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Discord now blocked in Russia and Turkey

Invincible Sugar

Summary

Discord is now blocked in Russia and Turkey, though for different reasons. Russia is blocking Discord because of perceived 'extremist and terrorist activities' while Turkey has done so for child safety concerns. Users in both countries can potentially get around the ban with VPNs, though both governments try to block this.

 

Quotes

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According to Reuters, Turkey reportedly blocked Discord after it refused to share information demanded by Turkish authorities which alleged crimes of "child sexual abuse and obscenity" were committed on the platform.

 

Similarly, Russian authorities have also implemented a blanket ban of the software this week after issuing fines to the San Francisco-based company for purportedly violating Russian law.

 

My thoughts

This is not so crazy on Russia's side, considering how much Russia hates western websites and services in general. Discord also blocked buying Nitro in Russia some time ago, so it's not like Discord hasn't "picked a side" in modern politics. Turkey is a little more surprising to me, Discord is pretty firm on it's child safety rules, it uses multiple AI and hash based systems to scan for CSEM, takes user reports about messages/conduct involving minors quite seriously, they moderate so hard on this that they even alienate some furry and anime communities when merely suggestive, not explicit, images of characters can be a bannable offense. Not saying they shouldn't take a stance against cub/loli content, but the fact they are so strict makes this claim by Turkey surprising for me.

 

Sources

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/turkey-and-russia-ban-discord

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/government/discord-blocked-in-russia-and-turkey-for-spreading-illegal-content/

https://www.reuters.com/technology/turkey-blocks-instant-messaging-platform-discord-2024-10-09/

https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/1fzp7z6/discord_is_aware_of_the_app_being_blocked_in/

 

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Turkey's concern is absolutely valid. Discord does not give the slightest fuck about child exploitation. I'm sure there would be a better method than entirely blocking such a popular platform, though.

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25 minutes ago, da na said:

Turkey's concern is absolutely valid. Discord does not give the slightest fuck about child exploitation. I'm sure there would be a better method than entirely blocking such a popular platform, though.

Discord strictly follows COPPA. Turkey's concerns are hardly valid.

Discord follows coppa better then what it was replacing. It was just a group of guys who thought teamspeak and ventrillo were trash for their friend group and FFXIV savage raiding. And they have never been advertised as private, They very much fuck users over who post bullshit because people took advanatage of hands off moderation in the early years.

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I don't think Discord's actions would matter one way or the other, the platform is always going to cause those issues and there's little ways to get around that.

 

THAT said, if you think that's really why Turkey was doing it, I'd say you're being a tad charitable to the officials. That's a logical cover. Discord is a great way to organize and they'd have almost 0 control over it from their own internal organizations. Bangladesh banned nearly all social media as the previous government was falling.  I can't find confirmation that Discord was explicitly banned in that instance, though VPN'ing out and using discord to communicate was definitely happening.

 

While I'm probably firmly in the camp that minors shouldn't be on social media (it isn't 2005 anymore where no one has any clue what's going on), most of these actions are always because of the involvement of Twitter in the Arab Spring of 2011. As they figure out a new one is being used to organize, it notably starts to get a lot of flak/banning. Honestly surprised Discord has lasted as long as it has in a lot of places, but that might be because it's really more heavily used by the younger generation.

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Is this allowed under EU laws? Discord does have a bad history of facilitating abusers, both physical and verbal.

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13 hours ago, williamcll said:

Is this allowed under EU laws? Discord does have a bad history of facilitating abusers, both physical and verbal.

vs what? sms?

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On 10/9/2024 at 5:45 PM, Invincible Sugar said:

My thoughts

This is not so crazy on Russia's side

If you know anything about the KGB, you'll know that what's really crazy is that it took this long for them to ban.

 

In China, they use DPI to block OpenVPN traffic for example. The ASIC hardware is there to do this efficiently. All you need is money to implement. 

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While im not suprised that Russia blocked it. Turkey blocking it is a curveball to me.

