Discord

Discord is a great place to make communities and grow communication with others around them, but there comes a time when a company needs to listen & get their act together in hand when things get serious. It's been one heck of 2020-2021 (in a bad way). Even though I rate this 4 stars for having everything original, I am still disappointed in their lack of support to help get a ban reissued due to a self-promotion bot "Server Scam". It was a HUGE fatal & accidental click that turned to the worst back in May. Idk why this is a thing, but something needs to get done with these advertising bots that randomly appear in my dm's and provide no information on what servers thereon. It sucks and it stinks. All of this leading to getting my phone number whitelisted & gmail whitelisted too. I still TO THIS DAY disagree with the whole blocking phone number thing, I can get from the email system, but the phone number has nothing to do with anything. This limits me from having to join specific servers that have a system level to an extreme point ((meaning to verify and phone number in order to get in)) In my opinion, it's stupid and pathetic to have a server do that. I rate the app a 4 star, but their support is a middle of 2 & 3 or just flat out 0 the way how they handle accounts. ONE screw up, and you're done for. I recommend to everyone that is just starting to use Discord to be EXTREMELY CAREFUL & AWARE of what is going on. But I'll give it this, their newest feature release regards of the Banner Profile & Stickers is extremely well done and would love to see more features adding to their $9.99 Subscription on Discord Nitro. They're even adding an Integration Feature where you can identify yourself as someone completely different on this specific server which I really love that type of concept & to see happen. I'll give it that extra star because of their newest features that there revealing out to the public and making the application extremely fast and quick, with no lag and glitch.

I like discord because its really fun to use, has a great UX & is really convenient to use while gaming with friends.

The privacy policy of this service is atrocious. Not only does the company own your password, e-mail and the contents of every message you send, it also lays claim to the ownership of your sphincter. Furthermore, the Discord app demands to know EVERY program your computer is running!

Why?

So they can give a cute little status update saying "X is play Y game"? More likely they are doing analytics and datamining. They reserve the right to sell your data and the blood of your firstborn at their discretion. Even worse, your porn browsing habits and your accompanying personally identifying information they scoop up is never deleted. So if the company ever folds, they can just sell it for a mint and the next company will have more info about you than you do.

This is particularly alarming as the CEO of this company has a history of doing exactly the aforesaid.

In conclusion, if you use Discord you are a sucker and every company with an analytics contract, and therefore every employee of said company, will know you spend an unhealthy amount of time watching Japanese cartoons about little girls, waste your money on erotic VN's, and that you still don't know how to get past the sadpanda on exhentai despite trying since you were a teenager because you aren't particularly bright, which is why you're using discord after all.

Horrible privacy policy, known to keylog your conversations. Android version is loaded with trackers. IMO, dont use it... But if you want to ignore that then id recommend at least not installing it on anything, and instead run it via a browser. That way it needs to specifically ask permission to do its spooky BS.

Bullet points:
*datamining
*system snooping
*furries
*pedophiles
*mandatory 2FA

this app is a cancer.

Revolt is the same user experience without any of the negatives. No datamining, no snooping, no pedos, no random requests for personal info to ransom your account etc etc

https://revolt.chat/

One of the rare messaging platforms that doesn't require phone number.

This company started out so well, but lately things have been going downhill fast. I don't doubt for a minute the pandemic had something to do with it, but ever since roughly the end of 2020 (my estimate. Your mileage may vary), their support services have been getting worse and worse. It came to a head this December when I was made aware by a friend how atrociously they had handled his attempt to recover his account from a hacker. The short version of it is this:

1. They didn't do a very good job protecting his account in the first place. 2FA is in properly implemented, because if you have a phone that's logged in you only need the phone to scan a QR code. It will not ask you via email or any other method if you authorized this before granting access to whoever's code you scanned. Email changes and password resets are handled on a "change the account first, ask questions (through support and hope they aren't backed up) later". So when he made the mistake of authorizing someone else's QR code, and didn't realize it, the only way he would've known is if he caught the emails (and let's be honest, we are all inundated with emails. His multifactor authenticator should've also thrown out a notification to compensate).
2. When he did contact support they at first tried to help him and reversed the changes, and I'll give them some credit for that. However, by the time the hijacker got kicked out of the account, he had already been reported multiple times, and discord support did nothing to prevent the (probably automated) review process for that from permanently banning the account. Basically, they should've known from the report that the account was compromised, that the abuse reports shouldn't be blamed on the account owner.
3. I tried to get clarification from discord support on what all happened with this, and all I get told is that they can't help me because I'm not the account owner. I tried repeatedly starting new tickets, explaining that I don't need any of the private information from the account in question (because my friend had already explained everything private that I needed to know), but I got absolutely zero replies. Given the general quality of the platform these days, especially in terms of security and access to support when security goes wrong, I would be very wary of putting anything on here that you wouldn't trust a foreign nation state with (in fact, China may already be spying on users by purchasing compromised accounts, if I had to guess). I think it's only a matter of time before Discord gets hit by a massive data breach the likes of which, based on their current Monthly Active User statistics, haven't been seen since Adult Friend Finder got hit in 2016. It's not too late to fix this Discord! Just admit your general developers can't handle security on their own and start hiring some security technicians. I am a certified software developer and even I will gladly admit I don't know anything about IMPLEMENTING security. I just know security design smells when I see them...