Discord clarifications

Stofftier

I need to use Discord. (Not for GoS Discord but other thing.)
I have never used it before.
What is there to know?

Expectations:

Everything I do on it is logged.
General hostility to users trying to not agree to every BS
I do not intend to use voice chat.
I will not use it with Play Services and don't care about fast notifications.

Questions:

What can the official app do what the website can't, if I don't give it extra permissions, in terms of persistently identifying my device (across profiles?) and getting more data out of my device than intended?
What kind of nondeterministic problems will occur? Like bans due to vpn ip, adblockers, whims or whatever I can't imagine.
Are there safe (as in is not known to attack my device/account and ban safe) 3rd party clients for Android which are better than official.

Edit:

Peculiar human implications specific to Discord?

ErnestThornhill

Stofftier Are there safe (as in is not known to attack my device/account and ban safe) 3rd party clients for Android which are better than official.

Here's a list of some Discord alternative clients/modifications: https://github.com/pluja/awesome-privacy/blob/main/README.md#alternative-clientsmodifications-of-discord

When it comes to Discord alternative clients/modifications, your IP and messages will still be shared and belong to Discord and they are also not encrypted. Additionally, the use of any modification/client violates the Discord ToS and, so, there's always the risk of the suspension or termination of your account.

Delaney

Stofftier

What can the official app do what the website can't

Hard to say since it is proprietary. At minimum it can figure out what device you have and try to gather identifiers unique to your profile. Personally I don't consider this a threat. Most of the data collecting will be what you do in the app anyway.

What kind of nondeterministic problems will occur?

Anecdotal, but I had less issues signing up via the discord app using a VPN, than in the browser without a VPN.

Are there safe 3rd party clients?

There were some, but they've been abandoned. Discord doesn't like alternative clients, either, so I wouldn't bother anyway.

ErnestThornhill

Delaney There were some, but they've been abandoned.

This is incorrect. I'm not familiar with all of the alternative clients/modifications, but I do know Aliucord is very much active.

Stofftier

I'd only use an alternative client if it actually brings something to the table.
One example would be a XMPP gateway that works well.
Doing it for its own sake is pointless.
I consider Discord adversarial but not clandestinely so.
I already said that I am aware that this platform does not have E2E.

Otherwise I would also use Discord on some cloud VM. But haven't yet found a generic way of UI forwarding that is few enough on hassle.

groove_untie145

Here are a few alternatives you can look into. Goof cord is probably the best in my opinion. GoofCord blocks all tracking and uses multiple techniques like message encryption to improve your privacy and security

https://github.com/Milkshiift/GoofCord
https://github.com/SpacingBat3/WebCord
https://betterdiscord.app/

Edit: I use all lightly, that's a direct paste from their GitHub. It's definitely better than stock discord.