Should we open a Lazarus (Free Pacal) Discord server?

[Bogen85]

IMHO Discord is a horrible choice since they require a phone number to verify.

And on the phone number, not just any text capable number, which in and of it itself is bad enough, but they require a actual subscriber based number (as in, your actual mobile phone number...)

[JanRoza]

What is wrong with this forum that we should need Discord?
Are there advantages we do not have here?
Until now I only see disadvantages mentioned.

[Thaddy]

The phone number is only needed for two factor authentication. And that is a good thing.
According to their policy it is not shared. MS and Google and many more do exactly the same for that reason.

[Warfley]

When you disable your mentioned stuff, nothing bad happen. Discord is nice to me and serves me good. Just my humble opinion about this topic.

I don't know if this is now fixed, but a few years ago disabling these settings did not turn of the collection of the data. The data was still collected and sent to the server, with the promise that the data won't be used. And I don't trust that, because the founder of discord, Citron, which in previous products where found to have illegally collected and sold user data and had multiple lawsuits, the biggest one a class action lawsuit where they had to pay out over 100 million USD in damages. And isn't it a coincidence that the EULA for discord now has the user forfeit their rights to participate in a class action lawsuit against discord? What a coincidence.

I don't trust the promise of a company that has a history illegally selling personal data and lying about it, to not sell personal data. I don't trust anyone whose already known for lying.

Second you can only disable some of those things. So from my example above, that all you type will be sent to the server, regardless if you actually send that message or not, is not possible to deactivate. And as I said, there have been reported cases where people typed in a (not so nice) message but never sent it, and still where punished by moderators for it, so these messages are not just recorded, but also shown to some human moderators.
So if you have something sensetive like your bank details in your clipboard, and paste it, because you think you copied something different, well there is a good chance, even if you never sent it to anyone, that someone can see it and might abuse it.

There are alternatives though, there are open source clients for discord that allow you to join discord servers and use the discord functionality, but do not send so much data.

And lastly, whats different to forums is, in discord you have exactly one account per forum. Sure the owner of this forum has all my data relating to that forum, but thats very specialized data. Discord is intendet to be used for a lot of different things, which allows then to profile all aspects of you, rather than something very specific.

I mean you can do with you data what you want, send all your data per email to every person on the planet if you like. I'm just saying that a product by a company that is known for illegally selling personal data, where you can't turn of the actual collection of data (just the usage on the server side), and which collects a lot of data that you cannot disable at all, is something I would be careful with.

I actually (have to) use discord myself, I have friends with whom I sometimes play online together and they don't like other solutions, but I'm only using discord for this specific thing, only start it for that and stop it right after I'm done. I'm still not comfortable with this, but it's so popular that I have to use it sometimes.

[Thaddy]

Well, I agree is so far that the phone number is a slight privacy risk and puts some reasonable pressure on the company that the data is indeed safe.
OTOH I used the principle myself, without compaints.
I switched to two factor based on presenting a QR code , though, but even that has issues if you look for them.

At work we used a quite expensive hardware token from RSA, for two factor,  but that is not feasable for consumers.

[Warfley]

SMS OTP as second factor is just pointless. Due to SS7 attacks anyone with a Linux system and some open source software can intercept text messages from most phone numbers anywhere without the need of any exploits, malware or social engineering. It's an inherent flaw with the SS7 infrastructure.

So SMS OTP can only protect you from people that do not know your phone number. Anyone who does any recon on you will probably be able to find out your phone number and circumvent the OTP through the SS7 attack.

[KodeZwerg]

Yes, we should all disconnect and live in a bunker without to communicate <sarcasm> 

[Bogen85]

I actually (have to) use discord myself, I have friends with whom I sometimes play online together and they don't like other solutions, but I'm only using discord for this specific thing, only start it for that and stop it right after I'm done. I'm still not comfortable with this, but it's so popular that I have to use it sometimes.

My reasons for using discord are similar, although I don't like needing to use it.

I don't having to use something like discord when there are other communication platforms I don't consider as invasive to my privacy, but at the same time I understand those who I intend to converse with won't use other platforms for a various reasons. (And to participate in projects where discord is their official communication platform).

[Warfley]

Yes, we should all disconnect and live in a bunker without to communicate <sarcasm> 

It's not like there aren't solutions. For 5€ a month you can rent a server on which you could host software like Matrix, Nextcloud, Jitsi, Teamspeak or any of the other decentralized solutions.

But people rather pay the invisible cost of all their personal data, than paying such a small fee for autonomy. And not everyone needs this, I share my server with some friends because there is more then enough capacity for multiple people.

You are always paying, but you can choose what you want to pay. It's not like there are no alternatives.

I just try to educate people as much as possible about these things, thats why I wanted to put it out here why I think discord is really bad. Because anyone who does not explicity search for things like that won't probably know any of this. Discord themselves are not going to tell you that they have a history for illegally selling personal information. And at least people here, with some technical know how, should be aware of such issues, and the alternatives

BTW, great website for quick checkups on services: https://tosdr.org/

[marcov]

The phone number is only needed for two factor authentication. And that is a good thing.

They mandatory force this. That is not additional security, that is drag net data gathering.

[Bogen85]

Yes, we should all disconnect and live in a bunker without to communicate <sarcasm> 

It's not like there aren't solutions. For 5€ a month you can rent a server on which you could host software like Matrix, Nextcloud, Jitsi, Teamspeak or any of the other decentralized solutions.

And less if just a few of those members share the cost, which is not needed, as 5€ a month is very low either way.

But people rather pay the invisible cost of all their personal data, than paying such a small fee for autonomy. And not everyone needs this, I share my server with some friends because there is more then enough capacity for multiple people.

You are always paying, but you can choose what you want to pay. It's not like there are no alternatives.

I just try to educate people as much as possible about these things, thats why I wanted to put it out here why I think discord is really bad. Because anyone who does not explicity search for things like that won't probably know any of this. Discord themselves are not going to tell you that they have a history for illegally selling personal information. And at least people here, with some technical know how, should be aware of such issues, and the alternatives

BTW, great website for quick checkups on services: https://tosdr.org/

Thank you! And completely agreed!

[Zath]

The forum is fine the way it is with a good, healthy number of users and some very knowledgeable people willing to help.
Discord would just take some of that away and perhaps weaken the forum.

[dbannon]

Yes, if you want to use a forum that is managed by people who's business model is to gather personal information to sell (to either third parties or their own advertisers), who have no interest in FPC/Lazarus and have evidently the morals of an ally cat, use Discord. Some people have no choice.

Again, we should consider how lucky we are to have this Forum where its managed by true believers for the stated purposes. Again, I thank the Forum Managers !

Davo

[Bogen85]

The forum is fine the way it is with a good, healthy number of users and some very knowledgeable people willing to help.
Discord would just take some of that away and perhaps weaken the forum.

This forum and a real time chat platform serve two different purposes.

There already is an "unofficial free pascal" discord and it is fairly active, though not nearly as active as this forum.

There has been other real time chat platforms in the past for free pascal and Lazarus, and there still are other real time chat platforms for free pascal and Lazarus now.

I don't see that the Discord (and other real time time chat platforms, some not as infringing as discord) reduces usage of this forum, if anything, they compliment this forum.

[HotShoe]

Why not IRC? I know it's ancient but it is fast, free and efficient. Start a channel, stick a bot in it that can grant ops to selected users, spread the word and you have real time chat.

--- Jem