That is so typical. My experience with Discord: I need to login to my account to be able to delete it, except what if I cannot log into it?! At first they disabled it, then I e-mailed them requesting them to delete my account, but all they did was a soft-delete, of course. All of the private messages are still there, etc. Even if I were to delete my account myself, it would still leave all my messages intact. I guess my definition of delete is different from theirs. They think delete = disable without saying it is disabled. Of course not being able to re-create the account with the same e-mail just further proves it. All that "delete account" does is remove your profile photo, change your nick, and disable your account, nothing more. I cannot even request them to delete all my private messages. I tried. They just do not give a shit.
I'm OK with this. Private messages have shared ownership. You weren't sending them to yourself. Yes, there might be identifying information in the content of the messages. Yes, in the majority of cases it wouldn't make a difference.
In some minority of cases, though, they would. Abusive ex sending you messages over discord? Yeah, those might be evidence especially when both parties are saying different things. This is the most common example I can think of, but I'm sure there are others. Heck, even if someone wanted to reminisce about days gone by... they should have the right to do so in conversations they were involved in.
Well, I thought they would delete them after having requested it, but they did not. In any case, there is a feature on Discord: I can delete messages (for everyone). So as long as I can log in to Discord, I can delete messages. I doubt they actually get deleted though, probably just changes its visibility, but in any case... why would not they do that if I could do it anyway were I to be able to log in?
Yeah, I am not leaning towards either way stubbornly, I am open minded about it, I just know that many places really only just changes the visibility. In any case, thank you for the link!
GDPR rules (which may not apply to you or Discord, not sure) say a company MUST hard delete a user's data upon request. Except if company can claim to need it, like for invoicing / tax reasons. Seems reasonable.
I'd be with you if each message was end to end encrypted and/or exclusively physically stored on the users devices. But it isn't. It's on Discord's servers.
Or another way of saying this is that the optimization of only storing one copy of each message doesn't change user-visible semantics of each user having their own copy of their messages.
But I thought Discord, somewhat controversially, did actually let one person delete messages from all parties. Maybe they eventually caved because it enabled abuses/harassers to deprive their victims of evidence.
You can still delete your messages on Discord, be it in a DM (direct message), or in a channel. You can even edit them, and there is no edit history.
Although administrators can take away your right to even see the existence of a channel, which means that you no longer can delete your messages in that channel, since you have to see the messages to be able to delete them. For the record: if you have the permissions, you can delete anyone's messages in a channel.
Similar issues can arise in direct messages, for example if you closed the DM, and say, you left all mutual servers, and you unfriended your friend (without blocking), and the person changed his or her name so you are no longer able to add him or her back. When you add someone, that person will appear in "Pending" friends after having added, so you can click on "Message" to open the DM. Without that, you cannot open the DM, which again means that you cannot see the messages, thus you cannot delete them. I put "without blocking" in parentheses, because if you block someone, they will appear in "Blocked" friends, and it keeps track of changes in their name or even ID (that they are able to change with Discord Nitro), and you can open a DM easily from there. To open up the DM, you right click on the name, then click on "Message" which you can only do if 1) the person is in the same server you are, 2) the person is your friend, 3) the person is in "Pending" friends, or 4) if the person is in "Blocked" friends.
Alternatively, if you lose access to your account through losing your password, getting your account disabled, or removed by you or Discord. In this case, too, you lose the ability to delete your messages.
To bulk delete your messages, you can use https://github.com/victornpb/deleteDiscordMessages. If you have sent 100k messages, then it could take hours for your messages to get deleted due to rate-limiting. This script does nothing more than what you can already do manually; delete the messages you can see.
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TL;DR: You can delete (and edit) your own messages on Discord as long as you can see them (have access to them), and you can delete other people's messages from channels if you have the right permissions.
No idea why this is being downvoted, because it's correct. You can't publish letters without permission. This has been tested in court many times.
What you can do is sell the physical object. That belongs to you.
You can also burn it or destroy it - which is an interesting edge case.
This really comes down to different kinds of ownership. The whole point of copyright is that creative/cultural/intellectual property rights are a thing, analogous to tangible property but with a different set of legal and commercial rights and obligations.
Electronic media depend on context. ISP and telcos are usually considered common carriers so they don't own the copyright of emails or SMSs.
Social media networks either claim all copyright in full (bad news for you...) or have a specific license clause in the T&Cs which gives them reproduction rights.
Sometimes these are for specific limited purposes, and sometimes they're a blanket sign-away of all exploitation rights. (Bad news for you again.)
Am I correct in assuming that uploading it online for others to see or displaying it for personal non commercial use would be covered under the Fair Use Doctrine?
Also, how does it work if a whistleblower gives a journalist letters that they received from someone else? Is the journalist not allowed to publish them in an article?
