- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Researchers published a massive database of more than 2 billion Discord messages that they say they scraped using Discord’s public API. The data was pulled from 3,167 servers and covers posts made between 2015 and 2024, the entire time Discord has been active.
Though the researchers claim they’ve anonymized the data, it’s hard to imagine anyone is comfortable with almost a decade of their Discord messages sitting in a public JSON file online. Separately, a different programmer released a Discord tool called “Searchcord” based on a different data set that shows non-anonymized chat histories.
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“scraped” via API? I don’t think It means what you think it means.
Meanwhile AI scrapers: This will be a fine addition to my collection.
Ooh! Do Teams next
Well yeah, it’s not encrypted. It would be the same as 10 years of Reddit posts or Lemmy posts scraped
This isn’t even them scraping private chats and small servers, they just scraped public servers in the discovery tab. None of that information was ever private, and every user can browse the chat history there.
In other words-- your sexting is safe, friends.
Yeah, exactly. It may sound scary or like a violation of privacy, but there is no privacy when posting to public online areas.
“Researchers scrape thousands of hours of news footage from their TVs!” is about as big a deal, honestly.
It also includes deleted messages. And they refuse to delete things when someone opts out.
It also includes deleted messages. And they refuse to delete things when someone opts out
Deleted messages are not included. Neither the public nor the API allows you to read deleted messages
Upon joining a server, users gain access to all non-deleted historical content within public channels, and the same is valid for data retrieval using their API.
Excellent point if searchcord used the api. They created unmarked bot accounts that save all the messages.
Searchcord yes, but not the researchers from the headline
It’s indeed not a miracle.
There’s literally no difference. Each Discord server is like a tiny chunk of Reddit. If anyone expected any privacy on these servers, they’re nuts.
That’s good news. Internet archiving is an important endeavor because you never know when they‘ll pull the plug. Now it‘s a little more secured and probably far more useful than in Discord‘s hands alone.
Not for messages that are supposed to be private lol. Let me just make a copy of all texts you’ve sent over the last decade, for “archiving”.
If you think messages you post anywhere on the internet are private, you’re in for a bad time.
This says it was done via the API so they wouldn’t be private messages.
Texts are sent in plain-text and I wouldn’t recommend discussing anything you’d like to keep private via text.
I can’t find this “public” json
Thanks, but the file seems to be restricted.
I skimmed through their paper and I can’t seem to find the instructions to download the dataset.
I found this particularly cute:
This study introduces the Discord Unveiled Dataset, a comprehensive and ethically curated resource encompassing over 3,000 public servers and 2 billion messages exchanged on Discord.
If they aren’t comfortable with their Discord messages being public, perhaps they shouldn’t have posted those messages in a public forum that the public can access.
Every time you post, you’re posting so that Meta, Google, Reddit and every known retail store like Walmart, Target, Kroger, etc. can see it because they bought that info or harvested it themselves. I think these are great announcements so people can see who sees and manipulates you with your own contributions of data.
The feedback loop is everywhere in tech.
🚩
marked safe
from Brazilian mass discord message leak
(never used discord)
Saving this article for the next time someone says “Just message me on discord its easier”.
I was hoping to play around with the dataset over the weekend to toy with some text-embedding techniques, but they’ve pulled the cord on the download links.
Anyone have a copy of the full archive they’re willing to share, or a magnet link?
They just wanted to find new slurs.
So basically discord finally got a usable search. I count that as a win.
I see a lot of drama here in the thread, people decrying data leaks, how Discord is very very bad, and a number of people wanting the “good old days” of forums.
Yes. I like forums too, but, uh…
These researchers scraped publicly posted messages. Keyword here being “public”. How would anything similarly public, like a forum, be better?
I actually remember the times when forums were at their peak. I hung out on BZPower for Bionicle things, and the Relic News Forum for Homeworld modding. You know what they had? Google bots that scraped messages, looked for certain words, and populated websites with advertisements based on what it could scrape from forums.
Pretty sure Lemmy doesn’t do encryption either, unless there’s some very special, private Lemmy server that nobody has access to. So the researchers could’ve just as well scraped the fediverse.
People saw “scraped Discord messages” and immediately jumped to “oh shit fuck my private chats have been leaked everybody panic”.
Yeah this being just as easy on bb forums or literally any webpage with a public comment section was my first thought as well…
Isn’t most of the internet scraped anyways, by the internet archive? The concerning part is that this is 100% going to be used to train some coomer brained AI. Scraping, botting, scamming: all those things are going to happen on large public communities.
Yeah, a lot of this push is about ushering in new laws to prevent data scraping.
Propaganda spreads easily through fake accounts—but how do we detect large-scale operations if they’re constantly creating and deleting accounts or trying to blend in with the rest of us? We’d need access to massive data sets to mine for patterns and expose coordinated behavior.
But the powers that benefit from shaping the narrative are the same ones pushing the idea that all scraping is bad. They want people to hate it, so they can justify laws that lock down access. That’s the end game.
How would anything similarly public, like a forum, be better?
Forums were the primary way that groups would talk with one another pre-global scale social media.
They could contain public subforums, but the majority of all of the forums that I’ve been a part of were not viewable without an account, which was manually approved or required a small payment (to make bans have a chance to actually stick).
People in general have no idea and just want to get spun up on drama and manufactured outrage.
Same thing happened when people started scrapping Twitter 10-15 years ago.
So this is:
'Uh guys, Discord chats leaked…"
For… what, just literally everyone who used Discord between 2015 and 2017, everyone who was an early adopter?
Dear fucking god.
I used to say ‘someday, people will learn’, but fucking no obviously not, no they won’t, almost everyone is an idiot and/or truly doesn’t care.
… I guess this’ll be fodder for a whole bunch of dramatubers / pedohunters for the next year or so…
It wasn’t the chats though. It was public servers that can be found through the discovery tab. I would love to be up and arms about this and convince people to switch but… Looking at it objectively, this isn’t terribly different from if they’d archived public subreddits and their posts.
The disappearance of forum public discussion to unsearchable, unpreserved, discord semi-private discussion chambers is probably the largest informational catastrophe of the internet so far.
I potentially agree, but as a possible competitor, I submit:
Everything DOGE has done in the last 3 months.
That information was at least available to capture.
With discord it was EULA-walled and anti-scraper locked
… No no no it all wasn’t.
The DOGE goons made up multiple logins to multiple US Gov databases that are not open to the public… inucluding the DoD’s SIPRNet…
… and we know at least some of these logins were also used from utterly unsecure personal devices, remotely, not onsite, and that they’ve been getting used by IP addresses from all over the place, all over the world, meaning said login creds have either outright been given away, or been compromised by other nation state’s hackers, or just total rando hackers.
But I want something like Discord. Just not corporate owned…
Not as featureful, but my friends and I run our own xmpp server
Matrix?
