Bulk Deleting Discord Messages and GDPR Compliance #429
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For a while now I have been talking with Discord's privacy team about bulk-deletion of messages. Initially they were very persistent in their stance to not allow users to bulk-delete their messages. However, I pointed out to them that this is by any and all means not compliant with GDPR policies, especially since deleting your account (which is the solution they kept offering) does not get rid of any your messages either. Therefore I decided to go the extra mile by contacting my national data protection authority. Not long after filing my complaint to the DPA, Discord's support got back to me after a long period of them ignoring my emails by allowing me to provide a list of IDs of DM and guild channels that I wanted my messages wiped from. They have since processed my request and my messages in all channels I provided were successfully instantly wiped. Unfortunately at the time of writing, Discord still does not allow users to bulk-delete messages themselves. But it seems that they are accepting such requests via support tickets. I have obtained the channel IDs from my data package and provided them with a comma-separated list for the channels I wanted to have wiped. If anyone reading this decides to make a similar request, please let us know about the outcome. Together we can help make Discord a better place that actually respects the data protection rights of its users. Data Deletion Request TemplateTo: [email protected]
Subject: Data Deletion Request
Hi,
I have recently requested my data package from Discord and found some data that I would like to have wiped in compliance with GDPR.
I would like to request all my messages from the channels with the following IDs to be deleted:
123456789123456789, 234567891234567891, 345678912345678912, 456789123456789123, 567891234567891234
I would have done this myself, but unfortunately this still isn't possible.
Thank you in advance,
[Your Name] |
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Replies: 75 comments 365 replies
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I wasn't able to achieve this. I tried to contact support and told them I want to delete these messages on this specific channel. Also gave them the specific ids for server and channel. But they said they don't bulk-delete messages because my messages serve important context to the conversation. Even though that channel is constantly getting messages and nobody reads older messages in that specific channel. |
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I just wanna pop in and say some things from my experience the first email had a great response and they basically said give the channel ID’s and message ID’s and they’ll take care of it for us problem is there was about 50k messages we sent a second email and we got a different individual this person we felt like we were talking to a robot who 100% was copying and pasting the same email to everyone from the looks of the tread we got the same email twice there was 2 people trying to get messages deleted in our group. The email caused outrage I am not even joking they said the equivalent of your personal data is not important to us we care more about other individuals then you because it might cause confusion for them we know it’s your personal data but we don’t care we understand it’s your right to request it to be removed but we don’t care about that either again others are more important than you thank you very much that’s basically what they told us. Personal note’s You can get your messages deleted as per your rights even if it means you have to bully them into doing it they literally got find €800,000 as of recently by a French company for breaking GDPR they were withholding data for people who haven’t used Discord for years and not informing individuals that they were still in calls after they have turned off Discord i’m pretty sure there’s other things too but that’s the bullet points (In our situation we got everything dealt with privately with the server owner) Discord will cave the law is on your side especially if your a European Citizen you just gotta keep pushing it. Also it is completely unreasonable how much you have to do in order to get them deleted in the first place it should just be an email with the server ID and then it be the end of it especially for non-tech savvy people. PS: thanks to abbydiode for their help. |
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I’m currently experimenting whit template’s with my friends and sending them to Discord. If we find a working one i’ll make sure to let everyone know and make a video on it that way everyone can have there rights respected. I’m going to post my third draft of the template I would really appreciate if there’s any comments you can make to make it better or share a working one you have so I can improve on it. Everyone is welcome to use this one I don’t know if it works yet were currently finding out. This is the one going to be sent to discord we will find out soon. |
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Surprised you didn't get an error for too many |
