I'm not sure how useful that is. It's not like gamers' opinion about games are hard to come by. Gamers are very vocal about their opinions, so any game developer looking for feedback can just go to Steam/Reddit/NeoGAF/whatever and read to their heart's content, or maybe even communicate directly to their player base.

What people say/believe they like isn't necessarily consistent with their behavior. Data-mining with sentiment analysis might be useful. ("'Wows' dropped 1.3% and negative-sentiment profanity rose 0.5% after the latest patch.")

We've adamantly stated many a time that we will never sell users data, or put ads in the app.

Isn't it a little irresponsible to make that claim while operating on VC funding with no monetization strategy?

I don't mean to imply that you yourself are being dishonest or that you will go back on your word at some point. I'm sure you have noble intentions and want the best for your users. But it might be beyond your control.

If the company gets sold or goes public, you could have drastic changes in management and their philosophy. You acknowledge this outright in your privacy page, under the "OUR DISCLOSURE OF YOUR INFORMATION" heading:

https://discordapp.com/privacy

Discord has a policy in place that explicitly says they can do whatever they want with the information without limit, including selling it or transferring it without consent. This directly conflicts with employees' public claims about intentions.

The difference is that one of them is a legal acknowledgement end users must make before they use the software and the other is a 'feel good' thing to hear on someone's blog or forum post.

If they just wanted protection against an accidental slippage of data then that privacy page could be changed substantially. Instead, they pave the road for the explicit sale of data at a later time.

Or, if they wanted to leave the option open in the future they could say "This privacy policy is subject to change" and give users an opportunity to opt-out when it changes without historical data being subject to undisclosed future use. But this weakens their value in an eventual acquisition by someone who wants to monetize the data.

As it stands right now, in an eventual acquisition or even just some internal shifts of philosophy in the organization, all historical data is up for grabs for any potential use.

Discord really shouldn't have employees state that they will never sell users data when they explicitly allow and plan for that option. It may not be intentional dishonesty, but it comes close.

"The difference is that one of them is a legal acknowledgement end users must make before they use the software and the other is a 'feel good' thing to hear on someone's blog or forum post."

No, if it's from a known employee, it counts as a legal advertisement.

Only if that employee is a VP or above AIUI.

You have Tencent as an investor. I've dealt with them when I've done work in China. I can't trust this statement knowing how that company operates.

Would you be so kind as to elaborate?

Tencent demands way too much for what they pay. Even when it comes to consultants and our already-exorbitant pricing. They may not say it immediately, but it is coming.

>put ads in the app.

How about if streamers wanted to put ads in their channel, and the company would take a little handling fee? eh?

"Support this other streamer/studio/client, subscribe to remove ads"

As does every other company in your position, then they sell the data. Every time.

Pure opinion:

> mine that data [...] more addictive [...] games

Oh, fuck no. No, no, no. I can not think of a more abusive thing for a company to do to its customers than that suggestion right there. How little respect would a company have for their fellow humans that anyone could even consider such a move?

Maybe that's just a failure of imagination on my part, but I'm ok with that.

if that kind of information had any value whatsoever, Reddit would be worth billions

Aggregated or Non-identifiable Data: We may also share aggregated or non-personally identifiable information with our partners or others for business purposes.

They're also free international. I bet plenty of governments would pay for a steady feed.