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On 10/10/2024 at 3:29 AM, williamcll said:

Is this allowed under EU laws? Discord does have a bad history of facilitating abusers, both physical and verbal.

Neither Russia nor Turkey is part of the EU. 

 

---

 

Turkey has a long history of internet censorship, which some people here don't seem to be aware. I was there when Wikipedia was blocked

🙂

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Summary

Russian military used Discord to stream real-time footage from drones and coordinate actions on battlefield.

 

Quotes

Quote

Russia has moved to ban Discord, a popular platform for real-time communication, drawing ire from the Russian military that has extensively used the app to coordinate units on the battlefield in Ukraine.

 

My thoughts

It's interesting and terrifying to see how tools, that were designed to maximise "frags" now used not in virtual, but in the real world.

Also wondering are other tools may be used?

Steam deck to control drones?

Quest to train new troops?

 

Sources

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/09/russia-discord-ban-military/

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When one hand doesn't talk to the other... Well, one less tool for them to use I suppose. 

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18 hours ago, disee said:

Summary

Russian military used Discord to stream real-time footage from drones and coordinate actions on battlefield.

 

Quotes

 

My thoughts

It's interesting and terrifying to see how tools, that were designed to maximise "frags" now used not in virtual, but in the real world.

Also wondering are other tools may be used?

Steam deck to control drones?

Quest to train new troops?

 

Sources

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/09/russia-discord-ban-military/

honestly, thats a brain dead thing to do by the russians. 

Discord messages are not encrypted, voice calls are now though. Everything they would post on the app would eventually have to leak to US intelligence. Its not like after the multiple dumbass war thunder leaks, discord doesnt just pass it all up to them now.

WaPo has made multiple completely out of pocket stories about discord though. so its kinda evergreen content for them. Its why my dad thinks discord is the worst thing ever now. 

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Didn't Ukraine use a Steam Deck to pilot FPV drones? 

I mean, it's a funny headline, but if a technology is proven to work well, there is no reason to not use it. Why waste resources developing a new "MiLiTaRy GrAdE" solution when a completely free one already exists.

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Western militaries have written reams of White Papers on the way Online Gaming is done, in all sorts of genres. They've basically been doing the analysis for over 25 years and most of the modern Network Warfare approaches come right from it. Have a sticky, complicated Network Warfare approach problem? What do you do: Hire extremely expensive consultants for millions or observe the try-hards grinding XP?  Turns out, the try-hards are far more adapt at exploitation of resources than the world's entire military consultant base.

 

I wish that was a joke, it's absolutely what happened. And it's part of the reason the Xbox controller has been adopted as a standard interface to a lot of systems in the Military. Everyone coming in already is trained on it, lol.

 

As for setting up Discord channels for an actual Raid. There's a lot of joke opportunities, but it's a very functional technology and understandable why line troops would default to it. The US Military used a world of iPhone apps during the GWOT.

 

Oh yeah, just remembered that Ukraine is using a custom Android app for all of their network communications. War has been digitized.

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A calling/messaging platform that people use to sell dr*gs and illegal p*rn. Not a surprise.

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17 minutes ago, thekingofmonks said:

A calling/messaging platform that people use to sell dr*gs and illegal p*rn. Not a surprise.

damn sms
shakes fists at email. 

Takes like this baffle me
Is there any, I mean, ANY calling/messaging platform not used for that?
Hell talking to a person... in person. You do the same thing over. we should ban talking to people. in person.

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10 hours ago, starsmine said:

damn sms
shakes fists at email. 

Takes like this baffle me
Is there any, I mean, ANY calling/messaging platform not used for that?
Hell talking to a person... in person. You do the same thing over. we should ban talking to people. in person.

Bad take.

 

Are emails instantaneous and practical? No. Are they less traceable? Definitely not. Out of the window immediately.

Does SMS support group messaging? No.

Does SMS have end-to-end encryption? No.

