A Brazilian team used Discord’s API to scrape 10% of its open servers.

Researchers published a massive database of more than 2 billion Discord messages that they say they scraped using Discord’s public API. The data was pulled from 3,167 servers and covers posts made between 2015 and 2024, the entire time Discord has been active.

Though the researchers claim they’ve anonymized the data, it’s hard to imagine anyone is comfortable with almost a decade of their Discord messages sitting in a public JSON file online. Separately, a different programmer released a Discord tool called “Searchcord” based on a different data set that shows non-anonymized chat histories.

  • .DonutsEnglish
    9•3 days ago

    It also includes deleted messages. And they refuse to delete things when someone opts out

    Deleted messages are not included. Neither the public nor the API allows you to read deleted messages

    Upon joining a server, users gain access to all non-deleted historical content within public channels, and the same is valid for data retrieval using their API.

    • @MoonRaven@feddit.nlEnglish
      2•3 days ago

      Excellent point if searchcord used the api. They created unmarked bot accounts that save all the messages.

      • .DonutsEnglish
        4•3 days ago

        Searchcord yes, but not the researchers from the headline