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.
404? another source please? I don’t trust them on this exact thing.
I was hoping people would do this!!!
🚩
marked safe
from Brazilian mass discord message leak
(never used discord)
Well yeah, it’s not encrypted. It would be the same as 10 years of Reddit posts or Lemmy posts scraped
It’s indeed not a miracle.
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.
It also includes deleted messages. And they refuse to delete things when someone opts out.
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
Upon joining a server, users gain access to all non-deleted historical content within public channels, and the same is valid for data retrieval using their API.
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
“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.
Yeah, exactly. It may sound scary or like a violation of privacy, but there is no privacy when posting to public online areas.
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.
If they aren’t comfortable with their Discord messages being public, perhaps they shouldn’t have posted those messages in a public forum that the public can access.
Public data should be accessible anonymously. You can’t change my mind.
Meanwhile AI scrapers: This will be a fine addition to my collection.
Every time you post, you’re posting so that Meta, Google, Reddit and every known retail store like Walmart, Target, Kroger, etc. can see it because they bought that info or harvested it themselves. I think these are great announcements so people can see who sees and manipulates you with your own contributions of data.
The feedback loop is everywhere in tech.
They just wanted to find new slurs.
I can’t find this “public” json
Thanks, but the file seems to be restricted.
I skimmed through their paper and I can’t seem to find the instructions to download the dataset.
I found this particularly cute:
This study introduces the Discord Unveiled Dataset, a comprehensive and ethically curated resource encompassing over 3,000 public servers and 2 billion messages exchanged on Discord.
Probably our only chance to find solutions to problems with open source software that uses Discord as their forum
I spent nearly three hours today between discord and matrix trying to figure out how to get these two pieces of software to talk using a certain protocol.
Imagine if there were online indexable platforms where people could publish this information so it’s easily accessible rather than having to scour through message logs hoping to find the right keywords. Such a technology surely doesn’t exist already, right?
I hate discord.
you get it to work? i didnt have time to get it working in both directions. matrix to discord worked fine but not the other way.
I don’t hate Discord, I simply hate that so many projects and companies have unanimously decided to use it as the wrong tool for the wrong job.
It’s fine for its intended use case, which is bickering with my friends about video games and fiction, and spamming each other with .gifs and meme images.
Discord is genuinely a great tool for what I used to use Skype for. Talking to my friends, and sharing dumb memes with them in a groupchat format. Companies need to learn that using it as a forum, a Q&A service, a wiki or any other information sharing purpose, is simply fucking retarded.
Language.
We can’t say the F-word on Lemmy?
That’s retarded!
Yeah, but then you have something like when people protest deleted their history on reddit which is fine as a protest tactic but leaves a hole where your specific question came up but now there’s nothing there.
Lol, I’ve read this headline and thought “thank fuck, probably the only option to have Discord’s content readable”, I like how universal this opinion is
Seriously. It’s beyond painful when some open source project only uses Discord for communication. You have to hope that you post your question at a time when the right people are online, and that there’s not a more interesting conversation going on, otherwise it just gets lost. Index that whole dataset.
I’ve always wanted to contribute to The Cutting Room Floor wiki but they hide registration behind a Discord server bot that will give the registration code.
Index that whole dataset
I’ve seen a few projects doing just that with answeroverflow.com and they have come up in my web searches. Not really a solution but at least a stopgap.
Given some similar issues, why is it some projects still use IRC then?
That would be equally annoying. Probably a better signal to noise ratio on IRC though; Discord descends into memes almost instantly.
For projects I am involved with all irc chats are archived and searchable. There is nothing private, no registration needed and searchable.
Quite a bit different.
Because IRC is awesome, always has been
there’s a difference between using irc for livetime troubleshooting and not having a forum at all and directing everyone to your livechat discord. i’m sure some sicko out there has run an OSS project on only IRC, but their project likely got no traction because a history of problemsolving posts is important in open source. generally speaking, you need:
- a wiki
- a static indexable searchable forum
- a live chat place for real time communication for novel problems
too many projects these days only have that last one in the form of discord
This is just trolling, at this point.
So this is:
'Uh guys, Discord chats leaked…"
For… what, just literally everyone who used Discord between 2015 and 2017, everyone who was an early adopter?
Dear fucking god.
I used to say ‘someday, people will learn’, but fucking no obviously not, no they won’t, almost everyone is an idiot and/or truly doesn’t care.
… I guess this’ll be fodder for a whole bunch of dramatubers / pedohunters for the next year or so…
The disappearance of forum public discussion to unsearchable, unpreserved, discord semi-private discussion chambers is probably the largest informational catastrophe of the internet so far.
But I want something like Discord. Just not corporate owned…
Not as featureful, but my friends and I run our own xmpp server
Matrix?
I potentially agree, but as a possible competitor, I submit:
Everything DOGE has done in the last 3 months.
That information was at least available to capture.
With discord it was EULA-walled and anti-scraper locked
… No no no it all wasn’t.
The DOGE goons made up multiple logins to multiple US Gov databases that are not open to the public… inucluding the DoD’s SIPRNet…
… and we know at least some of these logins were also used from utterly unsecure personal devices, remotely, not onsite, and that they’ve been getting used by IP addresses from all over the place, all over the world, meaning said login creds have either outright been given away, or been compromised by other nation state’s hackers, or just total rando hackers.
So how does this work? Like how did those messages through API calls? Also, is this not something that Discord would dislike since it dilutes the value of their data horde?
