Hey what's up! We did a bunch of dumb changes that are completely baffling! Again! That's our primary development strategy now :3
in grad school I took an undergrad-level class on Twitch Streaming for Community and Entertainment, and the professor was an extremely credulous, uncritical enthusiast of all tech-fads -- our guests ranged from producers working at Twitch, personal assistants to full-time streamers (who were depressingly resigned to "also working to be their friends"), Jason Caruso (music-producer failson of Rick Caruso, billionaire Los Angeles mayoral candidate)1, etc.
One week we had a producer from Discord come and talk to the class, and the content of that conversation made it extremely clear to me that Discord is riding the same wave that Twitter was on: Huge userbase but no monetization plan, run by wide-eyed MBAs who are consistently ensnared by whatever the latest techno-grift is. We heard about crypto wallets, AI, Metaverse, all that shit.
Basically, Discord does not know how to become profitable, and will continue to implement unasked-for changes and features because they do not have a firm long-term plan on how to actually generate a profit. Enshitification is inevitable with Discord, and imo communities should already be trying to figure out where they will migrate too when Discord becomes unusable.
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This was the only class I ever walked out early on, Jason Caruso spent 25 minutes trying and failing to log into his drop box account to show us some new music and I realized that my time would be better spent writing smut out in the sun.
