Discord defends itself against efforts to stop piracy on its platform by saying no to more invasive data collection. Even though Discord isn’t exactly known for privacy, this is a great move for its users. What are your thoughts?
Discord defends itself against efforts to stop piracy on its platform by saying no to more invasive data collection. Even though Discord isn’t exactly known for privacy, this is a great move for its users. What are your thoughts?
How else would they store and sync the information?
Encrypt it end to end with them not having the keys
They do have to retrieve old messages when new users join though. I’m sure the government can force them to lett them in a server and unlock the roles
Keep the data but encrypted. Let users send links that contain the pki info to decrypt the messages. Have that pki info generated client side.
Discord would only need to shuffle data, provide authentication, and provide the web app data down to the client. But every bit of user shared and generated content would be encrypted to them.
Like I said, Discord can still be compelled to let feds join the server, thus receiving the PKIs.
If the the pki is generated by users client side by a secret discord doesn’t control it wouldn’t be an issue.
Either you share the message history to new users (which includes feds) or you don’t have any history. I don’t understand what you mean
The server provides the data to authenticated users and helps facilitate pki between the clients.
If someone is added by the server to have access to the data but wasn’t given a key capable of decryption by an actual user they wouldn’t have actual access, just encrypted data.
Sync from another online user. If each message is signed by the author, there’s a built-in protection against tampering.
It’s really not hard, they just have to care enough to build it that way.
Can’t feds also sync them from other users?
Sure, if they’re granted access to the channel. But that access would come from users of the channel, not the service itself, and if the service doesn’t store the keys (i.e. you need at least one user online to get access), the service can’t really help the feds.
And whether to provide access to history for new users can absolutely be a setting on the channel. I’m just saying that having the messages only on the clients doesn’t preclude sharing those messages with a newcomer.