(Aug 14th, 2018, 06:46 AM)queenzelda Wrote: [ -> ]What are your thoughts on using Discord?
It's like some one took the worse of IRC and TS/Vent/Mumble combined it in to a centralized service.
It would be a bit better if you could have text in voice channels, I am only on Discord because my former clan is on it now, and when Im talking to people and want to post a link or text or something its super annoying that I need to say "Alright go to x channel for this" or @them. TS at lease had text in the voice channels.
I am not a fan of everything becoming centralized, when things are decentralized it allows for the most user freedoms If your host didn't like your TS server and took it down, there were many other TS hosts to use or you could even host it your self.
Centralization allows for way easier command and control of communities, speech, ideas, and thought, the very ideals that were behind the internet (speech, ideas and, thoughts, evolve in to academic subjects, be it arts and philosophy, or the sciences).
What is disturbing is that many people have the laissez faire ideals of the internet that worked for the old internet (before smart phones basically) "Oh its their site they can do what they want" it worked because there were plenty of options and other hosts who would take people in, should they get removed from their previous host. You also didn't see intentional or unintentional coordinated efforts to "De-platform" people.
Now that everything is in the hands of a few major companies (Facebook, Google, MS, Apple, etc), we are seeing this more and more, even more disturbing is the fact that most of these platforms (e.g. Youtube, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc) were advertised as pubic forums (in the legal sense, e.g. the public is allow to have discourse on it). Now they want to start policing (out side of illegal actives) the discourse on these platforms.
Now Most of these companies are either based in CA or have offices in CA and are subjected to CA law. CA has case law that states basically that "Semi public places such as Malls can not fully restrict speech" See Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74 (1980). With this if a company is advertising it self as a public forum, legally speaking then there should be some really interesting cases then coming soon (coughAlexJonesShouldHeSueCough)