
Discord does not allow 3rd party clients - mepholic
https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/8tukek/ripcord_unofficial_native_discord_client_no/e1toruy/?context=8&depth=9
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ddevault
Throwing your lot in with Discord, Slack, Skype, etc - is a huge mistake. They
serve their own interests, not yours. Use open platforms and open protocols or
you will _inevitably_ regret it. Your incentives and Discord's incentives are
misaligned.

~~~
polski-g
Yep. Use MatterMost self-hosted at worst, or something simple like
OpenFire/XMPP

~~~
tdb7893
The problem is that neither of those really seem to fill the shoes of Discord
for us. In Discord I can do text chats, voice chat, can post gifs, and can
even screen share. It also does all of that with no requirements for hardware
or setup on my part.

~~~
rtkwe
Yeah that's the issue with most self-hosted solutions. Pretty invariably
they're either a pain to setup, require someone to provide an always on server
(either in their house or pay someone else to host), or are hideous/missing
major features. Discord does well because it requires pretty much zero setup
on my part to have a place where me and my friends can chat while playing
games!

Personally availability was always a major issue to me when it came to older
self hosted solutions, with Discord I don't have to worry if group B has
someone willing to bother hosting because it's always there hosted on
Discord's servers and if something happened we don't suddenly lose our hub and
chat.

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gregknicholson
The Discord client may be open source, but Discord can apply whatever terms of
service they like to their server.

So just set up your own server using their open source server software, which
surely they must have released under the AGPL, because they weren't just using
“open source” as a buzzword.

...Yeah. The client software being open source is irrelevant if it relies on a
single proprietary server. Choose open standards instead, or AGPL'd server
software.

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beagle3
> he client software being open source is irrelevant if it relies on a single
> proprietary server.

At least you can make sure it doesn't send information it isn't supposed to
send to that server - say, audio when you weren't intending, or screenshots.

It's not good enough for server independence, but it is way better than closed
everything.

~~~
gregknicholson
That's a good point.

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fenwick67
The reason for this should be obvious - discord has no profit model right now
and wants to make sure they can monetize down the road.

I've heard them say they may introduce premium features that require payment.
If you make a client that can replicate these features (like custom emojis or
whatever), they might lose money.

~~~
mepholic
They already have Discord Turbo. I agree that it's likely because their profit
model is on shaky grounds, which makes me wonder: why do it in the first
place?

What other avenues do that have for monetization? Could they potentially be
collecting user data, chat logs, or voice recordings to potentially monetize
off of down the road? Might they decide to start automatically injecting
targeted ad content into chat sessions?

~~~
ApolloFortyNine
As with most of these "lose money now, make money later" startups, I think
Discord's longterm goal is to get bought out.

I don't see any way they can turn a profit. If they charge for hosting
servers, they'll lose a large number of servers (people will just
consolidate). If they charge for quality, users will start leaving for the
oldguard services (Teamspeak/Mumble).

Persistent text chat is definitely a plus, but all it would take is for one of
the slack clones to have a mumble client built in for there to be a free/easy
alternative. Or people to just go back to a groupme/whatsapp and a voice
service.

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Grue3
Non-electron client would certainly be a big winner for Discord. They should
hire the guy and rewrite their memory-hogging app.

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mepholic
Just mirroring the thread here in case the Discord Inc. overlords decide they
don't like the bad PR.

Title: Ripcord - unofficial _native_ Discord client. No Electron, no rounded
userpics (Staff reply) >> This sounds like a good way of getting your account
banned, or am I mistaken about the API rules? > You are not mistaken. We do
not support 3rd party clients, and they are not allowed per our ToS/API ToS.
(Staff Reply)

This is honestly unacceptable.

On this page here: [https://discordapp.com/open-
source](https://discordapp.com/open-source)

You claim that "Discord ️ Open Source". If this were true, than Discord Inc.
would recognize that not all Open Source developers run x86_64 machines, and
of those that do, not all of them use glibc as their system standard C
library.

The fact that both Discord's standalone desktop application (which uses
Electron; a resource hog on its own) and the in-browser version of the app are
both massive resource hogs prevents those who are not well off and do not have
modern computer equipment from using the service.

Additionally, Discord's web application fails to successfully function in most
Linux web browsers that I've found. This includes Firefox ESR and Otter on
x86_64 using musl libc. Text chat hardly works in Firefox, as the entire
interface goes blank and acts like it's refreshing on a fairly regular basis;
the login page doesn't even load in Otter. To even think that voice chat would
function under these circumstances is a straight up joke; and sure enough,
voice chat fails to function for reasons OTHER than the one stated above on
both ALSA-only AND PulseAudio configurations: I cannot get it to detect my
microphone (granted, Firefox's terrible, or rather, complete lack of an audio
configuration interface is probably more to blame here)

The fact that Discord Inc. is threatening to ban users who use 3rd party
clients just adds insult to injury. If Discord Inc. is really not willing to
provide open and portable solutions to use their service to their users, they
should at least allow 3rd parties to offer such solutions. The entire stance
of "YOU MUST USE OUR CLIENT" makes me have one of two thoughts: 1. Discord
Inc. is embedding Information Gathering code into their own clients, and wants
to make sure that they can collect and sell information on ALL of their users;
2. Discord Inc. is not confident in the reliability and robustness of their
server infrastructure, and therefore wants to limit which applications hit
their _public_ API's.

Long story short, what I'm seeing here is a complete lack of customer
obsession; it really seems like Discord Inc. doesn't actually care about their
users.

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bovermyer
You don't have to use Discord.

~~~
koreajim
...Unless you want to talk to all of the friends who refuse to use other
services.

~~~
scient
Then use their client. Its a free service, what are you complaining about.

~~~
tenryuu
I want to complain about their privacy policy

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homu505
I've been using userscripts and stylesheets with browser plugins to tweak
their webapp.

~~~
mepholic
I wonder if this is also disallowed by their ToS.

~~~
paulie_a
Most likely, but who honestly cares about a ToS?

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aepiepaey
People who don't want to get banned due to breach of ToS (since that would
cause them to lose contact with friends).

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legooolas
RIP bitlbee-discord :(

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microsuck
The only reason I'm not using discord is exactly because they have no native
client but this electron crap

~~~
prolikewh0a
I've gone back to IRC and created some Signal groups. Slack, Discord, and all
of these new chat applications are frankly abominations.

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mark_edward
Of some note: some Rust core teams have already moved, piecemeal, official
core team discussions to Discord, and are trying to get this done in a broad
way:

[https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/exploring-new-
communicatio...](https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/exploring-new-
communication-channels/7859/74)

~~~
bytematic
It is essentially slack with voice chat.

