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Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio

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Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and I received a

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Speaker 1: request on Twitter to do an episode about the history

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Speaker 1: of Discord, the communications platform. Now, if you don't know

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Speaker 1: what Discord is, it does help to get a quick overview.

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Speaker 1: So from a high level, Discord of software that let's

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Speaker 1: users chat with each other either through texting or with

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Speaker 1: voice communication or video chat. And it has other features

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Speaker 1: as well, and it grew out of gaming culture. We've

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Speaker 1: got two founders to talk about, so let's start with

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Speaker 1: a man named Jason Citron. He grew up playing video games.

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Speaker 1: He received a Nintendo in ne s. The Nintendo entertain

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Speaker 1: was stem a groundbreaking console, the one that brought home

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Speaker 1: video games back from the dead after the Great Crash

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Speaker 1: of the early nineteen eighties, and he was only five

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Speaker 1: years old when he got that. He said that when

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Speaker 1: he was a kid, all he really wanted to do

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Speaker 1: was play games on the n e S and his

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Speaker 1: parents essentially told him that if he did all of

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Speaker 1: his homework, he could spend as much time playing games

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Speaker 1: as he liked. So while other parents might tell their kids, hey,

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Speaker 1: you know, you should go outside and play, or otherwise

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Speaker 1: limit their screen time, Citron was more or less given

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Speaker 1: carte blanche to do all the gaming he wanted to,

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Speaker 1: as long as he didn't put off homework or anything

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Speaker 1: like that. He has said that when he was around

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Speaker 1: twelve or thirteen, a friend of his taught him some

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Speaker 1: early que Basic programming tricks during a sleepover. So que

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Speaker 1: Basic is a very simple programming language, and Citron found

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Speaker 1: it really interesting. So of course, the first thing he

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Speaker 1: really wanted to do was to make a game. So

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Speaker 1: he and his buddy stayed up late while everyone else

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Speaker 1: was asleep, and they got to work programming out a

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Speaker 1: text adventure. For those of you who have never played

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Speaker 1: a text adventure, it's pretty much what it sounds like.

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Speaker 1: The game presents the player with text and describes an

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Speaker 1: environment and any actions that are going on. Then the

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Speaker 1: player types in a command, and if the programmers anticipated

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Speaker 1: that command, you get a response that progresses the game

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Speaker 1: or perhaps ends it if you made the wrong choice. Now,

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Speaker 1: if the programmers didn't anticipate the command, you're likely to

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Speaker 1: encounter a failed message. So, for example, if you were

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Speaker 1: the type look under rock, and the programmers didn't anticipate

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Speaker 1: that action, you might receive the generic response I'm sorry,

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Speaker 1: I don't know how to do that. But if they

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Speaker 1: did anticipate it, you might get something like you lift

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Speaker 1: up the rock and you see an old rusty key,

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Speaker 1: or maybe you get you lift up the rock and

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Speaker 1: see dirt. What did you expect? It all depends upon

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Speaker 1: the programmers. And just for the record, I love old

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Speaker 1: text adventure games. Some of them get wicked hard because

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Speaker 1: programmers really went out of their way to make obtuse puzzles. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: let's get back to Citron. As he got older, he

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Speaker 1: decided he didn't want to just play games. He wanted

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Speaker 1: to make them as well, like as a job, not

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Speaker 1: just as a hobby. He enrolled in Full Sale University,

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Speaker 1: which is a private, for profit university in Florida. I

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Speaker 1: know it best as the home of n x T,

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Speaker 1: which is kind of the developmental branch of the w

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Speaker 1: w E, the professional wrestling organization. Anyway, the school is

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Speaker 1: known for its programs and feels like computer animation, audio design,

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Speaker 1: and that sort of thing. Citron graduated in two thousand

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Speaker 1: four with a Bachelor's of Science in game design and development.

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Speaker 1: He went on to develop for a few different game studios,

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Speaker 1: like Papaya Studio, which, if I'm doing my math correctly,

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Speaker 1: would have probably been working on titles like Disney Princess

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Speaker 1: Enchanted Journey and Windy Woo Homecoming Warrior Kick In Challenge.

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Speaker 1: He was there for less than a year before he

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Speaker 1: moved over to Storm Runt Studios, which was probably working

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Speaker 1: on licensed properties like Aragon and The Spiderwick Chronicles. Citron

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Speaker 1: stayed there for about a year and a half before

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Speaker 1: he moved over to Double Fine Productions in two thousand six. Now,

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Speaker 1: before I chat about that little part of his career,

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Speaker 1: I did want to mention that Papaia Studios and storm

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Speaker 1: Front are both no more. Storm Front actually folded first

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Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight after Sierra Entertainment, which was

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Speaker 1: set to publish the company's next game, closed down, and

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Speaker 1: I should probably do an episode about Stormfront at some point.

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Speaker 1: Papaia Studios stuck around till or so. I'm not actually

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Speaker 1: sure what happened with that studio other than it went

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Speaker 1: out of business. I couldn't find more detailed information about

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Speaker 1: what caused it to do that anyway, onto Double Fine.

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Speaker 1: This company, founded by Tim Schaefer, is known for games

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Speaker 1: like Psycho Knots and also the remaster version of Grim

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Speaker 1: Van Dango, the Brutal Legends game, and more. Citron joined

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Speaker 1: that team in two in six, a year after the

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Speaker 1: first Psycho Knots game had come out. Citron was there

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Speaker 1: for eight months and left in June of two thousand seven.

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Speaker 1: Now when you hear about these relatively short stints with companies,

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Speaker 1: with just you know, a few months here or a

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Speaker 1: year and a half there, you might get the feeling

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Speaker 1: that young Citron had itchy feet and he couldn't settle down.

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Speaker 1: And that is possibly the case, but it's also possible

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Speaker 1: that Citron was working for these companies on a contract basis.

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Speaker 1: A lot of studios will bring in freelance game developers

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Speaker 1: to help with titles that are in production. These developers

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Speaker 1: work alongside full time salaried employees until their contract is over,

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Speaker 1: whereupon the freelancer might have to head off in search

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Speaker 1: of their next gig. They might get resigned to a

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Speaker 1: new contract, but chances are they may just have to

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Speaker 1: try and line up their next job. And I'm not

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Speaker 1: sure if that's what was going on with Citron, but

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Speaker 1: I figure it's a pretty fair guess. He had some

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Speaker 1: bigger plans in store. However, He really wanted to try

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Speaker 1: and create his own own company, but Citron also recognized

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Speaker 1: that he didn't really have that kind of experience or background.

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Speaker 1: He was a developer, not an entrepreneur, at least not

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Speaker 1: yet anyway. He applied to and was accepted by you web,

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Speaker 1: which is a company that helps develop people into entrepreneurs.

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Speaker 1: The focus on fields like app development and gaming. You

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Speaker 1: web provides an environment and initial funding for product development,

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Speaker 1: sort of like the seed money to get a business going.

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Speaker 1: At you Web. Citron began to work with a developer

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Speaker 1: named Danielle Castley, and the two of them created a

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Speaker 1: game for iOS devices. It was called Aurora Faint and

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Speaker 1: it was part RPG, part Tetris like puzzle game. Citron

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Speaker 1: described it as quote a puzzle based m m O

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Speaker 1: RPG for the iPhone end quote. M m O RPG

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Speaker 1: says for massively multiplayer online role playing games, so a

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Speaker 1: game that supports lots of players simultaneously and as role

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Speaker 1: playing elements to it. The first game was actually fairly modest,

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Speaker 1: a single player game with some leader boards, but the

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Speaker 1: second attempt was far more ambitious, with chat rooms, asynchronous

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Speaker 1: multiplayer support, ghost battling, and more. Ghost battling is where

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Speaker 1: you create a profile, and when you're offline, your profile

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Speaker 1: is able to play against other players and perform as

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Speaker 1: if you are controlling it to some degree. Citron and

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Speaker 1: castlely recognize that players liked having ways to interact with

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Speaker 1: one another, whether it was to form friendships or talk

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Speaker 1: some smack, or you know, just have a conversation about

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Speaker 1: anything at all. And you could see that some of

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Speaker 1: the concepts that would later transition into what would become

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Speaker 1: features and discord we're taking shape. The experience convinced Citron

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Speaker 1: to try something bigger. He wanted to build not just

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Speaker 1: a game, but a platform for games on iOS. He

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Speaker 1: pitched it as Xbox Live but for iPhones, complete with

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Speaker 1: chat and video board features. He decided to quote, just

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Speaker 1: announce it and see if people would want it end quote,

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Speaker 1: which is a pretty seat of your pants approach, like

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Speaker 1: you don't even know if you can build it yet,

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Speaker 1: You're really just kind of fishing to see if there

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Speaker 1: are any bites, and there were. The developers put out

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Speaker 1: their announcement, which tech Crunch would pick up and publish.

