Discord is an instant messaging application, mostly directed at gamers™. It can house one-on-one messages, groups and so called servers, where people can create channels for audio and text. These channels must not be accessible to all people on that server and can be for different things.

For context: I have used Discord now for a too many years. I began using it, when I still used Windoof. I used the Desktop App on there. When I switched to Linux I started using the Web App only. I also tried out the Discord mobile app, but stopped after a major UI change.

Overview

Pro	Con
Many people use it already	It is not encrypting any form of Text.
On Discord Servers the owner and moderators have quite a lot of tools for moderation.	It will not delete all user data, when requesting an account deletion.
It is free to use, when you don’t care about your data being stolen.	It is not Free Software 1.
It encrypts voice calls.	It is a centralised service.
It is quite easy to adjust what others can see about you (except for Discord itself).	It collects all data it wants too and may use that for advertising.
It supports hardware security keys.	Its security recommendations are at least questionable 2
Discord has quite good noise suppression, which makes calls with people in noisy environments a bit nicer.	Voice and Video quality suffer, when using Discord.
It is really easy to develop bots for additional features.	Discord pushes their payed services with a lot of ads and takes features away from the base tier, so more people pay.
	They are based in the US and thereby must adhere to US laws.
	It has really bad support 3 and content moderation 4.
	Discords apps are really slow and resource hungry.
	It ignores browser preferences on light/dark mode.
	Its search sucks.

My experience with Discord

I still remember the first time I’ve used Discord. I was fully confused to how this page worked. At this point I got used to the strangeness of some of Discords UI, but it is still kind of weird. For example: Why are things called servers, which aren’t servers? Why don’t I see the members of a group displayed always, when on a bigger monitor? Why do sounds change with Halloween and Christmas by default? Why can’t updates be applied in the background? Why aren’t messages saved offline (browser storage)? Why can’t I see the message content before an edit occured? How can it be that deleted messages just vanish and don’t leave a “message deleted” message? Why can’t I request a data deletion from the UI and why is this only possible via a very specific support form and when you tell them in a couple of E-Mails that there is a law called GDPR?

Now that the first rage is out of the way, let me make it clear: Discord is one of my least favorite messaging apps, but it still holds value in some ways. Mostly because many others use it, but also because it has some great features. Once accomodated to the “server” structuring, it is really great. You can mute channels that don’t interest you and so on. Also they have good tools for voice isolation in calls, which is nice. Sadly they do not save all preferences server side, so every time I open up Discord in my browser I will have to set everything up again.

Privacy - who? If you use Discord you and your messages are NOT private. I do not get why so many also open source projects use it. Especially since the search within discord channels is a nightmare. It is quite hard to find anything and impossible to find what you want. Furthermore for help pages Discord is just not usable, since it can not be indexed by search machines and you are required to have an account.

Security? Kinda … At least you can get proper 2FA and make sure not everyone can message you. The default settings aren’t as sensible and every random person could just message you. Also 2FA is not a requirement. Also Discord has very bad management of when your account gets compromised. Lastly, please don’t assume your messages are safe. They are encrypted in transit, but not on the servers themselves. Anyone with access to Discords Databases will have access to all messages in a readable form.

AI? Discord tried and failed. It was also a privacy nightmare.

Discord on Linux. Yes Discord has an official Flatpak. That is nice, but also it request quite a lot of permissions, so I just use the web app, to be safe from random updates, where I don’t look into the changed permissions settings. This makes the experience worse, but at least it is kinda private and secure. Also it has the benefit that I just have to wait for the page to load, not for a gazillion updates.

Discord Android app. It changed so much, I didn’t find anything and deinstalled it. Before that it was not good, but navigatable.

Discord on Windoof. Yeah, that is probably how it should be used. You obviously don’t care enough about your privacy that Discord makes you nightmares, so you can get a good experience with it.