>Every time I see a business inviting me to a Discord, I feel like I'm putting myself in a position to be mistreated either by the platform or by the company inviting me. I feel like they don't quite understand sound business principles like Platform Risk.

>If keeping up the business afloat is your mission as a business owner, why'd you base your business off a platform you don't control? [...]

Why is discord any different than other platforms like office365 or AWS? Do you feel the same about companies using those platforms as well?

AWS and Microsoft are very, very different from Discord. Discord originated in gaming and caters to a largely non-paid user base, that background alone is enough to be skeptical.

As terrible as AWS and Microsoft are as companies, at least they have an established reputation in B2B software. It’s an apples to apple-flavored candy comparison.

> AWS and Microsoft are very, very different from Discord. Discord originated in gaming and caters to a largely non-paid user base, that background alone is enough to be skeptical.

AWS originated in providing servers for a book business that grew from there, Microsoft originated from writing a interpreter, but both of them excel in other areas today as well. It's not impossible to start with something (chat for gaming), gain expertise (chat for large groups) and then apply it elsewhere (chat in the workplace).

> It's not impossible to start with something (chat for gaming), gain expertise (chat for large groups) and then apply it elsewhere (chat in the workplace).

I understand what you meant, but it's not quite applicable in this case. Chat for gaming (and approach) is not an adjacent market of workplace/enterprise chat.

Just imagine Slack or Microsoft Teams going for gaming chat; you can quite imagine that repurposing of product not happening.

> Just imagine Slack or Microsoft Teams going for gaming chat; you can quite imagine that repurposing of product not happening.

If that ended up being more popular, they definitely would. But I don't think that'd happen either.

AWS and Microsoft were both much larger companies with many years of successful operations by the time they launched cloud services. Discord is both younger as a company and still recently raising new funding founds. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t rely on them but they’re definitely less proven.

Of course, which is why Discord charges much less then the several hundred dollars per year per seat that Microsoft does?

What is the complaint here, that they're offering a much cheaper service with less credibility?

The complaint here is that Discord is too popular among a generation of young business owners that put their livelihoods on the line in such an unreliable service, business-wise.

Discord's marketing is too powerful for these business owners to consider safer, more reliable alternatives. Same story with Stripe, and similar services that cut lifelines with no recourse other than outcry in public forums like HN and Reddit.

If they have to learn the hard way, so be it.

If your planning to use services that are ban happy like Discord, Stripe and ilk, make sure to document and communicate a fallback plan.

For example, ensure you have a backup email address for those you communicate with on Discord, and convey an alternate communication method (Meet us on Matrix at XYZ!), or on the payments side plan on how to handle a PAN Data Export with a pre-selected vendor that is experienced in ensuring Stripe exports this data to them. From what I have heard, nearly half of all data exports from Stripe fail to occur, so you need to be your own advocate to ensure the stable hosting of your payment card data.

That's what I'm talking about, yes. Being fully aware of the platform risk, and managing that risk actively.

One could always understand the tradeoff (this ban happy service brings me more public, exposes me to leads, as opposed to: they ban on the slightest mistake and are misunderstanding), but as every risk: It should be managed with any of the four basic risk management actions:

- Elimination: which in this case, would be to not use that service at all

- Mitigation: reduce the risk the most (your example of backup exports, etc)

- Acceptance: being aware and recognize maybe alternatives are more costly than accepting the risk

- Transfer the risk: let someone else handle the risk for you (insurance, for example)

It’s not a complaint as much as a caution that they’re not coming from a business services world and have less experience with things like paid support or SLAs. That doesn’t mean you should never consider them but it does mean you should have serious conversations about what you’d do if they suddenly nuked your account & won’t even give you a way to contact them – plan for Google-level support, not AWS.

A business contract with AWS or O365 account carries a lot more legal weight, and they also have the support infrastructure to assist when an automated tool does something that needs to be assessed for reversal.

If something like this happened at AWS they'd nuke the services that were running and probably reach out to the account owner (if the automated service didn't do so as part of the nuke). The account owner's databases or Terraform scripts wouldn't be deleted by a set of EC2 instances being taken down.

AWS has its own problems but they do try and stay out of content moderation where possible through their "Shared Responsibility Model" (which also means they don't do things like backups for you).

I'd say the difference is I can make a full backup of my data on office365 or AWS. From office365, I can export my documents, my emails, my drive storage. AWS: I get full access to my databases, my files.

Even comparing Discord to Slack: Slack has export capabilities.

Given what you just said in your comment, I guess what makes them different is that Microsoft 365 and AWS are enterprise-ready, so you can take away your data easily. With Google, with a regular account, you could as well using Google Takeout.

With Discord... you might have to strong-arm them into a GDPR claim or similar, so, vendor lock-in in a B2C SaaS is a thing.

There is no difference and people saying otherwise are just in denial.

Because their businesses/jobs are so tightly tied to AWS etc, they just tell themselves everything is fine. (What else can they do? Quit and be a full time open source developer?)

> Why is discord any different than other platforms like office365 or AWS? Do you feel the same about companies using those platforms as well?

The difference is that Microsoft and AWS don't take on an active role in moderating what happens between the company and its users.

But yes, in a way they are similar and I do feel uneasy each time we take on a dependency on some AWS-specific feature where we could easily have build the component to be independent.

No one else seems to care though. Even worse, the CEO wants us to dig deep into AWS, because that somehow will make the customers trust us more.

Didn’t AWS pull the rug out from under a fledgling, but increasingly popular, social media site that never recovered from their actions “after the platform was deemed to be both "unwilling and unable" to address extremist speech”?

https://www.newsweek.com/amazon-web-services-parler-lawsuit-...

>a fledgling, but increasingly popular, social media site

Aww, so innocent sounding. AWS was such a big bully in terminating their relationship with that client. It's not like anybody died as a result of that extremist speech they were popularising, right?

You are saying it’s okay for companies to intervene and censor if they deem it necessary.

You sound like one of those people who think governments should ban encryption because pedophiles use it.

> Why is discord any different than other platforms like office365 or AWS?

It is different. Really

Discord seems run by people with a vague understanding of security, attack vectors, let alone security best practices.

(or maybe they are heavily biased towards the gaming audience - but regardless)

What do you mean?

Because they seem to be very competent when it comes to software creation

They are very competent at bells and whistles and creating something for gamers

But in terms of identity management, they're awful

Not OP but yes absolutely. Run your own physical infra or fail

Hm, when you are solo coder doing a product, discord is super valuable. You get to interface with your customers in casual way + you get a bit of free knowledge/quirks base. Also if something is wrong with cloud provider, I can broadcast easily etc. All those functions can be ramped up separately, but the goal for me is to code and deliver on a product. As everything it has tradeoffs, but I wouldn't make snap judgements that discord is just a lazy excuse. Its a great tool for comms with low friction.

I hate how hackers and FOSS devs always try to make their “own” project. If there were a FOSS discord clone identical to discord, thousands would self-host it overnight.

Like this? https://revolt.chat

Oh thanks! I recently need something like this but couldn’t find anything.