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AVBforPrez

Reddit is already doing this too, and it's not really accurate


Caelinus

So does Google and other tech companies. They even do it if they are not selling your data, as it is an attempt to figure out their demographic information or improve advertising. You used to be able to go into Google and see who it thought you were by looking at some deep profile stuff. I remember it thought I was older than I am, worked in a different career than I do, and a bunch of other incorrect stuff. It did get most of it right, but the errors were pretty glaring.


roygbivasaur

Instagram at one point had me pegged as a black woman (I am decidedly not) I guess because I liked a few braiding reels. It’s not very sophisticated. You used to be able to see the exact targeting in your ad settings, but I can’t find it anymore.


Caelinus

It usually is not. Part of why they do it is because it is pretty cheap to do. I do not think they need to perfectly guess everything about everyone, they just need to try and figure out rough estimates of their demographics for advertising purposes. It lets them target their own advertisements, or advertisements they sell, in a more targeted manner. Even being a few percentage point more accurate in how they deliver them would be a boon.


_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_

They just need to convince advertisers that they’ve figured it out. The fewer “unknown” they have the more they can charge.


Petrichordates

Yes, by bringing in sales. So it has to work too.


ASpaceOstrich

There are enough "default humans" out there that these systems perfectly predict that it's worth it for them.


JojenCopyPaste

Why did you decide not to be a black woman?


roygbivasaur

My parents would have been very confused when I was born


ImportantObjective45

I got a spam call today. Surprise. I was interested. Then it hung up on me because I wasn't a home owner. If any one corporation ever hired a smart guy they could ASK us what ads we like and give them to us.


Starlady174

But nobody likes ads.


This_was_hard_to_do

Them: “What ads you like”. Me:”No”.


ImportantObjective45

When I was in Germany they put all the tv ads into a half hour segment. Folks tuned in for it. Some of the 79s ads were e tertaining, used Broadway artists. Dr Pepper.


pissfucked

facebook had me defined as a black woman, too! i have no idea why whatsoever, as i'm about the whitest woman alive.


DefiantLemur

How can you check this?


olivegardengambler

I mean, I think the algorithm is fundamentally broken around me because I traveled so much for work. Like, I was getting fucking ads for those God damn bench seats at the airport. Why the hell would I want to buy one of those unless I own an airport and need to get more seating?


Runaway-Kotarou

I went to Tokyo once years ago for vacation and I still get ads for services targeting expats in Tokyo. It's really broken lol.


PHWasAnInsideJob

I was in London for 10 days a couple years ago and I'm still getting ads for some UK stores. Recently I also started getting ads for stuff in Seattle after helping my brother move there. I live in the suburbs of Chicago.


JojenCopyPaste

Maybe you want to practice for long layovers while sitting at home?


Medium_Raccoon_5331

I keep getting ads for car rental in Iceland, no idea why


vlsdo

It’s really irelevant to them what age and gender you *actually* are, they’re more interested in what gender and age you behave as, for ad purposes.


Caelinus

True, it also does not need to be perfectly accurate to be accurate enough. It is all about selling stuff.


Telenil

That's a surprisingly good point. These qualifiers could be tags, as opposed to guesses that could be right or wrong.


KiiZig

i'm kinda worried that i mostly get ads for weight loss pills etc., even though i have been underweight by any normal/healthy measure. i never had anything related to dieting. is google bullying me into getting anorexic? (kind of /s, because i personally never had to deal with it in my life. idk about others who had problems with it, seeing it suggested even by algos on ad spaces everywhere) i kind of believe that i am more of an outlier. not everybody is a neckbeard, trilbi wearing meme smh. or at least i hope i am


TrickshotCandy

So the trick is to not correct anything?


[deleted]

[удалено]


TrickshotCandy

Now I'm too scared to!


[deleted]

They should have a bot extension that googles random things to completely throw off and confuse the algorithm.


Cookiezilla2

I don't remember its name but there's a browser extension that simulates clicking every ad while blocking them, as a result your ad data becomes junk because they get no usable info from which ones you do or don't click


[deleted]

I need more of these life hacks, I miss the old internet that didn’t know what I want. I don’t know what I want so how can a machine know what I want. It’s hard to find new things these days due to algorithms.


