The only thing more concerning than a public company buying the product of a company you like, is the company itself going public. Discord seems to be doing the slow march towards an IPO, and even though the company hasn’t yet done it, they are already falling prey to all of the trappings this course of action inevitably brings.
I understand it. Hell, not only do I understand it, I “get” it, here we are however many years since the beginning of the computer revolution, and the idea of success remains more or less the same. You start something from nothing in your garage, very much the modern equivalent of the pioneers of the industrial age and the shed from which their inventions sprung from. These inventions are presented to investors who love them and buy a slice. You use the money to grow and grow in this place of infinite potential and then, finally, you cash out. You take your lucrative stocks and options or just whatever enormous performance bonus you can get after the stock price reaches whatever metric is supposed to and then retire quietly to do whatever you want.
And after that who cares what happens to your creation? Phil Gyford’s Our Incredible Journey is a living recollection of that exact pattern and a worthy read (with its supplementary material), but the ones that are skipped there by virtue of the site’s concept itself is where the company, acquired or otherwise, continues down the path of the quest for more money until it more resembles a zombie carrying the original’s suit than anything else.
I saw it happen with Skype, I saw it happened with MSN Messenger, though the Microsoft origin of that one meant its fate was more or less sealed from inception. And now I’m really worried about Discord. Leaving aside the fact that Discord Mods are by now such an old joke that they would be shunned by the stereotypical Discord Mod or that every user should at some point be slightly concerned that they are at the mercy of Discord Inc’s goodwill, their monetization campaigns seem more and more intrusive the more and more inevitable their IPO becomes. Anyone who claims that an IPO won’t affect the way a company does things is lying, mad, or wants you to invest so that their stock doesn’t crater the second it goes public. To see how it usually works out, ask people who use Trello for anything more advanced than a glorified personal to-do list how they like it as Atlassian keeps trying to squeeze it for more cash.
But, as with all the insipid journeys, there’s precious little that we, the product, can do to change it. Keep an eye on the privacy policy, of course; and be constantly aware of anything that used to be available to you suddenly getting stuck behind the ever-encroaching paywall. And, of course, be on the lookout for the next alternative. Hopefully more decentralized (but likely not), hopefully open-source (but likely not), and then start the slow, tedious slog of trying to move those who you care about onto it.
Hopefully getting all of them in and keeping them there for a while before someone, somewhere, realizes they may be sitting on their chance to retire in their 30s
