SoftwarePlatformsDiscord’s new Clips feature elicits privacy fears, but we’d actually have more privacy if everyone used itWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
SoftwarePlatformsDiscord’s new Clips feature elicits privacy fears, but we’d actually have more privacy if everyone used itWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Discord)
Discord’s experimentalnew Clips feature, which has been rolling out since last year, lets users who are streaming in a voice channel capture up to two-minute-long clips of their streams. It’s a nice little feature addition that has accidentally become mildly controversial.
The fear is privacy. On social media, some posters have sounded the alarm over Clips' ability to record the voices of the other users in a channel aside from the streamer, urging their followers to opt out in Discord’s settings—there’s a toggle which omits your voice from Clips. Multiple Facebook posts I’ve seen declare that Discord now records your voice without your knowledge, and one said they couldn’t think of any legitimate use for the feature.
Actually, Discord clearly notifies the users in a voice channel as soon as someone with Clips enabled starts streaming. An argument can be made that it’d be better if we optedinto our voices being included in Clips rather than out, but it’s hardly the shocking breach of privacy certain tweets and Facebook chain posts are making it out to be.
The same thing can happen on Ventrilo, TeamSpeak, or the telephone, if anyone uses phones anymore. The privacy anxiety fueling this concern over Discord’s new feature is real—the internet’s an uncomfortable place—but Discord hasn’t sneaked something malicious in here. It bears mentioning that if you use the built-in voice chat in certain games,such as Overwatch 2, what you say is being recorded for moderation purposes, whereas Discordsays it does notrecord and archive voice chats.
If you don’t want whatever weird thing you happened to be saying when your friend pulled off a sick move to be heard in their Discord highlight reel, the option to have your voice omitted from Clips is at the bottom of the Clips tab in the Discord user settings.
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