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Comment by olah_1 | Hacker News Reader

> I still don't get why they aren't selling an "enterprise" version of Discord. Something that would be completely separated from the "public" one, with different account and a strong privacy policy.

Probably because they make more money on scraping the data of consumers than they would on (1) building e2e encryption into the platform and (2) hiring support to give white glove treatment to enterprise accounts.

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Discord doesn't sell user data.

"Aside from being a freeware VoIP application, the company is firm with their stand on not using advertisements on the chat platform (similar to Whatsapp).

Discord is also strongly against selling its users’ data because this would mean breaching the relationship between the two parties involved (sigh, Facebook). With that said, you’re probably wondering how this company stays afloat." https://alejandrorioja.com/blog/how-does-discord-make-money/

"The company is against advertisements and selling of user data" https://www.feedough.com/how-does-discord-make-money-discord...

taking is quite easy. the fact is that not only it is proprietary software, it has all the red flags - desktop application mining a shitload of metadata, everything unencrypted, no audits, hostility towards Free Software, and the owner also had a previous project that ended featuring a privacy scandal lawsuit. there is nothing preventing them from using people's information. it is abominable for communications software.

On the other hand they claim copyright on everything you send through it.

>By uploading, distributing, transmitting or otherwise using Your Content with the Service, you grant to us a perpetual, nonexclusive, transferable, royalty-free, sublicensable, and worldwide license to use, host, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, and display Your Content in connection with operating and providing the Service.

It protects them from technicalities, but it is very broad sweeping. This section of ToS is basically what keeps me away from it.

I am pretty sure that's the standard legalese for most platforms. Reddit and YouTube also effectively have the same wording.

I would struggle to find a major platform without it.

Reddit [0]

> When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works from, distribute, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed.

YouTube [1]

> By providing Content to the Service, you grant to YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable and transferable license to use that Content (including to reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works, display and perform it) in connection with the Service and YouTube’s (and its successors’ and Affiliates’) business, including for the purpose of promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service.

0: https://www.redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement#text-conte...

1: https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms#a294b3b51f

Just because it is widely used doesn't mean that from user PoV it is very overreaching.

They don't claim copyright, they ask (since this is a EULA and they don't tend to stand up very well in court) for a license to do the things you expect of a chat client with the stuff you post on the chat client (the big distinction being this doesn't restrict what you can do with it at all). It's a symptom of how broken copyright is that it's necessary. A really important part of that clause is "in connection with operating and providing the Service". While there's possibly a wide range of interpretations of exactly what that would mean (for example, could they incorporate any code you post on the platform into the code used for the server or client?), it means they can't do whatever they want with the content.

Why would they spend time implementing e2e encryption to go Enterprise? Slack is not e2e encrypted.

Enterprises don't want that anyway. How could they snoop on their employees otherwise.

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