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Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

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Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#441

Post by Mashimo »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #275
sbagel wrote: post #228

Discord does not give users a choice to opt-out of their wildly invasive data collection methods including logging executables running on your system while the desktop client is open, not just games. This data alone is very valuable. Comment from a 2019 support thread "I am pretty flabbergasted that people aren't making a bigger deal of this than they are. Discord actively monitors your executables, but the larger co…

Why would you install the desktop app? Isn't it Electron anyways, so aren't you basically running the same thing as you would in the browser, except now you've replaced the exceptionally well sandboxed, trusted browser with an outdated, unsandboxed browser and have given an app that doesn't need this access to your entire system?

>Why would you install the desktop app?

It scans executables running on my system and switches to "Streamer mode" when I start OBS.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#442

Post by belgesel »

fish45 wrote: post #77

Speaking as an 18 y.o. doing my first year college online, I wouldn't have made it through quarantine without Discord. I've a server with my high school friends and since Discord lowers the barrier to join a voice call so much it's super chill to just hop in a channel when doing homework or playing a game or whatever else, and anyone else who's free can join. I really wish there were competition, but there's nothing…

I believe before Discord got the high ground there was a program called Curse. I wonder if it is still functional.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#443

Post by Ataraxy »

tru3_power wrote: post #317
fish45 wrote: post #77

Speaking as an 18 y.o. doing my first year college online, I wouldn't have made it through quarantine without Discord. I've a server with my high school friends and since Discord lowers the barrier to join a voice call so much it's super chill to just hop in a channel when doing homework or playing a game or whatever else, and anyone else who's free can join. I really wish there were competition, but there's nothing…

The voice chat rooms reminds me exactly of this program called Ventrillo or “vent” as we used to call it back when I was in high school. I’m officially old! https://www.ventrilo.com/

The vent join sound is burned into my brain.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#444

Post by DocTomoe »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #440
savanaly wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I joined the Elm community I thought it was weird they use a Slack for real time discussion and not a Discord. When I asked why I found out that Discord's features are most certainly not a superset of Slack's. * Slack threads are an amazing feature and frequently used on the Elm slack. One discussion or one person's question can become a thread and then the channel won't be continuously pinged by the ongoing dis…

> For a big organization Dealing with the difference in default channel permissions requires an extra minute or two of work. Adding user-controlled joins means grabbing a bot and spending a few more minutes. For a big organization it's absolutely negligible.

For a big organization, this now means two more audit sessions with IT security, which means about 5-7 hours of meetings spent with them, only for them to then decide that the bot does not adhere to the obscure, 1990s-era document ITSEC-37893/378B section A.epsilon subsection D7 ("Auditability of automatic functionality by certified public accountants") which was written by some legalese zombie who last saw a computer in the 1960s and which reasonable people agree is not something that's relevant to the use-case - but ITSecurity won't budge and has veto powers.

Large organizations are far more likely to buy a solution that works for 80% of the use-cases out of the box, and then live with not fulfilling the other 20% by training their users around it (and constantly complain about the users) - especially if that means you can move accountability to the supplier in the contract. WHICH 80% of functionality is important is decided by what you best can sell to top management.

The sweet spot for quick decisions and technological adaptions are SMBs up to about 500 employees.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#445

Post by welterde »

2iP1zbR wrote: post #187
superkuh wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The employees and their contractors and related at Discord corporate can see your IP address too and much more. Luckily it won't be Microsoft owning it as they could correlate against their software empire too. But Discord does have significant profit motive to collect information about you. In fact, their entire proprietary protocol, client, and restriction of clients is based around ensuring this.

this is true, but also goes for every internet-connected service that i choose to use, as far as my IP address goes i've been invited to random, huge discord servers to play just one game, and after the games over i usually leave the server unless i know everybody. i never have to worry about the server admin or one of his buddies deciding they didn't like me for whatever reason and DDOSing the shit out of me for wee…

The game server admin also sees your IP address though? So unless you are only hanging out on discord and not actually playing you are still exposing your IP address.

