Discord banned a mass of accounts that were part of a service that scraped and sold user data, including messages posted across servers and what voice channels they joined, 404 Media has learned. The move comes after 404 Media reported on the service, called Spy Pet, last week and verified it was selling access to genuine user messages ripped from Discord servers.

Since then, and especially over the last several days, the number of servers that Spy Pet says it collects data from has fluctuated, dropping from around 14,000 to 12,000, before eventually on Thursday reaching zero. As of Friday, the Spy Pet website is also unavailable, and Discord says it is considering legal action against the site.

  • tal@lemmy.today
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    7 months ago

    If the Threadiverse gets large enough for data to be worth mining, they’re gonna be pulling off it too, if not already.

    EDIT: and as I’ve pointed out before, at least with current lemmy instances, it’s probably not that hard to get a user’s IP. I don’t know how viable it is to get that for a Discord user.

    • Donut@leminal.space
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      7 months ago

      You can’t get a Discord user’s IP address in the app itself as every interaction is proxied through Discord’s backend first.

      People do click on sketchy links and hand over their IP though, and Discord can’t do much about those situations

  • Jones@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 months ago

    The spy[.]pet domain got taken down, but soon after the developer published the same website under a new domain spying[.]pet…

    • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      What would you do if you found out I’ve been copying all your comments for the past week, changing them slightly, and then reposted them on a certain website without giving you any credit whatssoever?

      • gaael@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Why are you so intent on giving them s**t about their licensing of their comments?
        They cause harm to no one, they feel better because doing so is relevant to them.

        I might be wrong, but your question seems asked in bad faith: I am under tbe impression that most people on lemmy servers have at least a basic understanding of the privacy and copyright infringements of the training of AI models.

        Their will to license their comment probably has little to do with the very unlikely individual actions you describe and more to do with data licensing from big corporate entities.

      • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        What would you do if you found out I’ve been copying all your comments for the past week, changing them slightly, and then reposted them on a certain website without giving you any credit whatssoever?

        It’s so weird how some people get so bent out of shape over this.

        At the end of the day, its just a fucking link.

        Anti Commercial-AI license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

        • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          So the answer is nothing. You would do nothing.

          So what’s the point of the “fucking link”?

          • gaael@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            And what’s the point of your comment, apart for trying to spark a controversy out of nowhere?

          • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            So the answer is nothing. You would do nothing.

            So what’s the point of the “fucking link”?

            I’m not going to repeat myself all over again. I’ve already stated elsewhere in this conversation what I would do.

            Stop being so angry, it’s just a link.

            And look, I made it even smaller, just for you…

            Anti Commercial-AI license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

            • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
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              7 months ago

              Point me to where in this five comment long conversation you stated what you would do.

              You should take your own advice kiddo, seems to me the only one angry here is you.

        • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
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          7 months ago

          Because it’s embarrassing, there’s enough cringe here as it is how am I supposed to say to people ‘hey come and try out lemmy’ when they’re gong to see this sovcit Facebook mom stuff?

          • gaael@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            how am I supposed to say to people ‘hey come and try out lemmy’ when they’re gong to see this sovcit Facebook mom stuff?

            They’re going to read comments shilling for corpos, excusing China/Russia/Israel’s human rights violations… and a link towards an open source license at the end of someone’s comments is what you’re worried about?

          • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Because it’s embarrassing,

            I do what’s right, and not what may or may not embarrass me.

            I’m actually embarrassed that someone else would suggest not using a Creative Commons license to its full capability.

            there’s enough cringe here as it is

            Cringe is in the eye of the beholder.

            how am I supposed to say to people ‘hey come and try out lemmy’ when they’re gong to see this sovcit Facebook mom stuff?

            Just explain to them that Lemmy is a friendly and open place, where all different types of people with different opinions and ways of thinking can converse with each other freely, without fear of being harrased/insulted.

            Anti Commercial-AI license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)