Notes

Reasons Not To Use Discord

Richard Stallman's personal website.



https://stallman.org



See the daily political notes to get current political commentary.



RMS's Bio



Reasons not to use the Discord communications system



- The Discord communications system requires running a nonfree client program. This alone is enough reason to refuse to use the Discord communications system. - Discord reportedly collects a lot of information about users. The developer denies the claim that Discord reports which processes are running on the user's machine. I do not have any way to find out the facts. It does not collect these data. Discord Servers This is a minor detail. I also mention that the company does not make money solely by selling personal data. I don’t think it matters if the company makes money. It is the software's impact on users that matters ethically. The developers' motives for making it do those things are pertinent to understanding the situation but should not affect our moral judgment of mistreatment of users. One user quit Discord after Discord required her to complete a Google reCAPTCHA. It was likely that she was connecting through Tor. Google CAPTCHAs did not work for me because they required Javascript code. Discord insists on tracking users. If a user connects through a VPN, Discord demands that user provide a phone number.



Discord locks accounts with no associated phone numbers. When an account is locked, also called "deactivated", the user is not allowed to make real use of it until person adds a phone number. If Discord considers you suspicious, Discord may require you to speak with it by phone. This is the case if you contact it via Tor. If you use Discord regularly via Tor, then you must have that phone on you at all times. A burner phone, or one that you have only for a limited time, is not allowed to do this job. Discord servers and anyone else looking at the packets' origins can track who uses Discord. Users report that Discord shut down their accounts without telling them why.



I would love to see suggestions for other pages to be used as factual reference points for specific Discord offenses or to verify any false accusations contained in the page linked above.



Discord offers non-free application programs. You shouldn't use them, naturally, but they are a separate issue from using the communications system itself. The Discord web app reports that it sends tracking data instead of the usual to /track. This is to stop extensions to limit tracking. There is a switch that disables data collection, but it doesn’t affect the sending data to the server. Please send me any references.


My Website: https://discord-servers.biz/