As someone else mentioned, ads are becoming less profitable. Particularly in light of the whole data collection biz, I’m starting to regard paywalls as a more “honest” type of monetisation. In a perfect world, they wouldn’t need to do either, and maybe there are better options, but I don’t fault them for it.
And how does the host pay for them?
I heard the Eldar have a really fascinating new-
Why are you all aiming at me?
Short version to save others a click: Proton’s CEO tweeted an endorsement of Trump’s FTC pick, going on to praise how apparently the Republicans are now the party for the “little guys” and crediting the ongoing antitrust proceedings to Trump’s first term.
It’s still information. I agree that it should be available publically, but information available to few is still more than information available to none. I agree that you shouldn’t have to join a Discord server to get that information, but eliminating it entirely so that not even those who do join can access it doesn’t help anybody. It would only hurt a few, but a few is still more than zero.
It’s an issue of culture, so simply eliminating one repository doesn’t fix anything. They’d find some other messaging service to congregate on.
That’s not to say Discord are saints and there is nothing wrong with either their business or their platform. That is a separate issue I think we all agree on.
My point is strictly about the hypothetical deletion of Discord over the drift towards opaque information silos: It won’t help.
It also has plenty of utility for non-information-storing purposes. It’s more of a cultural issue than an issue with the tool.
Besides, wouldn’t it take all the information there to its grave as well, making its death a net information loss? After all, information confined it is still information stored somewhere, just not as easily accessible directly from the Web.
When commenting on US politics, they should be aware of US political realities though. When taking position relative to US politics, they should be aware of that. At the very least, they should comment that they’re progressive or something along the lines of “Our political orientation isn’t represented in US politics” to acknowledge that, like you did.
But when your CEO endorses Republicans, pretending you’re neutral isn’t a good look.
b-b-but muh communism