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Discord requiring you to add a phone number after the creation of your account (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 2 days ago by penguin202124@sh.itjust.works to c/mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
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Really annoying!

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[-] Xttweaponttx@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 day ago

What the FUCK.

I immediately went to settings and, I guess at some point I'd already given these swine my phone number? Went to remove it and I've greeted by this wonderful toast message=

1000012070

God I wish something was fully suitable as an easy discord replacement 😭 spacebar seems rad if it wasn't super alpha. And as cool as element is, it just doesn't have the same low bar to entry that discord has (not to mention group calls are jank as hell, when they work, and there's no screen share yet tragically)....

[-] jafffacakelemmy@mander.xyz 5 points 1 day ago

Just change your number to something like 07777777777. That will work for the UK.

[-] penguin202124@sh.itjust.works 2 points 14 hours ago

It doesn't work for me because it asks for a code ):

[-] werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago

We should do code swaps.

[-] Matombo@feddit.org 20 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Year of Elements/Matrix when?

[-] IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago

So many niche games servers tho.

FTL: Faster Than Light - Multiverse (mod community) for example, like there is literally no replacement community.

[-] denaggels@feddit.org 10 points 1 day ago

I really like using Element, but there are so many issues besides the not so intuitive account system, that deters the average user

[-] philpo@feddit.org 5 points 1 day ago

It's a shame that spacebar and revolt did not really take off so far.

[-] pewgar_seemsimandroid 2 points 1 day ago

this is the first time I've heard of spacebar

[-] philpo@feddit.org 2 points 19 hours ago

Yeah, that's the problem - none has. Sadly I also only read about it here in a previous post about discord a few months ago.

[-] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 121 points 2 days ago

They also sell that number, all your chat logs, voice calls and media to AI training companies.

Dont be a loser, dont use discord.

[-] warm@kbin.earth 36 points 2 days ago

Source? The only record of data being sold I remember is some 3rd-party that scraped public servers.

[-] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 53 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Per their privacy policy they collect

Content you create. This includes any content that you upload to the service. For example, you may write messages or posts (including drafts), send voice messages, create custom emojis, or post other content that you create with features that we develop. You may also upload and share files through the services.

Thats what they collect(so not the calls apparently my bad). In regards to how they use it, they mention advertisement stuff and the usual vague language of "improve our services" and "personalization". The AI stuff is supposedly opt in, but they collect the data and they are subject to US subpoenas so all bets are off anyways.

[-] homura1650@lemmy.world 34 points 2 days ago

Of course they collect content you upload. How else do you think they maintain a chat history so people can see what was said while they were offline?

I see nothing in the privacy policy that says they can sell the data. There is, however, things that allow them to share the data with 3rd parties, including bot developers. Having developed Discord bots, I can tell you that you can get pretty unrestricted access (with the server owners cooperation) until you have been added to a bunch of servers (at which point you need Discord approval to get things like message content)

[-] Kng@feddit.rocks 4 points 2 days ago

Not saying this makes up for it but discord recently introduced e2ee calls. This means if you have to communicate with your discord friends securely you have to call them.

[-] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 11 points 2 days ago

Policy doesn't count for anything. So what if they claim they won't sell data about you? They still can, and companies do.

Or they sell the entire company, like 23AndMe just did.

[-] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 2 days ago

How else do you think they maintain a chat history

e2ee is not so hard that the biggest player in the game couldnt pull it off my guy. they just want that sweet sweet data.

[-] bss03@infosec.pub 2 points 1 day ago

Signal, Wire, and Jami all support group chats that are E2EE. Discord's reasons for not doing it might not be sinister, but they don't need that level of access to your content in order to provide their core service.

[-] unhrpetby@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 days ago

The data collected sounds like a nothing-burger. Of course they collect the data you upload, and of course they store data (like messages) that need to continue to be networked to clients.

How they use the data does sound like corporate trash though.

[-] warm@kbin.earth 7 points 2 days ago

I'm not saying it's a perfect service, I'd rather all private messages be E2E encrypted, but there's no evidence Discord themselves have ever sold any data, so I don't understand why we are making crazy claims when them collecting data is a privacy issue enough on it's own.

Calls recently got encryption, so while Discord is as popular as it is, we can only hope they keep expanding encryption into other areas.

[-] Kng@feddit.rocks 3 points 1 day ago

As much as I would love it I don't think we are gonna see more encryption in the discord ecosystem. I am convinced that discord was not recording calls prior to introducing e2ee since they were peer to peer so they are not giving up any data in adding it

[-] warm@kbin.earth 2 points 1 day ago

It would be absurd to record calls, the expense of it isnt worth it.

I doubt it too, but it's okay, I mostly use it for calls anyway. The messages are just organising times.

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[-] penguin202124@sh.itjust.works 18 points 2 days ago

Sadly there are a lot of communities that are only on Discord.

