I don't mind being on a platform that's not used by 12 year olds. I'm looking for interesting social/political/philosophical/technological content and engagement, and I suspect only a minority of teenagers are really interested in that.

And while teenagers are on Discord, my impression is that their content there isn't great either. The interesting stuff on Discord is also mostly from 40-somethings.

Thing is, facebook has never been a great place for these things. I still have a FB account, but I haven't checked it in years, and back in the days when I did, there was only one person posting really interesting stuff. Everything else was just lame crap. For a while, I set FB to notify me when that guy posted anything and just ignored everything else, but I really wish he'd just post on a better platform.

Discord has a discovery problem. Your in channels you get invited to or made aware of, and most of those channels are echo chambers where the people running the channel are obsessed with getting you to post in them (even if its complete nonsense)

There are some quality discord channels, but how do you learn about or get invited to them in the first place?

In this particular case, one of my favourite RPG writers posted about it on MeWe. He, together with some other RPG writers, runs the place. It's tied to their Patreon, they organise talks and workshops for members. Most of the channels are about RPGs of course, but they have channels about tons of other topics too. One of my favourites is their channel about TV & movies, because there I get to discuss TV shows and movies with people who tend to have a similar taste as I do.

It's absolutely an echo chamber; it's mostly people who grew up with British roleplaying games in the 1980s and still love them today. But it's a fun group.

Wikisocial comes to mind. Have you tried that?

12 year-olds have always laughed at Facebook and instead used, X (kik, Snap, Tiktok, etc). They are a fickle bunch with no interest in being on the same platform as their parents. This is not anything new.

I'd argue that the NYT's war on FB and Apple's policies around privacy (e.g. "Tracking your data" when FB and "Enhancing your user experience" when APPL).

When my cohort was 12 facebook was cool as hell. Things really have changed, and I think OP is right. The facebook property has an expiration date.

But when your cohort was 12, were your parents on Facebook? Or were they on another platform (or no platform at all)? Facebook was the cool hen MySpace was the ew after all.

I quit Facebook when my mom and grandma started sending me friend requests. Maybe around 2009 or so.

Meta is cool, like Xi!

I read an article a while ago saying that for millennials, they love follower counts and likes, while zoomies will freely move between platforms with the days' trends without really caring about that stuff.

Personally I don't care about follower counts and likes and other such nonsense. I stick to one platform because I've met people there I like to chat with

I'm also not just consuming content and trying to stay ahead of trends.

Your view seems to ignore the temporal aspect, for one the original userbase of FB was students, they certainly weren't parents. FB hasn't been around that long, so to suggest anything has 'always' been the case ignores how this has been a very rapidly evolving ecosystem of software, from a generational point of view.

You're missing the forest for the tree. It doesn't matter what software platforms or communications methods are involved - children (or rather descendants, since they may be adults) generally do not wish to share the same social platform as their parents / older relatives.

I totally agree, that's the point of my comment even. This is a moving target, nothing 'always' about it. We're discussing the decline of facebook over time, and it started being popular with an entirely different age group than it is now.

I also think it's worth noting these are relatively new phenomenon, we haven't even had social networks for long enough to pin down trends so absolutely.

I appreciate my parents being on FB. But I’m an adult. I also left FB for a time though too.

I think FB can do real psychological harm so you have to be psychologically prepared for it.

Those college students grew up and that age group make up the bulk of facebook with their parents on as well.

Exactly, so it's not the case that FB has 'always' been for old people, is my point. It has evolved over time, as we're seeing most social networks doing. It seems hard to become a long term incumbent, but it's evolving in front of us.

My little nephew categorized all Facebook users as "40 year old Moms drinking wine". Among a certain generation, the possession of a Facebook login is a cause for ridicule.

Well that's how I describe it too tbh

That kid knows what's up

Sounds legit

> how will Facebook grow?

Probably by buying the next up and coming networks, just like they did with Instagram and Whatsapp.

I think this would have certainly been in the cards in the past, but at least for the moment there is regulatory backlash against anything seen as anticompetitive, especially buyouts like you referenced. (I Work with M&A teams)FB is having to pay significantly above market to attract and retain talent, and the use patterns are not well aligned to homegrown competitors to tik tok. Some might argue this is why such a big bet is being placed on the “metaverse” business plan. But these trends may be the biggest long term challenge they have faced since the rise of mobile.