Also only the voice server admin sees the IP address and not every user on the server, so your scheme wouldn't really work either.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#446

Post by anticensor »

O_H_E wrote: post #226
fish45 wrote: post #77

Speaking as an 18 y.o. doing my first year college online, I wouldn't have made it through quarantine without Discord. I've a server with my high school friends and since Discord lowers the barrier to join a voice call so much it's super chill to just hop in a channel when doing homework or playing a game or whatever else, and anyone else who's free can join. I really wish there were competition, but there's nothing…

I [and household] are now in a similar situation. At first, students got to use what they were already use to, but when the pandemic got painful and everybody flooded to online, thing went crazy. Discord is freaking enormous in that area rn. Servers for High school classes, university cohorts (ie. CS'24), university programs (ie. Electrical Engineering), There is even a course I am taking at uni where we have an offi…

How would you cope with 100 guilds limit?

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#447

Post by anticensor »

ed312 wrote: post #293
remram wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that would probably be welcome is some builtin support for threads. On the Python discord for example, there is a system of help channels which get assigned to the first person talking in it and returned to the pool after 30min of inactivity or once the problem has been solved. A bot keeps a few channels in a "free" pool, marks some as "occupied", and moves the surplus to a "dormant" section for UX purposes…

Personally I think threads ruin conversation flow. If you want to have an in-depth conversation about a topic limited to a few people, you should either open up another channel or do a DM. Just my opinion, but I hate Slack threads and love Discord's system.

That is impossible in Discord as up to 250 channels per guild are permitted at a time.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#448

Post by f1refly »

wongarsu wrote: post #33
COGlory wrote: post #2

What about Discord besides network effect makes it a desirable holding? Do they have any technological advantage?

It's arguably the best software in the "modern IRC" space. Sure, anyone else could catch up, but Discord has a core audience that cares about latency, low resource use, reliable effortless voice channels and good UX, while Discord's competition seems to move in the opposite direction.

> discord has a core audience that cares about latency, low resource use, reliable effordless voice channels and good UX

Are we using the same program? Discord has easily the highest latency when compared to mumble and even teamspeak. It's chromium instance hogs resources like crazy, both ram and cpu time. The reliability is okayish at best, when using it with friends we had issues on multiple occasions where one user couldn't hear another one until he rejoined the voice channel. The ux is absolute garbage, unclear notifications everywhere, a horrible space-to-content ratio and """ funny""" gaming references in the loading screens. On top of that, they purposefully cripple the functionality regarding desktop recording from the browser, trying to bully more people into their app that records your running processes for further analysis.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#449

Post by welterde »

steveklabnik wrote: post #277
xdrosenheim wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood what was wring people seeing my personal, private IP address... I can call my ISP and get a new one in seconds, or turn my router off for 5 minutes to get a new one.

When you're playing games, it can mean that people can DDOS you, or otherwise just like, send bad stuff your way. Both of the solutions you have still disrupt the game, even if they do temporarily solve the issue.

Not sure how using discord really solves the evil admin scenario though? Since the game server admin will still be able to see your IP Address.

I really have a hard time imagining a scenario where I can trust the game server admin, but not the admin hosting my voice server. Especially if it's some team-based game.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#450

Post by anticensor »

sascha_sl wrote: post #202
ripdog wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He wasn't talking about mass data collection used to sell advertising, he was talking about a the admin of a server with maybe a dozen users having access to his IP, which potentially could be used for DDOS or geolocation. The kind of 'data collection' which could have visible impacts upon his life.

Discord has the same issue, essentially everyone who works in a somewhat technical role has access to their moderation tools that have zero auditing and reports of abuse (reading people's DMs "as a joke") are not uncommon. Discord also refuses to delete any data you give them. Deleting a Discord account sets a lockout flag, changes the nickname to "Deleted User" and resets the avatar to default. That's it. They don't…

However, individually deleting messages using their API does delete them from their servers[0].

[0]: https://blog.discord.com/how-discord-stores-billions-of-mess...

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