What is Discord?

[Bluscream]

Discord is a Teamspeak like VoiP client with a modern text chat.

Official Website: https://discordapp.com/
Download: https://discordapp.com/apps

Enhancement: http://betterdiscord.net/home/

Pro's:

• Modern Chat
• Client IP's don't get revealed
• No dedicated server software

Contra's:

• Less customizable
• Client is just showing the webpage in a chromium like webbrowser.

 

[ehthe]

Some more infos on the service
1. It's very opaque ("it just werks")
2. traffic goes to cloudflare (for DDOS protection)

 

[Asphyxia]

I do not like Discord. My views have shifted from a little while ago. At first I was very happy to try out Discord. I am very open-minded, not about security though. Security is not something to be open-minded about when 1,000,000+ people's confidential/trusted information is at stake.

1. Discord is too arrogant claiming that Discord is the all-in-one replacement for Skype and TeamSpeak. Discord simply is not a replacement, but a substitute. We all know that when you substitute out one tool for another, well there are trade-offs. So, what are the pros versus cons? We will get to that below.
2. They do a lot of talk about how "secure" they are. Find me one IT security professional on their team, please. In the field of IT security, you cannot just fill in the gap. It does not make sense to put a server administrator or software engineer in the position of securing 1,000,000+ people's information. Anyone recall software catering gamer clans in which an RFI was found? Yeah, well that is an example of what happens when you have a technology officer without an INFOSEC officer/leader. IT security/INFO security are both close, they are still separate though. If Discord wants to impress people (especially myself), they will staff both an IT security and INFO security professional, separately. This is based on standards.
3. Yet another closed source, proprietary and overall pointless software. When there is a web-based Mumble client using WebRTC, this project will be dead and rotting as people can host their own Mumble (Murmur) servers, package their own web-client and custom theme it 100% however they want server-side. There are virtually unlimited options once there is a web-based Mumble client or even if TeamSpeak 3 were to be reversed or emulated, then a web-based client were built by INFOSEC/ITSEC enthusiasts. That would be "secure" and quite a bit smarter. Will that take some time? Yeah, but you bet your sweet as something like that is very much worth it. Open source is here to stay, do not count on it disappearing any time soon. I want to see the code behind Discord, how do I know I am safe? Where is their server, what language was it written in? I want to know all of this and I do not even care to begin finding out! They should have this information answered, transparency is nice in security. Obscurity is not a safe security. Discord is simply playing Hide N Seek with a malicious hacking team just waiting to show them a lesson. I hope not though.

Let's get to the trade-offs between TeamSpeak 3 and Discord.
Discord has not stood the test of time. They are currently living off of investment money. When that funding runs out --- what are their plans? They are going to sell:

We plan to sell optional cosmetics like stickers, sounds packs, themes, etc.

TeamSpeak 3 has more customization, easier to understand the security (back-end) and you may control your own server.

I don't have a problem with them selling something, I do have a problem with their privacy policy that makes any of your communications their property.

 

[Asphyxia]

That was just part 1. Expect me to expand on the Discord discussion a lot more. Throughout the day.. I am going to be brainstorming content for a video I am going to throw together.

Do not let the great evil rule this world any longer. Let's get started!

What is the great evil ruling this world? Is TeamSpeak 3 and Skype the great evil? Why and how are they the great evil? Is it possible that Discord is actually the greater evil of all of your options? Very likely, the answer is yes. Discord is backed by venture capitalist companies. These venture capitalist companies have invested over $9,000,000 into the company behind Discord. I am sure if you know what a venture capitalist firm is, you already will hate Discord. Venture capitalist firms generally target IT startups to hand the company startup costs, etc. In exchange the venture capitalist firm has equity. Let's say that Discord gets everything up and running for about $3,000,000 and then they sell it for $80,000,000 to some Japanese company. Discord original founders pull all support, they collect their fat paycheck and walk away. This is something that happens in business, have you ever wondered to yourself --- wow, this sounds way too good to be true.

A free voice chat server for millions of people across the world, with apparently no way for them to make money. Yeah, just wait until they cash out and then all of the servers end up shutdown because the business model is not intended for the long haul. The model is designed as a get-rich-quick scheme. They are trying to get partners, media coverage and social media hype which is exactly what is happening. Think about how many people are hearing about this application so quickly since the launch. They are basically spamming/flaming everyone with their "FREE VOICE AND TEXT CHAT FOR GAMERS, THE BEST", who the hell would not give it a try? Well, let's have a look into the history of Jason Citron and his unethical business practices.

http://gizmodo.com/5028459/aurora-feint-iphone-app-delisted-for-lousy-security-practices
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1626228?start=0&tstart=0

First of all, Aurora Feint was a game that Jason Citron helped create for iOS devices. This is a macboy (no offense) with an interest in making big money. Their application would dig into your cellphone contact list and send all of your contact information to their servers without encryption --- nice job ass hat. Strike 1 has arrived.

