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Unlocking Discord Nitro features for free

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Re: Unlocking Discord Nitro features for free

#41

Post by Jowsey »

deevus wrote: post #2

It rightly warns that you could get banned for using these tricks, but is there any precedent for Discord banning users for this kind of thing?

From the README of Vencord, one of the most popular mods:

> Client modifications are against Discord’s Terms of Service.

However, Discord is pretty indifferent about them and there are no known cases of users getting banned for using client mods! So you should generally be fine as long as you don’t use any plugins that implement abusive behaviour. But no worries, all inbuilt plugins are safe to use [...]

Re: Unlocking Discord Nitro features for free

#42

Post by aeturnum »

ivraatiems wrote: post #12
userbinator wrote: post #7

Currently, Discord doesn’t appear to validate on their servers whether the stream being transmitted truly adheres to the criteria of a non-subscribed user I wonder who thought that would be a good implementation. Client-side validation seems like a very novice mistake.

I suspect it's less they thought "this is a great implementation" and more "if people figure out how to break it, we'll patch it." This is the first time in several years of using Discord that I've heard of anyone even trying to circumvent their access/permissions structure for Nitro, so I see no reason why they'd bother unless this was widespread.

Once you think about the tech I think there's an obvious steady state:

- It's cheaper not to check on every call sever-side and the people who are most likely to dodge in this way are also not likely potential sources of revenue.

- you shouldn't ban every person who tries this. They will gum up support and, on average, won't even be trying to earnestly get features for free.

- Also people who exploit the obviously vulnerable account interfaces may do other things that clue you in to vulnerabilities you care about.

It seems like it's a situation where you can let people fiddle around with this a bit (a few hours, a few days) and ban folks who do it too long (a month?). People who use it heavily are unlikely to be real revenue prospects and, at the end of the day, it's an engagement funnel. People rarely use hacks on a platform they aren't using.

Re: Unlocking Discord Nitro features for free

#43

Post by fomine3 »

Dalewyn wrote: post #26
simmerup wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord is doing so well it's hard to say whether this is actually a problem for them or not. Maybe focusing on this security would have stopped them performing so well

>Discord is doing so well Are they? They try to sell me Nitro at least once every month, which only gives me the impression that they're desperate to increase their revenue stream to make ends meet.

Once per month is very few times.

Re: Unlocking Discord Nitro features for free

#45

Post by Jnr »

userbinator wrote: post #7

Currently, Discord doesn’t appear to validate on their servers whether the stream being transmitted truly adheres to the criteria of a non-subscribed user I wonder who thought that would be a good implementation. Client-side validation seems like a very novice mistake.

It doesn't really matter if they check it or not, I had Nitro for a year during pandemic because I thought I could stream in higher quality. In reality the quality was just as bad, and sometimes video looked very pixelated.

I have gigabit connection at home and a good GPU that does the encoding but I guess Discord doesn't have any servers near me (~1900km to Rotterdam) and it might be prioritizing low latency. The experience was terrible so I cancelled the subscription. All the other paid features seemed useless to me.

Re: Unlocking Discord Nitro features for free

#46

Post by wink »

In the good old times Discord's dev console wasn't even locked and I remember using it to file a bug report with a good description. At least they still provide an easy way in, I've also given up to debug some other electron apps where I only had the binary.

Re: Unlocking Discord Nitro features for free

#47

Post by wink »

sneak wrote: post #40

A reminder: everything sent via Discord, including DMs, is being logged in plaintext by Discord and will be available to them and whoever buys them (it was looking to be Microsoft for a while, though now it looks like they will IPO). Simply having an account there normalizes having personal conversations that can be easily data mined for AI, or otherwise used by Discord or their database/systems administrators. Secti…

> Simply having an account there normalizes

It's long been normalized, Discord has already won. I'm not saying that it's great, but for certain communities you don't have a choice, besides not participating.

It's actually even worse than back then, when it was "everyone has WhatsApp" because you could easily contact the people otherwise, you already had their number. But imho personal conversations are not the draw for Discord, it's communities with semi-public spaces (public as in 100 people will read it, not "it's available to everyone").

Re: Unlocking Discord Nitro features for free

#48

Post by numpad0 »

tylerhou wrote: post #30
s1mon wrote: post #21

I use Discord all the time, but I have seen zero reason to get Nitro. Every time they try to upsell it to me the "features" are unnecessary. The marque feature either "50MB uploads" (Nitro Basic) or "500MB uploads" (Nitro). Is this per file, per day, per month??? I only share the occasional screenshot or small file, so uploads have never been an issue. The rest of the "benefits" - "server boosts", custom Emoji, or a…

Before the username change, to keep my discriminator. Now the main reason is better stream quality — I stream games to my friends often. Also, in general, I think it’s good to support companies whose (otherwise free) software I use. Maybe if I give them money it will make them less likely to seek “alternative” revenue streams. $8 a month ($3 for Basic) is a fairly affordable way to support a service that I use daily.…

> Before the username change, to keep my discriminator

So the messaging was "pay by that time or lose ID"? That sounds like an...

Re: Unlocking Discord Nitro features for free

#49

Post by not_a_shill »

s1mon wrote: post #21

I use Discord all the time, but I have seen zero reason to get Nitro. Every time they try to upsell it to me the "features" are unnecessary. The marque feature either "50MB uploads" (Nitro Basic) or "500MB uploads" (Nitro). Is this per file, per day, per month??? I only share the occasional screenshot or small file, so uploads have never been an issue. The rest of the "benefits" - "server boosts", custom Emoji, or a…

Regular nitro is worth it for custom emojis across multiple servers or in DMs. (assuming you use discord often)

Nitro+ used to be worth it for the unique numbers after your username as a mild flex, but once they changed that I canceled my sub.

Re: Unlocking Discord Nitro features for free

#50

Post by nrabulinski »

ghosty141 wrote: post #18
viraptor wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord is happy to ban people for anything. They even stop people for using alternative clients. If you care about your account, do not mess with discord.

Iirc there is no confirmed instance where people got banned for using an alternative client.

There’s a lot of instances, for example the developer of one of the alternative clients https://github.com/Bios-Marcel/cordless
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