Originally posted on Mastodon.

I have mixed feelings about this 404 Media article: A Brazilian team used Discord’s API to scrape 10% of its open servers. The reality of public digital spaces is they are being recorded. Always.

This comes up on #Mastodon. Folks are (understandably) uncomfortable with their public posts forming a giant corpus. However, we are all posting to public websites freely accessible by anyone.

Expecting privacy in non-private spaces is inherently fraught. IRL if I’m talking face to face with a friend at a cafe I expect the conversation is not being purposely recorded. It’s not clear we should have the same expectation of @‘ing each other in public digital spaces, but it can feel violating nonetheless.

Unfortunately, with the slop machines vacuuming everything up, I think that boat has sailed (if it was ever even docked). It’s not clear we can create the social norms we might want. We have to ensure private communications for private conversations. In these times we are repeatedly shown money triumphs over respect.