Submitted 4 weeks ago by skilledtothegills@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://stackdiary.com/spy-pet-is-harvesting-your-discord-history-with-no-ability-to-opt-out/
The service offers the ability to purchase credits through cryptocurrencies, as well as offers the data for AI training purposes.
From the article, the data collection hinges on a bot going into a public server then scraping the history. Still a problem that Discord should act on, but it looks like there is no need to worry about private servers.
Does anyone know what kind of naming pattern or bot identification methods we could use? I belong to a small public server that’s there to serve a public need.
You could probably have a verification system thing that I’ve seen some public servers have where you have to complete some action before getting access to the actual channels.
“private” = small ‘servers’ that aren’t in the public index (I think you have to have like 500 people to be eligible or something), or…?
You literally just set the server to private, which is invite-only and has slightly less features. Any public/community server is in the public index.
This… this is nothing. Oh no, my messages on public servers are being scraped! Good thing I haven’t said anything in a public server I didn’t fully intend on being there forever.
The Discord haters will feast on anything. Granted, this should still be shutdown as a TOS violation but acting like this is a profound intrusion on privacy? Get ahold of yourselves. This is no different from Tweets being scraped or Facebook wall posts. Don’t add the bot to servers you don’t want it on and it’s a nonissue.
If they could somehow make this data available to search engines. Maybe we can start being able to google random problems and actually find solutions again.
What kind of foolish optimist are you? Search engines are to make profit, not help you find that obscure answer to your urgent question
Search engines would have to function but yeah that would be nice.
the content being scraped is from users, they do not control what bots are added to servers.
It’s much more like the Cambridge Analytics scandal in that users posted content that was shared with friends but not explicitly shared publicly, but those friends then granted a third party access to all of the data.
This is assuming the bots are allowed (or, at least not prevented in coming) in by the server admin and the bot is not obfuscated some how. If the bots are taking advantage of an expolit, or not being up front, then we have trouble.
it redirects to a video of the infamous Jonah Jameson’s “Are you serious?” scene from Spider-Man
No, it hosts the video. DMCA!!1!!1!!!
You have to pay for it…
Another reason not to use Discord.
You should learn about how message federation works on Lemmy
Deleted discord recently because of the ads. Glad I did as iv been looking for reason to delete it for a while.
I don’t have a Discord history, so that’s one problem taken care of.
Just never talk in a public server and it still won’t.
Time to switch to alternative open source ones: Revolt, Matrix, Spacebar…
I love pets
TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Excited to see Discord do absolutely nothing about this despite it being an egregious breach of their TOS.
Car@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
Discord‘s TOS only really applies when they feel like it.
starman@programming.dev 4 weeks ago
When someone uses 3rd party app
dopeshark@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Just like twitch
Tanoh@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
…and when they don’t pay Discord under the table. Discord wouldn’t be unique if this was the case either.
chameleon@kbin.social 4 weeks ago
I think they'll give it a genuine shot. These stalking services pop up like weeds and every time it gets some media attention they end up with significant problems not much later.
dis.coolwas the last well-known entry but there's been more.rar@discuss.online 4 weeks ago
Can’t wait for it to die and wither out. But I know they will retain a big pool of users on hostage like reddit or fb for a while.
dopeshark@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Is matrix.org a viable alternative as of now or the near future?
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I am still on it because of a small circle of friends.