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submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Five hours after Charlie Kirk was shot this week, an Atlanta man got a phone call from an Illinois police officer asking about a photo he shared with a couple of close friends on a private Discord chat. The Atlanta man, who asked not to be identified, says the post was merely a confirmation that he had purchased the same T-shirt that the accused killer wore (from an Illinois-based online shop).

Social media companies are generally forbidden by law from divulging users’ private communications to the government without a traditional legal process (e.g., court order). But there’s an exception: in perceived emergencies, social media platforms can proactively and “voluntarily” hand over private messages in response to what’s called an “emergency disclosure request” (EDR).

Discord, I am told, did not respond to any EDR here; but when I asked them directly if they’d provided law enforcement with information to traditional legal process, they declined to respond on-record.

The FBI, or the intelligence community, evidently is monitoring Discord private messaging, even from people who have broken no law.

Full blown Orwellian world. Run for local government and stop this shit.

The largest populated areas are left leaning. If they ae controlled by democratic socialist, we can restrict this shit. Just by pure numbers.

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[-] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago

I'm fortunately not American.

Guns should be regulated anyway.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago

How else can we stop people like Kirk and Trump?

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[-] [email protected] 55 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I saw this coming in 1999 when Scott McNealy inadvertantly spilled the beans on what his hateful industry was up to, and I have been extremely cautious about what I've been posting ever since. People have called me a paranoid crackpot for decades. I guess I hate to tell you I told you so...

[-] [email protected] 39 points 3 days ago

De-google and open source has been my push this year. I'm not the most knowledgeable but I don't trust these companies.

I stopped using social media for almost 20 years. Only anonymous chats like this are used. Everything goes through a VPN and I always think that someone else is reading my stuff.

9-11 put us on this track with no restrictions.

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[-] [email protected] 45 points 3 days ago

Using this to try to get more people off of discord.

Also not privacy related, but fuck substack

[-] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago

Ken Klippenstein has done amazing work and broke multiple stories.

This is not a smear against discord but a reveal of how the government is operating. If you don't think it is a privacy issue then you don't know what privacy is. Being a fan boy doesn't change what is happening.

Use discord all you want but your point is baseless about the story.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 2 days ago

Apologies, I wasn't criticizing the article, or you for sharing it. It's a tricky sentence, especially if English isn't your first language - the "but" changes the subject. Article is definitely privacy related.

What isn't privacy related is my opinion about subtack. I don't mean to derail, so will let anyone reading this look up why ss sucks and make their own decision.

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[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

What's wrong with substack? Lots of great independent journalists use it.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

Highly prone to lock-in, enshittification, and they promote Nazis.

Just another centralized platform that can't help but want to become universal.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

What's the better alternative?

[-] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

There are several, but the most direct alternative is Ghost (see SS to Ghost migration guide here).

I used to subscribe to several SS newsletters that switched to Ghost, which is how I found out about it. But I wouldn't have even noticed if they hadn't told me.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Unfortunate choice of initialisation there.

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[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

If self hosting ghost isn't your style. Some good hosted options are bear blog, and write freely

[-] [email protected] 28 points 2 days ago

Exactly what Charlie Kirk would want! More censorship!

[-] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

Sad fact that we live in a world that his death accomplished more then his life. We all knew he was a Trump asset but I never thought it would be like this.

[-] [email protected] 21 points 2 days ago

You may as well assume that anything done on public social media is being read, searched and filtered in real-time by law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Given the trajectory of this administration in persecuting people for their political affiliation, dumping commercial social media should be an imperative for everyone who isn't goose stepping.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago

That's been the case for 10 years. Unless it's e2ee, it's public record and can be tied to your real name with a minimal amount of paperwork.

Before I comment anything anywhere, I imagine it being read in a court room in a monotone voice. Bip bop dippity dop, the judge in this case is a swell person and I hope they have a lovely day!

[-] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

Well they will have to read a lot of my erotic zelda/link fan fiction.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

Sounds like a CSAM case for a motivated partisan prosecutor.

People break the law, as it is written, way more than they think. Selective enforcement to target political rival groups is very much in the playbook here.

It is less safe to speak in public today than it was 2 years ago, and it is only getting worse. Protecting your privacy also means protecting yourself from mob justice when they decide you're the new target group.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Well, it's being scanned for keywords by a script. They don't manually read every post in existence. That's not physically possible.

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[-] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I really do worry tools like whatever the naperville pd using here are going result in a lot of damage and upturned lives once their use becomes more casual, like god knows what's going to happen with the president declaring random political views terrorism

no real court orders were involved, the article mentions a EDR wasn't invoked, no push back from discord over what sounds like some sort of dump or access to all images uploaded to the service

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

on the plus side, there's one less dead nazi in the world.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

It's the Clipper Chip all over again.

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this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2025
406 points (99.0% liked)

Privacy

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