Recent Activity Tracking & Display - Privacy Concerns

While real-time interaction between Discord and the games or music a user is engaged with can offer a valuable social experience—allowing friends to see what you are playing or listening to, if enabled—the platform's broader handling of user activity raises significant concerns. The ability to show whether someone is busy or available for multiplayer gaming is helpful, but Discord’s practice of recording and broadcasting a comprehensive history of user activities extends far beyond this functionality and presents serious privacy issues.

Firstly, Discord is not merely cataloging recent activities for recognition purposes; it is retaining detailed records of all connected activities, including session durations and timestamps. This extensive data collection is concerning, particularly given Discord's increasing focus on monetization, even for Nitro subscribers. It suggests that user data is being harvested for potential resale, raising ethical questions about the company's commitment to privacy.

Secondly, the fact that Discord then broadcasts this information across all friends lists and shared servers exacerbates the issue. By prominently placing recent activity displays at the top of server user lists, Discord implies that this information is of higher importance than the server's participants themselves. This placement not only distracts from the core user experience but also encourages unwarranted visibility into users' past activities.

Lastly, Discord has embedded this feature within its Activity Status settings in such a way that users are forced to either disable the status entirely or manually configure it across all servers and activities to prevent unwanted broadcasting. This creates an unnecessary burden on users who value their privacy, offering a poor user experience.

Best Case Scenario: This could simply be an example of developers becoming so focused on their vision for the product that they lose sight of how the user base interacts with it.

Worst Case Scenario: Discord has developed a feature that enables, and potentially encourages, the stalking of users. Coupled with the company's extensive data collection and monetization strategies, this adds to a growing list of concerns over how Discord is prioritizing profit over user experience and privacy—particularly as they continue to diminish the value of Nitro subscriptions while increasing monetization across the platform.

In summary, instead of introducing features with potential harmful implications, Discord should prioritize fixing long-standing issues. For example, the persistent problem where users connected to PlayStation Network (PSN) or Xbox no longer receive notifications on mobile devices, as Discord treats them as being logged into the PC client, despite the obvious incompatibility.