
Reasons not to use the Discord communications system - spking
https://stallman.org/discord.html
======
striking
I understand that some people value their privacy above all else, but
balancing this with decent anti-spam is really tricky. As someone who runs a
(not large, not small) Discord guild, I personally would find it impossible to
keep any public guild of any decent size running if the anti-spam were any
less protective than it currently is.

It's unfortunate that this excludes some users but I think those users end up
being a vocal minority. I think the benefit here (conversations without spam)
outweighs the cost of privacy. And could one not just get a burner phone or
something to satisfy the phone requirement?

Obviously there is a place in the world for FOSS services that preserve
privacy or federate so you can manage your privacy effectively, but I think
Discord eschews this for user convenience and it ends up being a tradeoff that
a lot of people agree with.

(note that I will be experimenting with Matrix bridging and such in the near
term future, because I too don't absolutely love Discord. But I can at least
say I understand and agree with the tradeoffs and the intentions behind them.)

~~~
spking
Unfortunately no, burner and even prepaid phones will not work.

[https://support.discordapp.com/hc/en-
us/articles/36000096121...](https://support.discordapp.com/hc/en-
us/articles/360000961212-Invalid-Phone-Number)

~~~
thatguy0900
Interesting. I have an att prepaid as my actual number, works fine.

------
gentleman11
I found out accidentally that discord was broadcasting when I had OBS running
and when I played games and the games names as part of my status. That is
extremely invasive. The last thing I want is some chat app scanning all my
activity. What do they do with the data they don’t broadcast to everyone I
know?

~~~
bzb3
Discord is for gamers, and that's a feature they expect.

You can use the web version of discord if you want, which can't collect
information like that.

------
smnthermes
It's sad that Stallman is citing a fake news website... /s

~~~
wilsonfiifi
The last bullet point addresses that...