Are phone numbers less traceable than IPv4's that can be masked/spoofed in a number of ways? No.

Is Discord quicker to cooperate with law enforcement than ISPs? Absolutely not.

With the possibility of IPs being spoofed, is there any reason for criminals to still spend money on dozens of prepaid SIM cards a week as they did 30 years ago? No.

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didn't that one kid leak government documents on discord?

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4 hours ago, thekingofmonks said:

Bad take.

 

Are emails instantaneous and practical? No. Are they less traceable? Definitely not. Out of the window immediately.

Does SMS support group messaging? No.

Does SMS have end-to-end encryption? No.

Are phone numbers less traceable than IPv4's that can be masked/spoofed in a number of ways? No.

Is Discord quicker to cooperate with law enforcement than ISPs? Absolutely not.

With the possibility of IPs being spoofed, is there any reason for criminals to still spend money on dozens of prepaid SIM cards a week as they did 30 years ago? No.

damn how have I ever done group texts with SMS. must be impossble.
Imessage and RMS have end to end encryption

 

Discord is plenty quick to cooperate with law enforcement. There is never even the illusion that they dont.  And guess what isnt encrypted in discord. every server. 

its not a bad take. you saying discord is a platform to sell drugs and porn is a bad take. Its not a common use case at all for the platform, like where did you get such information? And then, you have to ask is it more pervasive then literally any other form of communication? Because its not, its just straight up not. 

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1 hour ago, starsmine said:

message and RMS have end to end encryption

Not SMS and require a permanent number. They're also require either an AppleID or a Google account.

1 hour ago, starsmine said:

Discord is plenty quick to cooperate with law enforcement.

Discord isn't a large entity that serves an entire country like an ISP. It's an educated guess that they'd take more time communicating law enforcement, especially outside of the country they operate in - the US. Sure, they are quick to communicate to US law enforcement, but the US isn't the whole world. 

https://discord.com/safety/360044157931-working-with-law-enforcement

I quote "Requests should be addressed to Discord Inc. Discord Inc. will respond to valid legal process issued by a U.S. court and properly served on it in the U.S. To achieve this, you will need to work through the applicable process for international legal assistance." - definitely not an immediate process.

1 hour ago, starsmine said:

And guess what isnt encrypted in discord. every server. 

Nope. For video and audio calls, at least, they are in fact encrypted. https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/25968222946071-End-to-End-Encryption-for-Audio-and-Video This is confirmed by the fact that Discord is an open-source service.

So criminals can talk about their operations without having to worry about surveillance.

The servers are used for communication and nothing else. Large illegal operations don't share illegal material directly on a server as it would easily incriminate them. Sharing illegal content is very often done by P2P or less stringent file sharing services, and drugs... are just traded physically.

1 hour ago, starsmine said:

you saying discord is a platform to sell drugs and porn is a bad take. Its not a common use case at all for the platform, like where did you get such information?

https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/1cjtuoy/discord_doesnt_take_action_against_servers/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Disboard/comments/1dbpt22/illegal_nsfw_servers/

https://www.renews.co.nz/i-started-one-of-nzs-first-discord-drug-servers-at-18/

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00914509221095279

https://medium.com/@ps488246/illegal-content-on-discord-a43222421b6e

Just quickly found some sources for you. It's something you hear about from time to time, so it's fair to assume that it's not rare at all.

1 hour ago, starsmine said:

you have to ask is it more pervasive then literally any other form of communication?

You brought up RCS, SMS and emails, which nobody uses to buy and sell illegal substances and illegal media. Two are easily traceable and all three are impractical.

What criminals mainly use, however, are open-source messaging services like Telegram.

And just like Telegram, Discord is 1- open-source (reliable in not getting your private information divulged), 2- a popular platform (hundreds of millions of users) and 3- an accessible public platform that doesn't require criminals to use the dark web (which would have them flagged by their ISP)

 

It's not a bad take, it's just a rational take based on facts.