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Speaker 1: So now lots of people were seeing it, and the

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Speaker 1: next thing they knew they had four hundred developers indicate

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Speaker 1: their interest in this project. Citron and Castley founded open Faint,

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Speaker 1: which would focus on building out this platform, and when

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Speaker 1: the company launched in March two thousand nine, there were

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Speaker 1: fifteen developers signed on with thirty games for this platform,

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Speaker 1: not games from open feint, but games that would use

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Speaker 1: open feint as the platform. At first, the open feint

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Speaker 1: team was really small, with just four or five people

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Speaker 1: working on it in the early days. By the end

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Speaker 1: of that first year that number was up to fifteen,

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Speaker 1: and two years in it was at sixty. And then

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Speaker 1: a Japanese mobile game company called g r E or

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Speaker 1: GREE made an offer that the founders could not refuse.

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Speaker 1: They acquired open feint for the princely sum of one

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Speaker 1: hundred four million dollars. Now, sit Tron figured he'd stay

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Speaker 1: put as the leader of open feint at least for

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Speaker 1: a while. In an interview with Business Insider, he said, quote,

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Speaker 1: I will be sticking around for a while. My personal ambition,

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Speaker 1: it might come off as a little naive but it's

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Speaker 1: a change the world kind of thing. I see open

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Speaker 1: Faint as an opportunity for me to help developers create

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Speaker 1: what I call shared experiences. You play games, right, so

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Speaker 1: you've had experiences like Mario Kart or Fifa where you're

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Speaker 1: playing with buddies and right as you're about to win,

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Speaker 1: your friend comes up behind you and wins. You throw

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Speaker 1: the controller on the ground and yell and scream at

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Speaker 1: each other. Those moments of connecting with your friends where

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Speaker 1: you can laugh and share like that are so powerful.

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Speaker 1: End quote. So again we see yet more signs of

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Speaker 1: this idea of communication and community, things that we become

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Speaker 1: really important. So if you've used Discord, all of this

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Speaker 1: probably sounds a little familiar, right, But we've got another

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Speaker 1: founder we need to talk about. So we're gonna leave

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Speaker 1: Citron at this stage in his career and switch gears

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Speaker 1: to talk about Stennislav Vishnevsky. Now, I gotta preface this

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Speaker 1: by saying I found way more information about Citron than

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Speaker 1: I did about Vishnevsky. Uh, Citron has been pretty you know,

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Speaker 1: much the face of Discord. But here's what I can

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Speaker 1: tell you. Vishnevsky earned a degree at California State University

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Speaker 1: at Northridge, presumably in computer science or some other field

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Speaker 1: related to software engineering. He speaks Russian. In two thousand nine,

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Speaker 1: he worked for a software company called Kassamba Incorporated. That

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Speaker 1: quote focused on developing technology solutions within the healthcare industry.

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Speaker 1: End quote. That's from Visionevsky's LinkedIn profile, which I found

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Speaker 1: very useful trying to find out more about his history.

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Speaker 1: He was there for about eight months. In the meantime,

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Speaker 1: he was also working on his own project called guild Work.

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Speaker 1: Stanislav had developed tools for a Final Fantasy title that

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Speaker 1: he recognized could be useful if adapted for other games,

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Speaker 1: specifically m m O RPGs. Many m m O RPGs

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Speaker 1: allow players to create associations within the games themselves, called guilds,

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Speaker 1: but depending on the game, the tools that players have

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Speaker 1: at their disposal might make guild management a bit of

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Speaker 1: a chore, so some guilds would turn to other tools

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Speaker 1: to help coordinate efforts within the guild and facilitate guild communication.

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Speaker 1: Guild Work grew out of that need and would expand

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Speaker 1: to allow for guild hosting as well. Also, it would

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Speaker 1: provide the foothold that the company Discord would need later on.

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Speaker 1: I'll explain when we get there. So his next job

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Speaker 1: was as a software engineer at a company called Kabam,

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Speaker 1: which developed social games like Kingdoms of Camelot. He was

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Speaker 1: there for less than a year, leaving at the end

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Speaker 1: of twenty eleven, and then he joined that Japanese game

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Speaker 1: company I mentioned earlier called Gree International Incorporated in early

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Speaker 1: So gree had acquired open Faint in two thousand eleven

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Speaker 1: and Stan joined Green in And now we've got our

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Speaker 1: two Discord co founders working at the same general company,

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Speaker 1: with Citron still leading the Open Faint team within Gree.

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Speaker 1: But shortly after that, Citron would found a new company

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Speaker 1: initially called Hammer and Chisel, and Vishnevsky would move over

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Speaker 1: to join on as a craftsman. According to Vishnevsky's LinkedIn profile,

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Speaker 1: which I think is cool. An early project of THEIRS

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Speaker 1: was called uh Fates Forever. It was a game, a

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Speaker 1: mobile mobile game for tablets and smartphones, and it was

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Speaker 1: a multiplayer online battle arena or mobile similar to games

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Speaker 1: like League of Legends Dota to or smite the game

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Speaker 1: and get a whole lot of traction. It did receive

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Speaker 1: good reviews, it's just didn't get, you know, widely adopted.

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Speaker 1: Vishnevsky was a developer on that title, and he campaigned

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Speaker 1: for the freedom to work on tools and features that

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Speaker 1: would allow players to communicate with one another in game.

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Speaker 1: This work, which aligned with Citron's earlier attempts with Aurora

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Speaker 1: Faint and Open Faint, soon became a bigger deal than

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Speaker 1: the game that it spun off from, and so we

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Speaker 1: saw the convergence of efforts to create opportunities for gamers

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Speaker 1: to communicate with one another while playing games, and these

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Speaker 1: efforts would combine to form the seeds of a new

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Speaker 1: software solution, which would ultimately become Discord. I'll talk more

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Speaker 1: about the coalescing of Discord in just a moment, but

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Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. So before we dive

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Speaker 1: into Discord proper, let's talk a bit more about what

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Speaker 1: made Jay and in Stanislav feel like it was something

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Speaker 1: worth doing in the first place. Now, there are a

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Speaker 1: lot of multiplayer games out there, and obviously the whole

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Speaker 1: appeal to these games is that you're playing with other

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Speaker 1: real people. You're all simultaneously in the game, and sometimes

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Speaker 1: you want to be able to chat with folks. This

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Speaker 1: is particularly true for team based games, in which chatting

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Speaker 1: with your teammates is key to coordinating a strategy and

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Speaker 1: being effective against other teams or against nonplayer characters. But

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Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is a lot of these

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Speaker 1: multiplayer platforms are pretty awful when it comes to supporting

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Speaker 1: team or multiplayer chat. Now, some are better than others,

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Speaker 1: but in a lot of cases, it feels as though

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Speaker 1: the actual communication tools are more of an afterthought. In

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Speaker 1: a way that is understandable. I mean, the team needs

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Speaker 1: to make sure that the actual gameplay elements of whatever

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Speaker 1: the game title is happen to be solid. It wouldn't

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Speaker 1: be much fun if you joined a multiplayer game that

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Speaker 1: had great communication tools but the game itself was terrible.

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Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, you'd probably be able to communicate easily,

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Speaker 1: but you would all likely spend your time complaining about

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Speaker 1: how crappy the game was. Like Jason had said several

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Speaker 1: years earlier, he really loved that experience of playing a

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Speaker 1: game in the same physical space as his friends, Like

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Speaker 1: you're all in the living room, all on the couch,

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Speaker 1: and you're playing elbow to elbow and being able to

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Speaker 1: talk in real time while playing the game, but the

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Speaker 1: tools available to gamers around twelve or so were, you know,

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Speaker 1: fairly limited, like teams speak in Skype or the two

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Speaker 1: big ones, and they also tended to be really resourced heavy.

