One runs on machines we pay for (= costs us money). Another runs on end users&#x27; machines (= costs them money).

I find it funny that backend devs will do all this infrastructure work to support billions of real time messaging and then frontend devs stop all over it by making the app take 500MB of RAM and hundreds of ms to take basic actions.

I think the base UI of Discord is fine, but having used it for almost a decade at this point, the UI has gotten worse. Besides the ads you&#x27;ve mentioned, they&#x27;ve added a lot more clutter (random icons, rarely used features, hidden menus, etc.). When I look at screenshots from 2019, I weep.

Animated server logos, colorful &#x2F;gradient and tonally-varied usernames &amp; avatars, the super emoji or whatever they&#x27;re called, etc all feel like they&#x27;re pushing more towards Twitch chat than anything else. Which as another commenter remarked, is essentially aligned with their original and biggest target demographic.

In what ways does it look that way, if you recall?I hear this semi-often, but I don&#x27;t really get it. The base UI of Discord is pretty normal &#x2F; looks just like every other chat app out there. Is it the ads for nitro and stuff like that were the issue?

Why would they make their UI less familiar to their target audience?

Couldn&#x27;t they focus some of their creativity on making the UI look less like the inside of a middle schooler&#x27;s brain?

Sorry, nobody cares.A more pertaining article:Discord: a case study in shooting yourself in the foot by having ties to Peter Thiel&#x27;s Palantir [1].[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pcgamer.com&#x2F;software&#x2F;platforms&#x2F;oh-good-discords-age-verification-rollout-has-ties-to-palantir-co-founder-and-panopticon-architect-peter-thiel&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pcgamer.com&#x2F;software&#x2F;platforms&#x2F;oh-good-discords-...</a>

Discord: A case study in performance optimization