https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-data-leak-contact-impor...
And aside from that, a lot of software communities are on Discord now. People are gating download links behind it, use their threading feature for support and put their knowledge base in channels. And not just small communities and developers. ASUS has made their main communication channel Discord too.
I agree it's difficult. I've had success showing keybase to people because of how barebones simple it is - but it's not a solution for everything of course.
How many non technical people have heard of Discord?
If the number in your name is your birth year I'm not too surprised, but don't assume you can project from your own experience onto others 1:1.
I can't even get my wife to install Element - and she works in tech as a senior python / automation engineer. People want neatness on their phone and low total complexity, and installing a messenger for a single person is over the line for most.
> You are a very ignorant if you think there is no barrier to getting someone to try an app with a substantially less good UX than what someone's currently using, and that that barrier doesn't border impossible in a group of 10.
Yet many people do have multiple messaging apps.
And Discord the one you think is so popular is not even in the top 10…
https://www.statista.com/statistics/258749/most-popular-glob...
They aren’t counting iMessage as a separate app. But do you really think it wouldn’t rank above Discord?
> I can't even get my wife to install Element - and she works in tech as a senior python / automation engineer.
Maybe your enlightened millennial friends and family aren’t as willing to change as you think they are?
> People want neatness on their phone and low total complexity,
Yet the average person has 35 apps on their phone
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and...
In modern life, people don't discuss politics in townhalls, pubs, or whatever anymore. Online communication is by now far too siloed and supervised to the point of being unusable. Media are one-way streets, pushing the agenda of billionaires.
But you need to be able to have controversial discussions about "heavy" topics without fear of being ostracised. You need to have a back-channel to give feedback to "higher ups". Etc.pp.
A society where the individual is degraded to a mere drone (even if only loosely via framing) controlled by the "hive mind", without any recourse to voice constructive criticism is a lot of things, but certainly no democracy. There looms a dystopia on our doorstep.
> But you need to be able to have controversial discussions about "heavy" topics without fear of being ostracised.
Uh, why? People should have freedom of speech, but it feels like a lot of people want freedom from the consequences of the their speech. If anything, I think a lot of our current social disharmony is a direct result of the extremely recent development of people being able to mouth offline with very little social constraints.
Mike Tyson probably said it best: "Social media made y'all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it."
that's all true until an app becomes the only way to interact with certain groups of people. i certainly wouldn't call my usage of Discord voluntary. it doesn't actually matter how often i read their privacy policy and shake my head. either I break off contact with a large part of the internet that's important to me or I begrudgingly agree "voluntarily" to their terms and conditions.