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Speaker 1: So if you were trying to run a game and

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Speaker 1: this separate voice over Internet protocol program, you know, like Skype,

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Speaker 1: your computer might start chugging a bit and your gaming

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Speaker 1: experience could suffer because now your CPU has to deal

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Speaker 1: with not just the demands of the game, but whatever

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Speaker 1: communications software you're running at the same time. Those were

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Speaker 1: some of the thoughts driving the push to develop better

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Speaker 1: in game communication tools for Fates Forever, the game that

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Speaker 1: Hammer and Chisel was working on, except the team recognized

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Speaker 1: that it might be better to develop something more broad,

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Speaker 1: something that could stand as its own communication platform and

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Speaker 1: not be tied to a specific game title, and so

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Speaker 1: Citron made the call to shift the focus to creating

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Speaker 1: the platform that could serve all games, similar to how

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Speaker 1: he wanted to make an Xbox Live environment for iOS

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Speaker 1: devices years earlier. It wasn't an easy decision, though, because

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Speaker 1: it meant backing off of Fates Forever, It meant abandoning

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Speaker 1: the game that they had been working on, and had launched,

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Speaker 1: and this was not long after it had launched. It

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Speaker 1: was like a year later, not even a full year,

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Speaker 1: and the game died in early death. It also meant

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Speaker 1: that he had to layoff the five full time employees

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Speaker 1: who had been working on the game, so it was

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Speaker 1: a big decision and not an easy one. Hammer and

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Speaker 1: Chisel then evolved into Discord the company with Citron a

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Speaker 1: CEO and Vishnevsky as Chief Technology Officer or ct O.

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Speaker 1: The team began to lay out what they wanted to

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Speaker 1: achieve with this service. The Discord software needed to give

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Speaker 1: gamers the ability to create rooms for chat. It needed

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Speaker 1: to support text chat, voice chat, and then later on

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Speaker 1: even video chat. It needed to be a lightweight type

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Speaker 1: of apps, something that wouldn't put too big a strain

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Speaker 1: on the hardware. After all, the original idea was that

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Speaker 1: Discord was for gamers, and a lot of gamers really

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Speaker 1: obsessed over getting the most out of their gaming rigs settings.

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Speaker 1: You don't want to compromise on the gaming experience because

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Speaker 1: your chat app is hogging all the resources. While Discord

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Speaker 1: aimed to avoid the issues gamers had with services like

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Speaker 1: Skype and team Speak, it didn't always work. Out There

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Speaker 1: have been times and Discords past when gamers have seen

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Speaker 1: Discord get a little hungry for CPU and memory re sources. Now,

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Speaker 1: to explain why this happens would require going into a

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Speaker 1: lot of technical detail that I'm going to be honest,

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Speaker 1: I don't fully understand. I'm not a programmer, so I

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Speaker 1: have a bit of a grasp on it. But rather

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Speaker 1: than stumble around hoping that I'm telling you the right thing,

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Speaker 1: instead I'll say that depending upon the settings of a

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Speaker 1: computer and on Discord and the specific build of Discord

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Speaker 1: that you were using, sometimes users were fine, and sometimes

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Speaker 1: they saw Discord alone sapping of a CPUs output. The

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Speaker 1: team also wanted Discord to be multi platform, so they

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Speaker 1: wanted to work on PCs, max, mobile devices and in browsers,

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Speaker 1: and it needed to run smoothly on all of those

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Speaker 1: platforms and provide a reliable service. To get started, Citron

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Speaker 1: secured funding from the ub nine plus incubator company and

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Speaker 1: several others, including ten Sent, the Chinese company that owns

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Speaker 1: a stake in several video game companies out there. The

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Speaker 1: team build out the product, prepping it for its public

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Speaker 1: release in May, and in many ways it is very

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Speaker 1: much like a web browser. In fact, you can access

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Speaker 1: Discord over the web, or you can download it as

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Speaker 1: a native app on a desktop device or mobile device,

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Speaker 1: and the activities in one instance happened across all other instances.

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Speaker 1: So if for some reason, you're running the Discord app

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Speaker 1: on your laptop, Okay, so you've got your laptop going,

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Speaker 1: you've got the actual Discord program running. Then you've got

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Speaker 1: a second laptop and you use it to open up

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Speaker 1: a browser and go to the web based Discord service.

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Speaker 1: And then you also had your smartphone out and you

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Speaker 1: activated the Discord app on your smartphone, and you all

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Speaker 1: three and in all three instances, you navigate to the

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Speaker 1: same server and the same channel. Typing something in on

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Speaker 1: your laptop that's running the app would publish it to everything.

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Speaker 1: You would see it on your phone, you would see

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Speaker 1: it on the second laptop, and so on. Now that's

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Speaker 1: assuming again that all three of these devices are logged

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Speaker 1: into the same server and same channel, which brings us

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Speaker 1: to how Discord organizes stuff. So Discord has a kind

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Speaker 1: of hierarchy of organization, and at the top is the server.

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Speaker 1: The server is kind of like the community base of operations.

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Speaker 1: When you create a discord server. You're not actually designating

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Speaker 1: a specific machine on your network to act like a

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Speaker 1: web server. Instead, the server is the dedicated online gathering space.

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Speaker 1: I kind of think of it like a Facebook page

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Speaker 1: in a way, if you are making a page on

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Speaker 1: Facebook dedicated to something. Uh, it's sort of similar. Now,

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Speaker 1: when you think about it another way, you can see

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Speaker 1: why this naming convention makes sense. On the web, you've

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Speaker 1: got clients and you've got servers. Now, the client is

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Speaker 1: typically something like a browser. So let's say you are

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Speaker 1: on your computer and you're surfing the web. To use

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Speaker 1: an incredibly outdated phrase, the browser you use, whether it's Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox,

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Speaker 1: or something else, that is the client. So let's say

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Speaker 1: you're using your browser to look up an article on

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Speaker 1: Wikipedia about Big Trouble in Little China, which, as we

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Speaker 1: all know, is the best movie that was ever made.

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Speaker 1: You type the title into Wikipedia's search bar and you

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Speaker 1: hit intern And when you do that, you've sent a

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Speaker 1: command to your client to request that specific web page

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Speaker 1: from the web server that's hosting Wikipedia. So the client

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Speaker 1: relays your request, which goes out over the Internet. The

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Speaker 1: request is encoded so that the message will eventually get

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Speaker 1: to the correct destination, that destination being the web server.

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Speaker 1: That request ultimately goes to that web server that processes

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Speaker 1: it and then returns the Wikipedia page. So the server

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Speaker 1: since the appropriate data back to the client, which is

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Speaker 1: your browser, and that's where you can see it. So

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Speaker 1: with Discord, the app on your phone or desktop or

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Speaker 1: the tab in your browser is the client. It's how

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Speaker 1: you are accessing the community you are interested in, and

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Speaker 1: that is the server, and messages that you type in

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Speaker 1: the client get posted to the server, which all clients

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Speaker 1: connected to that server can see at least all clients

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Speaker 1: connected to that server that have permissions to view the

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Speaker 1: message within whatever channel they can see it. So within

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Speaker 1: the server, as I mentioned, you have channels, and these

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Speaker 1: can be text based or voice based. So you could

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Speaker 1: create a server for your gaming friends, you know, kind

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Speaker 1: of the way the service was originally conceived, and you

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Speaker 1: can create specific voice channels for different games, because maybe

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Speaker 1: you're a group of gaming friends is really into a

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Speaker 1: lot of different games, and maybe that group has gotten

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Speaker 1: pretty big and not everyone is playing the same games

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Speaker 1: at the same time, So you can have different voice

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Speaker 1: channels dedicated to the various games and have multiple conversations

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Speaker 1: happening in separate channels, and you only hear the off

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Speaker 1: that's relevant to whichever channel you are in. So there's

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Speaker 1: a conversation. Let's say you're playing Rainbow six Siege and

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Speaker 1: other people are playing League of Legends. Well, you're in

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Speaker 1: the Rainbow six Siege room. You've chosen to go into

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Speaker 1: that channel. You only hear the conversation that's going on

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Speaker 1: in that channel. Meanwhile, over in the Legal Legends channel,

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Speaker 1: people are arguing about which path they need to take

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Speaker 1: in order to defeat the other team, and they're distinct,

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Speaker 1: so there's no cross talk. You can make channels public,

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Speaker 1: meaning anyone can connect to them, or you can make

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Speaker 1: them private and only allow certain people to see them,

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Speaker 1: which makes you know sense and building out a server

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Speaker 1: sounds like it could be daunting, but it's actually pretty simple.

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Speaker 1: So let me give you an example. I recently created

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Speaker 1: a tech stuff discord server, which I haven't really publicized yet,

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Speaker 1: and so for the moment, I'm the only member of

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Speaker 1: this server. But that's okay. When it's ready for prime time,

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Speaker 1: i'll chat about it. I'll put the link up on

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Speaker 1: the Twitter bio. I'll make sure it goes out and

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Speaker 1: people can join. Then Anyway, the tech Stuff server will

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Speaker 1: be a community where listeners can go to chat with

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Speaker 1: each other and share pictures and videos and bad puns

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Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff. Within the server, I

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Speaker 1: can make different channels to help serve the community. Channels

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Speaker 1: can be text based or they can be voice chats.

