Discord will switch to temporary file links to block malware delivery

www.bleepingcomputer.com /news/security/discord-will-switch-to-temporary-file-links-to-block-malware-delivery/

Discord will switch to temporary file links to block malware delivery::Discord will switch to temporary file links for all users by the end of the year to block attackers from using its CDN (content delivery network) for hosting and pushing malware.

74 comments

Can we please stop building everything around Discord? It has its place as a chat app, but it's become like a web parallel to our own, except owned and operated by a single company. It's an information black hole, completely closed off from the rest of the web, unscrapeable, uncrawlable, unarchiveable, and borderline unsearchable. It has everything that is wrong with the web today. When the company dies, all information in the app dies with it. There's no Internet Archive for Discord.
- I agree. It's a handy chat app but it's not a replacement for actual forums and, God forbid, an actual support page for a project.
- This is not easy when everyone you know is already on Discord.
  
  The network effect is active in full force here.
  
  Its a good point. Eventually discord will find some way to enshittify, I am sure.
- My university forces its students to use Discord for computer science. They even forced me to use my real name (otherwise they would've kicked me from the channel). It's a privacy nightmare so I hope they will switch now since they were using it to host weekly exams.
  
  It's so hard to delete anything on Discord it's in the permanent record. It's upsetting. I use it too, but it is a nightmare privacy wise and it has all sorts of consequences.
- Admittedly I really like Discord's user interface. Love the servers that can be organized by channel and channel type, have permissions sets for different roles, etc. All that good shit. What I don't like is the total control of one entity and lack of privacy. I've been looking at Matrix but it still has a ways to go before I could ever think of completely dropping Discord.
  
  I think at a minimum someone would need to create a semi automated client for Matrix that would have a better interface and then handle the technical changes and configuration automatically. Spaces can use used a "servers" but it involves creating rooms and then adding them and the process is complicated.
  
  Slack was basically the same when I used it
- Amen
- Technically someone could just make a headless browser and then scrape everything that way, Advancements in AI will make headless browsing easier and companies like Facebook won't be able to block automation by changing the HTML multiple times per day.
  
  Yes, instead they will discontinue their websites and make you use their app.
- What are you talking about?
  It's literally a chat app. If all discord servers die today, nothing of value will be lost.
  
  unfortunately no, there are several communities where if i ask for some specific information, i am told to go onto the discord because there are guides and information there. specifically, i have noticed this a lot with mechanical keyboard communities, but i know it’s happening elsewhere too. I simply don’t understand it myself, trying to find something on these is like trying to find something in a twitch stream. it’s infuriating.
- Nah Discord is like IRC on super-steroids.
  
  You're gimping yourself by holding this view.
  
  Discord is infinitely better then IRC except for the centralization.
Yeah... In sure malware is the reason. It's not that they don't want people using discord for file hosting.
- Still, it’s not a file hosting platform. 🤷‍♂️ it should have been temporary to begin with.
  
  It literally is, it's part of their paid plans.
  
  They wouldnt have been as popular if they had been temporary from the beginning.
  
  Shoulda woulda coulda, this is now a thing their community has come to expect and rely on their platform being capable of. And the change of such will break a number of channels.
- Files are still stored permanently and links inside the client stay permanent as well, only links accessed externally are affected. I don't like Discord either but anyone relying on it as their personal free CDN had it coming for them.
Dam gotta download all the memes before they get deleted.
This is good. At my place we actually already block any discord cdn links on proxy and emails as they were getting a pretty bad threat vector.
"To block malware delivery" haha good 1
Ughhh, now I have to go back to using shit like Google Drive. Discord was so much more convenient
- https://catbox.moe/ is pretty good
  
  Catbox shits itself pretty often causing for example 5 mb videos to take 3 minutes to fully buffer
I'm sure there are some selfhosted options for file sharing.
Isnt Max filesize quite low? Like 40mb or smth? Or was that hust for non Premium users? Also file hosting and sharing is so much easyer via telegram fyi

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