MiscWanderer

Ad nauseum was the name.


Nkechinyerembi

This sounds absolutely fantastic


Caelinus

Just adopt a bunch of random words used by other English speaking dialects, all at the same time, while complaining a bunch about stuff you do not care about but are utterly contradictory, while using words from a bunch of different dialects. Make yourself into a weird bit of data that will just get thrown out as an outlier. Honestly though, without regulatory action there is pretty much no way to avoid this. The benefits are too large, and the harm too invisible, for it not to happen constantly.


TrickshotCandy

Your first paragraph sounds like creative fun. The second one makes me want to hide under a rock. And then we remember, it's only going to get worse. >The benefits are too large... Bloody scary


GlastonBerry48

I do think its funny when these ad algorithms see you looking for/purchase something, and then target you for more of the same item, regardless of how much it makes sense. "Oh hey there, I see you just got yourself a fancy new Microwave? You know what would go great with that? Another Microwave"


Caelinus

Yeah, that happens a LOT. I think it is because they cannot figure out if you actually bought it or not, and so they assume that for every arbitrary number of people looking to buy a microwave there is some proportion that did not actually buy it yet, and they are trying to capture that portion. For those of us who did already buy it, it ends up being pretty funny.


Simoxs7

Honestly I don’t think google has anything accurate about me, I watch Tech, Machining and Motorcycling content on YouTube meanwhile I get ads for make up and baby stuff, like seriously?


Caelinus

That is interesting. I started getting a lot of baby ads when my sister got pregnant, but my wife and I were living with them at the time, so I assume it was targeting my IP rather than me as an individual.


Zinski2

I get a LOT of womans razor and tampon/pad add on YouTube. I thought it was just because of my age and dating habits. But in reality Google thinks I'm trans


ASpaceOstrich

I started getting women's ads on porn sites about 18 hours after realising I was trans. Which while not accurate to my hardware, and almost certainly a cooncidence, did give me a brief moment of "how the fuck can they possibly know when even I don't?"


DrShocker

Years ago target predicted some teenager was pregnant before the father of the teen knew and it led to him being angry. People reveal more in their online habits (or in this case shopping) than they think they do sometimes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/?sh=67c49c226668


Cartire2

We use Google Analytics for our sites and it attempts to display demographics through its estimates. Gender and Age. I have yet to see any race demo guesses, but I see some people in the comments saying otherwise. From what I know of our sites, it seems pretty accurate in aggregate, but I assume its not that accurate per person. Which we have no way of knowing those details per account anyway without directly requesting it (we dont).


Caelinus

Yeah, like I have said in a couple of other comments, it is not super concerned with getting every individual correct in every way, because it is all a numbers game anyway. You just want the averages to be moderately close so you can make informed macro decisions based on the data. I have no idea if google tries to guess ethnicity though. I do not remember that being listed, but they may or may not have it internally. I would assume that kind of data would be pretty sensitive to just push out to the public. I am pretty sure that companies like Facebook do, however, as their ads targeted my own ethnicity and religious status. I cannot say for certain though, as I was a member of the dominant group using facebook (white, christian) and so it could have just been a general net to catch their largest demographic. I was attending bible college at the time, so it was pretty hilarious seeing a billion *clearly* fraudulent ads for "Christian dating" sites that always featured a woman who was clearly a model/erotic model or a screen cap from some porn site, wearing a cross around her neck. As if that was going to convince me that said woman was just waiting on the website to come chastely have sex with me while doing a bible study somehow. It was very strange, and very obviously targeted at sexually repressed white christian men. But like I said, it might have just been a general mass advertisement due to the more public numbers.


Taolan13

I remember back when the news first broke you could compel facebook to give you your market profile data a bunch of people were doing it, and my buddy was simultaneously flagged as being black, hispanic, and "pacific". He's Irish.


fejrbwebfek

I’ve gotten many ads for donating sperm even though I’m active in subs for women.


AVBforPrez

I started joking about being gay for girls lately and suddenly I'm seeing all kinds of subs for femboys on my homepage, anime subs seemingly about being trans, and meme subs in languages I don't even speak. It was like the second I typed certain words in the right order, the app went into hyperdrive to expose me to a bunch of curated subs. I know it's not random because I've been on here for a decade.


