Add Support for Retrieving Pronouns and maybe User Bios via Privileged Intents

[Paillat-dev]

I am writing to request the addition of support for retrieving a user's bio and/or pronouns through privileged intents in Discord's API. With the recent introduction of a new profile field for pronouns, it would greatly benefit bot developers to have access to this information, enabling them to provide enhanced features and functionality to Discord users.

Use Cases:

1. AI Bios Moderation: Bots are commonly used for content moderation, including scanning and filtering user-generated text. By granting bots access to user bios, bot developers can implement AI-powered or non AI-powered systems to effectively moderate and filter bios and pronouns, ensuring compliance with community guidelines and preventing the spread of inappropriate or harmful content.

2. Pronouns Recognition: Inclusive communities thrive on recognizing and respecting diverse identities. By allowing bots to retrieve a user's pronouns, developers can create features that facilitate respectful interactions. Discord's Clyde AI already has access to pronouns, showcasing how this information can be utilized to enhance user experiences and promote inclusivity.

3. Contextual Conversations for AI Language Models: AI language models, such as Clyde or third-party LLMs integrated with Discord, can provide more relevant and context-aware responses when they have access to user bios and pronouns. This information adds valuable context to conversations, allowing AI bots to generate more personalized and tailored responses based on the user's profile information. It enhances the user experience by creating more engaging and human-like interactions.

Proposed Implementation:

To address these use cases, we propose expanding the functionality of privileged intents to include the retrieval of user bios and pronouns. This can be achieved by either creating a new privileged intent, such as PROFILE_INFORMATION, or by extending an existing intent, such as GUILD_MEMBERS, to encompass global profile information as well.

Example API Usage:

To retrieve a user's bio using the proposed API implementation, developers would utilize the following endpoints:

• For guild-wide bio retrieval:

  GET /guilds/{guild_id}/members/{user_id}/bio
  

• For global bio retrieval:

  GET /users/{user_id}/bio
  

To retrieve a user's pronouns, developers would use the following endpoints:

• For guild-wide pronouns retrieval:

  GET /guilds/{guild_id}/members/{user_id}/pronouns
  

• For global pronouns retrieval:

  GET /users/{user_id}/pronouns
  

These endpoints would require the appropriate privileged intent, either the new PROFILE_INFORMATION intent or the extended GUILD_MEMBERS intent, to be enabled for the bot's application.

Expected Benefits:

The addition of support for retrieving user bios and pronouns through privileged intents would unlock new possibilities for bot developers and enhance the overall Discord user experience. It would enable the creation of advanced moderation systems, inclusive and respectful interactions, and innovative features that leverage user profile information. Discord's Clyde AI serves as a prime example of how bios and pronouns can be utilized by AI applications to provide valuable functionality.

Notice:

Please note that I am aware that similar requests have been previously discussed and denied. However, given the recent addition of pronouns as a profile field and the fact that Discord's own Clyde AI chatbot has access to this information, I believe it is essential to reevaluate the possibility of adding support for retrieving user bios and/or pronouns through privileged intents.

By implementing this feature as a privileged intent, Discord can ensure that the access to user bios and pronouns is controlled and regulated. This approach would prevent misuse and enable developers to create valuable and responsible applications while respecting user privacy and security.

I understand that this is a sensitive topic, and the concerns regarding privacy and misuse have been carefully considered in the past. However, considering the evolving nature of Discord's features and the potential benefits in terms of AI bios moderation, inclusive interactions, and contextual conversations, I believe it is worth revisiting this discussion.

I kindly request a renewed consideration of this proposal, taking into account the new context provided by the introduction of pronouns as a profile field and the existing implementation in Discord's Clyde AI. By incorporating this feature as a privileged intent, Discord can strike a balance between empowering developers and ensuring responsible usage.

Thank you for your attention to this matter

[TwilightZebby]

While I dislike how AI/LLM-focused this suggestion seems to be with its possible use-cases - I do like the idea of allowing Bots access to Pronouns Field for Bots to use in their responses or to help with moderation of the Pronouns Field (since there are a LOT of people abusing that Field for malicious text just because it's labelled as a Pronouns Field).

[Paillat-dev]

I focused my message mainly on AI chatbots because Clyde AI does already have access to that information. But as you said, it's not the only option. There are lots of other possibilities for other uses of the Pronouns and Bio fields.

[RealAlphabet]

I feel uncomfortable with the idea of placing this as a privileged intent knowing that.

1. Pronouns and biographies are subject to contain sensitive personal information (by definition).
2. That bots would have the ability to literally scrape every member's bio.
3. There is no way for Discord to enforce the policy of collecting and storing user data retrieved through third-party bots. This also raises some GDPR questions (to be verified).

What's more, Discord doesn't currently display any warnings about bots on the server using privileged intents.

This prevents users from being aware of the information they'll be handing over to third-party bots when they join the server, and at the same time expressing their refusal to give access to (potentially) sensitive personal information.

I think it might be desirable to know a user's pronoun in order to personalize the messages sent to them, but I don't think an intent is appropriate given the nature of the data.

Until Discord allows users to express their refusal to give access to this information client-side, I think we should place this behind an additional OAuth2 scope such as user.bio .

In any case, adding an OAuth2 scope to retrieve the biography should be added for the reasons you cited and for services that synchronize the user's biography with Discord (discord.bio, etc...).

[Paillat-dev]

Thas sounds a great compromise actually, allowing users to opt to give their bio to an app. I like this idea.

[seailz]

I don’t think bio should be allowed at all.
Pronouns are a different story.

[angievic]

Seria excelente permitieran obtener los pronombres !

[pir8radio]

sensitive personal information, that they want the public to see by putting it in their profile? Doesn't sound so sensitive. Now that discord created this new pronouns field i have script kiddies using it to write bad words, or things like "Community MOD", "ADMIN", or "Support" then contacting my legit server users trying to get info out of them. You are worried about protecting the users of the public field who are proud of their pronouns, yet you allow abuse of the pronouns field by not allowing spam bots to kick these abusers.

[ktwrd]

Pronouns should be viewable by applications since it might help with specific applications that reference to the users, and it would be easier to use the users pronouns in their bio instead of using they/them by default of requiring the user to change their settings for that specific bot.

I'm agreeing with other people when it comes to not allowing bios to be viewed by bots since it 100% could be used for malicious purposes, but that also goes with bots in general if they can view message content since some could consider that it's private data when not in a public server.

[Qjuh]

Automod has access to it, so just setup automod rules to action upon that. But external apps like a bot should indeed not have access to privacy relevant information like that. Because it can (and will) be used to discriminate upon that information or worse.

[pir8radio]

I would agree with you all if pronouns were a set selection of pronouns. But I can enter things like -Admin- or Moderator or go to this website.... as my pronouns, which make this a field that can be abused.

[TwilightZebby]

Automod has access to it, so just setup automod rules to action upon that.

It does?

I was under the impression that the one sole "Profile" Rule for AutoMod only checks the username/display-name/nickname fields? 🤔

[ktwrd]

Automod has access to it, so just setup automod rules to action upon that...

@Qjuh I would expect automod to have access to profile/pronoun data, but I'm talking about bots that aren't made by discord. Bots thare aren't made by discord should have the ability to at least request the user to have access to their pronouns field.

[Qjuh]

I‘m sorry, I didn‘t mean to send my initial statement as reply to you but as general statement or response to OP or the person before you.
For your use case it might indeed be an option to propose receiving the pronoun field in interaction payloads, similar to what happens with locale already.