[HN Gopher] discordo: Lightweight, secure, and feature-rich Disc...
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discordo: Lightweight, secure, and feature-rich Discord terminal
client
Author : ducktective
Score : 59 points
Date : 2022-08-15 19:26 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| lbrito wrote:
| What do you disagree with?
|
| EDIT: wow, people really hate jokes. No fun allowed!
| agluszak wrote:
| Discord and other biggest communication platforms should be
| legally required to provide a fully featured API. Forbidding
| users from writing and using 3rd party clients is outrageous.
| tptacek wrote:
| Why? What else should I be able to demand from other people's
| products, simply by dint of their products fitting a particular
| description?
| neoromantique wrote:
| Demanding opening and tolerating programmatic access to an
| extent would probably be a good thing tbh, even if from
| accessibility PoV.
|
| Make it opt-in with advanced user verification if you want to
| fight spam, not simply blanket ban everyone whose data you
| can't monetize easily :shrug:
| tptacek wrote:
| It's not just spam; in fact, spam might be the least of it.
| Part of the reason companies require specific clients is
| that doing so makes it easier for them to build the product
| and deliver the specific value that they've decided they
| want to deliver.
| HidyBush wrote:
| Discord clients can't magically implement features that the
| Discord API doesn't have. The only thing they can do is
| personalize the experience locally, maybe by changing the
| interface or implementing more comfortable defaults and
| shortcuts. This is not a case of a Discord client offering
| Nitro (i.e. paid) features for free, to get the paid features
| you have to authenticate yourself through the API meaning
| Discord still gets the money and everyone's happy.
| tptacek wrote:
| Why should companies that build products with serverside
| components be required to let you build your own clients?
| What you're saying when you make this demand is that it
| should be unlawful to build closed systems (or: unlawful to
| build closed systems if there's a network API anywhere in
| them).
| HidyBush wrote:
| The moment you have a publicly facing API you are saying
| "these are the rules to talk to us". It doesn't matter
| what the client is, if it follows the rules then it
| should work.
|
| A website is a publicly facing API and if two different
| browsers can talk the HTTP protocol and implement all the
| other APIs the website requires then you shouldn't be
| blocked from accessing the website through one of them
| tptacek wrote:
| You're not really answering my question. "One of the
| rules of this API is that you exclusively use this
| client" is an expressible rule. What gives you the right
| to dictate the terms that other people build by? I don't
| understand the principle here.
| HidyBush wrote:
| How can a server know I'm using a different client if all
| the features are implemented? The condition that you may
| not use a third party client cannot be imposed by the API
| but is stipulated externally.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| I'll explain why I want the right to dictate the terms by
| which software on my computer talks to software on other
| people's computers. It's because it's relatively easy to
| customize local software to work in ways I and other
| people want it to, and the only thing stopping us from
| doing so is arbitrary draconian laws and rules. This
| results in situations where you can't access a lot of
| straightforward websites and services unless you download
| an "app" that's actually just a wrapper around a web
| browser and a bunch of spyware, and it makes it
| impossible for people with various minor disabilities to
| use a lot of services comfortably.
|
| The rule right now is "Any jerkoff can dictate what is
| and isn't allowed to run on my computer" and I would like
| to change that rule to "I'm in charge of what runs on my
| computer, you're in charge of what runs on your
| computer".
| prvit wrote:
| > and I would like to change that rule to "I'm in charge
| of what runs on my computer, you're in charge of what
| runs on your computer".
|
| Who is forcing you to install Discord?
| spion wrote:
| A study group, a programming community, any social group
| that you want to be a part of and they've decided to use
| Discord.
|
| Don't like the Discord client or have trouble using it?
| Pay the price of not participating in dozens of
| communities you would like to participate in.
| psanford wrote:
| Indeed. Discord also works just fine in a browser where
| it doesn't have any privileged access to your system.
| citizenkeen wrote:
| While I understand your sentiment, no jerkoff is
| dictating what is and isn't allowed to run on your
| computer. You're always welcome to use something other
| than Discord.
| neoromantique wrote:
| At certain size companies should become platforms.
| Discord is just about there I feel.
| cartesius13 wrote:
| You are in charge of what runs on your computer, nobody
| is forcing you to use Discord.
|
| There's no jerk dictating what is allowed to run on your
| computer, there's someone offering a piece of software
| that you can willingly install on your computer if you
| want.
|
| If you don't want that, you're always free to not use the
| software or use workarounds to avoid the things you don't
| like.
|
| I, for example, hate ads and use adblock always. But I
| don't think it's fair for me to go and say that everyone
| should _forced_ to not put ads on their stuff.
|
| I'm not a fan but I understand that I have no right to
| dictate what people do with their software
| spion wrote:
| This is not true for platforms. If a community decides
| they're going to use Discord, then you, the individual,
| are out of luck. You either use that or miss out on the
| community or convince the entire community not to use
| Discord.
| tptacek wrote:
| How is that different from, say, being forced to buy a
| PS5 or an X-whatever to participate in a gaming
| community, or to get a Spotify membership to hear a
| particular podcast?
