Discord AI PSAHey my lovely creatures, Discord wants to know what you think about the possibility of them adding AI features to the platform! Click the link below to tell them it will hurt their bottom line:
Discord AI PSA - Stoat shillingGonna take this as an opportunity to talk about Stoat again. Stoat is the closest thing we have to Discord, near 1:1, except it's FOSS. It's missing a few key features, and they got set back by that C&D, but if you're actively subscribed to Discord Nitro right now (though I imagine not many on Fedi are), consider cancelling it and setting up that same amount as a recurring donation to Stoat.
The biggest thing holding FOSS projects like Stoat back is a lack of money, meaning they need to work day jobs which slows development down, and limits their team to developers willing to sacrifice personal time to volunteer. If enough Discord users did what I'm suggesting, they could improve a lot faster, and we could break the cycle of enshittification. At least for our Discord replacement.
Discord AI PSA - Stoat shilling@daedalouseros One of the biggest problems with it is that the backend is too much of a pain in the ass to scale and run beyond a little dev instance, a fancy user facing client is fine but if nobody wants to run a server for it to connect to, and with no federation between the servers so people need a account on every server... its a very shiny thing that I come back to every few months but nobody would ever use at a meaningful scale :C
Discord AI PSA - Stoat shilling@Xipher I think the average Discord user is going to just go to Stoat.chat. From the sounds of it, that means that it might be a bitch to make bots for, but I think the flagship instance will be s suitable replacement for what is already a nonfederated platform. It's not like we're downgrading in that regard. And the more users that sign up and suppprt Stoat, the more likely this issue is to get fixed. So I say we focus on getting as many new users onboard with Stoat as possible first.
Discord AI PSA - Stoat shilling@daedalouseros@Xipher It's not an "issue". That is false framing. They are currently not interested in adding federation. This is their official and public position.
Discord AI PSA - Stoat shilling@star@daedalouseros Very much understand that, its not false framing, it just doesn't make it appealing, its something I've discussed with other average people that regularly use Discord and the idea of multiple accounts due to no SSO or federation or anything of the sort is an instant killer, it doesn't replicate the ease without removing the foundational monolithic element that is the root of the issues with Discord its self.
Discord AI PSA - Stoat shilling@star@Xipher Then I stand corrected on them eventually bringing federation. Though I personally don't care if they federate or not. I don't think everything needs to be decentralized, personally.
Discord AI PSA - Stoat shilling@daedalouseros@Xipher There is no way around a big distribution of concerns if you want a service to be great for a long time. Federation and great governance models can do that for you. Stoat seems to have neither. Besides that, yes, it is a genuinely good product, especially because it already exists and is usable now. But as a long term alternative? I would be careful...
