Provide better deleting options

After seeing numerous posts of people pleading with discord to delete the messages of deleted accounts, I decided that I should also list my own complaint & request with this very issue and to also make a mass post listing the links of the other posts so those who agree with this could support & upvote theirs as well, in hopes of getting discord to see & do something about this sooner.

I plan on emailing this link to both the support & privacy email of discord as well, and it would be great if others could do the same! If not that, maybe posting it on Twitter and having numerous people @ discord on there within the comments?

I'm even considering starting an online petition, it might not do anything but hopefully it'll draw enough attention for discord devs to take action. It's kinda weird that this has never been implemented in the first place because when I emailed discord about it, the one that replied to me agreed that this should be a feature. Even stating that they have a private personal discord as well and everything.

I'm fully aware that discord is busy and I can only imagine how much work they are under maintaining the app & website but this is extremely important for users and I, along with many others feel like this is something that you should not simply brush off, especially since this has been requested for years multiple times. After all this feature should have been an automatic given to begin with.

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Discord needs to do a better job at following the GDPR rules that they are "compliant with". Simply putting a deleted account as "anonymous" is not at all enough when their messages are still viewable to those they spoke with before deleting their account. Doing this only makes the person lose access to their messages / data, while others have access to them. This is literally giving the viewers more power over their data than the one who sent the data out. What makes it worse is, after the official "deleting" of the account, there's nothing the user can do about it and many of those who delete their account don't find this out until it's too late.

Setting the account as anonymous is not enough. Removing the email associated with the account, and the icon is not enough.That is doing the extreme bare minimum of protecting someone's privacy. The deleting of one's account on every other form of social media & outlet means their messages, email address, icon, username etc. are also permanently removed.

This is important for multiple reasons. People have been blackmailed & even doxxed due to having their messages remain after deleting their account. Even if the user didn't leave sensitive information behind such as their phone number address, or name etc, it's still very easy to be doxxed by those with malicious intent. It's still very easy for those with such intent to purposely screenshot old messages out of context purposely to encourage a witch hunt on another platform.

I'm more than sure that discord is aware that minors use this website / app to chat in servers, and I'm more than sure that discord is aware that some of these servers unfortunately are littered with the occasional creep. This is a given, after all this is the internet, you will find them. They deserve every right and then some to be able to delete their account when something happens without worrying about leaving a trace behind to ensure they are fully away from these creeps. They don't even have to be creeps, they can be bullies or even abusers in worse case scenario.

I once seen the argument "Discord doesn't disclose any personal information of the user. The user posts their own information out on their own." and while this is true, you also have a right to no longer feel comfortable about the links, selfies, or text once shared / disclosed with someone.

There's no automatic mass / multiple selection delete option on discord either. Sure one can search in their dms & servers to manually delete but in many if not the majority of cases it's more than 1000+ messages to go through? Especially if the conversation between two people has been going on for years. That requires a lot of effort and even then, you can still easily leave something behind that can be used against you. It has gotten to the point where people are practically 'hacking' into discord to use a script, code, or special coded bot to have them mass delete messages in dms. This is quite the risk may I add since this is typically against discord's TOS & can cause the account to be locked or even deleted by discord themselves. Besides, anytime you have to youtube "how to delete all messages on [platform]" and each video is requiring you to download a file & alter a script or something similar, there's an issue lol.

Even if discord can't remove every message a deleted user left behind in a server (I understand that this is / can be difficult), I do highly believe that AT LEAST the messages left behind in dms of a deleted account should be removed. The messages of a deleted account should eventually expire and no longer be viewable if the removal cannot be automatic once the account is officially deleted.

The information left behind doesn't even have to be personal. When someone deletes their account, the messages should follow behind it, since it was and still is a part of the user that it once belonged to. Leaving up messages that the user no longer has access to gives strangers more control & access than the actual user that discord claims to be protecting by putting them as "anonymous". Afterall anonymous only really works if the user was anonymous from the start. . Which the users aren't. They're a person with an identity and everything. I don't mean to sound repetitive but all this does is make the original user lose access to their data permanently while others forever have access to it whenever they wish to have it unless they too delete their accounts.

In addition to all this, what about the accounts on discord that have been deleted by discord support/devs themselves due to the reports of them doing things against the rules? What about the accounts that were / are deleted because they were spreading information or pictures that weren't theirs to begin with? There are many servers currently selling & sharing nudes of other people without their permission that have yet to be caught or reported for discord to do something about. Whenever they are caught, the account gets deleted which ultimately does nothing because their damage remains due to the messages they spread still remaining!

(A link I found in feedback warning others about the servers that are out there: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360071776831-People-are-running-discord-servers-selling-stolen-nude-photos)

Lastly.. what about the deleted accounts that are left in servers that may fall victim of data snatchers that raid? The user wouldn't even be aware and this has happened way too many times. They have no fighting chance at all. That's literally not fair AT ALL.

If they're not going to delete every dead account's dms automatically, can people at least have the ability to request this? Why don't we have a choice to get this option?

What is the point of discord keeping messages from deleted accounts anyway? We have never received any valid explanation and with all due respect there isn't any. Not any that's worth the privacy & protection of the user at least. Discord is continuing to grow and is quickly becoming a very common media to use for things besides just gaming. There are other messaging apps that can't even do half the things discord can, or even aren't as big as discord, yet they can & do provide the basic leisure of removing the messages of deleted accounts. You mean to tell me discord can't mimic smaller apps / websites for something so basic to protect privacy correctly but can give users the ability to screen share, video chat, text, and voice chat/call all at once in a server or 1v1 call? Seriously? Even skype removed messages from deleted accounts! Wouldn't deleting the messages of deleted users clear clutter anyway? Wouldn't it be, in the long run, a better investment? And you know what makes it even more frustrating? The fact that this is indeed a basic feature and it has been asked for numerous times by numerous people.

All in reality the lack of such basic features make me not want to use discord altogether because I don't feel protected. I feel permanently attached to my account because I'd hate to lose the data I left behind that could potentially be used against me, despite the data left behind being simple or 'non sensitive'. Discord has been putting more effort into making the app 'fun' & more well rounded for other uses (which is great!) but not even bothering to upgrade its safety policy. How do you aim to be used for more things and grow even bigger with such a horrid protection privacy? You cant be serious

TLDR; Discord needs to delete the messages left behind of deleted accounts rather than just setting the account itself to "anonymous".If this cannot be done for servers, this should at least be for their dms. Discord should also provide better deleting options with either a mass delete option or selective delete option when people are deleting messages as manually deleting is indeed a joke since the majority of dms have more than 1k+ messages sent between two users. Whenever and if ever this feature is implemented, this (the deleting of messages left behind deleted accounts) needs to happen to both old accounts that have been already deleted along with those who will be deleted in the feature.

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These are the links I have ran across of other users that have been asking for the same thing in the feedback section. Please take time to read & upvote theirs as well. Thank you for reading! I'm sure there are more but I haven't came across them yet, but I will continue to update this list as I find more whenever I do. I noticed some are marked as "dupes" but isn't that saying a lot? You're seeing people request for a feature repeatedly and yet nothing has changed. You're noticing a commonly requested feature and yet ignoring it..What's up with that?

A Twitter post that has also been talking about discord's crappy GDPR:

https://twitter.com/acute_gay/status/1274692239449612289?s=19

People have been trying to contact discord about this in general and they’re usually ignored or told “there’s nothing they can do”. Please do better discord. Please work on this with the same urgency you provide when working on things users typically don’t ask for.

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