Really annoying!
They also sell that number, all your chat logs, voice calls and media to AI training companies.
Dont be a loser, dont use discord.
Source? The only record of data being sold I remember is some 3rd-party that scraped public servers.
Per their privacy policy they collect
Content you create. This includes any content that you upload to the service. For example, you may write messages or posts (including drafts), send voice messages, create custom emojis, or post other content that you create with features that we develop. You may also upload and share files through the services.
Thats what they collect(so not the calls apparently my bad). In regards to how they use it, they mention advertisement stuff and the usual vague language of “improve our services” and “personalization”. The AI stuff is supposedly opt in, but they collect the data and they are subject to US subpoenas so all bets are off anyways.
Of course they collect content you upload. How else do you think they maintain a chat history so people can see what was said while they were offline?
I see nothing in the privacy policy that says they can sell the data. There is, however, things that allow them to share the data with 3rd parties, including bot developers. Having developed Discord bots, I can tell you that you can get pretty unrestricted access (with the server owners cooperation) until you have been added to a bunch of servers (at which point you need Discord approval to get things like message content)
Policy doesn’t count for anything. So what if they claim they won’t sell data about you? They still can, and companies do.
Or they sell the entire company, like 23AndMe just did.
How else do you think they maintain a chat history
e2ee is not so hard that the biggest player in the game couldnt pull it off my guy. they just want that sweet sweet data.
The data collected sounds like a nothing-burger. Of course they collect the data you upload, and of course they store data (like messages) that need to continue to be networked to clients.
How they use the data does sound like corporate trash though.
I’m not saying it’s a perfect service, I’d rather all private messages be E2E encrypted, but there’s no evidence Discord themselves have ever sold any data, so I don’t understand why we are making crazy claims when them collecting data is a privacy issue enough on it’s own.
Calls recently got encryption, so while Discord is as popular as it is, we can only hope they keep expanding encryption into other areas.
there’s no evidence Discord themselves have ever sold any data
Even if that were true, thats not how things work in the real world. If you cant mathematically prove that you dont have access to the data, then you arent trustworthy.
Calls recently got encryption
Says who? Discord themselves? Did the publish the code?
Can you provide a source then if it isn’t true? I am genuinely curious.
And yes, they did publish the code for their e2ee protocol.
The whole internet is the same, unless you are running all your own built software that you can vet, you are just putting faith in what a company/individual is telling you. If you want to use the internet, there’s always the inherent risk your data is being collected and sold without you knowing.
Sadly there are a lot of communities that are only on Discord.
And it’s so annoying! Bring back forums!
I would love to if all of the most helpful specialized communities didn’t all use it.
I can’t even get my friends or family to use Matrix/Element, let alone the masses.
Trust me, I want to make the full switch, but if I’m hanging out on my fancy open source server with no one on it, what’s the point?
I will agree that anything akin to Facebook or Xitter isn’t helping achieve anything, since they don’t provide communication that can’t be found elsewhere (social updates, memes, event invitations, etc), but for communities like this specifically, there’s just not many other places to go.
having a hard time finding a good alternative for screen sharing in a voice call. recently deleted discord and me and my buddy moved to matrix (element) but the screen sharing is very laggy and it needs a more aggressive mic noise removal. we speedrun a singleplayer game together and use screen sharing for that. steam can do all this but the delay is unacceptable.
honestly I’m this close to going back to discord 🤏
Im following matrix dev work very closely so im wondering if you have been trying the old call system (jitsi or 1:1 calls) or the new one (element call). the new one should work well for screensharing video but ofcourse you do have some level of compression artifacts. the element-desktop client should have it enabled by default since a few version ago. You can quickly test it out here without an account too https://call.element.io/
For noise removal it just uses the standard webrtc noise filtering stack afaik which does suck, but i have it disabled and do that kind of audio filtering systemwide on my linux machine with easyeffects.
I don’t actually know how good it is but another software that does screen sharing you might try is Jitsi
discord’s been doing this for a while, it’s really scummy
other companies that do this (that I’ve found):
- twitter (even before muskrat bought it)
- probably a lot more
This is or was part of their anti-spam/flooding protection. In the server admin dashboard, you can require a phone number on the account or you can disable it and allow users without verified phone numbers to participate.