There's no chance in hell regulators let them get away with it. They couldn't even acquire Giphy, let alone something more serious.

They can’t buy TikTok which is the big thing right now.

There will be a new big thing in five years or so. Meta makes enough money to bridge to that. They don't need to win every generation of social media.

> most of my social activity occurs on Discord.

Explain like I’m 60? How do you use it?

well, like IRC.

Like IRC, but instead of controlling a server, channel or user account yourself you are in full merci of the auto ban bots on a closed platform. Instead of using one of thousands of thin clients you are forced to use one of their few thick ones, hungry for memory. And because nobody but discord can actually moderate, the platform is full of spam and scam. What they do against spam? Nothing, but requiring a phone number that works with their 2fa what automatically locks out people without a (supported) phone number, for a online chat.. what a time to be alive

Just like IRC, but doing everything wrong that made IRC great.

What's the problem with moderation? Not only can you do all the same kinds of kicking/banning you could on IRC manually, there's a pretty clean API that lets you write bots to do it, and plenty of third party bots able to automate common tasks if you don't feel like writing one yourself.

All the other points stand, and the platform is indeed full of spam and scam - because many "servers" are run and inhabited by kids who don't investigate any of the moderation options and/or actively participate in the spamming themselves - but it certainly doesn't mean it can't be done.

(IRC was full of spam and scam as well as soon as you stepped away from the better kept communities; and also things like DOS wars and hostile channel takeovers during network splits, which Discord seems so far largely free of)

Go into any crypto related community and wait a day until the spam bots start bombarding your with DMs. Sometime stupid, sometimes downright well done scam. Sometimes things you are expect to answer. No visual difference there if you don't know all the verification bots by name & Id. In my point of view it's a dangerous platform because of the lack of general moderation.

It shouldn't be the server owners problem to repeat the same lines warning against the same things again and again because they lack actual control.

"Allow direct messages from server members" is a setting you can control. You can toggle it per server, and also set the default for new servers you join. This is more control than the IRC protocol offers - you can globally ignore all private messages there, or permit them. (You can also block individual users, of course, which you could also do with IRC). Private message spam is also a thing on IRC (though there it tends to be the "lonely women in your area" sort rather than crypto).

This really feels like a social problem, not a technical one; and not one specific to Discord, though it sounds like you have encountered some particularly bad communities there.

> Go into any crypto related community

Lie down with dogs, and get fleas.

> What's the problem with moderation?

The OP mentioned a bunch of problems spawning from the platform's lack of moderation, among which there's spam and scams.

OP didn't mention discord at all. Do you mean my post's parent? They said "because nobody but discord can actually moderate", which is counter to my experience; therefore my post asking for clarification. I'm keen to understand what the moderation tasks are that discord can accomplish that the users who are discord server admins cannot; perhaps I will learn something new, or perhaps I may be able share something I know.

Certainly, as I mentioned, I do see problems with scams and spamming in some communities due to the admins of those communities choosing not to moderate, or not knowing/caring that it is possible, but those problems do not seem specific to discord - IRC also had them, as do other platforms. Hence my confusion.

I think what makes/made IRC great is not any of those things, but the people that use it. Most people don't use a platform for the platform itself, but for the people that use it.

How does Discord spam work? I only really follow one Discord community (which has a few dozen channels), and it feels like the people organising it are in full control. I certainly haven't seen any spam there. It's a nice place to hang out with like-minded people (which in this case means middle-aged people who grew up with WFRP).

If you go to more generalized (ie. Tech) or especially crypto related servers and you'll get flooded with DMs.

The spam is kinda neglaceable 8f you just ignore all DMs, the smart scam I've seen is outright dangerous tho.

So it’s like AOL and AIM but with more features.

not disagreeing with anything there. i use irc more, myself.

merely noting that the social interaction mode with other users is IRC style.

Stepped into that one

It's just like Slack, but for people without jobs. /s

So why not just use IRC? What makes Discord different/better?

'Everybody' is already on Discord and I doubt I can convince all of them to move to IRC. Plus voice and video chat.

Not having to use bouncers, being able to use it on multiple devices at once, SSL-only. Using IRC on a phone is a giant PITA.

I wouldn't wish having to use EFNet on anyone, either.

The audience, voice and video chat built in, more advanced bot support.

