I know this because I'm temporarily using a Chrome-based WebBrowser component for called EO.WebBrowser (for edge-case reasons). I'm working on going back to the native WebBrowser control after getting about a few emails a month of emails asking about RAM usage.
It also shows up in the uninstall comments. Quote from a real comment: "The app works, but it uses a lot of RAM."
Slack and Discord are used for work, which might make users think of it a necessary evil. Paying for software yourself that you don't absolutely need and having it use lots of your RAM is a different story.
I think it makes even more of a difference for people outside of the HN audience.
A non-technical person might grab a $400 laptop from Costco with 4gb of RAM which is fairly common.
All it takes are a few Electron apps to exhaust that entire system's resources.
All I was trying to say was that Electron and other technical decisions should be evaluated by their actual business impact, which vary from app to app.
Is this actually true? Slack and Discord are valued at ~$7B and $2B respectively, and neither have found it necessary to move off their Electron apps. I assume both companies have already evaluated whether Electron's performance impacts their their bottom line, and concluded it does not.
Electron is undoubtedly slower and more resource-intensive than other options, but outside of specific audiences (HN readers) I bet most people won't care.