instance is that I only see the upvotes for that terrible comment. Which it has entirely too many of.
Honestly the amount of terrible comments and posts like that I see makes me want to switch to an instance with downvotes so that I can see that such shot isn’t popular.
If it brings you any solace, Mr Raised-by-4chan is getting absolutely thundercunted with downvotes.
Haven’t seen that many in a long while.
Happy to hear it, and also happy to see their comment disappear
High schooler Reading comprehension spotted.
Melt down about one term that you didn’t like and ignore the message lol
Either way my content speak for itsel, you could first do some basic diligence before spazzing out and trying to imply intent that ain’t there.
We really so deserve the government we got with this genius
Rheee
Sorry bro, you’re the one unironically using antisemitic dogwhistles, as if you can’t get the same point across without them.
That is your opinion and your entitled to express yourself here but learn to read lol
Pretty funny from someone who could learn to learn to write better and maybe describe things without needing to lean on antisemitic dogwhitles, but I mean, you obviously think you won this argument, so whatever. I’m sure your arguments about why it’s really important to use the N-word to explain your points have just about as much substance.
your
Somebody needs to get up on their high school education and it’s not the person you’re talking to.
lol
This is one of those things where the concept is entirely appropriate and accurate, except for that one minor issue…
Except it’s not the Jews, it’s the WASPs and whatever weird Catholic sect/cult that Justice Barret was raised in…okay, and yes, there’s probably some Jews in the mix as well.
Because what I just described is the main demographic groups of the .01%
Nah, they call them “white apps” and so since they are coming from a place of racism against whites, they feel it’s totally appropriate and okay to use a term like goyslop. It’s a shitty word to use and claiming it’s okay because you are actually racist against whites is stupid as fuck. That is still using antisemitic dog whistles. There are other ways to describe the same concept like “fast food slop.”
They think other people can’t read and don’t realize it still makes them a stupid racist.
But the concept isn’t just about fast food, it’s about the system that produces pink slime based chicken nuggets, and the people who sit up top of that system.
So they’ve correctly identified systemic problems that hurt people, and that those actions are done with intent, either maliciously or with indifference.
They’ve just confused capitalism working as intended, as being a Jewish conspiracy.
Also, “white apps” is just really bad racial propaganda. Whoever coined that term needs some new blood in their marketing team.
I think I found Trump’s Speech Writer’s account.
If Trump started saying this shit, he would get re elected
But you don’t appear to have sufficient understanding of what I said, if you believe somebody like Trump would repeat this in public lol
Oh. no, I’m not saying that this is something that Trump would say, it just has all the cadence of someone with early onset dementia. It is written like how he speaks, thus “Trump’s Speech Writer” and not Trump himself.
the sly antisemitism was totally on brand for Trump as well.
“sly antisemitism”?
Lol, what?
Y’all gonna accuse them of being a Chinese Hamas member next?
You can fuck right off, too. The evidence is clear as day.
I dunno, that was at least coherent if not incredibly dumb.
You mean auto deleting?
Well, it is better than 8, but still sad.
Discord continues down it’s path to total enshittification, which is exactly what I told everyone would happen when this fucking dogshit app got pushed on me around 2018 or so.
It’s a private company with a profit motive. Fucking shocker that it enshittifies. /s
Fucking dipshit gamers not knowing any better.
Ok but why are you so angry about it?
I’ve been using it for years and haven’t had to pay a dime.
How have they harmed you with their free app?
Because if you didn’t expect this path when you signed up you were naive.
Now everyone complains about it but for people who had already been paying attention: this was par for the course. Of course this was going to be the outcome. Why should I be happy that everyone fell for the promises of a for-profit private company again?
Like why do you think we are on Lemmy for fucks sake? Is it not for the same reasons??
How many times do we have to be fucked by private corporations for people to learn they don’t care about us?
But every time its all “but they have a better feature set so its okay that they might enshittify in the long-run!” Literally same shit is being said about Bluesky over Mastodon right now.
The problem being, there aren’t many alternatives around for discord. And even the ones that exist have issues of their own. Mostly relating to use base and entry barrier, in the case of the item source alternatives.
No, literally the problem is most people would rather give in and use a sleek corporate option every time.
No matter how many times they get fucked by doing that.
It’s a choice to keep getting fucked.
Lololol y’all are insane.
I’ve been using discord for free for like 8 years now. But now I can only share 10mb files and I’M FUCKED 🤣
So much entitlement.
Example one, this ^ shit-for-brains. People like him are how we end up with Discord, when alternatives like Skype have better file and screen sharing and are completely free. Because discord is fashionable. It’s where his equally brainless friends “game.”
No one is preventing you from using Skype. You are unhinged over discord 🤣.
Incredibly weird.
You didn’t even come close to answering the question. So I’ll ask again.
How were you harmed by Discord?