They do not require this just for a discord account last I checked. It’s likely due to whatever discord server you’re trying to join.
Same for Twitch. Same for a Microsoft account. It’s become the new normal.
I work in the cybersecurity field and I hate that the official discord server of one of the international orgs I’m involved in requires a phone number to participate. The irony.
I don’t think many people know about sim-swap attacks, so they think people knowing their phone number is fine.
Honestly I wish people would just fucking get rid of phone-number-based OTP anyways. TOTP is where it’s at.
This is or was part of their anti-spam/flooding protection.
That’s the official explanation. A phone number is a nice way to attach a real world identity to the data (which of course is sold to advertisers/data brokers etc).
Again - which isn’t required. You don’t have to supply your phone number.
They do not require this just for a discord account last I checked. It’s likely due to whatever discord server you’re trying to join.
This has changed, it gives you this popup whenever you make a new account, even if you haven’t joined any servers. I tried making an account for my brother a few months ago, and I saw this as well.
It’s because your data is orders of magnitude more valuable if it has enough information to identify you as a person.
They can’t sell it to data brokers for a lot of money if those data brokers can’t find any information to link that data with their existing profiles.
Surveillance capitalism 101, companies obtain the most value by enabling other corporations to spy on every detail of your life.
If you can’t use a service anonymously, without it being linked to your actual person, then you can either be okay with living with the panopticon, or don’t use the service.
Discord has been slowing rolling this out over the years. It started being offered as a “spam protection” feature and eventually it’ll be a requirement to have an account.
They depend on the masses of people who will trade all of their privacy in exchange for not having to learn how to use VoIP software, video streaming software or IM software.
Stop using trash service
What are some alternatives for discord??
Matrix is the main one I think
Team speak but that shit wont fly with Genz
It does the job though.
If group is private ie people you actually know, then just use signal it works fine enough
It is (or has already?) Going to receive a face-lift. That might help out a little bit honestly.
It has had one, TeamSpeak 5 and now they are adding screen-sharing with TeamSpeak 6. I think they would have held a good market if they worked on an upgrade sooner, they only released a beta for TS5 once Discord had gotten super popular. If they were more proactive I think most of us would be using TeamSpeak instead now. It’s just borderline impossible to convince people to move service.
What’s really annoying as well, is that if you try to remove your phone number from your account, your account will get blocked for “suspicious activity”, after doing the required captchas it will get unlocked but your phone number is still there, trying to remove it again will just lock your account again, how is that legal?
Because legal people get the protection of the law, shiti organics are there to be abused by legal people.
For what it’s worth I literally just removed my phone number from my account after reading your comment and it did it no problem. Haven’t gotten any suspicious account alerts yet but if I get one I’ll come back and update.
Can we just go back to irc already?
If we had ircv3 specs that included reactions. etc we might be. I rolled a small group of IRC servers with a few selfhost people a year back and it was quite fun. Tbh IRC itself is still alive and well, it’s just not user friendly enough to get non-tech people over easily
I hope Mozilla launches the Firefox Relay phone masking soon…
I needed my for some kind of organized event, it took them a week to take my account out of the spam filter, where they put me without event saying a word. By then it was too late, I made the fucking account and gave them my number for nothing else than troubles.
I mean, if you’re using Discord, then you’re probably not the kind of person to be bothered by this anyway.
I got locked out of my old discord account because I didn’t have a phone at the time
There was a server I poked around in once that required members to provide phone number just to join. Seems very unethical considering all the bad things that can happen from identity theft or stalking… it’s not like mods are employees for Discord. They’re just random mofos. Why would I trust a stranger on the Internet of all places?
Seriously, you’re complaining now? The privacy apps have been blocking Discord for many years.
The privacy apps have been blocking Discord for many years.
The what?
Things like Privacy Badger block Discord.
Sounds like a javascript issue. Privacy Badger has been pointless for a while btw, it’s superseeded by uBlock.
Superseded. From the Latin -sede.
In agreement with ublock origin though
Running uBlock-Origin for many years. I gave an example not an instance I use.
This might be because you’re on vpn. Try a public wifi at school, library, coffee shop or something.
YMMV . Created my account using vpn , basicly never used it while not connected to it , not once I’ve gotten phone verification prompt
Dunno exact conditions for it to show up , kinda paranoid about it
