Poggerino's Blog

A Plan To Leave Discord

Been thinking about leaving Discord for a good while now, thinking about things I could do to facilitate that move and eventually be able to treat Discord like how I treat Whatsapp: to talk to people or groups that haven't left yet.

What are the roadblocks?

There are a few roadblocks to moving away from Discord:

In this post I will endeavour to address these issues and come to some sort of conclusion on the best path forward.

We're used to it

We've pretty much been using Discord since it came out. Discord alone destroyed the other two major platforms (Skype and Teamspeak), and has been dominant since then.

Not only that, but we've stayed here despite the platform decay that Discord has placed upon us: increasing features locked behind nitro, terrible connection issues in both chat, voice, and screenshare, and annoying features like profile frames which make accessibility worse.

Now, Discord will be even more subject to profit than they used to be, as they are discussing an IPO with some investment bankers. This will surely speed up platform decay, as the platform will be beholdened to the whims of the shareholders.

Anyway, all this is to say: we joined Discord as we felt it was more convenient and nicer to use than Skype or Teamspeak. We liked the community and moderation features it has, and we are now locked in habitual use of the platform, despite the platform decay.

Communities we like are here

Since we have been habitually using Discord and the platform has monopolised our attention, communities have formed on the platform that we have joined and formed relationships within. We have also found great utility from certain discussions in these various communities.

Some friends wont or can't leave.

During any attempt to leave a platform we are both used to, enjoy using, and have relationships on; we don't really want to leave. Some people really don't want to leave, or cannot leave because the communities they participate in will not leave.

How do we address all of this?

  1. We form new habits by using other platforms for extended periods of time.

  2. We keep using Discord, but try to use it less and less over time as we form new communities on another platform

  3. While using Discord, tell your friends you'd prefer if they messaged you on a different platform. Over some number of years, we might be able to completely or almost completely disconnect.

Thanks for reading 😊

Also typing this on mobile has extreme lag for no reason, so much so that I resorted to using Samsung Notes to write it.

Also also the post ended up being too long for Discord forums, which has a message limit of 2000 characters. Epic