I am not on Discord, and I have no intention of ever setting up an account. I got fooled once or twice by centralized platforms, but I learned my lesson and I am going to avoid being fooled again if at all possible.

And you know what? It is really quite possible.

If more people made a similar decision, it would be even easier. Every little bit counts.

We really refuse to understand how much power we actually do have as far as saying "no" to abusive technologies is concerned.

#RevoltChat is a pretty good, FOSS, Discord clone (with a timely name). It's not as full-featured as Discord, and it is occasionally buggy (mostly just struggling to keep up with the demand of people switching to it from Discord).

However, the UI/UX is very similar. Almost no learning curve.

Oops ... edit to add: revolt.chat/

@rysiek

Revolt

Find your community, connect with the world. The chat platform that puts you first.

^revolt.chat

I mean, the enshittification was going on for a while already, with nitro nagging, quests on desktop client (thankfully easy to disable lul), and quite a few other annoyances - the only surprising part is the relatively slow tempo of this going on.

It would definitely be nice to have something decent enough for larger communities - like I guess there is Matrix but I have heard quite a few horror stories about it. At least for a Reddit and trad forums replacement there is kbin and lemmy which I heard work decently well, and for more public social media there is masto/akko/*key stuff - but for instant messaging things seem to be in major pain, which makes me sad.

@TheDailyBurble
The point of ads (from large companies) is to create needs. Easiest way to do so is to trigger survival instict: humans are a social animal, so being separated from herd is a death sentence.

If ads don't work on you, it's due to you not being their target segment. They're then easy to ignore. That's why large part of marketing is targeting: that the right people (eg. victims) see the ad.

Ads work. If they didn't, they wouldn't do it. And the cost for society is high.

@iju
I'm not convinced they do work, would need to see solid sales delivery, rigorously researched. I think they can make people aware of products. I'm certainly aware of cars, but I suspect it's diminishing returns beyond that.
Even in a willing segment, inattention to what people want defies any amount of shouting at them to buy. I prefer toilet paper that doesn't clog up my loo, so avoid the plushy stuff.

I was a marketing manager in an earlier life, amongst other of my career.

@iju
The fantasy ads are whale-sales, short term impulse buyers. The (far) bigger market is people who are looking for a product that addresses their needs at a reasonable price.

To get from A to B, I'm never going to need a Tesla (simplifying) but a few percent of people think they do, so you can overprice and underdeliver on that. For a short while.

@TheDailyBurble
We may be speaking past each other. I was talking of products on saturated markets such as cola-drinks or clothes. Also in general international companies are badly in touch with the needs of local populace, so they find it easier to change needs.

I've worked in marketing as well (briefly), but more importantly have two degrees that border the subject.

@iju Cool. I was going to add there's an irritation factor to advertising - people don't like being nagged and just blank out or it induces avoidance behaviour eg ad blockers, or muting channels until the ad has gone. The internet is far from the captive audience people fondly imagine it to be.

Again on a small datapoint, Netflix kept pushing Jeremy Clarkson at me. I don't care how much they overpaid for the series, it was so annoying I unsubscribed and have never been back.