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Show HN: A free, privacy preserving, archive of public Discord servers

searchcord.io

61–70 of 91 posts

Re: Show HN: A free, privacy preserving, archive of public Discord servers

#61
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ridiculous take. If you're posting in a server that's intentionally open to the public and accessible to anyone with a link or even indexed by server discovery you shouldn't expect privacy. That's just the basic reality of the internet.

No, what's "ridiculous" is this simplistic, black-and-white framing that deliberately ignores any nuance, the concept of contextual integrity or reasonable user expectations. Of course, no one expects absolute secrecy in a public-facing Discord server. That's a straw man. The issue isn't about some naive belief that messages are invisible. It's about the scope, permanence, and method of access and archiving. People p…

[flagged]

Re: Show HN: A free, privacy preserving, archive of public Discord servers

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, Thanks for your suggestions. > 1) I'd suggest anonymizing the usernames / author ids to something more privacy friendly such as how some image sites were generating 3-4 random words as a human readable unique id. This removes a lot of the reason people would opt out (i.e. posts being tracked down years later) In the original iteration of Searchcord, it used to work similarly to that. The username was `sha256(use…

The sheer audacity here is quite something. You're stating people can't use your scraped data for commercial purposes "without permission," while your entire project is built on vacuuming up content from countless users without their permission, and in direct violation of Discord's ToS. That's not just a double standard; it's bordering on next-level cognitive dissonance. And "privacy preserving"? With a one-click opt…

> Most people using Discord, even on "public, discoverable" servers, aren't posting with the expectation that their words will be systematically scraped, archived indefinitely, and made globally searchable outside the platform's context

Honestly, maybe they should. Maybe we need more stuff like this, until people finally wake up about the privacy catastrophe. The now defunct service spy.pet used to sell this kind of data with the stated purpose of doxxing people. There’s black markets for this. And it’s the same kind of data the service providers themselves have full access to.

Re: Show HN: A free, privacy preserving, archive of public Discord servers

#64
post #47

This clearly breaks discord TOS. I did consent for discord to have my data, I did NOT consent to you having my data. The discord TOS clearly state: > Our services might also provide you with access to other people’s content. You may not use this content without that person’s consent, or as allowed by law. As I was not informed of the usage BEFORE it was taken, I could neither opt in nor opt out. GDPR clearly states,…

Unfortunately TOS consist of words and words cannot constrain technical affordances. There has been a black market of scraped discord data for years (it was even sold on the public web at spy.pet). Stuff like this is probably the only way people will wake up to the realities of digital privacy.

Re: Show HN: A free, privacy preserving, archive of public Discord servers

#65
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, what's "ridiculous" is this simplistic, black-and-white framing that deliberately ignores any nuance, the concept of contextual integrity or reasonable user expectations. Of course, no one expects absolute secrecy in a public-facing Discord server. That's a straw man. The issue isn't about some naive belief that messages are invisible. It's about the scope, permanence, and method of access and archiving. People p…

[flagged]

It seems the core concept of contextual integrity is still not landing.

It's not a question of surprise that public data can be scraped - I'm well aware of how the internet functions, thank you. The point, which you seem determined to evade, is about the fundamental ethics of systematically doing so and the vast difference in impact and expectation between, say, a server's own moderation logs or incidental screenshots, and a third party, globally indexed, permanent archive. The former serves limited, often known functions within that specific community; the latter is a privacy-invasive data trawl weaponizing the 'public' label. Just because a thing is technically possible doesn't grant a free pass to ignore privacy implications or users' reasonable expectations of how their contributions will be used and disseminated.

Your attempt to dismantle the 'public park' analogy only underscores your misunderstanding of it. The scenario isn't about someone yelling (an exceptional event, often a public nuisance, that might indeed attract specific attention or recording). It's the equivalent of someone systematically planting listening devices by every park bench, transcribing every casual, low-expectation conversation - like my dinner plans with my girlfriend, or a vent about my boss - and then publishing it all online, forever, simply because the park itself is 'public' and it was a technically possible thing to do. The ethical chasm between observing a public spectacle and conducting mass, indiscriminate surveillance of every day, semi-private interactions within a public space shouldn't be this difficult to grasp. One involves a specific event; the other is a dragnet.

As for flagging, I didn't touch your comment. I have never flagged a single comment on this site. Perhaps others simply disagreed with the quality, relevance or the dismissive tone of your contribution.

Re: Show HN: A free, privacy preserving, archive of public Discord servers

#66
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It seems the core concept of contextual integrity is still not landing. It's not a question of surprise that public data can be scraped - I'm well aware of how the internet functions, thank you. The point, which you seem determined to evade, is about the fundamental ethics of systematically doing so and the vast difference in impact and expectation between, say, a server's own moderation logs or incidental screenshot…

I won't continue a discussion with someone who relies on AI for writing, this response you posted presents the tells of someone using a language model to write a response paragraph.

Re: Show HN: A free, privacy preserving, archive of public Discord servers

#67
So basically Spy.pet v2? Hmm.

I do see how this might be useful for certain use cases, but I don't like the fact that someone is scraping my messages without my consent. You might tell me oh well I could just opt-out: but what about those who don't even know about this thing?

I can already see Discord coming after this. Good luck fighting the legal battle with them.

Re: Show HN: A free, privacy preserving, archive of public Discord servers

#69

This is very much against TOS (selfbots are explicitly against it) and the only way you should be doing this is through the normal bot interface with community consent. Even then you could get in trouble with consent issues.

Even then that is probably against the developer policy & terms

> 20. Do not mine or scrape any data, content, or information available on or through Discord services (as defined in our Terms of Service).

https://support-dev.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/8563934450... (point 20)

Re: Show HN: A free, privacy preserving, archive of public Discord servers

#70
post #30

nice project. how are you going to handle the issues involved with breaking Discord's TOS? > "scraping our services without our written consent" additionally, are these pages indexable? i know of other projects (opt-in) that create pages made from user discussion.

> how are you going to handle the issues involved with breaking Discord's TOS? Not sure. I will solve that problem if and when Discord takes issue with Searchcord. > additionally, are these pages indexable? Yes, I would actually like for search engines to index it as their search is much more contextually aware than mine.

> Not sure. I will solve that problem if and when Discord takes issue with Searchcord.

You are in for such a rude awakening once discord gets to you

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