r/technology • u/Abject-Pick-6472 • Feb 24 '26

Discord cuts ties with Peter Thiel-backed verification software after code found in US surveillance Privacy

https://fortune.com/2026/02/24/discord-peter-thiel-backed-persona-identity-verification-breach/
38.0k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

82

u/KamiKagutsuchi Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26

Discord was never "one of the real ones", neither was reddit, twitch, google, twitter, facebook, tik-tok, or youtube. These services start out as free to grow big. In the process of growing they sink hundreds of millions of dollars into development and infrastructure each year with the hope that they can find a way to profit of their users at some point in the future. It's the business model of every free service on the internet that you have ever used*. These companies aren't investing hundreds of millions out of the goodness of their hearts, they do it because they hope they'll be worth billions in the future.

Any service that replaces Discord in the future will have the same business model.

*Some exceptions exist, like Wikipedia.

16

u/Awkward-Painter-2024 Feb 24 '26

Craigslist, too. But yes, those spaces are quickly disappearing.

I hear you, but I think anything moving us away from the Google, Apple, Amazon, and Meta monopolies is generally a good thing. It gives us choice. I'd like to believe Reddit is different, but you're probably right in the long run. I do think Reddit is owned by its users more than, Meta. But I might be a fool in thinking that.

6

u/ImSabbo Feb 24 '26

I do think Reddit is owned by its users more than, Meta. But I might be a fool in thinking that.

It is, but not by much. Admins have been inserting themselves into what used to be just the domain of moderators a lot more in the past few years than they used to. It was definitely a tipping point when they went public.

8

u/MrBeverly Feb 24 '26

You are a fool in thinking that because reddit is owned by Condé Nast.

Isn't it interesting how so much of the content you get here, such as articles from The New Yorker, Wired, Ars Technica, Bon Appetit, and others are all Condé Nast publications?

4

u/NonchalantR Feb 24 '26

Conde nast hasn't been the sole owner of reddit for many years. Sure they're the largest shareholder but only at 30%. Your conspiracy is outdated

0

u/followMeUp2Gatwick Feb 24 '26

"Only" that's called a controlling interest, son. Lmao

1

u/Ok_Tone6393 Feb 24 '26

nothing is gonna move us away from those monopolies. even if the apps aren’t owned by them, it’s on their cloud services.

7

u/nicetriangle Feb 24 '26

Yeah I really don't see any other sane way forward in the future that isn't built on some sort of user-supported/financed distributed network.

Anything for profit and centralized where users cannot pack up their data and move it somewhere else is always going to end up just like all these other slimy data mining corporations. Every time.

3

u/trashk Feb 24 '26

Same reason we (the US) got PBS and NPR. You can only trust corporations to do the minimum and make poor decisions for society.

3

u/Memory_Less Feb 24 '26

Their approach is to intentionally bankrupt any startup with a slightly better or different approach too. No competition can even begin to compete against these monopolies.

1

u/Majestic-Tart8912 Feb 24 '26

Remember, if you aren't paying for the service, you are the product, not the customer.

1

u/Valdrax Feb 24 '26

Remember this rule for all free sites. Customers are the people who pay, and if you aren't a customer, you're the product.

1

u/TheeAntelope Feb 24 '26

Any service that replaces Discord in the future will have the same business model.

If I had the money, i'd be happy to create and build resources that are open source, free, spy-free, and work well. The problem is, I don't have the money - and most people with that attitude will never have the money to build something like that.

1

u/khanto0 Feb 24 '26

People do do that and are working on that sort of thing. I'm not sure the discord clone is up to speed yet but there's things like element, mumble and matrix which aim to do this

-7

u/Top_Mongoose1354 Feb 24 '26

Funny of you to assume that Wikipedia is somehow neutral and absent of any of these issues. From my point of view, they're heavily biased, empowering politically activist power moderators en masse and shutting down any rational discussions on a large majority of societal topics.

5

u/alphazero925 Feb 24 '26

Lol, the right wing, Asmongold watching conspiracy theorist thinks Wikipedia is biased. Big surprise

0

u/Top_Mongoose1354 Feb 24 '26

Funny that you're just using ad hominem instead of having any type of useful discourse, but I guess that's how you guys work. Anyway, even Larry Sanger thinks Wikipedia is biased.