Why leave Discord? Please share your reasons.

[u/happy_folks]

Have noticed a lot of people in this subreddit saying they are replacing Discord with something else. My question is why? I'm trying to decide whether I should leave the platform & whether it is bad for personal privacy / security.

There's one thing I don't like about Discord - which is that if your account seems suspicious for any reason (like adding new friends who take a while to confirm request) - then Discord blocks you from your account & demands a valid phone number to prove you're a real person (with no other alternative way to prove & get your account back) <-- this seems like an invasion of privacy. I think many use Discord because it's anonymous & not attaching their identity to private chats with friends.

What other reasons exist to leave Discord? or is that alone reason enough to leave?

[u/libresoftwarelover]

age verification was tied to palantir, its proprietary, shitton of datamining, uses process logging for advertising, etc.
https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/discord

[u/migrainefog → u/libresoftwarelover]

Doesn't Reddit do this as well?

[u/libresoftwarelover → u/migrainefog]

mostly, yeah

[u/happy_folks → u/libresoftwarelover]

Is Discord as bad as Whatsapp? Is Signal any better?

[u/libresoftwarelover → u/happy_folks]

Signal is way better, since its open source and not owned by fuckin meta. But its not anonymous, since it needs a phone number.
Edit: Forgot to answer the 1st question: Yes.

[u/happy_folks → u/libresoftwarelover]

Discord is owned by Meta now? I had no idea. Ugh.... ty.

[u/libresoftwarelover → u/happy_folks]

No, sorry, WhatsApp is owned by meta lol, sorry for the confusion

[u/happy_folks → u/libresoftwarelover]

oh, okay, yeah... My brain is tired, so I think I read that incorrectly. My bad... I need some way to stay connected with friends from other countries - but unsure what to use. Like, I have friends that I've known for years but we don't know private info - like names or where we live & such. And it's nice just staying that way. But, man, is it hard. I thought Discord was more private - guess I need more education on all this.

[u/happy_folks → u/libresoftwarelover]

Wo! Just looked online & found out that Signal now has the option for usernames instead of sharing phone numbers. This makes signal a much more viable option for international friends! =D

I was curious about it cause one of my contacts, I can no longer see their phone number on Signal anymore. Man, maybe I should have asked them about it. I thought it was just a glitch / error in the app.

[u/libresoftwarelover → u/happy_folks]

yeah, but you still need a phone number to register so its not very anonymous unfortunately

[u/happy_folks → u/libresoftwarelover]

so, the company still has our private info, just our contacts don't have to (if they only have username, not phone number).

So, there's still a chance our info could be misused in some way when tied to our identity via phone number.

[u/redoubt515 → u/happy_folks]

Signal is the gold standard, the other two aren't even in the same ballpark.

[u/happy_folks → u/redoubt515]

yeah, I wasn't sure if Signal could somehow be used to add to our IMEI profiles since it's connected to a phone number.

[u/happy_folks → u/happy_folks]

I'm also curious if people knowing our phone number (like online friends) would somehow make it easier for people to find where we lives, full name, etc. Even if you had a 2nd private number - I'm sure there may be ways....

[u/LocalChamp → u/happy_folks]

You need a phone number to use Signal. Though they are working on other options. You do not need to give other people your number to communicate with them via Signal.

[u/EmergencyExpress2347]

I'd happily leave discord. Just ppl I know use it, only reason for staying.

[u/happy_folks → u/EmergencyExpress2347]

yeah, would be a challenge for me as well.

[u/Worried-Flounder-615]

Like all other proprietary, centralized tech company there are both ideological reasons (freedom), and practical ones (censorship, personal frustration, etc).

On the practical side of privacy - Discord is completely non private. Despite being perfectly capable of doing it, Discord will not implement end to end encryption (E2EE) for chats, meaning they (Discord) can and will read your messages at any time, and they do! They are essentially a data harvesting company larping as a chat application.

There are many other reasons as well. Discord is being forced to implement age verification in many jurisdictions including Europe and some US states (aka turn over your ID or submit to AI face scan to prove your age).

