It's mostly justified through features, but the Discord desktop program has access to:
Everything you type, even when the window is minimised
The contents of your screen
Your camera
Your microphone
The list of programs you're running, which it sends to their servers every few minutes
Your documents
Your IP address
Which could up to a point be tolerated, if it wasn't that Discord is part of the MUSCULAR programme of the NSA and Discord's (non-EU) privacy policy explicitly states they can send any and all information to their "partners" which may or may not store it for all eternity.
Of course they are. They basically took what was a decentralized, open source, encrypted (through TLS) protocol with many self-hosted servers it was hard to listen on (IRC), introduced some new features, and centralized all of it on private servers that can be accessed by intelligence agencies. They know a federated alternative is a big risk eventually.
On a browser you've got a lot more control on what information you give to the websites. So from that list, they can only see your IP address without there being an obvious indicator and/or a permissions prompt. I don't know if there are Facebook or Google trackers on web Discord, but if there are, any ad blocker can block them.
There are missing features, they don't put nearly as much optimization work to the web version so it's slower and voice chat is laggy, I suppose it works out for them because they'd much rather you'd use the desktop application.
Personally, for a community larger than say, fifty people, a Discord server just starts to feel incredibly impersonal, and feels like it demands constant attention in order to partake in conversations.
huh you've summed up why I've always hated the "join our discord server!" requests from communities I participate in. I cannot stand the multiple channels, constant stream of posts/notifications.
Oh! Yeah completely understand that. I'm on quite a few hobby servers, but I always end up just lurking because it feels like the same few people drive conversations and at that point you're just on the outside looking in anyway.
Honest question as apparently I'm out of the loop -- why is discord bad? Is it because of the g*mers or is there another reason?
It's mostly justified through features, but the Discord desktop program has access to:
Which could up to a point be tolerated, if it wasn't that Discord is part of the MUSCULAR programme of the NSA and Discord's (non-EU) privacy policy explicitly states they can send any and all information to their "partners" which may or may not store it for all eternity.
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Of course they are. They basically took what was a decentralized, open source, encrypted (through TLS) protocol with many self-hosted servers it was hard to listen on (IRC), introduced some new features, and centralized all of it on private servers that can be accessed by intelligence agencies. They know a federated alternative is a big risk eventually.
Well shit.
Well fuck
:maduro-coffee:
Ah what the fuck.
what about browser discord?
On a browser you've got a lot more control on what information you give to the websites. So from that list, they can only see your IP address without there being an obvious indicator and/or a permissions prompt. I don't know if there are Facebook or Google trackers on web Discord, but if there are, any ad blocker can block them.
There are missing features, they don't put nearly as much optimization work to the web version so it's slower and voice chat is laggy, I suppose it works out for them because they'd much rather you'd use the desktop application.
Personally, for a community larger than say, fifty people, a Discord server just starts to feel incredibly impersonal, and feels like it demands constant attention in order to partake in conversations.
huh you've summed up why I've always hated the "join our discord server!" requests from communities I participate in. I cannot stand the multiple channels, constant stream of posts/notifications.
deleted by creator
Oh! Yeah completely understand that. I'm on quite a few hobby servers, but I always end up just lurking because it feels like the same few people drive conversations and at that point you're just on the outside looking in anyway.
beyond a certain number of users it moves too fast and becomes a deluge of shit