[harryf]

That's exactly the question - how does a free communication app achieve a multi-billion dollar valuation despite not having ads or directly selling user data?

Discord's business model relies on attracting a massive user base to secure substantial investments and potentially a lucrative acquisition. We've seen again and again and again what happens once acquisition takes place.

Also a big existing investor in Discord is Tecent which, under Chinese law, could grant the government access to Discord's extensive user data.

So yeah.. it's not about features it's about freedom.

[concerndc1tizen]

And there's no way to delete your chat history basically. You can delete your account, but that doesn't destroy your messages.

And as for privacy: Your username is anonymous, but your email isn't (to Discord), so the % of users that didn't create a separate fake email, or ever connected with a trackable IP, basically aren't anonymous at all. They also record your voice. Every user's voice is recorded in isolation and can be used as training data for identification algorithms. Including unusual characteristics like breathiness, diction, accent, and so on. Probably it can estimate your age as well.

[culi]

Even lower-level Discord admins can basically any user's entire chat histories across all servers ever. There is zero encryption

[Lanolderen]

Data on Discord has never been safe really. I don't know how it is nowadays since my memes have gotten less edgy/dank but you could get banned for private messages for a long time.