The thing is I’d much rather they do things like this, where the ads are opt in and the monetized features are mostly just extra for if you are enjoying the platform, than something like introducing ads you have to pay to remove or locking core features behind a paywall.

It is a bit baffling. I think it's more ethical than the alternative though: pay gating useful functionality. Offering paid pallete swaps doesn't make a lot of sense to me, someone who would never pay for that, but it does at least mean I can just ignore it. If they were to, say, restrict voice calls to a paid subscription, suddenly I'm in a position where either I'm paying for the service or ditching it entirely.

Is there a peer to peer equivalent to Discord? That feels like it would be the best option, since it wouldn't rely on a centralized company that could enshittify the product.

ah yes, seeing deepweb market-esque exit scams on the surface web is a sign of a healthy system

Afaik it's a fork / copy of the actual Discord source code. With all its bugs

I basically had an adblocker for netzero making it a free service. Was super useful for my broke teenage ass.

Only option available is Matrix. It has its problems, but they're being worked on.

Right now it lacks the gaming/voice chat parts of discord - so for an OSS alternative for that part of discord specifically, there's Mumble.

For everything else, Matrix is a good alternative. Just be sure to pick a discord-like client. (E.g. Commet or Cinny)

God, I just wish they'd add a fucking Push to Talk option to a client... Any client

If I care about my account, it would suck. Can't migrate unless server allows me to

Lol that's an absolutely fair request. Have you asked on Element github? Sounds like a Mich needed feature.

Microsoft had a check ready for $10B.

I can't imagine how a new flavor of Buttcoin could compete with that.

Thanks for the suggestion; I'll download right away. =D

Because it’s federated, everyone can just leave.

Because of the networking effect, people don't leave. People have stubbornly clung to Twitter and Facebook and YouTube in the face of enshittification.

This notion that everyone's just going to pick up and leave Lemmy hasn't even worked on Reddit, the OG thing everyone was supposed to pick up and leave after it went to shit.

Part of that is because ads that are enjoyable and for things people enjoy often don't even register as ads to people. When people think of ads they typically think of unwanted distractions for things they don't want. They don't necessarily think of something like a free sticker for their favorite video game given to them at s convention. They may even put it on something like a laptop or water bottle. The same people may say they "hate ads".

I'm not trying to throw shade on those people, I think pretty much everyone is going to be accepting of at least some type of hypothetical thing that's enjoyable and/or useful to them. A prime exam is having a business listed in a directory. Someone mentioned that as an alternative to advertising as if companies don't pay to put their names in those directories.

None of this is meant to be any sort of criticism against anyone based on what they do or don't view as an ad, I'm just trying to help explain why, at least some of the time, it seems "people in the real world are depressingly accepting of ads."

They already do pay-gate useful functionality, this is just an alternative revenue stream

I have the "touch grass" one from April Fool's day. It's pretty funny.

I paid $30 for a year of Nitro basic. I don't think I'll do it again. All the actually useful features for me (longer messages and bigger uploads) are behind the more expensive one, and it's not worth it.

I think you might be mistaking it with Spacebar

I've never used Discord -- is it similar to Mumble? I tried Jami but found it too unreliable to recommend. What about Nextcloud Chat? I do use that though it is kind of clumsy.

Because of the networking effect, people don’t leave.

Federation is strong specifically because of how it gets around the networking effect. You don't need a .world account to see content from it. That doesn't apply for Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube without shenanigans.

This notion that everyone’s just going to pick up and leave Lemmy

You don't need to leave lemmy. It takes 10 minutes to set up a new account somewhere else, with zero downsides.

Federation is strong specifically because of how it gets around the networking effect.

Federation doesn't get around the networking effect. It inhibits the network's growth by allowing the community to fracture along instances, depending on the whims of the admins. But when one community outstrips the rest, its meaningless.

Federating mitigates the flaws of OG Mastadon, as it allows individual users to stack threads from multiple participating instances. But as soon as their native instance goes to shit, they've got to pick up a new account somewhere else and rebuild their profiles. And people - by and large - don't like doing that repeatedly.

It takes 10 minutes to set up a new account somewhere else

"It takes 10 minutes to set up an account in App X" is the same line I've heard explaining why people would leave Twitter or Facebook or Reddit.

Why doesn't BlueSky have all of Twitter's business if it's so easy?