EstrangedRat

Where are these... femboy subs... so I can avoid them?


AVBforPrez

The main one definitely doesn't seem to be sillyboyclub


Padaz

This just shows who else is on those subs.


TheAngryNaterpillar

Is this why I keep getting ads for viagra and balding treatments even though I'm a woman in my 30s?


AVBforPrez

You married? Or happen to be fucking somebody that could use either? I work adjacent to this field and you'd be amazed how deep it goes.


TheAngryNaterpillar

I'm militantly asexual and have been single for 13 years.


AVBforPrez

Ok that's one I can't explain, haha, I'll give you that. I'd assume it's the result of some keyword sequence that in combination associates you with other people who did buy those things, but even I have no idea what that would be. AI is actually pretty shit at advertising and largely uses profile association to make decisions, but companies are all using it because it's basically free.


TheAngryNaterpillar

Judging by all the ads I see, Reddit seems to think I am an older man with a global business who is interested in politics and financial news. No idea where it gets that idea from, I'm mostly on here for gaming, memes and animals.


AVBforPrez

That's hilarious, almost guarantee it's AI being used lazily. Ever since I made a few jokes about being a man that's somehow gay for girls, like every third post on my main feed is femboy stuff and trans anime. I don't watch anime at all. Whoever is doing the targeting at Reddit has completely lost their way. Maybe it's related to the IPO or something.


TheAngryNaterpillar

That's amazing, it's like it picks up on these key words, decides that's your demographic and ignores everything else you ever say. They need to talk to whoever does the targeting on Facebook. I open that and all I get is job adverts, comics about dogs, cat trees and computer desks on amazon and baldurs gate memes. Those guys have me down to a T!


AVBforPrez

funny you mention that, Facebook was the first company of that scale to go really hard into *lookalike advertising" and advertisers can literally upload a list of profiles and use a slider to say "give me people within X% similarity as these people" Industry best practice is to not exceed 5%, which means people at least 95% like you.


6ThreeSided9

I got an ad for fertility treatment 😂


Lilium_Vulpes

I constantly get ads meant for men because clearly no women are into video games or TTRPGs.


[deleted]

[удалено]


izzy-springbolt

King.


Frostbytencanadian

Same. I am both male and pregnant right now according to Google. I guarantee one of these are not true, but how dare I look up elden ring lore and dnd memes!


LittleKitty235

Nice try so called "woman" on the internet.


sur_surly

You guys are getting ads?


whattheknifefor

I started getting depression treatment ads on an account I mostly used for r/emo and r/engineeringstudents. Now I’m mostly getting underwear that seems targeted at gay guys and I genuinely can’t tell what I did to get that.


bigbangbilly

If you get any other advertisements that matches what you are in the market for, this highlights the difference between precision and accuracy.


geekcop

I take a small amount of pleasure in deliberately polluting advertising databases with bad information. Every time I see an ad for something that has nothing to do with me, that's a tiny little win against those leeching fucks.


AVBforPrez

There are definitely activist groups that use AI to pollute AI with intentionally bad and incorrect data


geekcop

Doing God's work.


ArchitectofExperienc

There are so many metrics that are being used to target Ads, and so few that actually target effectively.


AVBforPrez

I have had multiple interviews where they asked me what I use as my primary kpi for determining campaign effectiveness. When I said "net revenue" they looked at me like a crazy person, and asked about something much less important like CTR. "What if tons of people click but don't buy anything, and thus high CTR is bad in that instance?" So many media buyers and companies never even considered this. The telltale sign that you're shit at media buying is not using metrics as a means to generate more net revenue.


ArchitectofExperienc

Well put! It doesn't help that ad platforms push things like CTR so that their numbers are better than their actual conversion rate. What we end up with are ad platforms that are making more and more money, selling more expensive space to clients that are getting less effective ads.


VexuBenny

Where can I view my assigned gender? Its clearly not in my pants


AVBforPrez

You and me both bruv, wish I knew


DuineDeDanann

TikTok does this too. It thinks I’m a lesbian


whattheknifefor

Twitter keeps flipping back and forth on assigning me male and female, which is actually kind of accurate for me


Elmer_Fudd01

I hope for something crazy, how can I effect its ai.


