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Comment by zanny | Hacker News Reader

I would strongly recommend against it. Discord has no privacy guarantees in their TOS and actively says they will sell your data. Its how they offer their service "for free".

Workplace conversations should be private, and that almost exclusively means either a siloed self hosted solution or a service with a contract that guarantees data integrity and privacy.

If you are playing video games using Discord is fine, at least up until you start talking about personal details of your life in their chat rooms or over their voice services. If I'm having conversations I don't want Discord's data customers having, I'll use Signal / Matrix (self hosted or encrypted channels) / Mumble.

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That's nice misinformation, mate. Discord makes money from Nitro, and they started off with a fairly large investor cushion which grew since launch.

There is nothing in the ToS that states in any way, shape, or form, that they can sell their data. I challenge you to quote the exact place where it says that.

Yup this, our privacy policy plainly states that we're not in the business of making money from your data. We have various provisions which limit how and when we can share your data.

You don't look in the ToS. You look in the company articles of incorporation or bylaws which will explain things like how money is allowed to be made.

How would that work?

If a company drafts ToS and then plumb violates them, well, it'll be found out eventually and then you get things like the recent debacle with telco data being sold (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15477286), and then the company(s) in question will either get completely shredded or their reputation will at least be seriously besmirched.

I can see the logic of what you're saying, but at the same time I can't see how it would hold up. If you can show me how it would work I'm listening though.

As soon as you start your own business, you'll know all of this. The short gist of it is when you incorporate, you have to publish rules that govern your entire operation. These are either your articles of incorporation or your bylaws, depending upon the type of entity you are.

If "Don't sell customer data, even surreptitiously" isn't in those bylaws or articles, then the company is free and clear to do that. ToS says how you can use THEIR service externally, not how they internally operate.

Oh. Thanks very very much for this clarification; most helpful TIL.

Apologies for not replying sooner; I didn't see this until now!

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