i agree that discord is social media but the absence of instagram's individually targeted algorithmic curation is an important distinction when it comes to being "drug"-like for me

This is a fair call out, though I agree and disagree to a point. Some people get really into specific communities, if banned they will spin up as many new accounts as they can get in just to be in again, its really weird to me, I just move on from communities I am no longer allowed in.

i think they mean the ToS for amazon's affiliate link service, which prohibits earning a commission if your site has price history (a few large and old sites have exceptions)

it's provocative marketing for the photon imessage sdk/api so probably worthwhile since it's already getting engagement here

true, it's fit for a marketing strategy for an unauthorized protocol that is now being turned into a startup I guess

start your own company

In most cases, that’s the opposite of chill.

As do remote, responsibilities and autonomy

i'm worried they'll start making user unfriendly changes, like more ads, to meet investor demands for increased profits. overall it's a great product which i use everyday and i'm happy for them.

unfortunately, the user-unfriendly changes started years ago, especially around 2023. Having used it since 2016, you can tell that post covid is when they shifted from consumer-focused to revenue-focused; just look at how many people are outraged by the appearance of embedded ads, game "quests", nitro feature-stealing, discord profile purchasable customizations, and (one that not many people talk about) trendy corporate habits like year recaps and T&C changes.

Given their per user pricing model, who's going to pay for this for any given community? Discord is mostly popular in communities where self-organized funding would be realistic.

Zulip's product lead here. Communities are eligible for a free Community plan if they self-host, and there are discounts and sponsorships available for Zulip Cloud as well.

i am tired of ads, algorithmic curation, public-ness, anonymity, and scale

i still crave social interaction but have moved to smaller private group chats with real people i either see in real life or have an ongoing connection with

united has free messaging on their flights and i found myself using meta's ai chatbot via whatsapp a few times. it's system prompt forces it to ask me inane questions at the end of every action so i would be happy to switch to something else.

just tried making one using this and it initially was way too casual for me and i didn't like how it split responses into many messages but it's very responsive to my prompts to change its style.

is "time for 2 instruments, learning C++, Rust, and Python" not schooling ?

He's still learning. Driven by what he loves. And this is on top of the "standard" stuff.

the service area still stops at Burlingame for me without peninsula access yet