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Speaker 1: So I might make a channel that's just dedicated to

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Speaker 1: episode suggestions, and if you have a great idea for

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Speaker 1: an episode, you can pop in there and submit it.

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Speaker 1: Or I might make one for a community tech support,

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Speaker 1: where people who know what they're talking about can offer

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Speaker 1: advice to the technologically challenged. Sometimes I'm one of those

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Speaker 1: categories and sometimes I'm the other one. Or maybe there

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Speaker 1: could be a channel just for shooting the breeze to

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Speaker 1: discuss the latest in tech news or anything else. Really,

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Speaker 1: there's no limit on what you can build out. You

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Speaker 1: could get super granular. So for tech Stuff, I might

430
00:24:59,400 --> 00:25:03,080
Speaker 1: make categories for every possible topic, Like I could make

431
00:25:03,119 --> 00:25:07,000
Speaker 1: a sub category just for smartphone discussions, or maybe I

432
00:25:07,040 --> 00:25:09,760
Speaker 1: decided to get even more detailed than that, and I

433
00:25:09,840 --> 00:25:13,679
Speaker 1: make a subcategory for iOS and a different one for Android,

434
00:25:14,160 --> 00:25:17,400
Speaker 1: or heck, maybe I go even more detailed, and I

435
00:25:17,560 --> 00:25:22,040
Speaker 1: start making subcategories for specific models of phones. Now, of course,

436
00:25:22,640 --> 00:25:25,600
Speaker 1: the more in the weeds you get with these subcategories,

437
00:25:25,640 --> 00:25:29,040
Speaker 1: the fewer people are going to join them because they

438
00:25:29,080 --> 00:25:32,280
Speaker 1: won't really pertain to them. So sometimes it pays to

439
00:25:32,280 --> 00:25:35,200
Speaker 1: be a bit bigger picture with your topics to create

440
00:25:35,240 --> 00:25:38,520
Speaker 1: more of a communal space. So you create your server,

441
00:25:39,000 --> 00:25:41,320
Speaker 1: you build out some various channels that you think you're

442
00:25:41,359 --> 00:25:45,000
Speaker 1: gonna need. You can always add more as needed. In fact,

443
00:25:45,080 --> 00:25:47,920
Speaker 1: I would argue that you shouldn't spend too much time

444
00:25:47,960 --> 00:25:51,600
Speaker 1: building out the basic channels, because as your community grows,

445
00:25:51,680 --> 00:25:53,480
Speaker 1: you will learn what it is you need and you

446
00:25:53,520 --> 00:25:57,080
Speaker 1: can build further. At that point, you've got your voice

447
00:25:57,160 --> 00:25:59,359
Speaker 1: chat channels, you've got your text channels. Now you just

448
00:25:59,440 --> 00:26:02,920
Speaker 1: need to invite people to the server or else. It's

449
00:26:02,960 --> 00:26:05,199
Speaker 1: like the tech Stuff server. It's a waste lam that

450
00:26:05,480 --> 00:26:10,280
Speaker 1: only you occupy and you just quietly walk across the

451
00:26:10,320 --> 00:26:14,560
Speaker 1: desert landscape. So you can invite other people on Discord individually,

452
00:26:14,680 --> 00:26:17,359
Speaker 1: sort of like adding friends on a platform like Facebook,

453
00:26:17,840 --> 00:26:20,320
Speaker 1: or you can also post a link to the server

454
00:26:20,840 --> 00:26:24,840
Speaker 1: in some trusted space. It really depends on what approach

455
00:26:24,840 --> 00:26:26,720
Speaker 1: you want to take. If you want a server that's

456
00:26:26,760 --> 00:26:29,560
Speaker 1: just for you and your close friends, you're probably going

457
00:26:29,600 --> 00:26:32,399
Speaker 1: to invite each person individually. If it's meant to be

458
00:26:32,440 --> 00:26:35,880
Speaker 1: a larger communal space for something, maybe then you take

459
00:26:36,240 --> 00:26:39,359
Speaker 1: a bigger step. But that trusted space thing is a

460
00:26:39,400 --> 00:26:41,840
Speaker 1: really important detail. If your goal is to have a

461
00:26:41,920 --> 00:26:46,439
Speaker 1: focused community, publishing a Discord link publicly might not be

462
00:26:46,480 --> 00:26:48,760
Speaker 1: a great idea. It's kind of like how posting a

463
00:26:48,840 --> 00:26:52,639
Speaker 1: zoom meeting link publicly can be a really bad idea.

464
00:26:52,760 --> 00:26:54,720
Speaker 1: Is I think a lot of people learned the hard

465
00:26:54,760 --> 00:26:59,160
Speaker 1: way back in. If you just want the most people

466
00:26:59,160 --> 00:27:02,200
Speaker 1: you can get into your server, then publishing the link

467
00:27:02,240 --> 00:27:04,760
Speaker 1: everywhere might be your go to strategy. But if your

468
00:27:04,800 --> 00:27:08,120
Speaker 1: aim is to actually foster a community, you probably want

469
00:27:08,160 --> 00:27:11,680
Speaker 1: to be a bit more selective with Discord. You can

470
00:27:11,720 --> 00:27:17,080
Speaker 1: also designate roles to specific users, and roles give users privileges. So,

471
00:27:17,160 --> 00:27:20,000
Speaker 1: for example, you might want some of your most trusted

472
00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:22,719
Speaker 1: community members to be moderators who can step in if

473
00:27:22,760 --> 00:27:25,680
Speaker 1: someone is being a problem. Maybe you've got a jerk

474
00:27:25,680 --> 00:27:29,159
Speaker 1: face who's spamming one of the channels, or they're breaking

475
00:27:29,160 --> 00:27:32,720
Speaker 1: other rules like posting not safe for work content in

476
00:27:32,760 --> 00:27:38,119
Speaker 1: a family friendly chat environment. Moderators have various powers that

477
00:27:38,200 --> 00:27:39,919
Speaker 1: you give them. They can have like the power to

478
00:27:40,000 --> 00:27:43,719
Speaker 1: mute for example, UH they mute other other users so

479
00:27:43,720 --> 00:27:47,280
Speaker 1: that their abuse is no longer visible. Or they might

480
00:27:47,320 --> 00:27:50,480
Speaker 1: delete posts, or they might even ban people and help

481
00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:53,919
Speaker 1: you maintain order, so they sort of become your digital bouncers.

482
00:27:54,560 --> 00:27:58,320
Speaker 1: On top of that, people have made tons of different

483
00:27:58,359 --> 00:28:02,960
Speaker 1: automated scripts called bots for Discord. These bots can flesh

484
00:28:03,040 --> 00:28:06,920
Speaker 1: out what you can do with the Discord platform. Installing

485
00:28:06,920 --> 00:28:10,920
Speaker 1: a boat requires a person with administrator level access, someone

486
00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:14,359
Speaker 1: who has that level of authority within a server, to

487
00:28:14,440 --> 00:28:18,600
Speaker 1: grant permissions to the bot. These permissions are really similar

488
00:28:18,640 --> 00:28:20,320
Speaker 1: to the kind of stuff you see when you install

489
00:28:20,400 --> 00:28:23,200
Speaker 1: a new app on your phone or on your desktop.

490
00:28:23,760 --> 00:28:26,240
Speaker 1: You might see a checklist that includes stuff like the

491
00:28:26,280 --> 00:28:28,560
Speaker 1: bot will be able to see your email address and

492
00:28:28,600 --> 00:28:30,800
Speaker 1: your contacts, that kind of thing. So it's a good

493
00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:33,320
Speaker 1: idea to give those lists a good look to make

494
00:28:33,359 --> 00:28:36,760
Speaker 1: sure you're comfortable with it before you install the bot.

495
00:28:37,280 --> 00:28:40,040
Speaker 1: In return, a bot might do one of a billion

496
00:28:40,080 --> 00:28:43,080
Speaker 1: different things for you. It's all dependent on the specific bot.

497
00:28:43,480 --> 00:28:46,200
Speaker 1: There are moderator bots that can monitor chat rooms for

498
00:28:46,280 --> 00:28:49,360
Speaker 1: banned words. For example, uh these bots might be able

499
00:28:49,360 --> 00:28:52,040
Speaker 1: to do everything that a human moderator would be able

500
00:28:52,080 --> 00:28:55,320
Speaker 1: to do. Delete the offending post, mute the troll with

501
00:28:55,400 --> 00:28:59,040
Speaker 1: a warning, maybe even banned the user. Or a bot

502
00:28:59,160 --> 00:29:02,800
Speaker 1: might do something simpler like give account on how many

503
00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:05,640
Speaker 1: people are actually part of the server. I don't need

504
00:29:05,680 --> 00:29:08,400
Speaker 1: that one for tech stuff, because I know that number

505
00:29:08,520 --> 00:29:13,600
Speaker 1: is one heavy sigh. Oh wait, that's a stage direction.

