- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
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.
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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.
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.
Slack was basically the same when I used it
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.unfortunately no, there are several communities where if i ask for some specific information, i am told to go onto the discord because there are guides and information there. specifically, i have noticed this a lot with mechanical keyboard communities, but i know it’s happening elsewhere too. I simply don’t understand it myself, trying to find something on these is like trying to find something in a twitch stream. it’s infuriating.
So, so many modding projects live entirely on discord. I hate having to join a server just to download a single goddamn mod, and then you can’t find any info about them because google can’t index the discussions.
Technically with headless browsing, nothing can’t be indexed. That is at least unless people start getting brain implant and then Big Tech gets to control everything you experience and there’s no analog gap where things can be copied.
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.
It literally is, it’s part of their paid plans.
It literally isn’t, what the hell are you smoking?
you think a service you pay for that lets you upload files to them, to share the files with an unlimited amount of other people, is not a file hosting platform? even though it hosts files for you? and you pay for the service?
what do you think it is?
Don’t move the goal posts. It’s 100% not an advertised feature to use Discord uploads as cloud storage or an off-platform CDN.
The unintended side effect that you’ve so clearly described is the exact reason they’re implementing the protections in question.
So if I sell a paid package that let’s you upload files, then I store them and make them available to unlimited other people and put the files on my global cdn to achieve that. But I specifically don’t use the magic words in my advertisement. It’s not that product it’s some magical other nameless thing
Listen, I would be right there with you if this wasn’t a paid for feature, but it is. People pay Discord specifically for this. And now discord are neutering that feature because people are actually using it and now discord is mad. Just pay, don’t use.
So now people who want to distribute files will end up using mega or whatever and going off app, and for what. So discord saves some money. Fuckin great
What ? Pretty sure their paid plans only allow uploading larger files. It says nothing about the longevity of said files on their servers
It shouldn’t have been. That’s their bad—misuse of file hosting is an obvious result of offering file hosting. Manage your own files. Put them on GitHub or something. And if they’re private they shouldn’t be on any cloud to begin with 🤷♂️
… But it is, and they offer for people to pay them in order to function as such.
“Kroger shouldnt sell groceries. 🤷♀️ Grow your own celery, if you intended to eat it and not sell it you shouldnt have bought it from a store to begin with.”
You’re beim disingenuous, discord very clearly wasn’t selling file hosting and was simply offering file transfer
They literally were selling that. That was the thing they flaunted as a big reason to pay up, was the permanence of the file storage.
If they werent aware of that, or its effect on their sales, I would be genuinely shocked. That would be like mcdonalds being surprised people wanted fries with their combo meal.
Surely you can quote where the permance of file storage “was the thing they flaunted as a big reason to pay up”.
And no, a mere mention of increased upload sizes is not enough.
That comparison is poor. Kroger is a store for groceries. If DropBox started saying files were temporary, I’d think that was ridiculous. Discord should have always required a third party storage solution for longer term storage. They’re a chat app. Like zoom. And zoom provides integration with cloud file services.
Discord is a free chat app that offered a paid service of file storage. Because they arent actually trying to be a chat app.
They are trying to be a community hub. A hub that offers the bare minimum for a community for free, with paid upgrades to community care, communication, interaction, and convenience.
Which included file storage. Which is why so many people chose them for their community hub.
that offered a paid service of file storage
This is just patently false, so you’re either completely clueless or are being dishonest to stir up outrage.
No one likes change.
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.
Reminder that file uploads on discord more than a few mb is a paid feature.
25 is more than “a few” mb
Ignoring the fact that they were clearly talking in orders of magnitude, it was 8MB for a very long time and only recently got increased to 25.
I’d only recently noticed the change, because my multipicture and short video sends were failing less often.
Fine, free gets you 20 floppy disks worth!! Omg, so useful. Four second heavil compressed reaction mp4s might fit fine. Don’t go more than ten.
If I’m measuring it in two handfuls of floppy disks in 2023, then its not a lot. That’s your hint that I’m measuring it in !980s technology.
There’s no daily limit mate, you’re free to upload as many files as you want.
Just not at once.
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.
You make it sound like the initial investments were sustainable
If their plan was to intentionally make unsustainable investments and then gut features later on, they should be shuttered now before they waste any more users time and money
Wdym?
Initial investments are usually excessively big to secure your position. The main focus isn’t to balance the budget, but to have as many earnings and growth as possible to then get rid of the defficit
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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