That wooshing sound you hear over your head is you willfully missing the point entirely.
Like why do you think we are on Lemmy for fucks sake? Is it not for the same reasons??
*woosh
LITERALLY UNUSABLE 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Discord is fine for 99% of users.
What an overreaction. Also FYI the free file limit was 8MB two years ago before they raised the limit to 25MB, so if anything it’s gotten better.
Yeah the file limit on Skype is 300mb and has been for like a decade. Gamers are the dumbest fucking demographic on planet earth.
calm down man, no need to be so rude :(
You’re upset that I said the f-word @IntergalacticTurtleFucker@lemmy.world
Jk
you spoke the truth and it hurts (im retarded)
also I still haven’t decided if my name means that I am an intergalactic being, or if the turtles are intergalactic
Maybe it’s not even about you at all.
Intergalactic turtle, fucker.
I saw this headline and was thinking, “Huh, I thought the limit was 8MB.”
Anything that wants to meaningfully compete with Discord will probably also need to be able to near-seamlessly port over existing Discord servers to the new platform, since it’s so established now. Is there a competitor that can do that?
I’m completely out of the loop, so I might as well ask you: where is discord so established? Never used it in my life. I used IRC, ICQ and MSN in their time. Now for work Slack, teams and zoom. Signal and Telegram privately. Email for everything.
What am I missing? What does discord provide?
Discord is used a lot for gaming groups, modding, software development, and has largely replaced forums for lots of niche communities
Which is unfortunate. Hiding projects, code and support behind discord is just wrong.
There are Linux and open source communities on discord. I mean, just think about that for a second. These people have chosen to put their stuff on a platform that has refused to acknowledge the existence of their OS / development platform. Every other post on Reddit in the Linux community before I left was about some half assed discord workaround.
Unfortunately, a lot of fandom communities, video games, and (ugh) hobbyist development projects have Discard servers instead of a forum or similar.
It provides a weird IRC-but-not-really type experience that is similar to MSN in some ways. A lot of younger people flock to it because they find computer stuff difficult and they just want it to work, be easy, and have an app. The UI is trendy even though it’s horrible to actually navigate due to all the wasted space and buttons.
I really just think it caught on at the right time, though the video calling is pretty good. What I have a problem with is that you need to join a server to access any information inside of it, so it’s not searchable from outside of the Discord ecosystem. For dev projects or large communities, that sucks and makes the internet a worse place.
Personally I originally went to Discord because it was the alternative to skype which was increasingly becoming shittier and shittier when Microsoft bought it.
Yes, that’s how I ended up there too. At the time, Skype sucked and Mumble/Ventrilo/etc. were seen as too old-school for my friends (and a lot of them didn’t have PCs, just smartphones). We also tried Google Meet, Zoom, and Facebook Messenger at various points but Discord always seemed like the most reliable.
Discord is great as chat program. It should’ve only ever been used for that. It completely sucks as forum replacement. Discord should’ve had very little value to any decent organization.
I have a hobby development project with a modest community and maintain a Discord server basically because it’s necessary in order to avoid reducing my potential community reach by at least 50%.
I’m active on GitHub and respond to comments and issues there. I maintain an official thread for my project on the official forum for the game it’s related to. I also keep all documentation, downloads, and guides off Discord and on the clearnet. Discord is still easily 80% or more of where people look for information about the project.
That’s great - I am obviously not talking about you in that case. I understand why people want to use it, I just don’t think Discord’s features are good enough to justify the mass adoption and the walled garden and UI are bad.
Discord is fashionable. That’s it. The whole app is fantastically impractical if you want to use file or screen sharing. It’s just a bunch of gamers circle-jerking each other, which is a perfect way to keep them from infesting the rest of the internet.
Every single small game I play has effectively the entirety of their support, community and forums run through discord. Instead of easy to search and discover forums, I have to use crappy infinite chat logs. It sucks.
ICQ
You sure about that part? I thought they shut down. I guess they might have some user-based servers?
if you read the whole sentence it might make more sense…
i used […] in their time.
A really ugly and confusing UI.
Is there a competitor that can do that?
I say this with all due respect: Who gives a shit? If you were foolish enough to dump your entire community into Discord alone and don’t have an off-ramp, that’s your own fucking problem.
EDIT: Also, Matrix already has a bridge for Discord and has for a while:
Who gives a shit? The people who use it that you apparently want to switch to something else, for one. Shouldn’t it be easy to switch, like going from Chrome to Firefox? That’s how we get out of Discord hell.
Shouldn’t it be easy to switch, like going from Chrome to Firefox?
Say you have no idea how any of this works without saying you have no idea how any of this works.
That’s how we get out of Discord hell.
Why is it our job to fix the problems of a private, profit-focused company?
We’re not fixing Discord’s problems, oh my god. We’re trying to get their existing users to go somewhere else even though it’s what’s familiar and Discord works for them.
