In an attempt to crack down on the threat of malware, Discord has announced that links that are shared outside of Discord will be temporary and will expire 24 hours after being sent to the recipient. This move is aimed at securing file hosting on the platform. While this is a big change for the platform, they are confident that it can be implemented by the end of the year.
In actuality, the introduction of expiring links will serve two purposes. Firstly, it will drastically reduce the risk of malware, and secondly, it will also bring down the use of Discord as an unofficial file hosting service. Today, there are a lot of users who host their files on Discord before creating links for the same and sharing them on the internet. Not only does this encourage the sharing of infected files, but also compromises the safety of the platform. This is something they want to put an end to, and Discord believe they can kill two birds with one stone.
When asked about this decision, a spokesperson from Discord said that “Switching to temporary file links will help our safety team restrict access to flagged content, and generally reduce the amount of malware distributed using our CDN [content delivery network]”.
He also issued a message to Discord users – “If users are using Discord to host files, we’d recommend they find a more suitable service.”