506
00:29:16,920 --> 00:29:22,840
Speaker 1: Starting in Discord supported video chat and screen sharing as well.

507
00:29:23,400 --> 00:29:26,480
Speaker 1: That was added so two years after they launched. The

508
00:29:26,520 --> 00:29:29,480
Speaker 1: features are pretty robust, though the layout could seem a

509
00:29:29,480 --> 00:29:32,520
Speaker 1: little odd to someone who has never really used it before.

510
00:29:32,880 --> 00:29:35,280
Speaker 1: It reminds me a lot of old school chat rooms

511
00:29:35,280 --> 00:29:38,400
Speaker 1: from the early days of the public Internet, like even

512
00:29:38,440 --> 00:29:40,760
Speaker 1: stuff that existed before the web did, when I would

513
00:29:40,840 --> 00:29:43,680
Speaker 1: use tell Neet to log into chat servers and make

514
00:29:43,720 --> 00:29:46,760
Speaker 1: friends that way kind of makes me think of that. Now,

515
00:29:46,760 --> 00:29:49,280
Speaker 1: when we come back, I'll talk about how Discord was

516
00:29:49,320 --> 00:29:52,560
Speaker 1: received upon launch and how it's changed since then, But

517
00:29:52,640 --> 00:30:03,400
Speaker 1: first let's take another quick break. So, the Discord team

518
00:30:03,440 --> 00:30:06,440
Speaker 1: worked on making the chat feature from the Fates Forever

519
00:30:06,560 --> 00:30:09,680
Speaker 1: game into its own distinct product, and it wasn't easy,

520
00:30:09,840 --> 00:30:12,719
Speaker 1: not just because they were repurposing and add on feature

521
00:30:12,840 --> 00:30:16,120
Speaker 1: to become its own standalone thing, but also because the

522
00:30:16,120 --> 00:30:18,600
Speaker 1: company itself, as I mentioned, had to change from being

523
00:30:18,640 --> 00:30:22,240
Speaker 1: a video game developer into something else, and it took

524
00:30:22,280 --> 00:30:25,800
Speaker 1: about six months just for the company to change and

525
00:30:25,960 --> 00:30:28,800
Speaker 1: have its new culture and its new organization in order

526
00:30:28,800 --> 00:30:32,680
Speaker 1: to support its new purpose. According to Citron, quote, when

527
00:30:32,720 --> 00:30:35,120
Speaker 1: we decided to go all in on Discord, we had

528
00:30:35,160 --> 00:30:38,120
Speaker 1: maybe ten users. We would show it to our friends

529
00:30:38,280 --> 00:30:41,080
Speaker 1: and they'd be like, this is cool, and then they'd

530
00:30:41,120 --> 00:30:45,080
Speaker 1: never use it. End quote. As someone who makes podcasts,

531
00:30:45,520 --> 00:30:48,960
Speaker 1: I understand this feeling. I have maybe two friends who

532
00:30:48,960 --> 00:30:52,200
Speaker 1: listened to my shows, but let's be fair, most of

533
00:30:52,200 --> 00:30:56,760
Speaker 1: them get enough of me already. Discord marks May thirteen

534
00:30:58,080 --> 00:31:00,920
Speaker 1: as its launch day, not because that's when the service

535
00:31:01,040 --> 00:31:05,040
Speaker 1: officially launched, but because that's when people that the developers

536
00:31:05,040 --> 00:31:08,960
Speaker 1: didn't know personally started to actually use the service. A

537
00:31:08,960 --> 00:31:12,360
Speaker 1: Reddit user posted about Discord in a subreddit dedicated to

538
00:31:12,400 --> 00:31:15,600
Speaker 1: the game Final Fantasy fourteen, and for those who don't know,

539
00:31:15,880 --> 00:31:18,600
Speaker 1: the Final Fantasy series in general is a line of

540
00:31:18,600 --> 00:31:23,120
Speaker 1: fantasy genre role playing games. Most of those titles are

541
00:31:23,240 --> 00:31:26,200
Speaker 1: single player games, but a couple of them aren't, and

542
00:31:26,280 --> 00:31:28,720
Speaker 1: one of those is Final Fantasy eleven and the others

543
00:31:28,760 --> 00:31:31,280
Speaker 1: Final Fantasy fourteen, and they are both m m O

544
00:31:31,480 --> 00:31:35,760
Speaker 1: RPG style games. The original version of Final Fantasy fourteen

545
00:31:35,880 --> 00:31:40,080
Speaker 1: launched in two but due to some pretty major problems

546
00:31:40,080 --> 00:31:43,920
Speaker 1: with the game, it got shut down. In Square Nicks,

547
00:31:44,000 --> 00:31:47,400
Speaker 1: the company behind the series, launched a new version, essentially

548
00:31:47,440 --> 00:31:50,440
Speaker 1: rebuilt from scratch with a new game engine and everything,

549
00:31:50,840 --> 00:31:54,120
Speaker 1: and that one came out in that was the focus

550
00:31:54,200 --> 00:31:58,720
Speaker 1: of this particular subredit. So in that subredit, someone posted

551
00:31:58,760 --> 00:32:01,600
Speaker 1: a link to a Discord server where gamers could go

552
00:32:01,680 --> 00:32:04,160
Speaker 1: and chat about a new expansion pack for a Final

553
00:32:04,240 --> 00:32:08,800
Speaker 1: Fantasy fourteen. The Discord co founders, eager to foster their

554
00:32:08,840 --> 00:32:12,520
Speaker 1: new product, jumped onto the server as well, and they

555
00:32:12,600 --> 00:32:15,040
Speaker 1: joined the voice chat to talk with players. So now

556
00:32:15,400 --> 00:32:19,480
Speaker 1: the guys who built Discord are in the same voice

557
00:32:19,520 --> 00:32:21,640
Speaker 1: chat as people who are using it in order to

558
00:32:21,640 --> 00:32:25,160
Speaker 1: play Final Fantasy fourteen. This inspired some of the red

559
00:32:25,320 --> 00:32:27,920
Speaker 1: users to go back to Reddit and mentioned that, hey,

560
00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:29,440
Speaker 1: you know, it was kind of cool we were using

561
00:32:29,480 --> 00:32:31,840
Speaker 1: this app and the people who made the app jumped

562
00:32:31,840 --> 00:32:34,600
Speaker 1: in and they were pretty interesting, and that encouraged even

563
00:32:34,600 --> 00:32:37,600
Speaker 1: more people to check out Discord out of curiosity, and

564
00:32:37,640 --> 00:32:40,720
Speaker 1: so what followed was a classic word of mouth campaign,

565
00:32:40,800 --> 00:32:43,560
Speaker 1: and Discord started seeing more people sign up and download

566
00:32:43,600 --> 00:32:46,520
Speaker 1: the app. And it wasn't like a huge avalanche of

567
00:32:46,560 --> 00:32:49,959
Speaker 1: people at first, but it was an encouraging early start,

568
00:32:50,080 --> 00:32:53,800
Speaker 1: and the trend was day over day growth with registered users.

569
00:32:54,640 --> 00:32:57,240
Speaker 1: Those users began to say that being on Discord was

570
00:32:57,320 --> 00:33:00,120
Speaker 1: sort of like being at a house party. Maybe you

571
00:33:00,160 --> 00:33:02,280
Speaker 1: and a few friends grab a space on a couch

572
00:33:02,360 --> 00:33:05,200
Speaker 1: to talk about, you know, a recent sporting event. Then

573
00:33:05,240 --> 00:33:07,520
Speaker 1: after a bit, you excuse yourself and you decide to

574
00:33:07,520 --> 00:33:09,800
Speaker 1: head over to the kitchen, and there you get into

575
00:33:09,800 --> 00:33:12,680
Speaker 1: a conversation with some other people about how the DC

576
00:33:12,760 --> 00:33:16,520
Speaker 1: Cinematic universe really went astray and became a complicated mess.

577
00:33:16,880 --> 00:33:19,680
Speaker 1: And after a bit you then pop outside onto the

578
00:33:19,680 --> 00:33:21,880
Speaker 1: back deck to talk with a different group of people

579
00:33:22,240 --> 00:33:24,880
Speaker 1: about this amazing concert that one of them went to.

