TL;DR Discord loves to present itself as a company run by a few gamers just like you. The service aggressively advertises itself as “for gamers” with the hope that this “reputation” alone will propel Discord to the top. This has worked really well. The Discord team has refused, however, on multiple occasions to take certain steps to protect their userbase, described in more detail above such as adoption of E2E encryption or going open source. Instead, the Discord team states clearly in their privacy policy that they will gladly hoard a plethora of data about their users indefinitely, loosely claiming to only delete it when its no longer needed. The data they collect and store includes (but is not limited to) full chat logs, all chat media, a list of who you chat with, email address, IP address, device ID, behavioral analysis, activity tracking on the service, pulling info from social media accounts you link, and much more as stated above and in their Privacy Policy. Discord shares this same data with all of its partners, affiliates, agents, and “Related Companies” while lazily instructing you to check their privacy policy to find out what happened to your information, as its no longer any concern to Discord. In addition, Discord goes further to say “Developers using our SDK or API will have access to their end users’ information, including message content, message metadata, and voice metadata”. Their very vague “information” wording allows Discord to send whatever they please while, of course, leaving it up to you to go check their privacy policy and figure out just where and to who Discord sloppily throws your data around. Discord continues to show little to no progress or effort in considering open source code, strong end-to-end encryption adoption, or even something as simple as allowing the deletion of an old account. It is important to note that while Discord allows the “deactivation” of an account, their support team will happily inform you that they do not delete your data and your account cannot be deleted. This data is again stored for an indefinite period of time.
Discord is proprietary spyware. Using it means endorsing and legitimizing it.
Discord relies on its reputation to lure its victims. Despite just starting out as a way for to mingle in chatrooms and VoIP rooms, Discord has now expanded to any sort of purpose, even extending to schools where students will use Discord for clubs as well as online projects where communication is done over the platform.
The reliance on Discord is dangerous. Any thing you type or do in this program is recorded for the highest bidder (that be your government or private data brokers). The interface and UX is designed to keep you in the app for as long as possible.
There’s no way to “smartly” or “responsibly” use Discord. One way or another, Discord will extract value from you. It’s not just about you, but about everyone who uses the platform.
Solutions
There are no “alternatives” to Discord. I’m not going to try to fool you by saying there’s a magic bullet to defeat Discord’s presence in western society (other than socialism and ). But that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to help.
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Matrix: A decentralized messaging protocol. It supports video conferencing on its main instance as well as support for the Discord “Server” functionality. Easiest solution for a drop-in replacement.
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IRC: The one that came before Discord, community networks can be used if you need to communicate and is just as secure as Discord (public chat rooms with zero end-to-end encryption besides TLS)
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GNU Jami: If there was a magic bullet, this would be it. Completely decentralized, peer-to-peer messaging network that is device based. It is a GNU package, possibly the most guarantee for freedom you can get in this world. The team is small, but if you need somewhere to host your leftist activities that will require more than a court order (or a simple bribe) to de-anonymize by state and non-state (those funded by other states) actors then this is it.
Conclusion
This is a post for self crit. If the service is free of charge, then you’re the product. Any leftist should take steps to eliminate their dependency on Discord and proprietary messaging programs. Also any leftist should spread this message and inform others about the risks of using proprietary software.
We should also take Discord as a lesson in how to identify the dangers of proprietary programs and why it could make us vulnerable to abuse (which as we know in a capitalist society, is coming one way or the other). Discord isn’t the lone offender, but an example of how nonfree software will always pose a threat to a free and democratic society and only benefits the bourgeoisie.
Let this be the last thing I have to say about this accursed program
I was just skimming ProleWiki before coming across this post, coincidentally. At the top of every page is:
ProleWiki is looking for new editors.
Please, don’t hesitate to Request an account !
Join our Discord server and engage with our community!
I was thinking to myself “I wonder if I should get back on discord again” because of that. But after reading this and all the comments here, I’m reminded why I ditched discord to begin with and then some. Not to single you out, but @CriticalResist8@hexbear.net, @CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml, do you think using another platform for the PW community hub might be a good idea?
Discord is fucking everywhere and yet people have the audacity to claim AES countries are bigger tech dystopias or downplay the issue.
Hexbear was born out of being kicked out of centralized, capitalist run platforms, so the same principle should apply to other leftist sites.
I know zoomers don’t know how computers and the internet work so take it from someone who is of the computer generation: Just assume that anything that isn’t end to end encrypted is public and is collecting all of the data it can. The reasons for doing so are probably completely mundane. Teams want to collect performance metrics or show KPI improvements or whatever. But the fact that you can join a discord server and see the chat history to the beginning of time should be a hint that they store the logs in a way they can decrypt somewhere they can reach.
Uhh please change the entire software you use to talk to internet friends becuse data or something like they don’t already have your shit on lock
Uhh please change the entire software you use to talk to internet friends becuse data or something like they don’t already have your shit on lock
This type of counter-revolutionary defeatism never got anyone anywhere. Privacy grifters will talk about OPSEC and “threat models” all day but data privacy (or the lack of it) is just one of the reasons to not use Discord. It also normalizes bad behaviors and business practices in its industry (who doesn’t love subscription services and paywalls), is filled with predators to the point it’s a whole genre and stereotype, and has quickly been replacing existing technologies as well as dominating the field so no other alternatives could exist. It’s also got a horrendous logo to top it all off.
Yes obviously state actors could overwhelm and compromise anyone with vastly superior resources, but that’s not anything notable to care about (most countries surveil their citizens including AES countries). What I do care about is people being knowledgeable about something that could spiral out of control as well as creating a counter narrative. Of course I’m not going to magically change people’s habits and lives (as people in this thread have shown, Discord has become a dependency for their lives), but I can at least show them that this is something to care about. If you couldn’t tell, I’m someone who primarily advocates for free (as in freedom) software. Data privacy is just one of my ways to introduce people to the topic as well as challenge people’s perceptions. Also not everyone is affected the same, maybe some people benefit getting off Discord and some don’t as much.
A lot of people don’t even know Matrix exists because Discord is not just a “talk to internet friends data mining app”, it is a brand forced upon people and part of a larger system of exploitation that extends beyond it. Alphabet and Meta do arguably worse shit but my goal is to help people identify why this shit is bad.
Uhh please change the entire software you use to talk to internet friends becuse data or something like they don’t already have your shit on lock
Literally all of my online friends use discord so if I stop using it I have no social life at all
My data is worthless, just like I am to capitalists
