It's hard to leave when a huge chunk of your interpersonal connections are tangled in its web. It's the same reason Facebook and Twitter still exist.

That's part of the reason why these platforms have such high valuations per capita, opposed to non- or less-social apps. There's a lot of momentum.

I host a Matrix server myself and even I still use Discord more because that's where people are. Matrix has its own issues and, frankly, it's a shitshow; discord offers a lot of features with better UX and it has a lot of people.

The only reason Skype and team speak died* was because Discord provided a better value. Now it has the momentum, and the only way it will die is if something else offers even more value. Enshitification helps shift, but the momentum fights against it; momentum is like a small multiplier on top of its feature value.

Even if the app enshitifies, even if their base value drops; the product is still larger because of the userbase. So it becomes a chicken and egg problem. Until an inflection point is hit, their sheer mass buys them room to enshittify.

People who can walk away early are the exception, not the rule. It's why people still use Reddit more than Lemmy. I may get some hate for this, but I don't think the people on Lemmy are inherently "better." There are selection biases, and I'm sure that holds true by some metrics, but not in totality.

"If everyone accelerated at the same time, there wouldn't be a traffic jam" is true, but that's not how the world or its people work; you just need to come to terms with that before you can do anything about it.

Edit: speech to text typos. Probably missed some.

The issue is many groups only have a presence on Discord, like community groups. I'm part of a couple local communities, and there's no way you're going to get hundreds of people to migrate over without something that affects functionality in a major way finally prompting people to make the switch.

And Matrix isn't the only option out there

• https://stoat.chat/
• https://fluxer.app/
• https://armada.buzz/

and good ole IRC

I do agree, but the thing is vendor lock-in is real. Indoctrination by the powerful capitalists does wonders for masses to never leave the app at all. It really takes a changed mindset to switch to alternatives or to quit it entirely.

For anyone else thinking about Matrix for public chat rooms, consider setting them up without encryption. This will remove friction for your less patient and less technical users, and may avoid frustrating glitches in some client apps.

There's not really much point in encrypting a public room anyway, so you might as well keep it simple. The client-to-server connection will still be encrypted, which is the same level of privacy that Discord has. (And you can enable encryption on a room later if you want.)

Short, instant and hidden seems to be winning over anything else.

did irc have voice/video/screensharing?

It’s not quite ready yet but Fluxer is trying to be a drop in replacement for discord with self hosted options. I’m just waiting for it to be a bit more ready and stable before I jump ship, but as soon as they glance my way with age verification I’ll probably jump early

Looks like it’s back to irc and teamspeak.

If Steam got rid of removing messages after two weeks, it would definitely be more viable.

Well, for a while Discord was crazy good.