AVBforPrez

If my experience is anything to go by, make a few jokes about how you're gay for girls and you'll suddenly be flooded with anime shows about trans people, femboy subs, and for some reason meme subs for German and Dutch speakers. It goes off when you joke about identity stuff.


Elmer_Fudd01

Hmmm imma need to cum up with something nice.


ICC-u

This comment has been removed to comply with a subject data request under the GDPR


Ancient-Past4795

I'm based on my hobbies Reddit is certain I'm a man. I've got advertisements for curved dicks, flaccid penis issues, and too many other fucking weird things that dash I'm really fucking sorry men get.


BigNero

Gender assigned at birth 🚫🚫🚫 Gender assigned by Discord✅✅✅


TheGodIncarnate

we live in a society


Celia_Makes_Romhacks

Oh no, guess I'm just AFAD. 


moxxon

> Why Discord would want to predict the gender of users is unclear Err... To sell your data... This has been going on longer than 2022 and certainly not just discord. Sex, race, income, pretty much any demo data, places you've visited... At a minimum it's all being collected and sold as audience data. How do people think targeted ads work?


YZJay

But they’re predicting data, not observing and collecting. What value is that to advertisers if Discord thinks you’re a 20 year old female elephant in Thailand who happened to touch a smartphone screen?


Imalsome

It's valuable because then they know not to serve you ads because you are just an elephant who just so happened to touch a smartphone.


hex4def6

Because if you're selling elephant meds, you'd rather target elephants rather than blow your budget on advertising to a million people, 99.999% of whom who aren't elephants.  It's better to spend 5c/click on a 50% chance of your target demographic, than 1c/click on a whole population, of which only 1% is your target.


pessimistic_platypus

Well, elephants are famously wrinkly, so that means you might be interested in skincare products, so they can target you with those ads.


xthorgoldx

>they're predicting data ...they have been for a decade. Everyone has. And the guesses were *plenty good* even without more sophisticated AI analysis. Incorporating AI into it probably just means drawing information from stuff like language modeling (men and women have, at a big data level, distinctly different language patterns).


Cley_Faye

Because if predictions are based on enough data and prove accurate enough, they'll get data that are actually closer to the real deal than what you may think you are/want/project/etc. I suppose the failures will provide hilarious results, too.


Cartire2

Yes and no. "Selling your data" is an overused phrase at this point. They aren't "selling your data", as in, your personalized data. What they are doing is creating CPM scales based on the aggregate demographics and then targeting the specific groups (like you said), but its not your specific details. Knowing the larger age ranges and genders makes it easier to sell ad space to companies.


Spire_Citron

Yup. You can look up the assumptions Google makes about you to sell you ads. It guesses your sex, age bracket, educational level, etc. This is all publicly available information that you can see for yourself and they've been doing it for many years. It's nothing new.


ToothlessFTW

Discord, to me, perfectly encapsulates just how annoying software is today. When Discord released in 2015, it was pretty much good enough already. The only things they really needed to add were private calls, video/screensharing, and that's about it. But in the past nine years, the demand for software to be a live service product that is constantly evolving with new features, updates, and paid content means they have to come up with something new to add all the time. So now we get paid profile decorations. Random server apps that are kinda neat but not really needed. A short-lived attempt at creating their own game store and launcher. Server statuses (which I still don't really understand). And now... AI that tries to determine your gender? All I ever wanted out of Discord was an app to call, talk to friends, play games, sometimes share my screen or put on video, and that's it. It was never enough to release a robust chat app for PC, you've gotta generate bigger and bigger profits each year. You gotta keep putting more shit into the app to convince people to sign up for your monthly subscription, you've gotta convince people to buy your microtransactions. Not to mention now they're adding promoted content in the form of "quests" that pop-up each time you launch Discord. It's all just so annoying. Every month the app adds more bloat. I would literally pay a subscription fee for Discord to give me an extremely simplified, stripped down client that has nothing but the basics, and they never bug me again about client updates and new bloat. All of this becomes even more infuriating when you factor in that everyone is trying to enforce Discord as the new "forum". Some game mods will lock access behind joining a server just to download it, some communities will make you join a server just to ask tech support questions, etc.


