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What makes discord and reddit similar is that there is a discussion of enthusiasts available on any topic you are interested in. If I want to learn Ableton or discuss the Byzantine empire, I know I can find that on reddit. It just comes with BLM and LGBT propaganda and ban-happy leftist mods.
Doesn’t discord share that culture? If I pick a general hobby discord I expect to find an overrepresentation of trans moderators, pride flags, and progressive mantras. Just as I would at reddit. The Discord devs either cater to this audience or share the culture.
My experience with discord is limited and potentially outdated, but I have the impression of overlap between the Discord user identity and the average redditor. The redditor is older, but they're both likely to be socially progressive, with the younger Discord user more likely to identify as a radical.
My personal suspicion/conspiracy is that there's serious coordination on various Discords to astroturf reddit. Reddit is the biggest left of center messaging platform online. This suspicion is reinforced some stories like this one, where discord is used to manipulate messaging on reddit. Not by the DNC, Qatar, or Russia psyops, at least not directly, but by passionate believers in The Cause who happen to be prolific contributors on reddit. I am sure there's plenty of Discords that aren't of the mainstream discord culture, but the same can be said of certain subreddits.
It also occurs to me that chatting, the main discussion method on a Discord, is a different type than the more complete posting of a forum.
If that happens, it's because those hobbies are dominated in real life by those kind of politics too. Like if I wanted to get into guns, unless I make a specific effort to find liberal gun owners, any hobby group I join would more likely than not be catered to right-wingers.
The format of voice conversations vs format text posts is very different, but I think that's probably for the best. My local in-person rational group is dominated by progressive ideologies and that makes me hesitate to use particular phrasings. But by the same token, thanks to the social capital I have in the group, if I stick to the right frames I find that people actually give me fairly significant latitude on content because that's the social norm and I end up doing the same in return. I suspect discord will be the same way: you need a greater investment in social capital and respect for the particular social conventions of a given server, but in turn can have much greater relative disagreements than your average text forum without devolving into a flamewar.
Chatting on Discord is left coded in a way chatting never was in, say, the heyday of IRC or the short era of relevance for AOL chatrooms. Discord is/was primarily a platform for gamers. Gaming being left-coded checks out in a Gamergate way, but not so generally. If you're looking for left of center gun groups Discord is where you will find them. It's a weaker generality than reddit or Bluesky, but still is one.
Rats are known for their commitment to understanding over vitriol, even if imperfectly or to a fault. It's good your local rationalist group hasn't cast you out despite approaching disagreement politely with a demonstration of shared values, but that's what I'd expect.
Text chats, in my experience, are not less prone to flamewars. Especially for those with high percentage of combative people. There is maybe a higher ceiling for trust in chatrooms than a forum, but also greater familiarity-- that cuts both ways. Flamewars on forums commonly devolve from posting to chatting-like text. Voice chats and in-person communication provide additional meaning and off ramps for those so inclined
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Discord is more fragmented and sioled, so the power of the tranny powermods is greatly diminished. Unlike Reddit where a hobby may only have one or two reddits, it will likely have quite a few discords with different people in them. So if you look (of course this is the hard part but also possibly a blessing) then there are certainly some where they're at least not explicitly political for the enemy.
Of course the Discord owners will always put their fingers on the scale, but compared to Reddit the sheer amount of volume in messages makes it hard to automod. And scanning voice chat is even harder. On Reddit we know they have in many cases stolen subs and given them to aligned tranny powermods. But on Discord there's little point in stealing a discord, as most people would probably just leave. So the enemy usually just uses the banhammer against and political content they don't like.
BTW telegram is definitely the underdog for hobby chats, but the owners haven't really shown to take a side in the culture war.
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