After Danielle Cassley and Jason Citron developed Aurora Feint, they moved on to creating a mobile social network for people playing games. This was called OpenFeint. They hyped it up, got news/media coverage (TechCrunch) and ended up making $282,000 in revenue during the 2010 year. Then they sold OpenFeint for $104,000,000 to a Japanese company by the name of GREE. 18 months later, OpenFeint shutdown. Your typical venture capitalist business treatment with a focus on the money. Startup, make it valuable, sell it, enjoy the paycheck while walking away. Yes, game developers suddenly noticed OpenFeint shutting down and had roughly a month to update their games to have OpenFeint completely removed.

Danielle Cassley, OpenFeint Co-Founder with Jason Citron

Jason Citron, Discord Founder

After OpenFeint was sold out, Danielle seemed more interested in starting up her own gaming studio. It seems as if Jason and Danielle parted ways. Danielle started Red Bird Studios in Granite Bay, California and Jason started Hammer & Chisel Inc in Campbell/Burlingame, California. Jason began work on a game called Fates Forever. His game was not as successful as he had hoped (no surprise), though he did get a lot of investors.

Just by the photo, you can immediately tell this game is a MOBA. Jason basically made a League of Legends clone exclusively for iOS tablets (iPads) with the investment of $8,200,000 and with that budget, I would have expected better. Oh well, they can't all be as good as Riot Games. Once Jason got tired of his failure or should I say his unfulfilled dream of getting rich quickly on his tablet exclusive MOBA, he decided to give something else a try.

He liked working with OpenFeint, he enjoyed the social media aspect. His goal became to focus on how gaming communities communicate and he founded Discord with heaps of investors. The problem with Discord is that there are too many venture capitalist investors and no one really knows what the hell they are doing other than paying highly skilled programmers/engineers and eventually the investment piggy bank is going to run out. Once that happens, their reported method of moneymaking is selling stickers --- yes, fucking stickers to run free voice communications for millions of users around the globe. Fat chance if you ask me. This is either going to flop, they are going to get it big and sell it or they are going to get hacked and everyone is going to be scared.

You do what you want, I am staying the hell away from Discord. No thanks, sirs.

Additional info:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncitron
Apparently his top skill on LinkedIn is video games.

I'm a game developer turned serial entrepreneur. I obsessively love crafting video games.

Pay close attention to the serial entrepreneur part. He likes to start many different businesses or projects and not stick with one, so however Discord is right now you can expect him to get bored with it and either sell it or drop the project. Considering the only sensible business move will be to sell it, he does have investors to pay off and he is not just going to sit on a VoIP service that is not profitable. I'm placing my bet on him selling it within 5 years.

Also this: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-26-year-old-just-sold-his-company-for-104-million-2011-5

strange Matt, you never mentioned how Jason screwed the actually driver behind the idea I.e. his partner Danielle? Or how Gree execs are in deep doodoo for buying a company whose annual revenues last year were a little over 200k or how Apple did not buy them because openfient is so insecure that it was quicker to build game center.

Jason is wildly unpopular in the video games space since he screwed over the guys from free app a day i.e, saying he was going to buy them only to clone them 3 months later.

 

[Bluscream]

Thanks for this wall of text Asphyxia. I appreciate it

Also i would like to append http://forum.teamspeak.com/threads/122871-Benefits-over-Discord

 

[Asphyxia]

That's not just a wall of text, I did in-depth research on the business leader of Discord and the company. The audio bit rate is significantly lower on Discord which they supposedly do not plan to increase that --- so right away Discord quality is going to be lower than on any TeamSpeak server.

https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/3oecet/shame_about_that_voice_quality_though/cvwjqiu

They are happy to plaster huge lists of features on their site but bitrate information is conspicuously absent.

Discord is simply not transparent, they withhold a lot of information from users and if you pay attention at all you will notice they provide almost no specifics. There is no direct information they give other than: "Our software is secure! Better than TeamSpeak and Skype! Ditch the other guys! We are a bunch of overly invested and overly hyped losers that want to make a company to sell for a lot of money."

Their business model screams failure and when you setup something to fail in the long haul, I am not going to be one of the temporary users. I think it is great they have a web-client, but they want to control all of your servers, they want to control you. If you are submissive and like to bend over to the man more powerful than Skype and TeamSpeak (supposedly), feel free. That is the opposite of security though. An important part of security is availability and with their business model if their business team just stopped their work everything would permanently crash and be unusable --- BROKEN. With TeamSpeak 3, if they completely stopped everything, servers would just shutdown every 2 hours (yes, very annoying) although a quick fix could be applied to reboot the server every 2 hours. Taking away the ability for someone to manage their own server is like living in someone's house without a key. You require them to be there to let you in, there is too much dependence with Discord.

 

[Bluscream]

That's not just a wall of text, I did in-depth research on the business leader of Discord and the company.

Wall of text does mean "Damn long text" not "You did not put effort into it" And the thanks was not ironic!

 

[Asphyxia]

This is a video of some summarized reasons why I think Discord sucks.