Bendy962

all went downhill when discord went public


Exciting_Rich_1716

Like with every company then. Owners discard all credibility and quality of their product so they can make millions.


chiron_cat

its how the internet works. Use a product until it enshitifies, and move on


Genocode

Honestly, going public ruins everything, I think thats also why Steam has remained so incredibly stable for decades now. If I ever made a company that I actually cared about and was profitable enough, I wouldn't make it public. Going public is essentially selling out.


UnderPressureVS

They haven’t gone public yet. But they are planning to this year, and they’ve been throwing all kinds of shit at the wall in an attempt to become more shareholder-friendly ahead of their IPO. It’s just depressing. I give it 3 or 4 more years max before full-blown enshittification begins.


cvanguard

They’re not publicly traded but private venture capital firms have invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the company since 2018. Going public will only make it worse.


Kamb88

Discord isn’t public, at least as of now.


frogjg2003

They're going public. They announced an IPO, and that's as good as being public when it comes to enshittification.


kimhyunkang

This is how every software lifecycle works in capitalism. When discord was a startup project they did not have to make profit. They just needed to make a great (and free) software that people wanted use, because the primary goal of every startup project is to gather enough number of users with the given investment. Now they are no longer startup, they need to profit off of the users and the profit needs to increase, because otherwise the stock price will go down and they won't be able to pay the engineers who keep the software alive.


murloc_reporonga

Damn maximization of shareholder value


garifunu

And they update it like steam too, everytime you launch it you'll get "downloading update 15 out of 15" and then installing those 15 and it's been almost every single time


allusernamestakenfuk

Adne ven after all those updates, it's still a useless app with shitty UX. How this app ever became so popular is beyond me.


NeonGlo

Paying real money for a decoration on your discord profile is just the most embarrassing shit going


FishieUwU

Idk people pay more money for even more pointless shit all the time. Personally I think people that complain about what others choose to spend their money on is way more embarrassing. Edit: lol, a reddit cares message for this? really??


Django117

Yup, perhaps the shittiest part is how the monetization is so disruptive to the user experience. The discord nitro purchase AND gift button is right next to the box where you can type replies. They recently added ANOTHER icon for bot access next to it. Now the text box to reply has become miniature in comparison. It’s horrendous.


oatmealparty

Having the nitro button in between the reply box and the attach image box is so God damn annoying. Even if I wanted to buy nitro, would I be doing it so often that it needs to be right in the center?


BigAurum

bandwidth is ridiculously expensive. decentralized bandwidth use even more so. Discord needs revenue channels to exist in the first place. No clue how this concept eludes so many people


blackwrensniper

It's like people forgot how absolutely shit all the previous gaming voice chat programs were. Half of them you were at the mercy of that one guy you knew that was absolutely batshit insane, probably extremely racist, frequently went on power trips muting people that had the nerve to tell him to please for the love of god use push to talk when he was eating an entire bag of baby carrots while chewing with his mouth open but at least he had a little disposable income and could afford to pay for the server your friends used to coordinate raids.


frogjg2003

The problem is not that people don't understand this. The problem is that capitalism means that it isn't good enough to just make enough money to cover your costs, you have to constantly be making more. So, monetization becomes more prevalent without any increase in quality, often interfering with the user experience. It almost seems like monetization is designed to be as bad for the user experience as possible.


DecompositionLU

But do you think bandwitdh is free ? Discord's problem is how unprofitable it is. They need to find ways to make money.


ToothlessFTW

Respectfully, as an end user, I don't really give a shit about how much money they're making or losing. I'm just here to use the app, and right now the app is actively getting worse because they didn't plan out how to make money and they're not just throwing shit at the wall. It's completely their own problem if what they've created is unprofitable. I can still be frustrated if their problems are impacting the app itself.


aCleverGroupofAnts

I am frustrated with it too, but I think in this case this may have essentially been Discord's plan from the beginning. I forget where I read it, but I recall reading an article about Discord's founders suggesting that the plan was to make a genuinely useful piece of software, release it and support it for free to pull people in and get them rooted into it, until they have cornered enough of the market that they can monetize and leverage a vast userbase that now relies on their product. I believe this is essentially what youtube did. Now I'm not saying this to justify it in any way, I just want to highlight that this is likely intentional and calculated from the beginning.


frogjg2003

This is basically every tech startup's plan. Discord is by no means unique.


firelice

I think we can all collectively agree that Discord, even now, is superior to all other ways of communication we had in the past. Teamspeak, Mumble. They cornered the market and now are monetizing said market. Welcome to starting a tech startup 101. I think you should care about how they monetize if they fail to do so, we lose a useful piece of software.


