Let's Reverse Engineer Discord

Post by CoolGuySteve » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 7:18 AM UTC

sl1ck731 wrote: post #9

orliesaurus wrote: post #3

The problem is... There still isn't a clear business model for discord, the advantages of having premium (nitro) are almost non-existing. That's not an excuse for privacy, I know... They tried to create a small competitor to Steam's game marketplace but it didn't work out. They're back to the drawing table. Honestly, that's actually really good for free users, like myself, because we can simply use discord's wide arr…

I'm not sure why they haven't tried the business communications angle with an alternate branded Slack competitor. As a remote worker on an almost entirely remote team, we would benefit from a sort of voice channel huddle on-demand or even just watercooler chatting. There is something more casual about jumping into a premade voice channel where people may already be chatting than starting a Webex or initiating a Slack…

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 7:23 AM UTC

senectus1 wrote: post #4

mmastrac wrote: post #2

Yikes > We tested this malformed audio packet dispatch at various points during a voice call and consistently watched all malformed audio packets dropped by the server, which means that Discord servers are actively decrypting and inspecting all audio/video communications in real-time and not just some.

fuck. Is it really too much to ask for/expect a modicum of decency with these services?

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 7:33 AM UTC

franga2000 wrote: post #21

coenhyde wrote: post #14

I don't think Discord makes any claims that the audio is P2P encrypted. There are legitimate reasons why Discord might be dropping malformed packets, apart from an indication that they are spying on you (they may be doing that too). 1) to improve audio quality. 2) to help prevent RCE attacks on the destination client. 3) re-encoding at lower bitrates for low bandwidth clients. I don't really see the issue here unless…

3) is most certainly at play here, as Discord allows clients to set their preferred bitrate (RX&TX), which would not be possible in multi-party calls without re-encoding.

Post by krige » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 7:49 AM UTC

dyeje wrote: post #22

orliesaurus wrote: post #3

The problem is... There still isn't a clear business model for discord, the advantages of having premium (nitro) are almost non-existing. That's not an excuse for privacy, I know... They tried to create a small competitor to Steam's game marketplace but it didn't work out. They're back to the drawing table. Honestly, that's actually really good for free users, like myself, because we can simply use discord's wide arr…

Discord trying to take on Epic and Steam to create a marketplace was perhaps the worst move I've seen in the past few years. Steam is entrenched and Epic is printing money. Discord needs to capitalize on its greatest asset: a massive community. To me, the obvious path forward is doing Patreon like features for servers and perhaps trying to break into the streaming market.

Post by mapcars » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 8:07 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #26

Discord privacy policy: In an ongoing effort to better understand and serve the users of the Services, we may conduct research on our customer demographics, interests and behavior based on the information collected. This research may be compiled and analyzed on an aggregate basis, and we may share this aggregate data with our affiliates, agents and business partners. We may also disclose aggregated user statistics in…