| spion wrote:
| They aren't very different. With Spotify we actually gave
| up a lot of power that custom clients had for the lowest-
| common-denominator sort of stuff, which is really sad.
|
| With each of these products we keep giving up more and
| more of the powerful variety that was available before.
| While the average person doesn't lose much, the average
| person doesn't really exist and we've really lost a lot
| of long tails of value.
| tptacek wrote:
| I see the potential value, I just don't understand the
| principle that enables us to dictate that private
| companies provide it to us.
| troops_h8r wrote:
| The same principle behind antitrust laws: dismantling
| monopolies is good for the public and good for innovation
| jelly wrote:
| The demand isn't being made to the product side; Discord and
| other chat clients already have a chat API which their
| clients authenticate and talk to, it's all already built and
| user-facing. They already distrust their clients. They
| already made everything a third party client would need.
|
| It's a policy change, not a product change, and demanding a
| company adjust their bad policy is totally normal.
| e12e wrote:
| They are in various ways more like utilities than products -
| like other utilities they/we would benefit from regulation -
| leveling the playing field and helping future proof these
| services.
| CapitaineToinon wrote:
| I cannot wait not to use it because it's against ToS
| [deleted]
| smoldesu wrote:
| Super cool to see this underway, I've been waiting for a cordless
| replacement for a while now!
| hprotagonist wrote:
| will you get banned for using it like you will for every other
| alt client? Automated user accounts or "self-
| bots" are against Discord's Terms of Service. I am not
| responsible for any loss caused by using "self-bots" or Discordo.
|
| hmm. seems like no.
| [deleted]
| madars wrote:
| Official Twitter account:
|
| >All 3rd party apps or client modifiers are against our ToS,
| and the use of them can result in your account being disabled.
| I don't recommend using them.
|
| https://twitter.com/discord/status/1229357198918197248
|
| Thus it looks like in practice you can't have a client that has
| local chat history, local search, or just better information
| density on the screen, and simultaneously hope to not have your
| account nuked.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| Note that this is a slightly different way to phrase the
| actual ToS [1]:
|
| _You may not copy, modify, create derivative works based
| upon, distribute, sell, lease, or sublicense any of our
| software or services. You also may not reverse engineer or
| decompile our software or services, attempt to do so, or
| assist anyone in doing so, unless you have our written
| consent or applicable law permits it._
|
| In the other words, they want to disallow derivative works as
| long as law permits. There are two possible workarounds:
|
| 1. If your software doesn't actually depend on Discord
| clients and servers at all, for example AutoHotKey macros,
| you would be probably fine as they wouldn't be derivative
| works. Legal 3rd-party clients may be created with this way
| (I haven't seen any such attempts though); create a virtual
| desktop where the official client runs and reconstruct an
| alternative interface from screen captures, in principle.
|
| 2. They can only do things allowed by the law. Reverse
| engineering in particular is allowed in many jurisdictions
| when it's necessary to operate with other programs or
| devices, and a virtual desktop mentioned in 1 may qualify for
| this (but: IANAL). If a broader allowance is desired though,
| the law has to be changed.
|
| [1] https://discord.com/terms
| madars wrote:
| They also have:
|
| >We reserve the right to block, remove, and/or permanently
| delete your content for any reason, including breach of
| these terms, our Community Guidelines, our other policies,
| or any applicable law or regulation.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| This is a wrong paragraph to cite, because "your content"
| does not include an "account" (the ToS is very clear
| about this). The relevant paragraph would be the
| following:
|
| _Subject to applicable law, we reserve the right to
| suspend or terminate your account and /or your access to
| some or all of our services with or without notice, at
| our discretion, including if:_
|
| _- You breach these terms, our policies, or additional
| terms that apply to specific products._
|
| _- We're required to do so to comply with a legal
| requirement or court order._
|
| _- We reasonably believe termination is necessary to
| prevent harm to you, us, other users, or third parties._
|
| _- Your account has been inactive for more than two
| years._
|
| Given the current ToS using a third-party client already
| qualifies as an explicit reason for the account
| suspension and it doesn't seem to be wise to risk that.
| Yes, they still reserve the right to suspend your account
| for other unstated reasons, but that's another matter.
| keb_ wrote:
| You don't get banned for using Ripcord since it uses the same
| APIs as the web client.
| fouric wrote:
| What prevents Discord from doing a synchronized change of
| their web client and server APIs and using accesses to the
| old API to detect Ripcord users, then banning them?
| lima wrote:
| Nothing whatsoever.
| keb_ wrote:
| Nothing, but in doing so, they'll likely ban non-Ripcord
| uses who are using outdated clients as well, followed by a
| bunch of support tickets by confused users.
| benbenolson wrote:
| Yeah, this is what I use, and I've not been banned or
| anything.
|
| I have been locked out of my account, though. There was a
| week during which I got locked out, and had to re-
| authenticate with 2FA to get into my account, once a day.