If a case comes up in the whistleblower situation, the journalist will claim fair use as a defense. It will be up to the court to decide if it is a legitimate defense. It likely will be.
True if you do it within the copyright period, however I'd imagine that (barring further Disney shenanigans) by 2121 the author's copyright would have expired and it would be in the public domain.
Current copyright extends to 70 years after death of the author, so the letter written today will still be copyrighted in 2121 if the author is alive for 30 more years from now.
You cannot "unsend" a letter, an SMS, or an e-mail. You can delete messages "for everyone" in many instant messaging apps, and you can do that on Discord, too. The thing here is that they did not do what I could have done were I able to access my account. Perhaps it is covered in their ToS or Privacy Policy.
To the down-voter: could you please elaborate with what you got the problem so we could potentially discuss it?
Does the fact that I can change or delete this comment mean you, or hacker news have less right to it? If I delete it are you doing anything wrong by keeping a screenshot or even sharing it?
If I reveal I'm a criminal is it any different? What If it's 10 years later and I've served my sentence? Does it matter if the crime is morally wrong or even illegal where you live?
What it it's personal but not criminal, say I've come out as gay or a republican or a democrat or a communist.
I think we would be foolish to rely on greater privacy than is provided by terms and conditions and logically we will only acquire more favorable terms by requiring them in law. You gave a good example When you discussed being unable to delete data pertaining to your account.
I think on a one to one message your recipient has a right to a record of what you actually said I don't think allowing one side to edit it after the fact facilitates honest conversations nor does it much protect the person who reveals sensitive information to do so. You can already attest to what they revealed or keep a screenshot.
I think on a many to many forum like this thread that people ought to be able to control what new users see but people who already received the initial version have a right to the information imparted to them.
Basically I view a message as belonging to everyone who received it and the service ought to retain it as long as one person whom it belongs to wants to keep it.
I can see good reason to selectively remove content that is illegal say child or revenge porn but I feel like further restrictions ought to fall on the ethical reasoning of the receiver not technology to answer the complex moral implications.
Just to add a bit to it or TL;DR some bits: once personal data leaves you, it becomes out of your control, we should be aware of this. The Government may even step in and whatnot, but the information is still out there.
Discord changes your name, so it does that, although it does not really do much if the messages contain identifying information which it most likely does.
The sender owns the copyright, but there is always language in the platform’s TOS to grant them a worldwide licence to do as they please with content shared on their service.
I think WhatsApp strikes the right balance. The sender can delete the message from both devices for a few minutes. After that, only from their own device.
Just in case you are European: you can frame this as a GDPR issue. Send a mail to their Data Protection Officer (often dpo@doman.com) asking to exercise your right to correct and delete any personally identifiable data they retain about you.
If you disabled the account yourself, then you should be able to recover it and then press the delete button yourself. If it was disabled for a TOS violation or for legal reasons then they might have a gdpr exemption to deleting the data[0] (NAL).
As for messages, those aren’t deleted - while this might be legal (anonymization is seen as compliant with the right to be forgotten) they really should make it an option, otherwise people end up using scripts which do it for them[1].
I used ICO and their templates (I think it was ICO) more or less, but Discord did not care. They just disabled my account, but did not delete my messages.
I’ve implemented email blocking recently where we stored a secure hash of the blocked email so we know we’ve seen it, but we don’t have it stored. So it is possible to do that correctly
Why should an account delete remove private messages from others? If you delete your account at your cellphone cartier, should it remove text messages you've sent from everybody's phones?
I think this is spot on, when you post something to a communications platform you are publishing content. How can there be any expectation you can then un-publish it? Consider this in the context of bullying or shaming, should someone who sends me an abusive message have the ability to delete all trace of it afterwards?
There is nothing more frustrating than searching for information on old reddit threads and seeing that some useful comment that used to be there is gone because the user nuked all their comments via a script. I understand the privacy reasons but at the same time it does ruin a lot of content on sites and can force people to repost old questions to get the answers again.
This indeed sucks, but it would be pretty easy to fix. Just allow your nickname to be deleted for old posts automatically. I don't think individual posts' privacy is what people are usually worried about, but the possibility of getting "doxed" when given an easy way to view all of their previous messages.
I have actually considered using these scripts on my reddit account for privacy reasons but have always been concerned about deleting some useful posts/comments I have made. I definitely would love an option to unassociate my username from posts but still leave the content up.
While it is a useful tool for users there are exemptions for the company. For example, if your account details have been requested as evidence in a trial then the company should not delete your account under a GDPR request.
GDPR isn't a blanket deletion. Organizations can still retain personal information about customers for situations where they deem the data is still necessary for the original purpose.