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39 minutes ago, thekingofmonks said:

Not SMS and require a permanent number. They're also require either an AppleID or a Google account.

Discord isn't a large entity that serves an entire country like an ISP. It's an educated guess that they'd take more time communicating law enforcement, especially outside of the country they operate in - the US. Sure, they are quick to communicate to US law enforcement, but the US isn't the whole world. 

https://discord.com/safety/360044157931-working-with-law-enforcement

I quote "Requests should be addressed to Discord Inc. Discord Inc. will respond to valid legal process issued by a U.S. court and properly served on it in the U.S. To achieve this, you will need to work through the applicable process for international legal assistance." - definitely not an immediate process.

Nope. For video and audio calls, at least, they are in fact encrypted. https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/25968222946071-End-to-End-Encryption-for-Audio-and-Video This is confirmed by the fact that Discord is an open-source service.

So criminals can talk about their operations without having to worry about surveillance.

The servers are used for communication and nothing else. Large illegal operations don't share illegal material directly on a server as it would easily incriminate them. Sharing illegal content is very often done by P2P or less stringent file sharing services, and drugs... are just traded physically.

https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/1cjtuoy/discord_doesnt_take_action_against_servers/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Disboard/comments/1dbpt22/illegal_nsfw_servers/

https://www.renews.co.nz/i-started-one-of-nzs-first-discord-drug-servers-at-18/

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00914509221095279

https://medium.com/@ps488246/illegal-content-on-discord-a43222421b6e

Just quickly found some sources for you. It's something you hear about from time to time, so it's fair to assume that it's not rare at all.

You brought up RCS, SMS and emails, which nobody uses to buy and sell illegal substances and illegal media. Two are easily traceable and all three are impractical.

What criminals mainly use, however, are open-source messaging services like Telegram.

And just like Telegram, Discord is 1- open-source (reliable in not getting your private information divulged), 2- a popular platform (hundreds of millions of users) and 3- an accessible public platform that doesn't require criminals to use the dark web (which would have them flagged by their ISP)

 

It's not a bad take, it's just a rational take based on facts.

God you have to be taking the actual piss.
even those reddit threads are taking the piss. Do those servers crop up, yes, do they get shut down, yes. going "help discord didnt immediatly handle my report, they dont care" is a piss take. 

Do I have to repeat myself? the servers are not encrypted. A voice call being encrypted does not mean the server is encrypted. So dont "nope" the fact that the servers are not encrypted, because they are not. 

I keep having to stress this fact with you, Discord does not have it any worse then any other communication service. 

you say discord is slow because this?

Quote

I quote "Requests should be addressed to Discord Inc. Discord Inc. will respond to valid legal process issued by a U.S. court and properly served on it in the U.S. To achieve this, you will need to work through the applicable process for international legal assistance." - definitely not an immediate process.

You mean, the way every ISP works? you get a court order warrant, and you properly address it to an ISP or Social media. Hell, it is harder to get into someone's mail then it is to get one of these warrants to be actionable. There is no communication method that exists other then talking out loud in public that does not require a warrant.

I HAVE never once said you cant find exploitation material or drugs on discord. but to  paint the picture that it is more common on discord, is a bad awful take. To even pretend that this is at the feet of discord who moderate harder then many many other platforms, is an unhinged take.

to say no one uses SMS/RMS/iMessage/emails to do their illegal shit, is absolutely a bonkers take. it is just as much of a problem on those protocols as it is on discord. 
iMessages are all encrypted. you cant just warrant your way into them. Apple will 100% hand over the encrypted data, but they cant decrypt it for the FBI. 

 

For the US to not have access to the information, it has to never touch US infrastructure, and even then five eyes can spy on it without a warrant, because constitutional protections do not apply. 

Discord is also not open source. It is very much closed source. Telegram is also closed source. Even if they were open source, I am completely lost to the point you want to make with that. Open source does not encourage or endorse criminal activity. 

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