[kibwen]

Discord has taken over this role for me and all my social groups. And unlike Facebook there's no ads, no viral bullshit, no astroturfers, no personal information, and you can keep your identities separate across multiple social circles (all of which are private and invite-only by default).

[ekianjo]

> And unlike Facebook there's no ads, no viral bullshit, no astroturfers, no personal information

The counter to all of this is "for now..." - there's no network that gets massive without falling prey to numerous kinds of incentives.

[kibwen]

Sure, but then we'll migrate somewhere else. "They'll be bad eventually" is by no means an argument in favor of instead using a service that is worse now.

[AdvancedCarrot]

Thing is I'm not convinced that discord is really any better from a privacy perspective.

They still retain all of your messages (including DMs) unencrypted indefinitely with no easy way to remove them. Deleting your account doesn't remove messages either.

[p1peridine]

Yes and to be able to use discord with a VPN or Tor it requires a phone number. Unacceptable. Privacy disaster.

https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/discord.html

https://stallman.org/discord.html

[kibwen]

I didn't say anything about message privacy, but it's still strictly better than Facebook because Discord "profiles" feature nothing except a username (which, unlike Facebook, is not required to be your legal name), an avatar, a profile banner, and 190 characters worth of freeform markdown. And unlike Facebook, it doesn't pester you to ever add personal information. A company can't store private information that it never has to begin with. By all means, if you want message privacy, use a service that offers end-to-end encryption, which isn't Discord. (But keep in mind that end-to-end encrypted group chat (as in, not strictly one-to-one) is an impossible and unsalvageable UX boondoggle.)

[dicknuckle]

I'm not really worried about Discord keeping all my messages about a Robot Lawnmower or a couple pieces of software / games I discuss on there.

[p1peridine]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument

> The nothing to hide argument states that individuals have no reason to fear or oppose surveillance programs, unless they are afraid it will uncover their own illicit activities. An individual using this argument may claim that an average person should not worry about government surveillance, as they would have "nothing to hide".

> Edward Snowden remarked "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." He considered claiming nothing to hide as giving up the right of privacy which the government has to protect.

[dzink]

Some groups are really dependent on evidence the person is who they say they were - especially parent groups /Mom groups, health groups, where you’re looking for advice or legitimate local socialization / resource information.

[kibwen]

Facebook has no way of actually verifying that you are a parent, so I hope nobody is relying on that to provide any sense of security. And my experience with Google+ is that a real-name policy is a woefully naive way of trying to filter out the maniacs; plenty of deranged people have no qualms about having their actions associated with their legal identities.

[mccorrinall]

Facebook at least doesn’t force me to subscribe to a 5$ service in order to upload images from my phone. It’s so annoying that they can’t just compress images and videos on the client. Right now I’m always sharing videos and photos to telegram first, since their client actually compresses most of the files below 8MB and then continue sharing it to discord once again.

The UX as a free discord user is horrible.

[Pigalowda]

Facebook gets its pound of flesh from you in other ways.

[mccorrinall]

I agree! But honestly, I prefer some ads which I can block over a monthly pay wall just to share some images in a closed group. Especially since I’m a student :)