If there’s no choice in this, it is bad. If “servers” are allowed to opt-in, and users are interrupted with a warning before posting on a “server” that has changed the setting, it’s possibly good.

I know Discord messages have never been secure, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been a place people treated as private. Suddenly making messages accessible is like replacing all the bathroom stall dividers with transparent partitions: never was secure from a real threat, but there was a heightened expectation of privacy.

There are a lot of fandoms and communities and support groups with the intent to be public and having those indexed by your favorite search index will bring value, just like public web fora of the past and reddit (even ex-Twitter) before extreme monetization and slopification. But, changing any shared information or thoughts from inaccessible to accessible is virtually guaranteed to cause harm via unwanted disclosure and those harm could be irreparable and impossible to balance with the benefits of accessibility.

This news is mixed, with a side of anxiety. I’m not really sure what’s going to show up in my Discord history.

It’s Free Software; if they want to change the branding, they can fork it. I say fuck the haters of .lol and anime catgirls.

Corpos might get to use our work gratis (since that’s the only way we can make it libre for everyone), but we don’t have to cater to them.

[email protected]

I use Paypal and they charge my Discover (Novus network, IIRC). No MC policy issue, let me buy what I want.