[-] redwattlebird@lemmings.world 12 points 2 days ago

And it's so annoying! Bring back forums!

[-] avieshek@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Can’t Lemmy be like Forums?

[-] wheeldawg@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 day ago

Kinda. But this "comment" system is more set up to encourage replying to others rather than the original subject.

That would be an easy fix though.

I feel like we can't use services anymore at all. We need protocols and clients to connect to each other using those protocols and stop using centralized anything at all.

99% of what I've done in discord is a private server with like 5 or 6 regulars just to use voice coms in game.

But we already had that with TeamSpeak, Ventrilo, and Mumble. The UIs were fucking ugly as dog shit, but they worked.

Discord just came along and and combined a global (to a set of members) chat room and a voice service, where before those were separate.

Now if something is "just" a website then no one under like 25 will be able to hear of it, much less figure out how to use it. They need apps to be able to communicate.

The problem is that bigger services obviously have a problem of scale with that setup, so they start simple and get a bigger audience, then start the spying with some tiny change no one will check patch notes for.

These days we're all guilty of that.

Capitalism is again the bad guy here. Monetizing everyone's actions and identities is the particular issue. No one would feel a need to do this if it didn't lead to more profits. I'll bet there are a bunch of companies that started off good and fell to the dark side when they couldn't control their monetary appetite. (Or when younger employees took on promoted positions and saw opportunity- all they had to do was (cough cough) stop not being evil (cough cough)).

[-] otacon239@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago

I would love to if all of the most helpful specialized communities didn’t all use it.

I can’t even get my friends or family to use Matrix/Element, let alone the masses.

Trust me, I want to make the full switch, but if I’m hanging out on my fancy open source server with no one on it, what’s the point?

I will agree that anything akin to Facebook or Xitter isn’t helping achieve anything, since they don’t provide communication that can’t be found elsewhere (social updates, memes, event invitations, etc), but for communities like this specifically, there’s just not many other places to go.

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[-] hornedfiend@sopuli.xyz 10 points 2 days ago

Which is the reason I don’t have a discord account. I just can’t be bothered.

[-] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

I get discord mail sometimes telling me I have to log on urgently as accounts get deleted after a few years of inactivity.

[-] moosetwin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 30 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

discord's been doing this for a while, it's really scummy

other companies that do this (that I've found):

  • twitter (even before muskrat bought it)
  • facebook
  • probably a lot more
[-] Matombo@feddit.org 7 points 1 day ago

for me it wanted one after i added too many friends at once

it some agressive anti spam "ai" that more or less randomly decides if it wants a phone number or not

[-] thatradomguy@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago

There was a server I poked around in once that required members to provide phone number just to join. Seems very unethical considering all the bad things that can happen from identity theft or stalking.... it's not like mods are employees for Discord. They're just random mofos. Why would I trust a stranger on the Internet of all places?

[-] Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com 5 points 1 day ago

The server owners can’t see your phone number. Discord allows you to set a minimum verification level for users in your server. The lowest is simply having a verified email on their account. The highest is a verified email, a few minutes old (so no brand new accounts), been in the server for a few minutes, and a verified phone number. It’s just a bot prevention thing, because spammers/scammers are a big issue on large Discord servers. Especially early in Discord’s history, it was a big issue where bots would raid a server and just totally shut it down with spam links. So Discord started allowing server owners to set minimum verification levels before users could interact and send messages.

[-] SatanClaus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 2 days ago

The server owners cannot see your phone number. It's just a way to keep bots and assholes out most of the time.

[-] ATDA@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago

Can we just go back to irc already?

[-] truxnell@infosec.pub 7 points 2 days ago

If we had ircv3 specs that included reactions. etc we might be. I rolled a small group of IRC servers with a few selfhost people a year back and it was quite fun. Tbh IRC itself is still alive and well, it's just not user friendly enough to get non-tech people over easily

[-] avieshek@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Just after Elon Musk’s twitter (𝕏) made it a norm~

[-] Teppichbrand@feddit.org 4 points 1 day ago

Say the word!

[-] Marmanvii@lemmy.one 15 points 2 days ago

What’s really annoying as well, is that if you try to remove your phone number from your account, your account will get blocked for “suspicious activity”, after doing the required captchas it will get unlocked but your phone number is still there, trying to remove it again will just lock your account again, how is that legal?

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[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 8 points 2 days ago

I created an account without a phone number. What really anoys me is there focus on IP addresses. They apparently don't realize IPs rotate.

[-] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 days ago

I mean, if you're using Discord, then you're probably not the kind of person to be bothered by this anyway.

[-] FireWire400@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago

I hope Mozilla launches the Firefox Relay phone masking soon...

[-] daggermoon@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

The reason I don't have a Google account.

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this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025
381 points (100.0% liked)

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