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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[–] AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 33 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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

[–] donuts@lemmy.world 14 points 10 hours 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.

[–] yetAnotherUser@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 hours ago

Real question. When they say "we don't sell your data", that also means they are saying "we don't trade your information with other companies for other things that aren't money", or it doesn't?

[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

Makes sense. I've been getting "quests" and adverts about games I don't even own. If Discord was selling data for targeted advertising, the adverts would've been far more... Targeted.

Still annoying as hell, though, but at least it's limited to my mobile app. I use Vesktop on my computer.

[–] qarbone@lemmy.world 20 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Not meaningless but certainly undercuts the grandstanding.

[–] Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world 8 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] qarbone@lemmy.world 4 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

And that's job creation right there!

Thanks to Discord, I'm able to keep merchants that "connect overbearing authoritarian entities with the data they shouldn't have, at a price point we all can agree on" at stable, sub-full time employment status.

Truly, pillar of the economy, er community.

[–] Mandy@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 day ago (1 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.

[–] zewm@lemmy.world 3 points 23 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Mandy@sh.itjust.works 4 points 23 hours ago

for the 7 that actually stuck, it was matrix for a while

[–] ItsComplicated@sh.itjust.works 208 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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

[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

Collecting information, on the context of third parties. Obviously they have information, otherwise the whole system wouldn't work.

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 27 points 1 day ago (2 children)

How else would they store and sync the information?

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 day 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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[–] Grunt4019@lemm.ee 59 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Encrypt it end to end with them not having the keys

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 23 points 1 day ago (22 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

[–] fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Keep the data but encrypted. Let users send links that contain the pki info to decrypt the messages. Have that pki info generated client side.

Discord would only need to shuffle data, provide authentication, and provide the web app data down to the client. But every bit of user shared and generated content would be encrypted to them.

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Like I said, Discord can still be compelled to let feds join the server, thus receiving the PKIs.

[–] fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

If the the pki is generated by users client side by a secret discord doesn't control it wouldn't be an issue.

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Either you share the message history to new users (which includes feds) or you don't have any history. I don't understand what you mean

[–] fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 hours ago

The server provides the data to authenticated users and helps facilitate pki between the clients.

If someone is added by the server to have access to the data but wasn't given a key capable of decryption by an actual user they wouldn't have actual access, just encrypted data.

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[–] swankypantsu@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day 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.

[–] knightly@pawb.social 87 points 1 day ago (28 children)

Discord sucks and nobody should use it.

[–] Drigo@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 day ago (6 children)

There is no alternative that can do the same

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[–] stoly@lemmy.world 79 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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

[–] example@reddthat.com 37 points 1 day 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.

[–] subignition@fedia.io 17 points 1 day 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

[–] Lev_Astov@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Yeah, I've never needed to add a phone number.

[–] example@reddthat.com 10 points 1 day 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.

[–] subignition@fedia.io 6 points 1 day 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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[–] Gemini24601@lemmy.world 63 points 1 day ago

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

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[–] Mwa@lemm.ee 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

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

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