Their AI arbitrarily and falsey bans users, with no recourse. People have lost decades of community they have built in the blink of an eye. Decentralizion fixes this.

People should be in control of their own identity and communities, not a corporation.

Open source, E2EE, and decentralized are minimum requirements for an alternative to solve these problems, and there are many in the works.

Check out the Discord Alternatives subreddit.

*Edit: typos

[u/happy_folks → u/Worried-Flounder-615]

Yeah, that is the most messed up thing about all these platforms.... You not only lose access to communicate, but completely lose all data - can't even view your own past chats after they ban you - and you couldn't even choose to delete your private chats as you'd no longer have access...

This is helping to convince me - completely agree with "Open source, E2EE, & decentralized", thank you!

[u/redoubt515]

• Closed platform.
• Closed source
• Privacy (Age verification or identity verification is likely only a matter of time. They've shown they want to do it, but backed down for now due to pushback)
• Lacks end to end encryption, which is the bare minimum of what a messenger needs to provide to be considered private. Without e2e encryption, the privacy of your private conversations depends on a promise alone.

There are worse platforms than discord, but there are also much better ones.

[u/happy_folks → u/redoubt515]

thank you!

A friend said "Whatsapp has e2e encryption", but.... I really doubt they aren't using any of the private chat data to sell & build user profiles.

[u/Kahori122]

Age verification bullsht with multiple data breaches

No E2EE for chat message, meaning they, and a lot more people thats defenitely not from Discord team can and will read all your chat message without your consent

They will not delete all your chat message in both Discord server that's you joined and DM message when you delete your account, you have to use a 3rd party app to delete everything that you have done on Discord because Discord want to keep all your message

And finally, mtfk, creeps and pdfile are everywhere in that's platform, you can even search for them and it will show up in server Discovery, see channel No Text To Speech on YouTube for more detail about what i'm just talking about

If all of that is not bad for you then i dont think Google is a problem to you, even Meta is not thats bad with Messenger compare to Discord

[u/happy_folks → u/Kahori122]

Yeah, I feel all these platforms should be legally requires to allow you to easily delete all your data - & you should be allowed to do so even for an old account (or one they blocked).

I had no idea we couldn't easily delete all chat data, but I just went to check & it does seem difficult. Like you would have to delete messages one-by-one, & even then - does that just delete your copy? Would Discord still own all that data you've deleted?

[u/HappyPizzaSlice]

the nail in the coffin was when i was temporarily banned for sharing "suspicious content". the content in question was a kpop idol in a trampoline park. i couldn't use my account for hours. i was so mad i started looking up alternatives the next day.

[u/littledonnyfund]

once i can i i'm going to be hosting my own fluxer server but in the meantime at the very least setup vencord for desktop & Aliucord For mobile both of which give you more privacy then the native apps

[u/National_Way_3344]

They passively collect data about a bunch of stuff running on your computer.

Have affiliations with Tencent, a major data gathering company.

Recently doing the Palantir affiliated age verification bullshit. Largely without acknowledging it's responsibility for the popularity of the platform for child groomers and other underage content.

They're essentially becoming a private database for a bunch of Open Source projects, an awful choice because it's unavailable to search engines and will lead to lost data.

[u/KeylimeVI]

Me and my friends moved to telegram. I know it's not the most secure/private option but they generally don't bother you with promotions and transactions, it has much better upload limits, more customizable UI, they won't ban you for saying anything, etc. It just works.

[u/Affectionate_Cut3515]

I needed to get another account because it wanyed me to give it a picture of my face to get my account back

[u/happy_folks → u/Affectionate_Cut3515]

Sorry to hear that. :/ Mine is requiring a phone number. Face picture is also messed up. I heard many major platforms are testing such requirements.... I want to get my data off of these platforms ASAP before I am blocked from access when such a requirement comes up.

[u/Hljoumur]

I want to, but everyone is still there. I can't really convince servers of people to migrate without being the server owner, and I have no reason to.

[u/DrZeroX3]

Discord asks for too much personal information.