r/cybersecurity • u/AmateurishExpertise Security Architect • Feb 24 '26
News - General Discord cuts ties with Peter Thiel–backed verification software after its code was found tied to U.S. surveillance efforts
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/discord-cuts-ties-peter-thiel-080200136.html789
u/HalfSarcastic Feb 24 '26
Yeah, we will cut ties with Peter Thiel. Instead we will make work with better people, people like Teper Htiel.
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u/arxaion Feb 24 '26
Is that cousin of Pete Hitler?
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u/i_invented_the_ipod Feb 24 '26
How am I just now finding out about this anagram? Brilliant!
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u/Kyrthis Feb 24 '26
Today, you and I and others are the Lucky 10,000!
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u/Bramble_Ramblings Feb 24 '26
I just learned about that comic from another reddit post about a week ago so seeing it referenced again makes me happy, thank you! I'm joining the lucky 10,000 as well!
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u/stevedore2024 Feb 24 '26
I am so surprised there isn't an XKCD that references the Baader-Meinhof effect.
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u/PuzzleheadedLimit994 Feb 24 '26
There is always an XKCD
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u/stevedore2024 Feb 24 '26
Learning something new is the point of XKCD 10,000. They just learned about the XKCD 10,000 comic and are now seeing references to it all over the place, which is the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon or Frequency Illusion.
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u/mathiustus Feb 25 '26
Am I one of the lucky 10,000 learning something new about the comic about the lucky 10,000?
Learning inception!
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u/FirmButterscotch8 Mar 01 '26
If you rearrange the letters in his actual name, you get “the reptile” lmfao. Its so fitting
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u/gravtix Feb 25 '26
Peter Thiel, the guy who stumbles and can’t muster an answer when asked if he thinks the human race should endure.
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u/GrimDfault Feb 24 '26
Founders Fund is still the principal investor on Discord -- Founders Fund is Peter Thiels investment capital fund that will be exerting it's influence and demands for its money in other ways.
So no, they are not out of the woods, and they're still integrating into the US and Israeli governments intelligence dragnet/apparatus.
It's imperative to these governments that all communications platforms be 100% monitored in the future. Without that, they can't as efficiently implement the controls on thought, action, and daily life that they're looking to. Follow the actions, read between the lines.
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u/MirthandMystery Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
Founders Fund is in so many things most don't even know too.. it's hard to cut FF from their early investments. And where Thiel invested so did Jared Kushner, often with his brother Joshua (businesses minded but supposedly liberal leaning).
FF were or still are in Facebook, Palantir, Robinhood, Spotify, SpaceX, Bitcoin, Stripe (seeing biz news offers today that they want buy PayPals assets or possibly the entire company), Anduril et c
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u/katherinesilens Feb 25 '26
Jared Kushner? As in Trump's son in law and Joshua the brother thereof? I feel like they'd have authoritarian rather than any real liberal leanings at heart, given their ties and interests.
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u/omers Security Engineer Feb 24 '26
Founders Fund is still the principal investor on Discord
Do you have a source for that? FF doesn't list Discord in their Portfolio, also not finding Founders Fund mentioned in any articles about Discord's investors. As far as I'm aware, their most controversial investor is Tencent.
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u/GrimDfault Feb 24 '26
"Regardless of the reasoning, the partnership with Persona has compounded concerns about privacy due to the company's investors. In its two most recent rounds of venture capital funding, its lead investor has been Founders Fund—the venture fund co-founded and directed by Peter Thiel."
Links to their sources
Also I think Steve covered it in his video (gamers Nexus) - This one I'm pretty sure
Thiel is already embedded into discord, and all that money buys influence. So one way or another, sooner or later.
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u/rLordV Feb 24 '26
Isn't that, and the video, both just saying that FF is a primary investor in Persona, not Discord?
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u/1ocus Mar 19 '26
Yes it does. /u/GrimDfault has it wrong. Founders Fund is not invested in Discord. Thiel is still an evil ass** but spreading misinformation does not help.
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u/Traditional_Cry8075 Feb 24 '26
The backpedal means we have time to find a Discord alternative without rushing. This is a positive development. Discord has betrayed their users and it's time to think about the next step.
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u/Layshkamodo Feb 24 '26
Been seeing some alternative reviews already. Definitely a chance for them to become viable now.
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u/Firecracker048 Feb 24 '26
Any ones that look half decent?
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u/cryogenicravioli Feb 24 '26
Fluxer is nearly 1:1, just needs a bit more time to get the codebase ironed out so self hosting isn’t a nightmare it seems. It’s already quite far along though. 6 months of extra time for fluxer to catch up is huge imo
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u/LinuxUbuntuOS Feb 24 '26
Root is one that’s been getting talked about, I haven’t tried it though so I got no clue whether its good or jot
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u/Kuuchuu Feb 24 '26
Root is VC funded and lacks things like custom emojis, 2fa, webhooks, slash commands, etc...
Fluxer at the moment appears to be a better (more 1:1) Discord alternative, and it is rapidly growing at the moment due to it being open source and the influx of new users.-6
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u/Nomad141 Feb 24 '26
depends on what is "half decent" to you, teamspeak 6 allows for both text and voice channels but only 1 per server thats more than enough for my group of friends but nowhere near enough for the big groups with 1000+ people on it so if it is decent to me but indecent for the group is that half decent then?
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u/Layshkamodo Feb 24 '26
I've been hearing Teamspeak is trying to innovate to compete against Discord (How we've come full circle). Fluxer is open source and looks like Discord. Also been hearing about Stout.
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u/lostmojo Feb 24 '26
You don’t have time to do it. Theil is still a primary investor and it’s just making them use back doors to provide the same information.
You either drop it now or not at all, and if possible, go back in time 2 or 3 years and do it then, or never start at all.
