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.
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.
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.
In other words-- your sexting is safe, friends.
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
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
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.
It’s indeed not a miracle.