
Slack Is Fumbling Developers - gregdoesit
https://www.swyx.io/writing/slack-fumble/
======
mdaniel
I got PTSD reading the list of sign-up complaints; it goes double for the
extra hoop-jumpery of adding 2FA for each newly created account. Icing on top
for the obligatory email unsubscribe 3 days later when some rando "welcome"
bot mentions me and Slack feels it important to email me to let me know that
I'm welcome and I should post a message if I have any questions

Zulip, or even Mattermost a little bit, offers unlimited hosting for open
source communities, and not this "we're going to throw your messages in the
trash" stupidity that Slack is doing. It's a grave disservice that Slack is
doing to those communities

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jamestimmins
I think the quote the author is looking for is by Chris Dixon.

"What the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do
during the week in ten years"

[https://cdixon.org/2013/03/02/what-the-smartest-people-do-
on...](https://cdixon.org/2013/03/02/what-the-smartest-people-do-on-the-
weekend-is-what-everyone-else-will-do-during-the-week-in-ten-years)

~~~
swyx
author here! thanks! i was! thank you

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chatmasta
Personally I prefer Discord for community chat because search is not limited
to the past 10k messages. I wouldn't trust Discord for work chat (weak
privacy). For work chat I prefer self-hosted e.g. mattermost.

~~~
jacksonpollock
how does the security compare slack to discord?

~~~
chatmasta
The _security_ (e.g. passwords, 2FA, etc.) is roughly equivalent between Slack
and Discord. In both cases you're hosting your messages on someone else's
server.

For _privacy_ , Discord has a bad track record, so as a business, I'd choose
Slack over Discord. But I definitely prefer self-hosting communications
infrastructure.

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ozten
Slack is crossing the chasm. While early adopters shed it for Discord (and
others), Slack is gaining mainstream users and mindshare.

~~~
toyg
Is it really, though?

in my experience, the mainstream is going for Microsoft Teams, and
overwhelmingly so. Any org who has not significantly bought into Slack yet is
very unlikely to _ever_ do it, because Teams is now “good enough” and
effectively free. Which I guess is why Slack is trying to kill Teams with
lawyers rather than features.

Slack has likely jumped the shark.

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dbbk
Slack is making the conscious decision to not build their product for this use
case. And I think they're right to! It's absolutely fine that alternatives
exist for developer communities. Making Slack a massive, amorphous application
that appeals to all use cases would be a quick way to kill it.

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kmf
agreed on all of this - Slack is really tough to build a community on top of!
Kurt’s quote in that post is very true; the moderation/role stuff in Discord
makes it super appealing for building any sort of large community.

i’ve been working on a new discord server for people building mailing lists[1]
and newsletters and built out an opt-in software channel section where people
can opt into #mailchimp, #convertkit, etc. channels without any sort of
moderation/admin input needed. it’s a really nifty “self-serve” thing that i’m
pretty sure i wouldn’t have been able to pull off with slack.

fully expecting “discord communities-as-product” to be a big thing over the
next few years as they’ve built a great platform to do that sort of thing.

[1]:
[https://www.mailinglisthackers.com/chat](https://www.mailinglisthackers.com/chat)