| However, they eventually stopped doing that after enough
| support tickets rolled in, and Ripcord has been rippin' along
| ever since.
| baal80spam wrote:
| I'm using Ripcord for over 3 years now and love it.
| euclaise wrote:
| It has happened before https://annaclemens.io/discord
| keb_ wrote:
| Yes, I remember when this happened. Everyone who got banned
| had their accounts unbanned (I was not banned however, and
| I've used Ripcord daily since 2018). You were also just as
| likely to have gotten banned if you used an outdated
| Android client.
| stepupmakeup wrote:
| If they're willing to lie about using a third party client
| (which is what they did to initially reach front page here
| many moons ago), I'd wager they were actually attempting to
| automate their actions instead of "BANNED after manually
| pressing 6 buttons".
| Operyl wrote:
| Yes, you likely will. They have heuristics that will snuff out
| custom clients, and it's frequent to see people get nabbed by
| this. It's unfortunate, because from an abuse perspective I
| understand why (they have issues with spam from user accounts
| joining guilds and spamming users with "Free Nitro" (premium
| membership for Discord)).
| zorkian wrote:
| (I work at Discord and manage our Infrastructure, Security,
| and Safety engineering organizations.)
|
| We currently don't intentionally block or disable third party
| clients or action the accounts of people who use them.
|
| We do monitor the traffic of spammers and we build heuristics
| around how to identify them -- and sometimes third party
| clients get caught up in that. Cold comfort, I know, but it's
| not us trying to block/come after well-behaved third party
| clients.
|
| Anyway, to OP, good luck with discordo! For one of our
| internal hack weeks a few years ago I tried to build an
| RFC1459 compliant Discord gateway... it was a fun POC, but
| definitely lots of rough edges because the paradigms don't
| exactly match up. :)
| game-of-throws wrote:
| Is it possible those heuristics could accidentally trigger
| for browsers other than Chrome? I had an old account where
| I normally used the android app, then one day I logged in
| with Firefox on desktop (with adblocker) and my account was
| banned about a minute later.
|
| At a business level, can you share why the ToS forbids
| third party clients at all? We all know that "trusting the
| client" is not a viable security plan, so why does it
| matter what client people use?
| [deleted]
| Operyl wrote:
| Eh, this reads weird to me. So third party clients are
| "ignored," but things like Better Discord which modify the
| first party client are explicitly not kosher? I'd love for
| better clarification around this at some point honestly.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Clearly Discord as a corporation is not ok with third
| party clients or modifications to the client.
|
| But the engineers who would be in charge of enforcing
| those rules do not spend time explicitly seeking out
| third party clients or modifications. They instead look
| for "non-standard behavior", which may incidentally catch
| either.
|
| PS: This is why you don't speak about your employer's
| business unless asked to by your employer.
| Operyl wrote:
| Which brings me back to my initial post, despite the
| (mind you, high level engineer)'s opinion, you should
| probably stay way clear. Support will just not help you
| in certain situations, and it's not worth the risk. Was
| surprised to even see a reply from him, Discord the
| organization has typically been _very_ clear it's not
| kosher.
| ducktective wrote:
| disclaimer : I'm not involved in the project in any way. I
| just posted for publicity.
| scohesc wrote:
| That's the really frustrating part about this - I understand
| they want to keep their walled ecosystem/garden/whatever for
| whatever reasons they want.
|
| I just wish I could customize discord's GUI so:
|
| -The GUI have so less empty space
|
| -Have a "compact" version where it just shows the users in
| the channel and who's speaking, and compact view of a chat
| channel.
|
| The default window is just an absolute PAIN, it doesn't go
| smaller than a certain size and it just has so much
| irrelevant information not pertinent to the voice/video call
| I'm in or who I'm chatting with.
|
| Maybe I'm the boomer longing for individual/group chats a la
| MSN messenger 20 years ago. :O
| Operyl wrote:
| > Maybe I'm the boomer longing for individual/group chats a
| la MSN messenger 20 years ago. :O
|
| I know, right? The thing is, the vast majority of the
| generation using this don't have these qualms, it works for
| them. This must be how it felt like when we stopped used
| corded phones, haha. Or hand written stuff to type
| writers..
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| I think the really frustrating part is that tons of
| knowledge and discourse is getting blackholed into
| Discord's walled dumpster where it's not searchable and
| likely to disappear forever within a few years
| est31 wrote:
| FTR there is a compact setting for discord. I use it
| together with 80% zoom so that it has a "normal" font size.
| Turns it into an actually usable product :).
| ronsor wrote:
| I would better understand why if I wasn't still seeing
| people's accounts getting hacked regularly and spammers going
| around with botted accounts. Spammers also generally don't
| care if their accounts get shut down after a few days.
| Operyl wrote:
| It was so so so much worse before, to be fair. We just see
| the limited stuff that does get through, for better or for
| worse.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| > lightweight
|
| > golang
|
| yet another terminal discord client that will be abandoned
| shortly
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(page generated 2022-08-15 23:00 UTC)