When you are paying $0.00 for the service? And in this case they are dropping malformed data, which could easily protect their users from malware that exploits weaknesses in the media codecs.
This notion also does not translate very well to things which are not related to IT. I use a very large number of things in my daily life which I am not paying for but I still expect them to work and be safe. Or would be it be fine if I take an elevator and it falls down and kills me? Or whoops, I got a free candy which turned out to contain toxins. I guess I didn't pay for the service so why do I have some expectations for it to work or be safe?
If you want to argue that Discords measure in this case are fair then I'm fine with that, but just something like "STFU the service is free" is not enough when it comes to these companies with massive impact on society, IMO at least.
Edit: After thinking about this a bit more, I guess the point is that if they are just dropping (potentially) malicious data, or in your case not letting a gorilla through the door. This does not have anything to do with the service being free as far as I can see, they can be argued for independently.
Instead I see people defending questionable behavior by pointing out that the service is free. And the point I tried to make originally was that I would like to at least be informed about the questionable behavior, so I have a chance to take this extra "cost" into account when I select a product.
We simply cannot expect something to be had for free without making money to support the service. Unfortunately, one way to monentize the service is to sell user data.
It doesn’t seem fair to burn Discord at the stake for a feature they never claimed to provide.
Those things are paid for by someone who is expressively giving you rights to those goods/services. Just because Method Gaming is paying for their discord server so you can enjoy your free service, doesn't mean they are necessarily aware that you are using their paid-for server resources. OTOH, if I am renting an apartment from a building (which I pay for) and someone comes to visit me in the elevator, I expect that the elevator cost I pay for through my rent is safe enough for you travel in.
> guess I didn't pay for the service so why do I have some expectations for it to work or be safe?
Safe != privacy. The issue is not necessarily security (although there is an implication there as well), but more so it's privacy.