Also it’s definitely possible to code an import tool that scrapes a given server for info on how to structure things on the new platform, so idk what you think you’re gaining by insulting my comparison to an aspect of a service that makes users motivated to switch.
I don’t know who shat in your coffee, but get a fucking new cup.
Honestly the onboarding for a lot of alternatives to various to popular platforms/apps (Matrix, Mastodon, etc) seems to be the biggest impediment to more adoption of those platforms and apps.
By onboarding here I mean the communities that use those platforms recruiting others to join them and help build communities up.
Like goddamn if that users comment was the first time I’d heard of Matrix it would have turned me away for sure.
Not to mention Mastodon having a reputation that proceeds it.
Yes, exactly! At this point, some of these communities have been on Discord for years and have specialized bots for certain tasks. They don’t want to start over, and I don’t want them to either - there’s tons of real work that these communities have put in. I think that these messaging services that want to make headway in the space Discord occupies need to reduce the friction in switching because a lot of Discord admins do believe that the feature set is better, they just can’t easily move over.
This happens to organizations all the time and it’s a known issue - Discord communities are no different. I’m hoping something comes along in the next few years if it doesn’t already exist in its infancy right now. Even at the user level, I know many people are confused about Matrix. I don’t know how exactly to fix these issues, but they need to be priorities.
The people downvoting you are the ones who eat up the enshittificaion. Discord is unusable for anyone who wants file or screen sharing. Skype, by contrast, has free screen sharing that’s smoother and higher quality, and a file sharing limit of 300mb, all free for the last decade.
But yeah most users are barely computer literate so Discord keeps humming along.
Skype was annoying to use and so is element
Oh, I know. It’s squarely aimed at fucking tools who don’t even own a PC, which is why it has that “mobile first” design ethos even though their mobile apps are absolute trash.
It doesn’t matter how many times this happens, people would rather get fucked by corpos than spend time learning anything.
Look, I’m as upset as you are about the enshittification of everything, but this is a bit too far.
There was always legitimate issues with Discord’s storage management, and they at least seem to be taking it seriously now.
I’m not a massive fan of Discord, but this is a bit of an overreaction.
Unlike other platforms, we store your files for as long as you need them, so it is crucial that we manage our storage sustainably
I mean, its great that they offer that, but all my files dont need to be permemnant. I would love the ability to review and delete old files
Yeah, makes no sense that they store some pdf I was dragging over to someone one time. Super inefficient. They should allocate an amount of storage per user that then rolls and deletes the oldest files when the cap gets exceeded to make room for the new files.
It’s probably because it’s their property now and personal data is precious
Maybe, but then they’d want more data, not complaining about needing to limit it. Or maybe it’s just because they want lots of small files like text, and not waste it on inefficient sound and video files.
They want more data and literally can’t store it efficiently enough. You can read their eula and see, they instantly own anything you upload and you no longer have rights to it, which is absolutely bonkers and pretty dubious in many countries if this is even legal. We found out when they overviewed the security of our studio and we use other communication software now because of it. They could literally argue that they own the assets to the games we make if we send concepts to each other.
yknow, i would like to see reported figures as to why discord isn’t actually able to host file sizes over a certain size…
The problem is discord never deletes files, no matter how old they are. So they have a perpetually growing storage need
seems like a skill issue to me. Surely they would delete them on the banishment of a server, old servers die pretty frequently. Channels are deleted. Etc.
These companies hoard data they might have an use for but not even know how yet. Training AI and shit. Deleting stuff ain’t in their dictionary.
we really do live in a dystopia don’t we.
Anyway this seems like a great excuse to not limit the file uploads, and just pay for more storage considering you could like, sell it, but what do i know.
It is more like the data could make money in the future but is not making money right now so they don’t have infinite money for storage. If they had I am sure they would be happy to increase free storage limits.
i guess we should ask google how they’re doing with the 15gb of free storage thing.
Google has a lot more money
For real.
I emailed them once asking about how they were complying with GDPR regulations if they didn’t allow users a way to delete all their message details, and didn’t even have a procedure for GDPR requests, only their standard, much worse privacy-wise account deletion process. They claimed it was because they had a legitimate interest to keep any messages not individually deleted, so the chats would still look coherent after an account was deleted.
They only delete your message if you delete it individually, so naturally, I was concerned, since you can’t delete messages in a server you were banned from, or left, and Discord provides no way for you to identify old messages in servers you’re not currently in.
They eventually, supposedly, sent my concerns to their data privacy team.
They were then sued for 800,000 euros about a month or two later.
They still don’t allow you to mass delete your message data. They really want to hold onto it for as long as they can.
That’s shitty times thar you have to use tools for pirating like torrent, Usenet to share big files . For smaller ones even email providers have bigger limits at least 15 megabytes