580
00:33:25,600 --> 00:33:27,680
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a house party, and a Discord

581
00:33:27,720 --> 00:33:30,720
Speaker 1: server can have those separate spaces where all sorts of

582
00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:33,280
Speaker 1: conversations can happen and you can hop from one to

583
00:33:33,400 --> 00:33:36,560
Speaker 1: another just freely, as long as you have the permissions

584
00:33:36,560 --> 00:33:39,239
Speaker 1: to join those channels. So rather than setting up a

585
00:33:39,240 --> 00:33:44,840
Speaker 1: dedicated call between specific people, you have dedicated spaces. It was,

586
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:47,920
Speaker 1: for lack of a better term, a real game changer.

587
00:33:48,720 --> 00:33:54,040
Speaker 1: People frequently will compare Discord with Slack communications and project

588
00:33:54,120 --> 00:33:57,440
Speaker 1: management tool, and maybe that's one of the reasons I

589
00:33:57,480 --> 00:34:00,960
Speaker 1: found Discord a little bit intimidating when I first popped on.

590
00:34:01,560 --> 00:34:05,600
Speaker 1: It's not that Discord is particularly complicated or difficult to use,

591
00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:09,920
Speaker 1: more than it represents yet another way of communicating with people,

592
00:34:10,239 --> 00:34:14,160
Speaker 1: and I personally have hit fatigue on that. In fact,

593
00:34:14,239 --> 00:34:17,000
Speaker 1: I hit fatigue probably a couple of years ago. At

594
00:34:17,040 --> 00:34:21,800
Speaker 1: one point people were reaching out to me on Twitter, Facebook, Facebook, Messenger,

595
00:34:22,040 --> 00:34:27,680
Speaker 1: Google Hangouts, base Camp, Slack, Discord, email and text, and

596
00:34:27,719 --> 00:34:30,799
Speaker 1: probably a few that I've forgotten about, and y'all, that

597
00:34:30,920 --> 00:34:32,719
Speaker 1: was just too much for me. But that's not the

598
00:34:32,760 --> 00:34:35,960
Speaker 1: fault of any one of those platforms. It's just that,

599
00:34:36,000 --> 00:34:40,040
Speaker 1: you know, I had notification overload. Because of its versatility,

600
00:34:40,560 --> 00:34:43,919
Speaker 1: Discord didn't take long for people to adopt it, and

601
00:34:44,040 --> 00:34:47,319
Speaker 1: for all sorts of community interests. I mentioned the tech

602
00:34:47,360 --> 00:34:51,840
Speaker 1: Stuff server, which clearly isn't going to be dedicated to gaming. Instead,

603
00:34:51,880 --> 00:34:54,319
Speaker 1: it will serve as a communal place for listeners to

604
00:34:54,520 --> 00:34:57,399
Speaker 1: meet each other, talk about tech, maybe get into totally

605
00:34:57,440 --> 00:35:01,960
Speaker 1: unrelated conversations, just you know, people connecting with other people. Now,

606
00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:04,840
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that everything on Discord is all peaceful

607
00:35:04,840 --> 00:35:08,759
Speaker 1: and happy. The platform, like dozens of other online platforms,

608
00:35:08,800 --> 00:35:12,239
Speaker 1: has made the news as different extremist groups have made

609
00:35:12,280 --> 00:35:15,560
Speaker 1: their own Discord servers. Discord has had to deal with

610
00:35:15,600 --> 00:35:19,839
Speaker 1: things like hate groups, white supremacist groups, and other extremists

611
00:35:19,920 --> 00:35:24,080
Speaker 1: who have made spaces on the service. The Discord team

612
00:35:24,080 --> 00:35:28,200
Speaker 1: admitted that they responded too late to some of these groups,

613
00:35:28,480 --> 00:35:32,520
Speaker 1: that we're creating a foothold in Discord. In seventeen, it

614
00:35:32,560 --> 00:35:36,359
Speaker 1: became clear that far right protesters at Charlottesville had used

615
00:35:36,360 --> 00:35:41,360
Speaker 1: Discord to plan the event. Prior to Charlottesville, discords general

616
00:35:41,360 --> 00:35:45,160
Speaker 1: approach was to moderate and block the worst types of content,

617
00:35:45,520 --> 00:35:49,239
Speaker 1: you know, stuff like pornography or racial slurs. But as

618
00:35:49,280 --> 00:35:52,200
Speaker 1: I think most people have learned over the last few years,

619
00:35:52,760 --> 00:35:56,319
Speaker 1: the obvious stuff isn't where the problem starts and ends.

620
00:35:56,880 --> 00:36:00,480
Speaker 1: The obvious stuff is just the most overt manifestation of

621
00:36:00,719 --> 00:36:06,439
Speaker 1: deeper problems. But those underlying issues like racism, homophobia, misogyny,

622
00:36:06,480 --> 00:36:09,120
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing, those could be present and

623
00:36:09,239 --> 00:36:14,040
Speaker 1: exacerbated without it being you know, obvious and on the surface.

624
00:36:14,360 --> 00:36:18,200
Speaker 1: We've seen that across numerous online spaces, and Discord was

625
00:36:18,239 --> 00:36:22,839
Speaker 1: one of them, and to some extent still is. After Charlottesville,

626
00:36:22,920 --> 00:36:26,560
Speaker 1: the Discord team created a new department called Trust and Safety.

627
00:36:26,920 --> 00:36:29,440
Speaker 1: The company now takes a more active role in defining

628
00:36:29,480 --> 00:36:34,040
Speaker 1: the boundaries for online communities using Discord. Within those boundaries,

629
00:36:34,360 --> 00:36:37,399
Speaker 1: server creators can make whatever type of community they like,

630
00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:40,319
Speaker 1: but all of that has to be nested inside the

631
00:36:40,360 --> 00:36:44,000
Speaker 1: more general rules for Discord as a whole. According to

632
00:36:44,040 --> 00:36:47,560
Speaker 1: a website called Protocol, the Trust and Safety team makes

633
00:36:47,640 --> 00:36:51,239
Speaker 1: up about fift of all of Discord's staff, which is

634
00:36:51,280 --> 00:36:53,719
Speaker 1: a significant percentage and it really shows how big the

635
00:36:53,800 --> 00:36:57,680
Speaker 1: challenges are when it comes to creating a safe space online.

636
00:36:58,520 --> 00:37:02,000
Speaker 1: In dis Chord saw a major growth spurt, helped in

637
00:37:02,080 --> 00:37:04,359
Speaker 1: large part by the fact that people were stuck at

638
00:37:04,400 --> 00:37:08,480
Speaker 1: home during the COVID pandemic. From February to July of

639
00:37:08,520 --> 00:37:11,479
Speaker 1: that year. The site's user numbers grew by nearly fift

640
00:37:12,360 --> 00:37:16,160
Speaker 1: Schools were using it, some businesses were using it. Discord

641
00:37:16,200 --> 00:37:19,440
Speaker 1: itself was looking different, with the team moving further away

642
00:37:19,480 --> 00:37:22,640
Speaker 1: from the gaming culture that had spawned it. But one

643
00:37:22,680 --> 00:37:25,840
Speaker 1: thing I haven't really mentioned in this episode is revenue.

644
00:37:26,239 --> 00:37:29,239
Speaker 1: If Discord is a business, how does it make money.

645
00:37:29,360 --> 00:37:31,440
Speaker 1: The co founders have already said that one thing they

646
00:37:31,440 --> 00:37:34,360
Speaker 1: don't want to do is sell user data or to

647
00:37:34,520 --> 00:37:38,200
Speaker 1: show ads to users. So the really big way the

648
00:37:38,239 --> 00:37:42,360
Speaker 1: most online networking platforms rely upon to make money is

649
00:37:42,400 --> 00:37:46,520
Speaker 1: off the table. So what is Discord doing instead? Well,

650
00:37:46,640 --> 00:37:50,360
Speaker 1: right now, there are two main ways Discord makes money.

651
00:37:50,840 --> 00:37:52,680
Speaker 1: One of them is the big one, and the other

652
00:37:52,719 --> 00:37:55,440
Speaker 1: one is the small one. And the big one is

653
00:37:55,480 --> 00:37:59,800
Speaker 1: through investments. Discord has received a lot of investments a

654
00:38:01,239 --> 00:38:05,120
Speaker 1: million dollars or so. As I record this, analysts value

655
00:38:05,160 --> 00:38:08,719
Speaker 1: the company at about three and a half billion dollars,

656
00:38:08,760 --> 00:38:13,200
Speaker 1: But that valuation is based on discords utility and popularity,

657
00:38:13,600 --> 00:38:16,280
Speaker 1: not on how much money it actually brings in. Because

658
00:38:16,320 --> 00:38:19,760
Speaker 1: the second way, a much more modest means of revenue,

659
00:38:20,200 --> 00:38:23,879
Speaker 1: is through a premium service called Nitro. Nitro is kind

660
00:38:23,920 --> 00:38:26,600
Speaker 1: of like a V I P version of Discord, with

661
00:38:26,680 --> 00:38:30,280
Speaker 1: some perks that the typical user doesn't have. They include

662
00:38:30,280 --> 00:38:34,680
Speaker 1: the ability to change your user name, to access special emojis,

663
00:38:35,120 --> 00:38:39,480
Speaker 1: and have better quality voice and video chat within the system.

