this post was submitted on 21 May 2025
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461
Researchers Scrape 2 Billion Discord Messages and Publish Them Online (www.404media.co)
submitted 17 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
62 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Researchers published a massive database of more than 2 billion Discord messages that they say they scraped using Discord’s public API. The data was pulled from 3,167 servers and covers posts made between 2015 and 2024, the entire time Discord has been active.

Though the researchers claim they’ve anonymized the data, it’s hard to imagine anyone is comfortable with almost a decade of their Discord messages sitting in a public JSON file online. Separately, a different programmer released a Discord tool called "Searchcord" based on a different data set that shows non-anonymized chat histories.

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

Well yeah, it's not encrypted. It would be the same as 10 years of Reddit posts or Lemmy posts scraped

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 hours ago

There's literally no difference. Each Discord server is like a tiny chunk of Reddit. If anyone expected any privacy on these servers, they're nuts.

[–] [email protected] 70 points 16 hours ago (4 children)

This isn't even them scraping private chats and small servers, they just scraped public servers in the discovery tab. None of that information was ever private, and every user can browse the chat history there.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 16 hours ago

Yeah, exactly. It may sound scary or like a violation of privacy, but there is no privacy when posting to public online areas.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 16 hours ago

"Researchers scrape thousands of hours of news footage from their TVs!" is about as big a deal, honestly.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 15 hours ago

In other words-- your sexting is safe, friends.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

It also includes deleted messages. And they refuse to delete things when someone opts out.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

It also includes deleted messages. And they refuse to delete things when someone opts out

Deleted messages are not included. Neither the public nor the API allows you to read deleted messages

Upon joining a server, users gain access to all non-deleted historical content within public channels, and the same is valid for data retrieval using their API.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Excellent point if searchcord used the api. They created unmarked bot accounts that save all the messages.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 12 hours ago

Searchcord yes, but not the researchers from the headline

[–] [email protected] 3 points 15 hours ago

It's indeed not a miracle.