Really annoying!
This is or was part of their anti-spam/flooding protection. In the server admin dashboard, you can require a phone number on the account or you can disable it and allow users without verified phone numbers to participate.
They do not require this just for a discord account last I checked. It’s likely due to whatever discord server you’re trying to join.
Same for Twitch. Same for a Microsoft account. It’s become the new normal.
They also sell that number, all your chat logs, voice calls and media to AI training companies.
Dont be a loser, dont use discord.
Source? The only record of data being sold I remember is some 3rd-party that scraped public servers.
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.
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.
there’s no evidence Discord themselves have ever sold any data
Even if that were true, thats not how things work in the real world. If you cant mathematically prove that you dont have access to the data, then you arent trustworthy.
Calls recently got encryption
Says who? Discord themselves? Did the publish the code?
Can you provide a source then if it isn’t true? I am genuinely curious.
And yes, they did publish the code for their e2ee protocol.
The whole internet is the same, unless you are running all your own built software that you can vet, you are just putting faith in what a company/individual is telling you. If you want to use the internet, there’s always the inherent risk your data is being collected and sold without you knowing.
Stop using trash service
Can we just go back to irc already?
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