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Discord's Disturbing Ties to Global Surveillance | ID Verification, Palantir, & Thiel (www.youtube.com)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/games@lemmy.world
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Discord has announced that it will begin requiring government-issued ID or face scans for use of large parts of its platform, extending beyond its original compliance with UK ID Verification Law and various Online Safety Acts around the world. What we found disturbing was what seems to be Discord's strange web of connections, including links to the UK Government via partners, links to Peter Thiel and Palantir (and even Epstein) via venture capital-funded identity verification services, and Discord's prior partner data breaches leading to concerns of the application's ability to protect its users. This all comes at a time when Discord is rumored to be preparing for an IPO, which would be an awfully good time for Discord to suddenly know a whole lot more about its users -- data that could be valuable for marketing or other disagreeable uses. At least as a positive, this has led to a rise of Discord alternatives.

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[–] 31 points 8 months ago (9 children)

I really hope that Matrix will be getting a large surge of support from this. I for one, will be making a contribution.

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I prefer SimpleX chat

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    This is the most secure option but it isn't discord. Stable, Post Quantum cryptography and defeating metadata analysis is core to the protocol. But the mobile clients are heavy and can eat battery. It also lacks multiparty voice chat which IMHO is a critical discord feature.

    Simplex and Mumble or Jitsi would be close and very secure but not at feature parity.

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  • [–] 11 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    Hopefully revolt. Matrix sucks.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Personally, I would like to see them both get new users. And Delta Chat, and XMPP, and other messengers too. Relying too heavily on one option is what got us into this mess.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Relying too heavily on one option is what got us into this mess.

    I agree with the sentiment but still feel the need to point out: specifically, relying heavily on one proprietary, non-federated option is what did it.

    Open software with an established, open protocol (yes, even one as bloated as Matrix) has way less eggs-in-basket danger. The difficulty, last I checked, of self-hosting stoat is one thing that makes me a little wary of it too.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    Yeah, that's a valid point.

    I like that Stoat is self-hostable, but the lack of federation or even a way to sign in to multiple different instances in the same app makes me not even want to try. Why should I self-host something when everyone else is going to be on the flagship instance, which mine can't talk to?

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    • [–] 11 points 8 months ago* (3 children)

    The fascist noose is tightening the world over thanks to proprietary big tech. We have to escape now while we can to open-source alternatives.

    Currently the best (in my subjective opinion) self-hostable, encrypted and federated (like lemmy/piefed) alternative is Movim.

    It offers 90% of the features of Discord, including group video calls, group texts, and even screensharing with audio (must use a Chromium based browser currently to share the audio). The only feature missing is discord-style rooms, which the dev is currently working on to release as fast as possible.

    It doesn't even require an email to create an account, and runs right in your browser, so it has an extremely low barrier to entry. Give it a try with a friend to see if it can meet your needs! :D

    For a more complete guide to swapping proprietary apps for safe open-source ones, I suggest referring to this post: https://lemmy.cafe/post/18663514

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (2 children)

    They will ban open source and privacy technology eventually. Desktop Linux, privacy ROMs, encrypted chat apps, and a bunch of other items not approved by the glorious state.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    That would be impossible to enforce practically, and would devastate businesses, their main financial supporters.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    Rules for thee not for me. These asshats don't give two shits about anything except power and wealth.

    What is more likely, is that they'll just turn off the internet for the commoners. Like they're doing in Iran now.

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    • [–] 7 points 8 months ago

    it's pedophiles all the way down 🤷‍♂️

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    [+] -29 points 8 months ago (4 children)
    [deleted]
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