content: [Monthly reminder] Discord is digital cancer. They send a tracking request for every single thing you do in their client. Clicked on someone’s profile, clicked on a channel, clicked on a server, etc. The URL was named /track before but they renamed it to “/events” recently (but it’s still a POST with no response). Also their desktop client is literally a remote administration toolkit, it has full access to FS (electron app) and it loads every script from their servers. They can just add something like require(‘fs’).readFileSync(process.env.HOME + ‘/.ssh/id_rsa’).toString() and send this to their servers, and you won’t even notice that (since it doesn’t require an update on client because the client is just a browser with full permissions that loads obfuscated code from their servers every time you launch it). In addition to that by being a centralized service (instead of an open protocol with federated servers in networks) it creates perverse incentives for censorship due to the company not wanting to associate with scoundrels. Currently Discord will even ban groups that discuss video game cheats. Hosting your own (mumble/teamspeak) or using a federated open protocol (IRC/Matrix.org) cuts the gordian knot of deciding what type of content will be allowed for everyone. Courtesy of /u/superkuh