664
00:38:39,520 --> 00:38:43,080
Speaker 1: The subscription costs ten dollars per month. Now, I am

665
00:38:43,120 --> 00:38:47,919
Speaker 1: not sure what percentage of active Discord users are Nitro subscribers,

666
00:38:48,480 --> 00:38:52,120
Speaker 1: but my guess is that it's a fairly low percentage.

667
00:38:52,400 --> 00:38:54,120
Speaker 1: I don't know that for a fact, it's just a

668
00:38:54,160 --> 00:38:57,799
Speaker 1: guess now. In the past, Discord has also tried to

669
00:38:57,800 --> 00:39:02,200
Speaker 1: get into the game's storefront business, something that's dominated by Valves,

670
00:39:02,320 --> 00:39:06,600
Speaker 1: Steam storefront and the Epic Games storefront. This turned out

671
00:39:06,640 --> 00:39:09,400
Speaker 1: to be a bust for Discord, and I imagine there

672
00:39:09,400 --> 00:39:11,439
Speaker 1: are a couple of reasons why I didn't pan out.

673
00:39:12,320 --> 00:39:16,080
Speaker 1: For one thing, Steam is a monolithic force in digital

674
00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:19,640
Speaker 1: game delivery. It already has a really big user base,

675
00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:23,200
Speaker 1: and just like real brick and mortar stores, customers tend

676
00:39:23,239 --> 00:39:26,319
Speaker 1: to stick with whatever store they become used to. They've

677
00:39:26,320 --> 00:39:30,360
Speaker 1: got a lot of stuff in that store already. And Secondly,

678
00:39:30,800 --> 00:39:34,960
Speaker 1: discords user base wasn't just gamers. In fact, a lot

679
00:39:35,000 --> 00:39:37,960
Speaker 1: of folks who never used Discord for gaming at all.

680
00:39:38,440 --> 00:39:41,520
Speaker 1: We're relying on the app, so they really didn't have

681
00:39:41,600 --> 00:39:44,880
Speaker 1: any interest in purchasing games through Discord. That's not why

682
00:39:44,920 --> 00:39:48,200
Speaker 1: they used the service for After trying to market games

683
00:39:48,239 --> 00:39:51,520
Speaker 1: for a few months, Discord pulled the plug on the experiment.

684
00:39:51,640 --> 00:39:54,600
Speaker 1: It just it wasn't making Discord or their third party

685
00:39:54,680 --> 00:39:58,399
Speaker 1: partners that were providing the games any real money, So

686
00:39:58,600 --> 00:40:00,480
Speaker 1: it was more of a drain on reest Is than

687
00:40:00,480 --> 00:40:04,600
Speaker 1: anything else. In more recent news, Discord became part of

688
00:40:04,640 --> 00:40:08,640
Speaker 1: the brew haha surrounding the Wall Street Mets subreddit. Now,

689
00:40:08,680 --> 00:40:11,840
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with that story, here's the shortest

690
00:40:11,920 --> 00:40:15,920
Speaker 1: version I can manage. The subreddit is taking aim at

691
00:40:15,960 --> 00:40:19,359
Speaker 1: hedge funds that specialize in something called the short cell. Now,

692
00:40:19,400 --> 00:40:23,040
Speaker 1: this is when an investor borrows stock from a broker,

693
00:40:23,320 --> 00:40:27,120
Speaker 1: So the investor doesn't own these stocks, but then the

694
00:40:27,160 --> 00:40:31,000
Speaker 1: investor sells these borrowed stocks at whatever the market prices

695
00:40:31,400 --> 00:40:34,280
Speaker 1: in the hopes that the price is going to soon drop.

696
00:40:34,719 --> 00:40:37,200
Speaker 1: And if the price does drop, that's great news because

697
00:40:37,239 --> 00:40:41,000
Speaker 1: then the investor buys back the borrowed shares and they

698
00:40:41,000 --> 00:40:43,480
Speaker 1: are buying it back for less than what they sold

699
00:40:43,520 --> 00:40:46,520
Speaker 1: them for, So they returned the borrowed shares to the

700
00:40:46,560 --> 00:40:49,799
Speaker 1: broker and they pocket the difference. So if you have

701
00:40:50,000 --> 00:40:53,880
Speaker 1: borrowed to share and you sell it for twenty dollars,

702
00:40:53,920 --> 00:40:56,200
Speaker 1: and then you buy it back at ten dollars and

703
00:40:56,239 --> 00:40:58,120
Speaker 1: you return the borrowed share, you get to keep that

704
00:40:58,160 --> 00:41:00,560
Speaker 1: extra ten bucks. It's a way to money on a

705
00:41:00,600 --> 00:41:03,560
Speaker 1: stock when the stock price drops. But there are a

706
00:41:03,560 --> 00:41:08,560
Speaker 1: lot of different market forces, some of which are malicious,

707
00:41:08,600 --> 00:41:12,319
Speaker 1: that can lead to stock prices dropping. That's kind of

708
00:41:12,360 --> 00:41:15,839
Speaker 1: what the Wall Street Bets folks were objecting to. So

709
00:41:16,280 --> 00:41:19,800
Speaker 1: here's the catch with this approach. If the stock price

710
00:41:19,880 --> 00:41:23,280
Speaker 1: goes up instead of down, now you have to spend

711
00:41:23,360 --> 00:41:26,320
Speaker 1: more money to buy back the borrowed stock to return

712
00:41:26,360 --> 00:41:29,640
Speaker 1: it because you are obligated to return the shares that

713
00:41:29,719 --> 00:41:33,480
Speaker 1: you borrowed. So if you sold shares for twenty dollars

714
00:41:33,840 --> 00:41:36,960
Speaker 1: but the price goes up to twenty five dollars, you

715
00:41:37,000 --> 00:41:39,400
Speaker 1: have to spend an extra five bucks of your own

716
00:41:39,440 --> 00:41:41,880
Speaker 1: money to buy back the share you borrowed so that

717
00:41:41,960 --> 00:41:45,239
Speaker 1: you can return it to the broker. Well, the Wall

718
00:41:45,280 --> 00:41:48,080
Speaker 1: Street Bets sub breddit took aim at those big hedge

719
00:41:48,080 --> 00:41:51,040
Speaker 1: funds that specialize in short selling, and the stock that

720
00:41:51,080 --> 00:41:53,680
Speaker 1: got the most focused was for game Stop, the video

721
00:41:53,719 --> 00:41:57,400
Speaker 1: game retail company just coincidentally happens to go back to

722
00:41:57,480 --> 00:42:01,200
Speaker 1: video games. The Wall Street Bets for Oakes encouraged people

723
00:42:01,239 --> 00:42:04,000
Speaker 1: to buy up shares of game Stop now buying up

724
00:42:04,040 --> 00:42:07,000
Speaker 1: shares of a company tends to drive the stock price

725
00:42:07,040 --> 00:42:10,600
Speaker 1: for that company up. It shows an increased demand. So

726
00:42:10,840 --> 00:42:13,960
Speaker 1: you have these companies that are short selling, and people

727
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:16,960
Speaker 1: started buying these shares and the price started going up,

728
00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:20,280
Speaker 1: not down. That puts the squeeze on groups that are

729
00:42:20,320 --> 00:42:23,399
Speaker 1: trying to short sell the stock. So some of those

730
00:42:23,440 --> 00:42:26,719
Speaker 1: folks will just cut their losses and they'll get out. Uh.

731
00:42:27,120 --> 00:42:29,319
Speaker 1: But no one really likes to lose money, right, So

732
00:42:29,560 --> 00:42:31,520
Speaker 1: a lot of people and a lot of these hedge

733
00:42:31,560 --> 00:42:35,720
Speaker 1: funds would start to try and short sell even more shares.

734
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:38,680
Speaker 1: So they're borrowing even more shares and selling them at

735
00:42:38,680 --> 00:42:42,560
Speaker 1: the market price, the idea being that, well, we already

736
00:42:42,560 --> 00:42:45,440
Speaker 1: expected the price to go down. The price went up.