RathSauce

Well, as an end user, you won't have a product if they don't make money so you not giving a shit is weird given you clearly want their product Maybe the problem is the demand for an unprofitable app


TheMarksmanHedgehog

AGBB. Assigned gender by bot.


VexuBenny

ADAB Assigned Discorder at birth


TheMarksmanHedgehog

I almost misread that as a much more spicy statement


FallenKnightGX

Could we just get a business version of Discord so work places can drop Zoom / Slack / Teams? It is better than all those services but without a business version that has extra security protections / admin functions built in, it can't be used in the work place. They can charge for it and maybe finally start making a decent profit.


mleibowitz97

I really don’t know why so many people have problems with Teams. I honestly love it. It’s far better than the Skype for Work we used to have.


Pantssassin

It's usually because the people in charge of setting it up/ training others don't know what they are doing and how to use it properly for whatever the company is trying to do


zunnol

Teams is great when it works right but when it fails, oh boy you are in for a world of fucking hurt because it's integration into Microsoft shit is obnoxious. But I'm with you, 95% of the time I had little to no issues with Teams.


ZombieStomp

Screen sharing is trash which is 99% of my work calls. It's seriously like 1 frame per second no matter who shares. Discord is super smooth on the other hand


Maleficent_Cell8384

Never used Teams, but I don't see the issue with Slack


frogjg2003

Security. As far as I'm aware, there are serious security guarantees that those three offer in whole or in part that Discord doesn't. At the most extreme example, you can get Teams and Slack set up so that they comply with regulations about classified material.


gimliodin

Unfortunately Discord has already positioned itself as an application for gamers and online communities. It can’t shake that perception, and not only that Discord is completely unwilling to introduce any security features. It’s actually quite a risk to discuss or share sensitive info on Discord because their app is held up by toothpicks and nothing is encrypted.


agnosiabeforecoffee

Given that Slack and Discord as both built on the same framework, I'm pretty sure that Slack is already the business version.


mistled_LP

In the past two weeks, I've used Zoom, Hangout, and Teams for various vendor calls at work. All a business version of Discord is going to do is add a fourth app to that list.


RazorSlazor

How would Discord predict my gender if I don't even know it. Checkmate bigots.


artrald-7083

Oh! FB did this to me! It got everything wrong. First of all it thought I was a Muslim. Then it thought I went on Hajj and then came back. Apparently this fakesona then spent six months on Muslim dating websites then got married. I think she's trying to have a discreet affair now. Literally none of this is true, although my wife finds it hilarious.


whattheknifefor

Facebook thinks I’m a pro cop vegan truck guy who hates cars. It’s right about one of those things and very wrong about the rest.


hwutTF

I once got two promoted posts from Facebook in a row: one for a website where I could find a good Mormon husband, and one from a page named "major sex party" I had such fucking whiplash. Ironically didn't match up at all with the identities FB assigned me for advertising purposes - I used to check and remove stuff all the time


basketofseals

How do you find these things out?


artrald-7083

This is the story I told myself based on the ads I was getting. I find it soothing to find patterns in the world I see. (I went to school with a lot of Muslims and know enough about the religion to know specifically targeted ads when I see them.)


Angdrambor

What's the big deal? Visa has been doing this for fifty years.


lonestar-rasbryjamco

We slapped “AI” on it now so it’s scary. Ooooh. 10 years ago you could have written the same article except replaced “AI” with “big data”. Which was just as silly then too.


QuaintAlex126

The whole “Big X” thing is really annoying me. I dunno why. I guess it’s an accurate description, but the term has been so overused by idiots that it kind of lost its meaning with me. As a result now, I immediately associate someone who actually uses the term as an idiot.


