this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024
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Discord defends itself against efforts to stop piracy on its platform by saying no to more invasive data collection. Even though Discord isn’t exactly known for privacy, this is a great move for its users. What are your thoughts?

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[–] ItsComplicated 215 points 2 months ago (2 children)

If they did not collect any information, they would not have any information to give when they are served a subpoena.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 months ago (2 children)

How else would they store and sync the information?

[–] [email protected] 61 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Encrypt it end to end with them not having the keys

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago (6 children)

They do have to retrieve old messages when new users join though. I’m sure the government can force them to lett them in a server and unlock the roles

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (11 children)

Why?

Why is channel history needed for new users?

Back in the IRC days you joined a channel that was just empty, if you wanted the history you had to run an IRC client continously, I remember running screen irssi on a separate computer and sshing into the server, reconnecting the screen with irssi in it.

If you want the history automatically, you can't expect privacy.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago

90% of the reason I even have discord is because people much smarter than me use it to share information. Nobody uses other areas suited for sharing information anymore. It's either Reddit or discord.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Because a lot of people go to discord servers to access existing information?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

That is a good point, I have never done that, and to me it is just a chat system....

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Far more than should tbh. Too many little game mods will have a Discord for questions and reporting issues rather than using their GitHub or a forum.

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

Oh I agree, it's very much a "forcing a round peg into a square hole" situation, but I doubt discord will make any changes to push back against it

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

At the same time, expecting privacy in a room where a bunch of strangers hang out is already unreasonable. If everyone already in the channel can log the chats, for example by idling in the channel, then adding E2E on top of that is probably a false sense of security.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I remember running screen irssi on a separate computer and sshing into the server, reconnecting the screen with irssi in it.

I still do that today.

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[–] sugar_in_your_tea 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Sync from another online user. If each message is signed by the author, there's a built-in protection against tampering.

It's really not hard, they just have to care enough to build it that way.

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[–] [email protected] 92 points 2 months ago (7 children)

Discord sucks and nobody should use it.

[–] [email protected] 81 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The only thing that really sucks about it is that knowledge that was openly searchable is now locked away behind logins.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 months ago (2 children)

no, you're also effectively locked out of any participation unless you provide an email address and phone number, which they won't even tell you about in advance but use dark patterns and gaslighting that they noticed "suspicious activity" to step by step first ask you for an email and then once that is validated they prompt you for a phone number. the only thing they don't do yet is ask for ID.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Validation level is set by server owners, you are unlikely to need to verify a phone number except in the biggest (and therefore spammiest) servers

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

it doesn't seem to be server specific because once prompted there is no way to use the account again, even if you decided to just not use a server that may have these settings set.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Odd, I've never had that experience. Maybe you're using a VPN or something that makes your IP look more suspicious.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

I keep trying to take out my phone number because I don't want strangers seeing that shit, but... then "suspicious activity" gets detyected seconds later...

[–] [email protected] 63 points 2 months ago

While this is true, Discord has a massive user base, so it’s somewhat a privacy win for the common person

[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 months ago (3 children)

its still the old chicken&egg problem: if you dont have communities you dont have users, and if you dont have users you dont have communities

thats why everyone sticks to discord

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Well, you are on Lemmy aren't you

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

We are all Estebiu alts.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Well yeah, cuz there are quite a lot of communities and users already

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

Social inertia and an extra helping of users hate having to learn things.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Discord is a fantastic IRC replacement.
The issue is that people try to use it to replace forums, wikis, personal websites, issue trackers, git, and the kitchen sink, and it does none of these.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea 5 points 2 months ago

Exactly. It's like IRC w/ audio (and probably video now?) chat, and you can post gifs and whatnot. It should be used for discussion, and it's perfectly okay for that. I would prefer something a bit more privacy focused (again, IRC is decent here, just needs some cryptography), but it's okay.

But yeah, not a fan of it being a resource for anything beyond meeting like-minded people to have discussions with.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (11 children)

What's a good alternative that allows easy instant message, voice and video calls, and makes it easy to group my friends by game?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I have been using revolt, going to setup my own server once I get better lol, last 3 times have been a cluster fuck to get it working. I got mattermost working the first try but it's a slack replacement not discord.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (6 children)

There is no alternative that can do the same

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Life has gotten better since I dropped it. Moved a dozen or so people over to Signal and have been running with that ever since.

I do miss the ability to easily stream games, though.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 months ago

The attorney called Nexon’s demands “improper and overly burdensome”

They will give you up in a heartbeat as long as they don't have to do the extra work of finding you.

Discord isn't protecting anyone's privacy just their bottom dollar

Discord is committed to fulfilling its obligations under the law

[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Discord still sells your information for advertising so it's meaningless posturing.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I'm gonna get flak for this but no, Discord does not sell any user data, no matter how many times people keep repeating it. Quoting a legendary redditor here:

Discord's privacy policy repeatedly states that they do not sell your personal information:

We don’t sell your personal information. Our business is based on subscriptions and paid products, not from selling your personal information to third parties.

We make money from paid subscriptions and the sale of digital (and sometimes physical) goods, not from selling your personal information to third parties.

We do not sell the personal data of our users or share personal data for targeted advertising purposes.

‍No sale or “share” of personal information: The CCPA sets forth certain obligations for businesses that sell or “share” personal information. We do not sell or share the personal information of our users as defined in the CCPA.

This is a legal document that they will get in trouble for if they were lying. They've already been fined hundreds of thousands of euros for GDPR violations but that curiously did not include a fine for "took people's personal information and then sold them without consent whilst explicitly saying they didn't do that"

Discord further has no third party advertisements which they can use to "sell" your data by allowing those advertisements to target you.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Not meaningless but certainly undercuts the grandstanding.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yes, the authorities will have to pay for data like everyone else.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago

Of course it's Nexon.

[–] Mandy 13 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I had a server with a respectable size.
Did a hard cutoff due to some stupid discord thing.
I managed to get a total of 50 people of about 3k to switch and out of those like 7 actually stayed.

Yet I had to get a burner account again to get in touch with certain people.

Its all be man.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I've never played a Nexus game, and I'm definitely not going to start now. People who are pirating a game aren't usually doing it bcz they hate the company, or have a vendetta of any kind. It's usually a money issue. People are more than happy to pay for games when they have money, and you're not a shit company.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Well, I have no First Amendment rights, so there's that.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Sad am forced on this app, I love matrix more.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I know the feeling. Similar thing happened in a discord I'm in. Rate limit ban on a leader account, no response from support even via burner, then jumped ship to a new one that could actually be managed.

At least discord has to foot the storage costs of a dead server pestered with bots because of their own incompetence.

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