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Okay so tiny update I sent it to the wrong department and some guy who’s job it was just to explain the TOS was just there like 😬 because I had basically sent him a hitpiece the message links lead to a private server which I had transferred to my friend where I completely shit talked discord and called them weirdos for some of their policies I can give more information on that but not here I don’t think that would be appreciated. Anyways I haven’t followed up with it kind of forgot about it and I don’t really feel like doing it today only reason I’m back here is because I got a email on my protonmail account. I’m just popping in to say if you got the same email I put it into virus-total It gave me 7 red flags so don’t click the link It was posted here and I presume it was deleted but I still got an email for it so some of y’all probably did too I’m just here to say don’t click on that shit that’s all. i’ll probably do a follow-up after New Year’s and happy late Christmas to everyone. |
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I have just submitted my own request using a similar template as mentioned above to the Discord support requests page, with a little more pleading and reasoning... I do hope something is done. Will update when I get a response. |
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Hey I will update when I receive an answer (maybe in a few month) |
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Heya, I know some individuals here have had success in getting Discord to bulk delete their messages. |
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Alright so new discovery I just made Discord delete your email off there servers within 14 days when you delete your account meaning you can’t legally prove that whatever messages that were sent from a deleted account are yours meaning GDPR law does not apply to deleted accounts because all messages are anonymized it’s very unfortunate for me in my case because 14-year-old me said some stupid stuff so I hope you learn a lesson form my mistake do not delete your account until those messages are gone only deactivate. |
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Trying a different approach i’ll keep you all updated on how it goes. |
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Ok I’ve been in a long email exchange with Discord for a while after my last update discord flat out denied my rights and I’ll be on a phone call with Irish government officials after the bank holiday I’m not sure how much I’m legally allowed to disclose but I will let you know if I’m successful. |
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everywhere i tried its always can anyone help me? |
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Great news everyone an old acquaintance of mine successfully got his messages deleted by Discord!!! he created a bot to scrape all the message links and put them into a text file sent them off to discord and they deleted everything without a hitch only caveat is messages in threads weren’t touched but altogether it was a success. |
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When I first submitted an inquiry on their customer support center, their first reply was "Deleting message should be inquiried via (some other link)", because "it is beyond CS's resources". After their first reply I pushed them with strong arguments, and they said I need to export a list of discord message IDs via privacy package. After I passed them a list of discord message IDs, they said I have to reformat those IDs in following form; (They did not tell the exact form at the first, I guess this is because they wanted to delay message deletion process as long as possible)
After a week they said my messages are all deleted, but many of my messages WERE NOT DELETED at all. Therefore I reported the Discord on some national privacy-related instituitions including KOPICO. After a public servant sent an email to the Data Protection Officer, they finally deleted(at least those were invisible) almost all my messages(but there were still few left) and they added the "Korean local terms". Discord is not deleting your messages easily. They will try to give you many excuses if you seems not urgent. You should prepare your plans properly, and need to push them hard. If you are interested about my code to export list of discord message IDs, check my repo. |
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Cool little thing I noticed discord keep a cache of messages on the devices locally that means only you can see them don't be worrying it's for performance reasons so if you disconnect from the Internet, you can see your old messages and then reconnect and see them all disappear immediately because the cache updates I only noticed it because I opened up a DM and my messages were still there for a fraction of a second then disappeared it's a cool effect though.https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/2de52830-ded4-417c-98b8-84afe895d137 |
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Has anyone tried this if they have messages that may violate Discord's ToS? I'm ngl I used to be more carefree when I was younger.. Maybe a bit too carefree. I was wondering if anyone was concerned about discord scanning/reading deleted messages, or even reading the contents of channels. It's been in the back of my mind for a few months now, and recent discord events have made me weary of my past. Google searches haven't given me any concrete results on the matter. Also, do you have to specify channel IDs, or can you simply say that you wish to completely erase all your messages from the platform? All answers welcome! |
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here's a bash script if you don't want to use python #!/bin/bash
# Add the channel IDs you want to exclude
declare -a EXCLUDED_CHANNELS=(
"123456"
)
# Create a temporary file to store all data
temp_file=$(mktemp)
# For each directory in the current path
for dir in */; do
if [ -f "${dir}channel.json" ] && [ -f "${dir}messages.json" ]; then
# Get channel ID
channel_id=$(jq -r '.id' "${dir}channel.json")
