Enshittification Continues: Discord to begin showing advertisements on it's free platform
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/17617609
They supposedly can be disabled in settings- but we all know that won't last. They're going full Microsoft Skype mode and it's only a matter of time.
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Most of these platforms make no money but have taken huge amounts of VC funding which they have burned through. For the VCs to unload it and cash out they need to show the product can be monetised and them try and shift it before the users leave the platform. Idiot users want all the features of a product developed by lots of talented full time paid staff but don't want to pay for it themselves so they leap from startup to startup then complain when the inevitable happens while dismissing open source alternatives as inadequate for their needs. Why should we care? I don't.
While I don’t disagree with the sentiment, the Discord Nitro subscription has been around for a long while. From what I’ve seen using the platform it seems relatively popular. I’d guess adding ads to the free tier is as much about enticing people onto the subscription (which presumably won’t have ads).
Ubtil they go to the Netflix model where users can experience both a subscription and ads at the same time.
I doubt it. Video ads are worth a lot more. Unless they ad them to live streams Twitch style.
That would be absolutely terrible
And Nitro isn't exactly inexpensive either, or wasn't last time I used Discord.
I've been using Discord almost since launch, and in that time, not a single feature did I find as an important addition to the program. It is now much more bloated with unnecessary stuff, stuff for which they paid those talented devs you mention.
I would have been perfectly content with a one-time payment to use it and it would have worked perfectly well for them with that model if they didn't get greedy and want to stuff it with random junk to justify a subscription.
I don't mind paying as long as it's not a subscription scam for no reason at all.