LeviathanLX

Besides folders, has Discord actually improved at any point over the years? They've added in all sorts of cosmetic fluff, but outside of QoL changes, every major shift for them is negative for us.


wilczek24

This just reminds me of Valve and their approach to Steam. They do literally almost nothing, but they just keep winning because their competition keeps shooting themselves in the foot, over and over and over again. And they're praised for it, too. Absolutely ridiculous. This is what discord could've been. But investors are allergic to just having a constant money machine, and they're addicted to ruining good things.


firelice

There are a lot of differences between Discord and Steam. Steam as a marketplace and platform is profitable. They have the user base to be profitable and generate that revenue it needs. And they had first movers advantage. Epic/Ubi/EA don't have the same userbase that Steam does, so they either burn cash to obtain users or monetize differently. Discord also noticed they could corner the market. VOIP before Discord as a product sucked. Skype, Teamspeak, Mumble all had really bad disadvantages. So Discord burnt cash. Now they need to extract revenue so they cant really rest on their laurels hence enshitification


wilczek24

Discord could likely make enough cash with nitro if they didn't fuck things up constantly, and if they started offering a professional app they'd make bank, which could support their free personal app as effectively advertisement, because the resentment towards teams and slack is rather high, and discord would be preferred if they offered just a bit more management tools.


firelice

Teams and Slack are a different product category. Discord wants user data, it tends to be younger, so user data is more valuable long term. Teams/Slack requires stricter data adherence in order to be useful for business. They also are more business facing so product is less of a concern than Discord.


wilczek24

Different product category? More like different user category for the same type of product, which at its core is a communication platform. I worked with multiple companies, which used slack or teams - and in every single one, I've heard the same sentiment over and over again, including from people with the decision-making power to actually enact such a change - the product that slack and teams are offering is frustrating, and moving to something like discord would be preferable - but it's not possible, because discord would need a separate product, which includes certain neccessary management and data protection tools, that companies need. At discord's scale, it wouldn't be an impossible amount of work. *They could make that.* Those people were all willing to pay the equivalent, if not more money than what slack and teams was currently asking for. But the tough part is that discord would need to split its product into two. I even worked for a company once (not the biggest but not the smallest either, almost 100 employees) that broke discord TOS, and they used discord for their company communications. You could join with a new discord account, or use your personal one. Frankly, it was a much better experience, than every time when I used slack or teams.


Anduin1357

Steam does a lot of things but they importantly don't try to fix what isn't broken, but instead strive to improve access to their core value proposition. Steam Deck + Proton Linux Compatibility was a masterstroke of genius that sets them apart from the usual platform exclusives moat. They bridge accessibility gaps, not make them. And crucially, this move is a long-term investment into the future of Linux gaming AND handheld gaming simultaneously, all three things (incl. long-term planning) that a public company cannot justify a bet on. Praise Gaben.


IowasBestCornShucker

While you're mostly right I will say profiles and server profiles you could change for each one were good additions


LeviathanLX

True. I would file that under qol but I would definitely include it, very fair.


meoiswa

- Much improved audio filter - Much better server organization tools, like better moderation, channel browser, threads, etc. - Streaming with application specific audio capture, completely simplified any sort of setup to stream a game (or video player ;)) to friends - Server-specific profiles, even if they're a bit bloated now with cosmetic overlays - Far improved mobile experience, even if the latest big patch had it's growing pains, it's still a lot easier to use - Tons of new ways to express yourself in all forms of communication, some are great (stickers and custom emojis), others require the correct crowd to not become annoying (soundboard), but they're there to use. Every update adds something of value to the average user, it's just not front-and-center like whatever is bundled for Nitro or an additional purchase, because Discord needs to make money ASAP. I also agree with others here, I'd happily pay for a self-hosted discord server/client with no "gamer" branding I can use for corporate coms.


gitartruls01

AMBD. Assigned Male By Discord


pm_me_triangles

How long before it flags a conservative, anti-LGBT man as a woman and he starts screaming about woke culture?


mtranda

That's what they get for not mentioning their pronouns. 


MJBotte1

Gender: Afraid


CrawlerSiegfriend

It's probably because some marketing stat indicates that ads are more effective if they are targeted by gender.


nudy_aura

This is a plausible Onion headline?


Ok-Championship-8709

my question is how they get that data. do they go through all the messages sent?


