
Discord is deactivating accounts without phone numbers - alg0rith
https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/djyy6v/psa_discord_is_deactivating_accounts_without/
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StanislavPetrov
I can't believe I'll be the only one to wave goodbye to discord if and when
they demand my phone number. Its their prerogative to demand our phone numbers
and ours to delete their software.

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arminiusreturns
Discord really annoys me, because it stole so many of my mumble/murmur friends
who ignored it's anti-features and black box nature.

I still prefer the technical capabilities of mumble for voice, but so far the
best foss alternative to discord I am aware of is mattermost. Anyone aware of
any others similar?

~~~
BrandoElFollito
RocketChat maybe? [https://rocket.chat/](https://rocket.chat/)

Or Matrix? [https://matrix.org](https://matrix.org)

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illumina
Hey everyone - Jason (the CEO person) here from Discord. I lurk a lot on HN
and wanted to just chime in and share a little context since this thread is
about my startup!

The user in this linked thread has likely triggered our anti-abuse system.
Unfortunately, Discord is constantly under attack by people trying to spam or
do malicious things. Instead of just outright banning everyone who our systems
identify as trying to violate our TOS, we sometimes present an option to
verify that you’re a human via a phone number. We know it’s not ideal and it’s
still a cat and mouse game to mitigate spam, but it has been shown in our
system to reduce spam plus help people keep their accounts. Check out this
post from one of our engineers if you want waaaay more detail about how and
why we use phone number verification:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/dl9y94/the_trut...](https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/dl9y94/the_truth_about_discord/f4pkxnb/?context=3)

In addition, we have a whole transparency report that walks through some of
the work we are doing to try and maintain the safety and integrity of Discord
for you all [https://blog.discordapp.com/discord-transparency-report-
jan-...](https://blog.discordapp.com/discord-transparency-report-
jan-1-april-1-4f288bf952c9)

I also want to just mention that we do not sell user data. People keep
bringing this up, reasonably so, because of the lack of trust in tech
companies and how US law effectively requires terms of service to be written.
You’ll notice we only ask for the rights we need to operate and improve
Discord itself. We also voluntarily rolled out GDPR compliance globally, not
just in the EU. It’s important to me that we build a business where our
incentives are aligned with the people who use our service - not advertisers.
That’s why we make money by selling Discord Nitro. (And thanks to everyone who
subscribes and supports us!).

And lastly on the topic of Tencent, they have a very small stake in Discord
and have absolutely no ability to control what we do or access our data.

~~~
nieve
Assuming your statement that you don't sell user data is correct, are you
willing to state that you do not share it with other companies without money
changing hands directly? That's a pretty big gap in your claims.

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panny
Well that just wraps it all up with a nice neat little bow on top, doesn't it?
Let's put this together for the HN readers:

Chinese company Tencent is a Discord investor.

China requires face scan to get a mobile number starting Dec 1.

Discord begins requiring mobile number to keep account.

A Chinese surveillance camera may soon be using your face to review every
discord message you ever made as it is observing you. I'm sure this will apply
to the facial recognition customs kiosks as you enter/exit the country. Have
you seen them? Scan passport. Door opens. Step into the kill box. Scan face.
Approved? Second door opens, you may pass. Not approved? Well... you probably
should have stayed home, friend.

If discord asks for your mobile number, keep this in mind.

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manjana
As far as possible I never give away my phone number, to any online service.
Facebook, Google and LinkedIn also makes it hard for you to sign up without
one I recall.

The 2FA argument is week imho. It's all disguised datamining is my guess -
similar to how Google properly uses captchas to simultaneously improve their
ML algorithms (ever stopped to think about what those captchas contains?
Crosswalks, cars, parking signs, crosswalk lights etc.).

If you're an American citizen you can use Abine's _Blur_ subscription to mask
your phone number (and more), unfortunately it doesn't work outside of US yet.

~~~
arminiusreturns
I am the same, and the most recent place I had to give a phone number or gtfo
was twitter. I've been monitoring the spam call rate to see if there has been
any change, which I expected, but nothing statistically significant yet...
(keyword: yet)

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reustle
I can't get wait until we get past this point in society where a phone number
= a person. WhatsApp, LINE, most banks, now Discord. Most of them don't work
with virtual numbers like Skype or Google Voice either.

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monkeydreams
There is a plausible (to me at least) explanation of what is going on in the
discordapp subreddit. Apparently this is related to specific cases and is part
of the crackdown on Discord spamming.

