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Comment by notaustinpowers | Hacker News Reader

I think the "big deal" about it comes from the fact that users did not give that information willingly to Discord. If I did not provide you that information, why would I expect you to know it? And in a state that California (where Discord is based), I have the right to know how my data is used/shared, and request it be deleted. But I can't request information to be deleted if I don't know you have it. I can't know how you're using/sharing my data if I don't know you have it.

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I guess they are saying they don't need to ask you anymore - if you willingly give your actions (servers you browse, things you say, chats you react to, etc.), and they can infer from that, then where's the foul?

I think it comes before that - the first pieces of data they are scraping. I don't buy that the problem is that they can and will infer your age/gender/etc. based on that.

The foul is that I don't want to share my age and gender with every online service that I interact with. I'm bewildered so many people defend discord's actions here. If you give company your email address are they allowed to fully doxx you (your real name, home address, job history, age, gender, friend list, phone number)? Even though you've shared your email address and they just used it to infer the rest (using publicly available sources).

> If you give company your email address are they allowed to fully doxx you

I'm not sure but I'd also be interested to know why information that used to be printed in any phone book for the world to see is suddenly the most private information to hold dear.

I might have my hottest take of all: Anonymity is bad for the web and (ironically) makes us less safe. It creates a power imbalance. I'm only "anon" here because others are. If nobody was anon (somehow) we could know our attackers, trolls, and harassers and take action.

At least with a phone book you were able to opt out of your information being included in it. As of right now, there's no way to opt out of Discord.

Anonymity on the internet protects a lot of us from state actors, governments, and fringe extremist groups. We're already losing that anonymity with many state laws (submitting IDs to view adult content is one of those). Imagine if the President had a list of every person worldwide who said anything bad about him. Name, number, gender, age, address, list of friends on every network, etc.

Having to deal with trolls and harassers that can be blocked or removed from the platform for gross violations is a much better option than everyone in the world being able to find out who I am, who my family is, who my friends are, etc.

Yeah you wish that would work.

All the bad actors will do is steal someone else's credentials. Just like they do now. You still won't figure out who they are. They'll set up networks of fake names, fake friends, fake businesses, fake pages, fake comments, fake posts. They're not going to just roll over and start doing shady shit in their own names.

Note my (somehow). I'm aware it wouldn't be possible.

The foul is that PII per California law the user has the right to know what information is collected, how it's used/shared, and request the data to be deleted. Discord is based in California and will be under subject to these laws.

Looking through Discord's ToS and Privacy Policy, gender isn't mentioned once. And age is mentioned once in the Privacy Policy in regards to account creation.

This practice circumvents the law by gathering this information without the user's express permission.

They aren't collecting gender. They're guessing at gender. If they're doing it right, they're just storing a score representing likelihood. I don't think it's a given how the courts would rule on that... even in California.

They are spying on you, looking for clues to your gender. That is the same as collecting the data, but more insidious and automated.

If you talk about cookie recipes, you might be the type that buys baking sheets. Discord knows you talk about cookie recipes. Presumably it's in their TOS or something.

To me, this strikes me as someone walking in the park with a stroller getting indignant about someone assuming they might be a parent.

Sure, but now consider that the government also has access to this data, and pair that with recently passed laws around gender & reproductive rights. It gets ugly fast. Discord is holding a dangerous piece of data, here.

> request it be deleted

You hear that, HN? Not providing an option to delete our comments is against the law (in California and probably in EU as well). No, anonymizing the comment doesn't count.

> No, anonymizing the comment doesn't count.

It would be nice if HN, or literally anyone, offered that option.

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