Discord

From Archiveteam
Revision as of 18:46, 14 November 2018 by Sanqui (talk | contribs) (irc)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Discord
Free Voice and Text Chat for Gamers
Free Voice and Text Chat for Gamers
URL https://discordapp.com/
Status Online!
Archiving status Special case
Archiving type Unknown
IRC channel #discard (on hackint)

Discord is basically modern day IRC used by gamers and gamer associates worldwide. It was introduced on 2015-05-13 by the today-eponymous company, Discord Inc. The Discord server and clients are proprietary, the use of Discord is free with paid bonuses.

Discord enables users to create servers (called guilds internally), which further divide into text and voice channels. Those may have different access permissions depending on roles given to users on the server. Discord keeps unlimited logs of text channels. Anybody who joins a Discord server has access to full server history (except for channels with the seldom used "Read Message History" denial). Access to a Discord server is granted through invites in the forms of an URL, which may be unlimited until disabled or automatically expire.

Discord's status is essentially deep web, as Discord servers are unable to be indexed by conventional search engines and archival tools, even if invites are posted publicly. However, as it keeps history and has a well documented API, it proves possible for users, particularly admins, to create comprehensive archives of servers they have access to.

Should Discord server archives be posted publicly? This is a question worth pondering on. On IRC the implicit agreement is that you don't publish logs, but the privacy story is different on Discord, where everybody who joins gains access to years of logs. Given that closed services like Discord and Telegram are on the road to displace traditional services like message boards, there is culture worth saving. Archival and noindex publication could be appropriate. Note that Discord explicitly forbids collecting and disclosing end user data in their Developer Terms of Service (point 2.4 End User Data). See also our attitude to Robots.txt. Make your call.

Software

Note that use data mining, robots, spiders, or similar data gathering and extraction tools is against Discord's Terms of Service. Using these tools with your account may get your account banned. Use at your own risk!

Software for archiving Discord servers include:

  • pullcord, created by ArchiveTeam user moufu. pullcord is a Go command line program which supports incremental archival of channel logs, server logs, attachments, avatars, server icons, server splashes, and emoji.
  • DiscordChatExporter is a GUI program which can be used to export message history from a Discord channel to a file.
  • Discord History Tracker is a browser plugin that lets you save Discord channel logs one by one.