# Check if channel_id is in exclusion list
skip=false
for excluded in "${EXCLUDED_CHANNELS[@]}"; do
if [ "$channel_id" = "$excluded" ]; then
skip=true
break
fi
done
# Skip if channel is in exclusion list
if [ "$skip" = true ]; then
continue
fi
# Get all message IDs and join them with commas
message_ids=$(jq -r '.[].ID' "${dir}messages.json" | tr '\n' ',' | sed 's/,$//')
# Store channel_id and message_ids in temp file
echo "$channel_id:$message_ids" >> "$temp_file"
fi
done
# Process the temp file to combine messages for same channel
awk -F':' '
{
if (a[$1]) {
a[$1] = a[$1] ", " $2
} else {
a[$1] = $2
}
}
END {
for (i in a) {
print i":"
print a[i]
print ""
}
}' "$temp_file" > output.txt
# Clean up
rm "$temp_file"
run it from within the messages folder, you can get a list of channel id's to exclude by running a command similar to this cat index.json | jq 'with_entries(select(.value | contains("Direct Message")))' etc |
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Just got my data package, but the potential of getting banned still scares me. Has anyone deleted risky messages and come out fine? |
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sooooo.... i sent the request ~11 days ago, then sent a follow up 1 week after my reply to their automated bot message, and i still have not gotten a confirmation or acknowledgement. should i just wait longer or is there something else i need to do? |
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I made a tool to export the selected channels / message IDs directly from your data archive within your browser : https://dorifor.github.io/undiscord-package-util/ It now has the updated CSV format export It should be easier to use than some CLI tools. if you have some tips / comments, please do I'd love to improve it ! |
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I got a message saying they will only be accepting CSV format starting December. Is this the format that https://github.com/ishnz/bulk_deletion_helper generates (which is what I used)?
|
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New CSV format detailsHey there. Heard about the new format and decided to ask for clarifications from the privacy support team.
In other words, it does not seem to require typical CSV headers as it was previously assumed? |
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Hi everyone, I was going through the thread and realized it’s getting quite large and difficult to extract useful information from. I was thinking it might be a good idea to branch out a bit. Since this is a community-driven project, I don’t want to make any decisions on my own without getting your input first. Given that this project is heavily Discord-focused, I suggest we create a dedicated Discord server. This would help us better organize information, provide specialized channels for specific topics, and even private channels for developers. At the moment, we’re trying to explain how to get the necessary files for message IDs and discuss important changes, like Discord altering its format, all in one place. It’s becoming a hassle in my opinion. Another issue is that we don’t have control over this thread. We can’t delete irrelevant or resolved messages, and the discussion has become quite messy. We’ve essentially outgrown the scope of this platform. Not everyone can use GitHub, and much of what’s said here isn’t even relevant anymore like the original post and my tutorial are vastly outdated now and I think it’s a good opportunity to revamp that. That’s my case. Let me know what you think, or if you feel this is a bad idea. This is a community-driven project, so if you’d rather stick with the current setup, that’s fine. However, I do believe these problems need to be addressed in some way. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! |
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Discordomicon (The deletion documentation)I’ve quickly done "Discordomicon", a short guide to compensate for the lack of centralized information of on removing data from Discord, you can explore it here: https://discordomicon.github.io/removal/overview/. |
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Sorry to talk about nothing again, folks, but I just submitted a second request to have the same data deleted. I think the first time that I requested such deletion was on September 14th or 15th, which is about three months. A lot more than GDPR says that they have to do. Maybe they'll actually do it this time (which they probably won't), so, I'm holding out for a hero here. If there's anything else anyone thinks I should know about this whole fiasco, then don't hesitate to contact me and say so, or just comment here. Anyhow, thanks for reading this rant. |
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They just sent Clyde to do their bidding. On my part |
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I submited another request, as mentioned right here, and they wrote me back with this bullshit-looking email, as mentioned in this comment.
Anyway, somebody please point me in the right direction. |
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OK, so because this thread has gotten so long, newcomers are finding it difficult to understand the processes and information that have been shared. I’m making this quick to keep everyone updated and ensure there's no confusion for people coming into the thread.
I’ll be covering each of these sections:
Working Message Bulk Deletion Method
Video Tutorial
To get your messages deleted, you will need to request your data package. Make sure you have access to the email on your account. Here is a small tutorial on how to request your data package:
Data Package Request Tutorial
A…