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Comment by robryk | Hacker News Reader

If I had no right to see messages others send to me, then sending messages would be pointless -- the recipient would not have the right to read them.

Every other chat service I have requested data export from gave me all the messages in conversations I was a part of (even if they were mangled somehow -- e.g. missing attachments in FB Messenger). I think this is an example of Discord applying motivated reasoning for the company's benefit (E: at the expense of their users).

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That's something completely different. GDPR takeouts are only referring to YOUR data. The data entered from other people is not yours. It's not that hard to comprehend if you think about the legal aspect. This is a compliance issue more than anything else if they could they wouldn't give you anything.

The original comment was talking about lacking data exports tools/options. The workaround is using GDPR but even that is lacking.

It's not a workaround because it's not working.

> When I request a copy of all data Discord "has on me" I get only the messages I've sent (which is borderline useless), and I am only allowed to do that once a month, with a days-long waiting period.

What he is trying to paint as a broken feature is just compliance to GDPR and with that you only get your data.

>A piece of functionality that's missing/broken by design in Discord is data export. Discord client can show me all the conversations I've taken part in. When I request a copy of all data Discord "has on me" I get only the messages I've sent (which is borderline useless), and I am only allowed to do that once a month, with a days-long waiting period.

Full comment because context is important.

The first part of the comment is explaining that there's missing/broken functionality. They're trying to export data and that's missing. What Discord has, which could count be used as that feature, is requesting a copy of all your data and THAT is broken for the use case because it's missing the messages of others and, even then, it's once a month and there's days-long waits.

They want to export data out of an application that has no data export feature and with discords strategy atm they don't want to implement one. There is one feature implemented for GDPR purposes which is GDPR compliant (even the long wait times). He is complaining about a non existing feature and than argues that the law whole HN is going on for like 6 years doesn't reach far enough? Just don't use discord if you need features they don't offer OR even better call your senator and tell them to regulate it OR scrape it yourself.

Well this is pretty dumb if true. If someone willingly participates in a one-on-one conversation with you, and you can literally screenshot any of their messages that are so important they must be withheld, what's the point?

To me it’s like asking for a mass DM feature. Discord can’t stop you from messaging 100 people about an exciting new investment opportunity, but it’s not a workflow that we’d want to encourage so there’s not a UX primitive for it. (A sibling comment asks why Facebook and Google messaging apps let you export other people’s messages; I think they’re wrong, driven by an earlier era in UX design when people were focused much more on user power and much less on its downstream consequences.)

Note that I didn't mention GDPR or any regulation. Data export is for me a feature that makes it easier to walk away from a service (and, as a side effect, makes it easier to use the service by performing the export periodically and keeping an indexed copy of that data in your favourite database). What Discord offers doesn't help me walk away from it at all, so from my POV it's missing this feature.

Do you know why Google Hangouts and FB Messenger provide a data export that includes others' messages? Do they base it on a different interpretation of the law, or is there some other reason for them to do so?

Messages sent to me are MY DATA. The same as letters sent to me. Packages sent to me. Physical things given to me, Etc... The enter point is you send me a message. That message is now mine (my copy). If you didn't want me to have it you shouldn't have sent it to me.

If I send you something by accident and delete it before you read it I should be able to delete it with no way of you recovering it.

If you read the ToS it also is very specific that it's not your data.

You've now moved the goalposts from "a discussion about what constitutes "your data" under GDPR" to a discussion about moral rights for deleting accidental content, and a reference to Discord's ToS, neither of which have anything to do with GDPR.

You are arguing about a law that is in place and available to read. Discord is in compliance of that law by only sending you your parts of the conversation. Do you really believe they did it without checking in with their lawyers?

Check the ToS you don't own anything on Discord you even transfer copyright for every word you type. What even is your argument here? That it would be nice otherwise?

> Check the ToS you don't own anything on Discord you even transfer copyright for every word you type.

This is blatantly false. https://discord.com/terms under "your content" claims that I give Discord a forwardable and nonrevokable license to do anything with my content, not that I transfer copyright.

I think there's confusion. A chat is by definition not a single owner property. Its not like photos you upload on a host, blog entries or your FB wall.

By this logic, if I ask my email provider for my data, it would only supply an archive of emails I sent. It certainly seems like the emails sent to me are mine as well. I'm not a Discord user, but is it really true that exports only contain one side of DMs? Seems almost like malicious compliance when I consider the purpose of such archives!

There is no take out feature. There is just a GDPR compliance one that does the bare minimum to be law compliant. If you read the ToS you would know that you don't own any data on Discord.

> The data entered from other people is not yours.

Citation for this? It seems pretty intuitive to me that messages sent to me are considered to be "my data", and your claim doesn't seem to be consistent with the overall theme of the GDPR...

At the very least, there's a distinction between personal information such as your name and address (which the GDPR regulates the collection of), and non-personal content like anonymous usernames and sent messages.

the only thing you can take out is your content... read here. That you don't have ownership of anything on a platform like discord should be clear with all the ToS threads about user generated content in the last years.

https://discord.com/terms under "Your Content"

https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/360004957991-Y...

> 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

They have a license on everything sent AND they can use it to reproduce, publish, etc. So they very much can create the functionality.

ofc they could but for what benefit to them?

People using their platform vs looking for others with the feature.

I guess they reasoned about it and decided it's not worth their effort with a growth rate of 40%

Now you are moving the goalposts from "a discussion about what constitutes "your data" under GDPR" to "what would the benefit be for Discord", as you already have in another thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29715101

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