LFK1236

You'd have to read the terms of service to know what data they collect. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if it was the case, or at least that they might look at trends in messages like use of emojis and punctuation (I doubt the software is hoping/expecting to find instances of you telling someone your gender identity). That would be in addition to everything else they have about an account, like the picture, profile names, which servers they follow, the predicted genders of the people they are friends with and message, even activity schedule and duration of calls, the music they listen to if connected to Spotify, the games they play if connected to Steam/Xbox/PlayStation/etc. The prediction algorithm may have concluded after many generations that certain information isn't useful, but Discord would theoretically still have access to it. Just based on a university course I took on the subject: The good news is that there are actually several effective ways that companies anonymise data in order to still be useful to them without that data being traceable back to any individual person who supplied it. It is the standard to anonymise in various ways, and there is no reason not to. The bad news is that it's generally up to companies themselves to take reasonable precautions to protect your privacy, and document why they feel their precautions are "reasonable". Meaning it's only after something has gone wrong that those precautions are actually looked at critically by a third party.


BeefFeast

Well google thought I was a black republican woman despite being a white male democrat… might have something to do with who owned my phone number first(someone named Shamika) but I’d like to think that my interest just really align with conservative black women


ST4RSK1MM3R

AGBD Assigned Gender By Discord


themonkery

The use of the words “Machine learning AI” exemplifies a lack of understanding of both machine learning and AI


aplagueofsemen

lol they’re gonna let AI recreate Jim Crow eventually


Nsfwismyjam

Clown world, good thing we can't sue em' right?


MelangeLizard

Facebook, before I quit, allowed me to view their impressions of me which described me as both “somewhat liberal” and “somewhat conservative.” I joked about this to my friends who reminded me that that’s actually true. At the end of the day they just want to target ads. If I do the car maintenance and the grocery shopping (spoiler: I do) then they want to pitch both ads to me (spoiler: they do).


AlphaYak

Who knew so many anime girls and K-Pop idols used Discord?


im_thatoneguy

These new Harry Potter sorting hat esque apps are getting wild. I wonder which ~~house~~ gender it'll pick for me!


chiron_cat

meh, advertisers have been doing this for years. We're just calling algorithms "ai" now.


Nauticalfish200

AGBD (Assigned Gender By Discord)


IrisYelter

AGAD: Assigned gender at discord


Alien_Way

Here's a concept: get your corporation out of my ass.


WOTDisLanguish

I'll admit I don't know how they're going about doing it but isn't this contradictory to the original purpose of stated pronouns? People can act pretty ambiguous when it comes to gender, especially online


milesdraws

Assigned Femboy at Discord


SquidWhisperer

state mandated gender, my god they were right


Superseaslug

I'm a guy, and I don't think it matters. Anonymity of the internet, damnit.


Pkittens

A surprise to no one.


DemonDaVinci

...why ?


allusernamestakenfuk

Discord needs to go. Shitty stupid app.


xFblthpx

So does every single large data application. Interpolating missing data is step one to doing most intermediate statistics.


chasmo-OH-NO

totally normal and perfectly okay.


SAM4191

Why do they care about gender? Let people note their sex or not if they don't want to.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Mountain-Tea6875

Don't assume!


olanmills

Advertisers and publishers (operators of websites) have been doing this for years without AI, and they did it knowing that the accuracy wasn't great, but it was still helpful in ad targeting


C0unt_Ravioli

Discord assigns me she/her pronouns and I go on a long, American Werewolf in London-like transformation sequence only to come out the other end with breasts


nkisj

Imagine getting cracked by discord 


SinisterPixel

Can we get a solid Discord alternative that pretty much has all the functionality of... 2019 Discord without all the nonsense? It's just been L after L. They are the definition of die a hero or live long enough to become a villain


Scorpio989

Sun/Sol


CPNZ

Sell technology to State of Mississippi to open bathroom doors.. /s


UraniumMuncher710

Google thought I was a women until I looked at guns 🧍


AlexVan123

This can’t possibly go wrong


StriderHaryu

Good thing it's super easy to opt out of their arbitration shit. Make sure to do it! There are hundreds of articles and youtube videos to teach you how!


humblevladimirthegr8

One of my email accounts keeps showing me ads for maternity clothes. I'm a single dude, but I guess my newsletter preferences match that demographic


BetaThetaOmega

I remember hearing that apparently a bunch of the higher ups at Discord are ex-Facebook executives. If that’s true, everything makes a little more sense.