Discord will switch to temporary file links to block malware delivery::Discord will switch to temporary file links for all users by the end of the year to block attackers from using its CDN (content delivery network) for hosting and pushing malware.
Can we please stop building everything around Discord? It has its place as a chat app, but it’s become like a web parallel to our own, except owned and operated by a single company. It’s an information black hole, completely closed off from the rest of the web, unscrapeable, uncrawlable, unarchiveable, and borderline unsearchable. It has everything that is wrong with the web today. When the company dies, all information in the app dies with it. There’s no Internet Archive for Discord.
I agree. It’s a handy chat app but it’s not a replacement for actual forums and, God forbid, an actual support page for a project.
This is not easy when everyone you know is already on Discord.
The network effect is active in full force here.
Its a good point. Eventually discord will find some way to enshittify, I am sure.
They already have
I guess that is what they are doing, but this particular change seems pretty reasonable to me. Discord can’t simultaneously be a chat application and a repository for all memes for all time.
Just goes to show that VC funded services are not sustainable infrastructure for anyone.
My university forces its students to use Discord for computer science. They even forced me to use my real name (otherwise they would’ve kicked me from the channel). It’s a privacy nightmare so I hope they will switch now since they were using it to host weekly exams.
It’s so hard to delete anything on Discord it’s in the permanent record. It’s upsetting. I use it too, but it is a nightmare privacy wise and it has all sorts of consequences.
Since I live in the EU, it shouldn’t even be legal to force students into Discord. I really hate being that guy but if they do this shit again I will refuse.
Admittedly I really like Discord’s user interface. Love the servers that can be organized by channel and channel type, have permissions sets for different roles, etc. All that good shit. What I don’t like is the total control of one entity and lack of privacy. I’ve been looking at Matrix but it still has a ways to go before I could ever think of completely dropping Discord.
Slack was basically the same when I used it
I think at a minimum someone would need to create a semi automated client for Matrix that would have a better interface and then handle the technical changes and configuration automatically. Spaces can use used a “servers” but it involves creating rooms and then adding them and the process is complicated.
Amen
Technically someone could just make a headless browser and then scrape everything that way, Advancements in AI will make headless browsing easier and companies like Facebook won’t be able to block automation by changing the HTML multiple times per day.
Yes, instead they will discontinue their websites and make you use their app.
I discontinue any websites that push apps. The reason they make apps is to spy on you.
What are you talking about?
It’s literally a chat app. If all discord servers die today, nothing of value will be lost.Nah Discord is like IRC on super-steroids.
You’re gimping yourself by holding this view.
Discord is infinitely better then IRC except for the centralization.
It’s better flat out. Centralization isn’t evil in an of itself. The dogma pushed in this comment section is hilarious.
It creates a single point of failure if the administration ever goes bad.
The “server” nomenclature is also misleading. It’s not a big deal and I think it works pretty well for what it’s supposed to convey.
Yeah… In sure malware is the reason. It’s not that they don’t want people using discord for file hosting.
Still, it’s not a file hosting platform. 🤷♂️ it should have been temporary to begin with.
They wouldnt have been as popular if they had been temporary from the beginning.
Shoulda woulda coulda, this is now a thing their community has come to expect and rely on their platform being capable of. And the change of such will break a number of channels.
Eh if they don’t want people using their service that way, that’s their right. People who care about it that much should host a matrix instance.
This is typical enshittification. Make an impossibly good service to gain marketshare. Then make it worse once you’ve eliminated all competition and dominate the market.
Did anything about my comment imply I thought this change was illegal? This has nothing to do with their rights
The issue at hand is taking away a feature your users have come to expect from your product after youve secured a level of dependance by outcompeting the competition
I didn’t intend to imply that, my statement can be rephrased as “if users don’t like this change, they should use an alternative, because discord is going to do what makes sense to discord.” File hosting is ubiquitous and cheap, so it isn’t a big deal. I don’t work at discord, but I do work at a company that has file hosting as one of its features, and combating malicious misuse of that feature is expensive and a pain in the ass. If I could get away with not offering file hosting, I’d be tempted to remove it.
Do you think your company could get away with offering a paid service that included file hosting, and then suddenly announcing that the file hosting was now only temporary?
Or would you expect your customers to abandon you over any claims of “just find an alternative”?
E: to clarify, by “your company” I mean where you work. Im not assuming youre at a position of ownership
The services are way too different to compare that feature in isolation, unfortunately. But discord’s business model is not to be a cdn, and I think it’s a good move to occasionally prune a feature that doesn’t provide enough juice for the squeeze. We’ve seen much worse enshittification this year, and I doubt this move has any measurable effect on their active users. Dealing with getting your servers off of blacklists because some douche decided to host malware on your free file hosting isn’t how anyone wants to spend their days, I assure you.
Files are still stored permanently and links inside the client stay permanent as well, only links accessed externally are affected. I don’t like Discord either but anyone relying on it as their personal free CDN had it coming for them.
Dam gotta download all the memes before they get deleted.
This is good. At my place we actually already block any discord cdn links on proxy and emails as they were getting a pretty bad threat vector.
“To block malware delivery” haha good 1
Ughhh, now I have to go back to using shit like Google Drive. Discord was so much more convenient
https://catbox.moe/ is pretty good
Catbox shits itself pretty often causing for example 5 mb videos to take 3 minutes to fully buffer
I’m sure there are some selfhosted options for file sharing.
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