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Somewhere in the intelligence community, a new project just received unlimited funding: join as many Discord servers (and Slack instances, and…) as possible, id

Somewhere in the intelligence community, a new project just received unlimited funding: join as many Discord servers (and Slack instances, and…) as possible, idle, and log everything. Whether that requires 1,000 quietly idling accounts or 100,000 of them, there’s now enough motivation to pull it off.

hammyhavoc 3y ago
Bold of you to assume they won't just be given access to a firehose of data. Money talks.
- troydavis 3y ago
  For Discord, I think the perceived risk outweighs the benefit. Unlike a government contractor or large telecom conglomerate[1], Discord doesn’t have a business unit that serves governments enough to directly benefit. I think a more likely outcome is Discord ignoring accounts that they strongly suspect are operated by the US government, or not thoroughly investigating that possibility (so they never know enough to strongly suspect). Basically, willful ignorance. (Discord staff, if you’re reading this: add likely government accounts - including probable country - to https://discord.com/tags/transparency-reports https://discord.com/tags/transparency-reports and add a warrant canary for overly-broad requests to https://discord.com/safety/360044157931-working-with-law-enforcement https://discord.com/safety/360044157931-working-with-law-enf...) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    Who says it needs to come from Discord? These aren't heavily encrypted communications. I don't know if it's still the case, but Discord used Google at one point. Enough said. The sheer scale of data generated means they are unlikely to ever successfully identify an account if that's their intent. Where's the difference between a consumer that joins a lot of servers versus a contractor who joins a lot of servers? Where's the difference between a consumer that joins a specific server and a contractor that joins a specific server? There isn't one as far as monitoring them goes, unless they're coming from IPs known to not be civilian IPs, which is an easily solved problem for anybody to not be discovered.
  - abeyer 3y ago
    What risk? They've had a long history of doing invasive data collection on their users already, and everyone keeps going. What's the risk of handing a login to their existing databases to the government?
  - stametseater 3y ago
    Discord doesn't have a revenue stream that makes sense given the scope of services they offer for free. Discord Store is a flop, Discord Nitro subscription fees can't add up to much. Selling digital 'stickers' is a joke. To keep the boat afloat they keep having new investment rounds, but unless they plan on running a ponzi scheme they need to find a real source of revenue. They have user data in troves, even logs of all the programs that (non-browser) users are running. Expecting them to not sell access/use of that data seems very naive. They could already be selling access to this data under the table to their 'investors.'
deleted 3y ago
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hammyhavoc 3y ago

Bold of you to assume they won't just be given access to a firehose of data. Money talks.

troydavis 3y ago
For Discord, I think the perceived risk outweighs the benefit. Unlike a government contractor or large telecom conglomerate[1], Discord doesn’t have a business unit that serves governments enough to directly benefit. I think a more likely outcome is Discord ignoring accounts that they strongly suspect are operated by the US government, or not thoroughly investigating that possibility (so they never know enough to strongly suspect). Basically, willful ignorance. (Discord staff, if you’re reading this: add likely government accounts - including probable country - to https://discord.com/tags/transparency-reports https://discord.com/tags/transparency-reports and add a warrant canary for overly-broad requests to https://discord.com/safety/360044157931-working-with-law-enforcement https://discord.com/safety/360044157931-working-with-law-enf...) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  Who says it needs to come from Discord? These aren't heavily encrypted communications. I don't know if it's still the case, but Discord used Google at one point. Enough said. The sheer scale of data generated means they are unlikely to ever successfully identify an account if that's their intent. Where's the difference between a consumer that joins a lot of servers versus a contractor who joins a lot of servers? Where's the difference between a consumer that joins a specific server and a contractor that joins a specific server? There isn't one as far as monitoring them goes, unless they're coming from IPs known to not be civilian IPs, which is an easily solved problem for anybody to not be discovered.
- abeyer 3y ago
  What risk? They've had a long history of doing invasive data collection on their users already, and everyone keeps going. What's the risk of handing a login to their existing databases to the government?
- stametseater 3y ago
  Discord doesn't have a revenue stream that makes sense given the scope of services they offer for free. Discord Store is a flop, Discord Nitro subscription fees can't add up to much. Selling digital 'stickers' is a joke. To keep the boat afloat they keep having new investment rounds, but unless they plan on running a ponzi scheme they need to find a real source of revenue. They have user data in troves, even logs of all the programs that (non-browser) users are running. Expecting them to not sell access/use of that data seems very naive. They could already be selling access to this data under the table to their 'investors.'

deleted 3y ago

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