Make VOICE_STATE_UPDATE a privileged intent

[ftilly]

Discord has made many intents privileged over the past few weeks. While some of them are obscure, the vast majority of them are for good reason.
While message content, the last largely controversial now-privileged intent, provided a minor degradation of the usability of the Discord API, it was made privileged to protect the privacy of users.
VOICE_STATE_UPDATE is a similar intent. It provides even more sensitive information. From my calculations, making it privileged would have an even smaller impact on the developer community than message content did. As nearly every discord bot does not use the VOICE_STATE_UPDATE intent for a legitimate purpose, I see no reason to keep it unrestricted.

[SinisterRectus]

Voice state updates are the only source for a user's status in a voice channel. Bots rely on these to know whether a user is muted or deafened or connected to a channel. What about that is sensitive or used illegitimately?

[ooliver1]

Then it can (can) be updated at that point. There is no reason to cautiously make intents priviledged, when voice states are only about as sensitive as any other non-priviledged intent. Voice states make up 3/4 of my events (45/s at peak), and are the only ones (apart from guild events for cache) that my bot cares about.

[ftilly]

Making events privileged before they release will reduce community backlash. For example, if message content was privileged before messages existed, there wouldn't have been any backlash.

[ooliver1]

But there is nothing that will be changing with voice states that we know of, so there is no reason for you to pick that specific intent. All current (3) privileged intents were accessible without privileges before they were introduced.

[ftilly]

nothing that will be changing with voice states that we know of

speak for yourself

[broman]

Why are you assuming that voice state may “include sensitive information in the future” as a justification to restrict it right now? Discord is perfectly capable of making these decisions on their own without your expertise

[AlmostSuspense]

Discord has made many intents privileged over the past few weeks

where did you get that from? there are only three privileged intents, and that's been the case for several months/years already

[ftilly]

I don't think that's relevant

[ooliver1]

I don't think that's relevant

It is quite relevant, that is a quote from your post but it is incorrect. Your wording is like Discord has made many more intents priviledged recently