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Discord’s secret weapon against open source competitors (it’s PluralKit) (medium.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Why are FOSS platforms like Matrix having such a hard time getting users to migrate from Discord? Because of PluralKit.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Very interesting indeed.

I guess a usecase like this easily slips past most developers due to lack of exposure :?

Is the need to respond as a separate entity so frequent that separate accounts for each entity would not be enough or is the user switching process too much friction?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I once knew a system with 400 members. That's not common, but it is a thing. Systems of around 10 people are very common. Discord only allows up to 5 accounts. And only up to 1 account on mobile. And besides, having to maintain separate email accounts, even for a small system, is a burden. What about walk-ins and dormancies? What about new members who are still figuring themselves out and might want a change of name later? Pluralkit makes it all simple.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Matrix allows up to ∞ accounts, changing the display name, and user icon at any time, plus true E2E encryption (if enabled). Also allows only sending to cryptographically verified accounts, to curb impostors.

There is a list of several clients with multi-account support if you filter by "Featuresv Multi-account": https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/

It's a pity the reference client doesn't have the support, and some of are in beta, but still seems like PluralKit is kind of a clumsy workaround for an artificial limitation imposed by Discord's monetization goals.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

How long would you say it takes to change your username and pfp on Matrix if you know exactly what you're doing and have done it plenty of times before? 20 seconds? Pluralkit can do a proxy in 2 seconds. 20 seconds is not an acceptable delay to sending a chat message to most people, but 2 seconds is.

And what if two members of a system are in a conversation, possibly with a third person? Is it going to retroactively change the username and pfp on the old messages? Cause that would turn the conversation to complete nonsense. Imagine I'm having a discussion with some friends, two of whom are in a system, I step away to go to the toilet, and when I come back 5 minutes later I can't tell who was talking in the last 5 minutes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Changing from one account to another takes... let's see: click on the icon, pick an account, done. 2 seconds? yeah, something like that. You had to setup the accounts beforehand, but I'm guessing the same thing happens with PluralKit, doesn't it?

Is it going to retroactively change the username and pfp on the old messages?

Each account/user has their own setup, so... yes? no? Not sure what you mean.

Imagine I'm having a discussion with some friends, two of whom are in a system, I step away to go to the toilet, and when I come back 5 minutes later I can't tell who was talking in the last 5 minutes.

Not sure I follow. How does PluralKit do it? Does it create a separate user for every message?

PS: for reference, FluffyChat even has an alt account grouping feature: