@652,534
Sort of. Some sites actively choose not to compete, which is nice, but then that puts them at a disadvantage with the majority of the dopamine-addicts, so they have small userbases.
Old web economy was driven by users or webmasters creating unique content which wasn't found anywhere else, and dedicated communities for specialized interests.
The internet became centralized because social media came along and invented the idea of "mandatory membership" where not having an account is equated with not existing. Then google took it a step further by making an api for logging in to
other websites with your gmail account. Of course behind the scenes these sites were gathering all sorts of usage data and using it to build targeted-content algorithms to further cement their mandatory status, along with specialized advertisements which they sold on to 3rd parties.
Discord is basically a social media re-imagining of AIM and IRC (and possibly Skype? idk if it has audio chat) but with the anonymity of IRC and the limited scope of AIM removed. Because those things inhibit the ability of the platform to exploit its traffic for financial gains.
The modern web economy seems to consist of 3 pillars:
1: Clicks (to collect traffic data that can be alanyzed)
2: Re-shares (to spread awareness of the site and bring in more clicks as well as figuring out what sort of content gets more clicks so more of that content can be generated)
3: Revenue (turning click and share data into ad buys)[/ol]