737
00:42:46,120 --> 00:42:48,560
Speaker 1: Now I'm sure the price is going to come down,

738
00:42:48,600 --> 00:42:50,319
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna do it some more, and I'm gonna

739
00:42:50,400 --> 00:42:53,399
Speaker 1: chase after that lost money. Kind of like if you're

740
00:42:53,400 --> 00:42:57,120
Speaker 1: in Vegas and you're playing blackjack and you lose some money,

741
00:42:57,280 --> 00:42:59,520
Speaker 1: so the next time you bet even more because you

742
00:42:59,520 --> 00:43:01,839
Speaker 1: want to win back the money you lost plus make

743
00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:06,919
Speaker 1: some and you're just getting into a sunk cost fallacy there.

744
00:43:07,480 --> 00:43:11,319
Speaker 1: But since there were more active buyers because of the

745
00:43:11,320 --> 00:43:14,440
Speaker 1: Wall Street bets folks, this price just kept going up

746
00:43:14,760 --> 00:43:17,200
Speaker 1: and the squeeze was getting worse. In fact, if you

747
00:43:17,239 --> 00:43:20,480
Speaker 1: go to the sub credit you might see people saying, hey,

748
00:43:20,520 --> 00:43:23,120
Speaker 1: the squeeze hasn't even happened yet. What we're seeing is

749
00:43:23,560 --> 00:43:27,160
Speaker 1: the early activity before the squeeze. Now, in reaction to

750
00:43:27,200 --> 00:43:30,080
Speaker 1: all this, we saw several online platforms shut down to

751
00:43:30,120 --> 00:43:32,280
Speaker 1: try and curb the behavior of the Wall Street Met's

752
00:43:32,360 --> 00:43:36,320
Speaker 1: crowd um And this could be an entire episode, probably

753
00:43:36,320 --> 00:43:38,600
Speaker 1: will be an entire episode in the future, but that

754
00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:42,319
Speaker 1: included a discord server dedicated to the group. Now this

755
00:43:42,360 --> 00:43:44,640
Speaker 1: story is still playing out as a record this and

756
00:43:44,640 --> 00:43:46,600
Speaker 1: there's a lot to be said on all sides of it,

757
00:43:46,960 --> 00:43:49,919
Speaker 1: including pointing out the hypocrisy of how wealthy hedge funds

758
00:43:49,960 --> 00:43:52,120
Speaker 1: have essentially played the same sort of games with the

759
00:43:52,120 --> 00:43:55,319
Speaker 1: stock market for decades, and yet when it comes to

760
00:43:55,320 --> 00:43:58,239
Speaker 1: groups of an individual investors who are organizing to do

761
00:43:58,280 --> 00:44:02,359
Speaker 1: it online somehow, then it wrong. The whole thing is complicated,

762
00:44:02,480 --> 00:44:04,640
Speaker 1: and like I said, I'll try and tackle an episode

763
00:44:04,640 --> 00:44:06,880
Speaker 1: to talk more about in the future. It's a little

764
00:44:06,880 --> 00:44:09,720
Speaker 1: tricky because really it's a subject matter that's better suited

765
00:44:09,719 --> 00:44:14,240
Speaker 1: to a money oriented podcast. Anyway, Discord got some flak

766
00:44:14,320 --> 00:44:17,239
Speaker 1: for banning the server, and they eventually reverse course on

767
00:44:17,280 --> 00:44:20,800
Speaker 1: the decision. But it turns out that, at least according

768
00:44:20,840 --> 00:44:24,000
Speaker 1: to Discord, this band was due to the server hosting

769
00:44:24,080 --> 00:44:29,280
Speaker 1: quote hateful and discriminatory content end quote, which I'm guessing

770
00:44:29,320 --> 00:44:33,240
Speaker 1: revolved around the general philosophy of eat the Rich. Also,

771
00:44:33,960 --> 00:44:37,239
Speaker 1: the subreddit Wall Street Bets is filled with a lot

772
00:44:37,280 --> 00:44:43,560
Speaker 1: of loaded language, which I'm guessing also triggers Discords moderation policies,

773
00:44:44,160 --> 00:44:48,160
Speaker 1: essentially saying, hey, guys, don't use these types of words.

774
00:44:48,680 --> 00:44:53,640
Speaker 1: It's harmful and it's not funny. Um where it. Meanwhile,

775
00:44:53,640 --> 00:44:56,799
Speaker 1: it's going like crazy on the subreddit. So the server

776
00:44:56,920 --> 00:45:00,080
Speaker 1: is actually back. Now the Wall Street Bets discords er

777
00:45:00,320 --> 00:45:03,400
Speaker 1: has returned, Discord is taking a more active role helping

778
00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:07,520
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Bets team moderate content on that server

779
00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:10,640
Speaker 1: to make sure it aligns with Discords policies, and as

780
00:45:10,719 --> 00:45:13,880
Speaker 1: long as it does, then presumably it will still have

781
00:45:13,960 --> 00:45:17,520
Speaker 1: a home over on Discord. I am sure that Discord

782
00:45:17,600 --> 00:45:20,520
Speaker 1: is going to continue to play a big part in

783
00:45:20,600 --> 00:45:23,520
Speaker 1: a lot of people's lives moving forward. I know that

784
00:45:23,600 --> 00:45:27,680
Speaker 1: a lot of the gaming channels I follow Discord is

785
00:45:27,680 --> 00:45:30,160
Speaker 1: playing a huge role because it tends to be the

786
00:45:30,200 --> 00:45:34,760
Speaker 1: platform that creators are using in order to have conversations

787
00:45:34,880 --> 00:45:38,000
Speaker 1: in the background that aren't going out over a stream,

788
00:45:38,440 --> 00:45:42,040
Speaker 1: so that people can coordinate, get everything working together, work

789
00:45:42,080 --> 00:45:45,359
Speaker 1: out a technical issues before they play together. So it's

790
00:45:45,400 --> 00:45:48,160
Speaker 1: it's become a really useful tool for a lot of folks,

791
00:45:48,400 --> 00:45:51,319
Speaker 1: and um one that I expect we'll see grow. And

792
00:45:51,360 --> 00:45:54,600
Speaker 1: like I said, once that tech Stuff server is, you know,

793
00:45:55,760 --> 00:45:58,280
Speaker 1: ready to at least be tested out, I'll let everybody

794
00:45:58,320 --> 00:46:01,120
Speaker 1: know so people can join if they like. Chances are

795
00:46:01,120 --> 00:46:03,440
Speaker 1: in the early days it will be pretty quiet, but

796
00:46:03,719 --> 00:46:07,640
Speaker 1: I hope to actually foster a community that we're you know,

797
00:46:07,760 --> 00:46:10,160
Speaker 1: my listeners can talk with one another. We really haven't

798
00:46:10,200 --> 00:46:12,640
Speaker 1: had that in the past, and I think that that's

799
00:46:12,640 --> 00:46:14,600
Speaker 1: a shame because I know that I've got a lot

800
00:46:14,600 --> 00:46:19,240
Speaker 1: of super smart listeners who are experts in different fields,

801
00:46:19,560 --> 00:46:21,839
Speaker 1: some of which overlap mind so in which I can't

802
00:46:21,840 --> 00:46:25,240
Speaker 1: even begin to understand, and it would be really interesting

803
00:46:25,280 --> 00:46:27,839
Speaker 1: to be able to have a place where that kind

804
00:46:27,880 --> 00:46:31,239
Speaker 1: of conversation can happen. So that's my hope. I'll let

805
00:46:31,280 --> 00:46:33,240
Speaker 1: you guys know when that thing is up and running

806
00:46:33,239 --> 00:46:35,600
Speaker 1: and ready for folks to join and tear it to

807
00:46:35,680 --> 00:46:37,480
Speaker 1: shreds because I know I'm not going to do a

808
00:46:37,480 --> 00:46:39,799
Speaker 1: great job out of the gate, but that's okay. It'll

809
00:46:39,840 --> 00:46:42,480
Speaker 1: be a work in progress in the meantime. If you

810
00:46:42,600 --> 00:46:45,560
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future topics I should cover on

811
00:46:45,640 --> 00:46:47,759
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, the best way to reach out to me

812
00:46:47,840 --> 00:46:50,600
Speaker 1: really right now is on Twitter. To handle for the

813
00:46:50,600 --> 00:46:54,279
Speaker 1: show is text stuff H s W and I'll talk

814
00:46:54,320 --> 00:47:02,719
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I

815
00:47:02,840 --> 00:47:06,360
Speaker 1: Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,

816
00:47:06,680 --> 00:47:09,840
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

817
00:47:09,920 --> 00:47:11,440
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.