this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2024

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Billions of public Discord messages may be sold through a scraping service (arstechnica.com)

submitted 7 months ago by jeffw@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 96 points 7 months ago

Lol, from an Ars comment:

Discord finally has working search

[–] csm10495@sh.itjust.works 11 points 7 months ago

Would be cool if Google search indexed public discord servers.

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 10 points 7 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

It's easy to get the impression that Discord chat messages are ephemeral, especially across different public servers, where lines fly upward at a near-unreadable pace.

Joseph Cox at 404 Media confirmed that Spy Pet, a service that sells access to a database of purportedly 3 billion Discord messages, offers data "credits" to customers who pay in bitcoin, ethereum, or other cryptocurrency.

Searching individual users will reveal the servers that Spy Pet can track them across, a raw and exportable table of their messages, and connected accounts, such as GitHub.

As Cox notes, Discord doesn't make messages inside server channels, like blog posts or unlocked social media feeds, easy to publicly access and search.

As noted by 404 Media and confirmed by Ars, clicking on the "Request Removal" link plays a clip of J. Jonah Jameson from Spider-Man (the Tobey Maguire/Sam Raimi version) laughing at the idea of advance payment before an abrupt "You're serious?"

Those who haven't paid for message access can only see fairly benign public-facing elements, like stickers, emojis, and charted member totals over time.

The original article contains 420 words, the summary contains 177 words. Saved 58%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[+] AlexanderESmith@kbin.social -20 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Who uh... cares? The information is publicly available, that's how it was scraped... Who would /buy/ this?

And what would they do with the knowledge that Fartknocker72 posted sonic slash fanfics?

[–] admin@lemmy.my-box.dev 27 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Who would /buy/ this?

Have you heard of any companies in the past few years who are trying to mimic human speech? They need lots of example data to do that.

And what would they do with the knowledge that Fartknocker72 posted sonic slash fanfics?

While knowing that 1 specific person likes something is mostly irrelevant, once you link it to an email or real name (just wait for the next data beach), criminals could use that kinda data for blackmail.

Furthermore, companies like Facebook and Google mostly make their money by linking people's behaviour to their interests. They probably won't be caught with their hand in this cookie jar, but it should show you how valuable this data (in massive quantities) is.

[+] AlexanderESmith@kbin.social -12 points 7 months ago (2 children)

criminals could use that kinda data for blackmail.

Maybe... don't say shit on the internet that would embarrass you if associated with your real name?

[–] recursive_recursion@programming.dev 17 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Maybe... don't say shit on the internet that would embarrass you if associated with your real name?

the problem arises from deobfuscation of identity through aggregation and correlation analysis of data

[+] AlexanderESmith@kbin.social -8 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I understand the vector, I'm just saying that maybe if people had conducted themselves responsibly, this wouldn't be an issue.

Hiding behind a moniker to do things you would normally be shunned is bad for everyone. It allows trolls to thrive, reduces or removes the impetus for broader social change/evolution (offline, that is), and fosters echo chambers full of people who have zero responsibility to regulate what they say for the sake of sanity (because fuck it, who's gonna call them on their bullshit, right? And even if someone does, "they're" not being judged, "their profile" is, so they can separate themselves from any criticism without doing any self-reflecting).

If you want to post something (text, art, etc) and you have to stop and think about your reputation, that's a good thing. It means you should either not do something stupid, or you should stand behind your actions, and give support to others to do/say that thing.

The other option is to post behind a fake name knowing that there are no consequences, and just call it a day (which is why the opinion of the average post is so easily dismissed at "some random person on the Internet").

And if you really do need anonymity (because the thing your discussing is super difficult or dangerous for you)... maybe don't fucking have that conversation in a public discord channel?

[–] admin@lemmy.my-box.dev 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Imagine people wanting to discuss their sex life or fetishes without having to worry what their boss or neighbour would think of it.

[–] AlexanderESmith@kbin.social -3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

@admin

Imagine having private conversations in private.

This data was apparently scraped from public channels.

[–] admin@lemmy.my-box.dev 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's not public data though. You need to agree to the ToS before you can get to it. Which clearly states that you cannot use it without permission.

But you're moving goal posts here, so I think I'll just ignore you from now on.

[–] AlexanderESmith@kbin.social 0 points 7 months ago

I mean, my first reply to OP literally said the same thing, but sure, it's me moving the goal posts.

And I'm not talking about private as in "who owns and has 'rights' to the data" because "discord is s private company with TOS" (which offers zero protection, since scrapers don't care about TOS, even when the scraper is a major company - See StabilityAI, Google, et al).

I'm taking private as in "not any random person can log in and see it". Private discord servers and DMs don't appear to be included. That's the "private" I'm taking about.

[–] Jax@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 months ago

Have you heard of any companies in the past few years who are trying to mimic human speech? They need lots of example data to do that.

You fixated on one point while there are worse problems than just being ashamed of what you've said.

Stop.

[–] Jax@sh.itjust.works 6 points 7 months ago

I don't think people who struggle to read as much as you have any business talking about internet hygiene.

[–] poplargrove@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

I've a few times shared personal information to people I am friendly with in public chats, accidentally or while not putting much thought into it. I imagine there are others like me who wouldn't want to be doxxed.