I have used discord intensively in the past but it was tightly linked to very narrow interests, like video games. I never discovered anything on discord, I rather got discord invites from other forums or what have you.

Are there discovery features in discord I may not be aware of?

The lack of discovery is precisely why it's so popular, in my opinion. Communities have a much easier time gatekeeping so you avoid redditization and have a much greater sense of privacy.

> much greater sense of privacy.

This could have been the case, but Discord blocks me from making new accounts without a separate, expensive mobile phone number.

You can’t even join most servers without having a bot ping your name publicly. This name is then searchable by any user in that server by searching for “mentions:yourcurrentname#tag”. This applies even if you changed your username since then.

You also cannot turn off the ability for someone to see what mutual servers or mutual friends you have.

Any of the above issues would be manageable as a single issue, but when combined, Discord is the worst tool for privacy, bar none.

Privacy in the sense that zoomers' parents won't find their server.

There's always been endless third party websites, and I believe they added first-party discovery for public community servers a while ago. Community servers have been getting some serious features, too. They really are rapidly (and successfully) becoming something more like traditional social media.

I had no idea this was a thing, but I'm probably about the same, Discord is my main social media platform. Used to be HN.

HN is/was a social media site? And discord a general social media site? From what I’ve seen of discord it comes across as a site for gamers around gaming world and then proceeding to include also those “interest groups” (ie eating Telegram’s lunch) where those people are active who keep messaging incessantly, memes, LOL kinda things and all.

(I mean of course in a pedantic way a lot of site of the Internet will be considered social media sites but we are talking about Facebook specifically here)

Yes, these are social networks. Arguably even a vBulletin forum is a social network and I’ve met some of my best friends in life on those when I was a young lad.

If you can post somewhere as a person, build a reputation or identity there, interact with a community and build relationships: congrats, you have a social network. The mechanics of me replying to you on HN, sending an iMessage to a girl, sending a Slack message to my boss or posting to a group in Discord are nearly identical but the people and the intricacies of the software differ. This is one of the reasons I’ve never been a fan of the “Facebook is a social media monopoly” line of thinking, at least in America. Just doesn’t work if you sit down and think about it, it’s just another website that does a few things better than some others and they are massively successful because of what they’ve chosen to be good at.

HN is a lot like /., Digg or very early Reddit to me, and it makes sense because it was started with a lot of the same ideas towards the end of that era, but with a purpose to serve Y Combinator’s needs.

HN is a social network as much as LinkedIn. They might not look the same and have the same features, but people connect with each other in varying ways on here.

Discord it depends, but if you join the right communities, it's like joining the perfect Facebook Groups.

I’m 30 and I don’t want anyone to know I open Facebook. I only use it for marketplace and to receive messages from my older relatives. I feel like it’s associated with dumb content and being manipulated to watch hollow nonsense. But I also don’t use TikTok for the same reasons. I do install Instagram every now and then because many of my friends send me memes there and I don’t want to ignore them forever, but it’s just a touch and go.

Facebook is lucky to not have to chase the 12 year old market. They get bored quickly, have no money, and are impossible to keep interested for very long.

Having the boomers is something everyone mocks FB for, and no one realizes it's why they're so successful.

Did he laugh at you for oculus or instagram?

Well, the subject of this topic is the original Facebook itself, not its other properties like Instagram.

That said, if I'm not mistaken I think Instagram too is deemed to be something for "old" folks by the current set of teens, tweens, and younger twentysomethings.

“The platform got better when children started using it” said no user ever.

The fortysomethings I know also think it's only for old folks. Do thirtysomething's still use Facebook ironically, or something?

> Do thirtysomething's still use Facebook ironically, or something?

Not among my peers. Facebook is seen as a way to communicate with older and tech-challenged relatives. It's in the same category as LinkedIn -- a social network whose content is mostly cringe and that you're only on as a means to an end, not because it's a good product.

I was ridiculed in my local cafe for not having a Facebook account. This was by people in my age group (mid fifties).

I had an account years ago but abandoned it as soon as they started to monetise (same for Twitter).

> most of my social activity occurs on Discord.

Same here.

This makes me happy. Facebook is abusive, evil, and lame. They’ve completely lost touch and deserve that laugh.

I don't use FB but maybe when that 12 year old gets older they will start using it.

Can confirm, would've laughed too.