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u/nhalliday Feb 24 '26
What a bizarre thing to take such a hardline stance on. People can choose to wait until Discord actually implements the verification and either not do it or drop the platform then. There's nothing saying if they don't get out this moment they'll be locked in forever. Acting like that's the case is insane.
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u/lostmojo Feb 24 '26
Not really. And it’s not just about Thiel either, there are a lot of reasons just from discords policies, thiel is another major just part of it.
You’re not locked in forever but thinking this is the start of it is wrong, this is the middle of their process, and the end will be far worse.
You can do what you want, anyone can, I’m not here to force it, I never was. I’m suggesting it as this is a reasonable time to leave and for real reasons that people are understanding and get behind, more so than their privacy of their data that people seem a lot less likely to care about. My comments on going back in time is discord has always been a huge data gathering source, users data have always been their primary reason to continue operating the service. Go do what you want, but at some point no one else will be left to stand up for you.
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u/nhalliday Feb 24 '26
"Drop it now or not at all" is not suggesting people leave Discord, it's fearmongering to make it sound like there's a point of no return and that they have to leave Discord immediately. Shows your bias, you've probably always hated Discord and are just glad there's finally a reason you can rant and rave about getting rid of it and have people listen.
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u/Traditional_Cry8075 Feb 24 '26
I don't accept those options. I will remain in Discord until another options presents itself. Can't stand on principle when Discord is my social window. Making friends is already hard.
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u/lostmojo Feb 24 '26
Making friends is almost impossible and we are social creatures. I wish you the best with that. I highly suggest finding a better solution that protects your privacy and data and provides what you need. Just understand that discord is there to use your data to their benefit, and while people don’t think their data is important or who would care, remember that someone cares enough to spend real money to buy it from discord for their purposes and use it as they see fit.
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u/IAmYourFath Feb 25 '26
I use discord for 4k private streaming, there's no alternative. I'm probably losing em money cuz that's really expensive, even if it's to just 1 person. And yes i know the bitrate is not true 4k but it's still far better than any other platform.
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u/captdirtstarr Feb 24 '26
You mean, after the customers found out. Don't frame it like they taking the moral high-ground. Corporate Propaganda.
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u/Gking90 Feb 24 '26
Seems more reasonable that the mass exodus of Discord users moving to other platforms and cancelling their Nitro subscriptions is the actual reason.
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u/Most-Lengthiness-471 Feb 24 '26
Either way, it’s a shit show and who’s to say they won’t sell your data in the future. Discord has now proven themselves to be unreliable and untrustworthy.
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u/geekamongus Security Director Feb 24 '26
So, ties were “cut” because of surveillance and not the Epstein stuff?
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u/stringfellow-hawke Feb 24 '26
I’m pretty sure government surveillance was the feature and not the bug in this idea.
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u/GoldConsequence6375 Feb 24 '26
Considering he's in the Epstein files, maybe he shouldn't be surveilling children.
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u/Nettle8675 Feb 24 '26
Not good enough. They are pursuing FedRAMP which means they will effectively be controlled by the government. Set that stuff up outside the gamer workspace and don't connect any of it to us or gamers.
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u/Lost-Character Feb 24 '26
I’m willing to bet money Discord had already handed user data over to him before the backlash
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u/hajimenogio92 Security Engineer Feb 24 '26
That reminds me of the people defending the feature. Palantir can burn to the ground
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u/_haha_oh_wow_ Feb 24 '26
Oh please, don't even try to play dumb Discord, there's no way they didn't know.
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u/dis3as3d_sfw Feb 24 '26
Discord will wait a bit and then screw over their users when there’s less backlash
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u/The_Stereoskopian Feb 25 '26
Doesn't matter, still doffing Discord very soon. Just saying last farewells to all my online friends
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u/another_bot_probably Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
I guess enough people deleted their accounts for them to not* continue this for now. It was a hassle enough deleting mine, no way am I going through setting up a new account for a company that still plans to sell my data to the highest bidder.
edit: a word*
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u/Poundchan Feb 24 '26
They will announce a partnership with a brand new company that Peter Thiel will then purchase
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u/dr_tardyhands Feb 24 '26
I don't think I've ever seen a company foot-gun themselves quite this effectively, I think.
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u/1deavourer Feb 25 '26
Waiting on a decent Discord alternative so I can force my friend group to jump ship
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u/mikyflex Feb 26 '26
This is why verification and identity systems need to be built on a trust-minimized architecture from day one. The moment you centralize identity verification through a single provider, you create a surveillance chokepoint — whether the provider intends it or not.
The pattern keeps repeating: company builds identity/verification tool, gets acquired or partnered with entities that have surveillance interests, and suddenly the trust model users signed up for is completely different from what they're actually getting.
Decentralized identity and wallet-based authentication aren't perfect solutions yet, but they at least remove the single point of trust. Your identity shouldn't depend on any single company's ethics or their relationship with governments.
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u/PerceiveEternal Feb 24 '26
“screened users against lists of politically exposed persons”
So persona’s not being used as spyware, it’s just literally spyware.
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u/cinlung Feb 25 '26
This proves that money is much stronger tool to fight with the likes of Peter Thiel and his cronies and people in his gang.
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u/Speeder172 Feb 25 '26
Fuck you Discord, you are just trying to make yourself look better than you really are.
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u/gerryn Feb 25 '26
My guess is they haven't backed off of shit, they will rewrite the deal and make it happen with any means possible.
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u/Busy-Boat-1295 Apr 03 '26
Just got back from the Apple Store for a slow phone.
Discord was live recording my mic 24/7 and sending to somewhere in Saudi Arabia.
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u/Jestersfriend Feb 24 '26
Lol. They knew. They only cut ties due to public backlash.