(And why I think you should care)
When most people use or do something, it is safe to assume it is convenient. But convenience often comes at a cost.
Unfortunately, most people aren't aware of the costs of using Discord, and so I will explain exactly why I quit, to be the change I want to see in the world™
Keep in mind that I am not trying to convince you to stop using Discord. I am merely showing my point of view.
I also provide some suggestions on how to mitigate a lot of the things I mention here, if you're interested in that kind of thing.
This is also not supposed to be a detailed post about every single thing Discord does that I do not agree with, and you should do your own research beyond this.
Discord constantly phones home about everything you do. It records when you've read messages, when you've sent messages, and from where you've sent these messages. Information associated with this is, for example:
Whenever you are being taught how to use the internet, people will usually tell you that "whatever you post online stays there forever."
While that is true, people are more likely to forget about it in a messaging platform, and they are more likely to assume that their private messages with others are inherently private. But they're not.
On Discord servers, bots can (and usually do) record your sent messages, deleted messages, edited messages, your statuses, your profile picture changes, your nickname changes, and other information, essentially keeping a log of every change you've ever applied to your profile, as well as every message you've ever sent.
While this is true for anything online, on Discord, not only is it possible, it has become standard practice as well.
What would you share via direct message to your close friends, partners, and coworkers? I know it is not uncommon for secrets such as game account passwords and home addresses or meetup spots (if you're planning a night out for example) to be shared in these chats, from personal experience.
Discord is not end-to-end encrypted. This means that if a data breach ever occurs, every piece of data that Discord has on their servers (like every message you've ever sent and everyone you've ever talked to...) will be in the hands of a bad actor and possibly leaked and used against you. It also means that, hypothetically, their moderator team can read these texts, and you are entirely depending on Discord to have protocols in place for who can and can't access this information.
In fact, they definitely do have access to your texts, as this is how they deal with account reports.
Imagine a future where everything you've ever posted online comes back to haunt you.
Consider that people have been rejected from job applications simply because of their online presence before, from things that they willingly chose to post on social media out of their own volition.
Imagine the kind of impact it could have on your life if after a data breach, anyone could look up the kinds of things you've been typing on Discord.
If you are thinking "I do not do or talk about anything incriminating," you are missing the point. If somebody wants to use information against you, they will. It does not need to be incriminating. It can also be used for identity theft, for example.
It's also worth mentioning that laws change all the time, and the social, political and economic climate of the world is not necessarily at its most stable as of writing this post.
Fascism, oppression, censorship, ignorance, corruption, and manipulation via propaganda is not particularly uncommon, and nobody is immune to them.
Consider that even Meta, one of the most data-hungry and intrusive companies out there, has end-to-end encryption on their Messenger software, and it shouldn't be surprising that Discord not having it rubs me the wrong way.
If for any reason you decide that you want to stop using the service and you would rather a bunch of people and servers didn't have your messages, you will have to delete them one by one (with a caveat which you can see for yourself on the GitHub page linked on the last chapter of this post).
There is no way to bulk delete your data, and if you delete your account, all Discord does is change your account name to something like "Deleted Account#0000." All of your messages remain in their systems.
This essentially means that if you've ever said anything you would rather get rid of from Discord's servers, for example your address, you're out of luck! And the worst part is that after your account is deleted, there is nothing you can do about that. Your messages will be out there forever.
The thing about centralized social applications is that it only makes sense to use a service that other people have already adopted. Why would you use Discord if there's no one there?
This is one of the main reasons why people use Discord, with the second being that there is no better application out there that provides the same functionality.
Back then, people used to use Mumble, TeamSpeak, Skype, Steam chat, you name it... Discord managed to pull all of those applications and provided an easy-to-use, accessible, and all-encompassing service that is simply way more convenient than anything else on the market.
As of right now, there is little to no competition at all.
The main alternatives that are at least somewhat privacy-respecting as of writing this post are:
If you want to keep using Discord, understandably so, here's a list of things you can do to keep yourself somewhat sane: