[DO NOT ADD] Discord Username System
Hey there @everyone! Been about 2 months since I changed this post. And it's been a hot minute, but the username update has now been worked into Discord. No matter if we liked it or not. And people will now (forcefully) get used to it.
As a suprise, this idea has the MOST ever comments and votes recieved on a single post on the feedback platform EVER. The story around this event is the most interesting I have ever seen. And the gerne around it still hasn't ended either. We'll see where all of this goes.
On that note, I have been working on a little project regarding that, since Twitter, Discord, Reddit and Tiktok are heading all into the same route. Our own little enshittification.social! A mastodon instance for the enshittification of companies and they services they used to offfer. (Twitter, Unity, Discord, and so on)
Would you like to participate in an UNOFFCIAL poll? Click here!
(NOT affiliated with Discord in any way, shape or form)
We thank everyone for their votes, comments and joining our DIscord server and enshittification instance. The story of enshittification will never end and we can see that with the recent Unity Pricing changes.
I've recieved a press request through Discord, however I'm moving that to email, if any press wants to reach out about the update from someone willing to represent the entire discord community against this change, send an email here:
- press@stefanocoding.me
Need more information? Check NTTS's Video:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3LUtBVe3Jk
Want to talk with people about the update? Check this server:
- https://discord.gg/jpFhkeqGHS
An anonymous Discord Partner has spoken out about the reservations, check it out.
- Original post was deleted by reddit admins, link is now for archive.org
Hey, even game devs are struggeling getting their official name as verified servers:
- https://www.gamesradar.com/indie-studio-has-their-discord-username-stolen-out-from-under-them/
- https://twitter.com/rustylakecom/status/1659556388526338048
So what is it with this update?
So generally, this update has recieved a TON of backlash. And this feedback post has already recieved just about 13k upvotes at the time of writing AND a change.org petition with 13k people having signed it,
Fundementally this change to discord is going to cause more issue's for it's users then it could be worth. Among the comments, there are a few I'll display/mention.
One of the major issues that can be confirmed is the resale of Discord accounts. That is something that is unable to be denied and is going to be a major issue. Example here:
What discord has done absolutly wrong during this update:
Discord staff has been claiming double the names, one for their private account. Another for their staff account. Some of these usernames that are being claimed are so rare that people are speculating they are planning to sell it one day or another. The communication is absolute crap, they have not communicated how they where planning to do the roll-out and the way people are now claiming names left and right, from piewdiepie, markiplier and other names that should have been reserved. Then the way access get's rolled out? Verified bots where supposed to get access first, then supposedly brands, moving on to the staff and then the partnered and verified servers. Then the general population. But this has so far changed even more, starting with people from the moderator program, and suddenly the Hypesquad event team. And we still do not have enough information to know what the next bracket will be. There is no proper communication apart from Discord telling us to append our tag/discriminator to our usernames if we can't use it. Or you know just don't make usernames unique. The reddit has been stormed with people hating this update. And when people go to the support page, they're told to respond to feedback, or create it. We've all done this, but Discord still hasn't made an official statement. The entire update wasn't even properly announced like they do with everything else. Hidden behind their Birthday suprises. With the nitro trails providing people with 2 weeks of nitro to forget they signed up and pay an additional month. Normally, this would be tweeted and announced everywhere properly. People are moving away from Discord in an attempt to revolt, they're disbanding Nitro to put a dent somewhere in Discord's earnings. But that'll probably be recouped by investors. Discord claims to listen to feedback. But we've seen nothing of this yet. As a ton of people are saying, Discord is turning into Twitter, we don't want to see it happen. But with the 300 million active users on Discord, we're barely making a dent with this feedback post.
What are some good ways to fix this update?
The previous system worked perfectly, nothing to change about it. However using the display name system is a good idea. Maybe even supporting for official known people to get a username, or a checkmark to define "hey they are official" without the Twitter "pay for a blue tick" bs.
> BELOW ARE COMMENTS MADE BY THE COMMUNITY, NOT BY ME DIRECTLY <
Mikey's, Gen, Rain
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+1. This is a terrible idea which will just cause more pain and headaches to the end users. A great number of people pay basic nitro just for the ability to choose what their discriminator is. They won't get the ability to do that anymore and as a result will cancel their nitro sub because of this. You mention this is to sidestep the technical debt that's been built up in the discriminator system, but you will realize very soon that you'll lose money if you don't tackle that technical debt now due to lost Nitro subs. Hell you'll probably push the update through, lose the money, then realize you have to tackle said technical debt in order to bring back discriminators and such to a standard you feel is for the best.
Also as other posts have mentioned prior, services like XBox Live, Blizzard, and a few others are implementing/have implemented their own version of discriminators, so what's the point in trying to look like other sites/services when said sites/services are trying to mimic Discord's way of handling things?
16 -
I was a semi-early adopter back in 2015, and the simplicity of the username system was one of the larger draws to Discord. I've always been whateverIwant#1313 (not my actual name for reference), and I felt that server profiles built on top of that nicely.
But I don't mind sharing a root name with someone else, because in all the years I've used Discord I have never been mistaken for anyone else... so why the change?
There is no increased value of outputs for this, plus continual improvement should be worthwhile and meaningful (you're an IT company so I hope you appreciate the ITIL references!).
This does not improve things for the customers, and it has made me more likely to not renew my Discord Nitro on the account I use most; I've been using Discord Nitro since it was first made available in the UK, and it is one of my longest running subscriptions to an app or social media service (can't really call you a gaming service anymore, can I?)
If anything, once this change goes through, I'll need to make sure I can claim my old username to stop some old friends doing it to impersonate me for lolz. I could do without that added stress and anxiety of again having to act pre-emptively to shield myself from harassment.
I guess I expected better, the current system doesn't present a concern because there can be a dozen or hundred of people with the same username... but the value goes up exponentially once you artificially limit that possibility. Is this just a sneaky way of bringing out NFTs linked to accounts and wallets, by assigning artificial scarcity to these virtual objects?
I hope that I'm wrong.
16 -
tl;dr: +1. For a multitude of reasons.
Congratulations, Discord. This is the worst update you'll ever implement.Where do I even start?
First of all: IMPERSONATION. Discord has still not addressed the hacker problem yet. The hacker will take over your old account and you'll have to make a new one, probably with a different tag indicator. When the update is implemented, who gets the advantage? That's right! The hacker! Who will then go on to do horrible things under the name that they didn't choose (they only chose it by hacking an account)
Second of all: Y'ALL ARE GONNA LOSE A LOT OF INCOME. A feature of Discord Nitro is changing your username. That's the beauty of it. If you don't like your tag, you can change it to "heeheehoohoo#6969" or what have you.
which brings me to my third, final, and most important point: THE INDICATORS ARE EVERYTHING. This was the main reason I signed up for this platform. It allowed me to have a unique teller to separate myself. In this context, discrimination is fine. It allows me to distinguish hacked accounts from real accounts. Taking this away will not only make it harder, but more disheartening for others to get back their account. Chances are, the hacked accounts will be older, and therefore will be able to take the username for themselves.
There are many other reasons explained in this forum as well. I advise the team to read all of it.
Discord, please listen to your users. We didn't ask for this. WE DON'T WANT THIS. WE DON'T EVEN NEED THIS. Please do the right thing. Cease this unnecessary change that will hurt both the users and your company.
If it ain't broken, don't fix it.
20 -
+1
this is a horrible idea, and frankly a lot of the points in the blog post are either laughably ridiculous, will not be solved with this update whatsoever, or both. mostly both.
like, come on. "our current usernames can often be too complicated or obscure for people to remember and share easily"? you really don't think that's not going to get worse? "we didn't want people to hit the 'your username is taken' screen"?" guess what! that's going to happen on the regular now! now, instead of just going "oh, yeah, my username is starlight#1111" or something it's going to turn into ridiculous chains of letters, numbers, and the _ and . symbols because the way this is rolling out means not everyone gets to change their usernames at the same time. people are going to get the notif, go to change it, and end up with something like "st.ar.li.ight_1111" which is totally much easier to remember (not), because they were one of the last ones on the rollout list.
not only that, but it's going to make it much easier for people to be searched for. i like having this so people can't find me unless i specifically give them my handle or am already in a server with them, not so they can just search up my username and run at me. if people have usernames that are popular or desired, it's going to end up the same way it is on other sites where they'll likely get people messaging them trying to get them to give it up, harass them, try to offer money for a username. account selling is going to skyrocket. it is going to be so much easier for people to impersonate others. somebody with an all capitalized username? bam, get someone replacing that uppercase i with a lowercase L and you've got a problem.
nobody asked for this. listen to all the people telling you this is a BS idea. it wasn't broken. it doesn't need fixing.
18 -
Dear Discord,
Ya fucked up. I'm already tired of having to deal with changes to how text sizing and spacing works. I'm annoyed at the obligatory shitty image grouping. Do NOT make me change my name. Poll for features before implementing them, for fucks sake.
If you want to continue with the stupid excuse that a four digit code at the end of your username is "hard to remember" then give us friend codes, like steam. Or links. Also like steam. Or just don't change it. At best, if you need more unique usernames with discriminators... add another number. We can handle it, I promise. I don't know how to tell you this, but people memorize phone numbers. Phone numbers are quite long. And there are other important strings of numbers people have to memorize to function in society. I really REALLY think people can manage 4 digits that they can often CHOOSE THEMSELVES.
Maybe take a moment to reflect on the fact that the world doesn't need another Twitter or Instagram. You can touch on their features, but stop trying to become them. Discord is a chat platform. Not social media. I don't want it to be social media. I don't want to be easy to find. I don't care if my username is hard to type in, because if I want someone to friend me I'll friend *them* or I'll copy paste it for them. It's this neat trick, very easy. There are even keyboard shortcuts for it.
With Exasperation and Spite,
Kitaaan~0 -
Absolutely horrible change. People want to keep their username. Not to have a garbage of a username like xXMyNameIsJohnXx. Why are we going backwards in technology. This was an issue during the MSN days. Discord had a good solution to the problem. Why are we going backwards?
14 -
Getting rid of the discriminators is a terrible idea, you are regressing from the solution you already had to unique names being a terrible idea. Think about other social media, how many "John Smiths" are there? Why would you force it so only one person can be "John Smith", and all of the rest have to be JoHN.SMITH__ etc. You already had the answer! Why would you go backwards!
14 -
+1.
I am deathly sure this update is going ti end up in discord going empty. This isn't twitter 2.0. We aren't stupid, the number tag is actually pretty damn good for diversity in names. If they do this, I am gonna be hella disappointed and I am very sure people all over will cancel their nitro. He'll, this is gonna give way to so much fraud and privacy invasion. I don't want some rando messaging me because they found my username somewhere somewhere decided they want to schmooze. Hell no.16 -
+1
Horrible idea. Even if they're genuinely trying to fix the problem of people not remembering their discriminator, this username system is just going to make things even harder to remember lmao. I have a hard time believing that they really thought #xxxx is harder to remember than @ asdakdl12askdf324 or something, which someone will eventually have as a username. Feels insidious to pretend it's because they're thinking about the community when it's so obviously a net negative lol.
16 -
+1
Other people here have explained why this is an awful change in way more detail than I ever could (account selling, impersonation, phishing scams, etc...) but I'd like to add on a few more things:
1. One of my favorite things about Discord is not having to deal with the annoying "This username is taken" problem that every other website/app/game on earth has. Do you have any idea how common "Floofy" is? My name on everywhere that isn't Discord is some weird variation that I had to make up on the spot. Ya'll literally mention this in the blog post as a reason for why discriminators exist in the first place... why take away an advantage that Discord has?
2. Do you seriously think this will make it easier to add people? When every common variation of "Floofy" gets taken within minutes, will it be easier to add me when I have to set my username to something like "@floofy_was_taken_123"? And by the way, it's a GOOD thing that you can't add people that easily- I don't want random friend requests from people I don't know! If really want someone to find me, there are plenty of ways for me to send that specific person my name + discriminator via text so they can easily copy-paste it into Discord. I really don't buy the "but it's hard to add people!" claim as a valid reason for this change to go through.
3. Lastly, the ability to customize your discriminator has been a standars feature of Nitro for YEARS. I'm sure all the current Nitro subscribers who still use that feature will be totally okay with you taking it away from them and definitely won't cancel their subscriptions!17 -
For the love of God please do not change the username system
12 -
there are numerous reasons why the removal of the 4 digit discriminator is a horrible idea, but I offer the primary ones, as well as my own personal reasoning:
1) the most enjoyable part of this feature was not needing to worry about whether my desired username was taken, that I could name myself whatever without limitation (as well as 9998 other people with an identical username). now, for example, what is currently TOBY !![4 nums] is gonna have to 708y69 because well... we can't all be toby now can we? which sucks because we are! it removes one of the most stress-relieving account creating and customizing aspects and opts to look like... twitter (ew)
2) it won't solve any kind of bot or impersonation issue. if people were dumb enough to fall for impersonators then, they'll fall for them now- that's just how the world works. same goes for bots, they'll still get made, they'll still cause issues. if anything this will just create a new issue of hacking for the sake of getting better usernames.
3) enjoy the username black market! need I elaborate on this? it's ridiculous. I've seen people on pay insane amounts for usernames on other platforms, I've seen accounts hacked and stolen for usernames, I've seen people *harassed* simply for having a "good" username. this creates a massive iceberg of new username related issues that literally no one wants to deal with. (ps: you won't be getting paid for any sold usernames!)
4) it removes yet another feature that made purchasing nitro worth it. custom discriminators were one of the parts so many people enjoyed about it, in fact I have a friend who exclusively buys nitro to make his #6969! enjoy less money I guess.
5) on the more personal note- this makes me and other afab, queer, and/or poc users at even higher risk of harassment for simply existing. this is already an issue on the platform, but the numbers, the ability to freely change names, etc protected us more than setting changes ever did. now we're losing that and it's absolutely going to put us in a horrible position.
I'm absolutely certain that I will be finding an alternative to discord, as well as cancelling my nitro subscription, if this goes through. even if I have to use skype of all things, I have no interest in supporting a company that clearly doesn't understand what it's userbase wants or needs.
26 -
Awful idea. Please, discord team, give up on it.
17 -
Just popping this here to show they haven’t thought this through at all. If your developers are saying shit like this in direct contradiction to your update: maybe don’t do the update. Dreading seeing my nickname taken. I go by three names in my Twitter handle just so it’s unique when really I just want to go by Lemon Man. Discord stands out from the crowd which pushes users to stay and join, I don’t see a reason for taking away a feature that encourages people to use your platform over another
27 -
This is just absolute madness, it's bad for everyone involved, what on earth are you all thinking?
16 -
awful idea, just add extra #s to the discriminator and remove case sensitivity
17 -
Absolutely agreed with everything, no one asked for this and we don't need it, the tags system works perfectly fine, there's no reason to imply the new discord username system, +1
18 -
Discord isn't a social media site and it shouldn't try to be. They don't have to and shouldn't uproot their entire username system just to add a display name function... The real solution for "there can only be 9999 mikes" would be to add another digit or two to the discriminators, not to make it so there's only one mike. The other change will also be incredibly harmful to everyone with a non-english name - umlauts and accents are necessary for a lot of languages using the latin/roman alphabet, and that's not even going into the fact that other alphabets won't be allowed at all...
TL;DR, +1 to everything above
20 -
+1
Probably the most egregious sin of a feature you guys have formulated yet. The consequences of such an idea will not only rip you a new one financially, but it will also cost you a fraction of your user base. Alternatives are out there and growing, and if you think your hold on the chat client world is so unshakably strong that you can roll out these features without community input and face no consequences, you'll find out very quickly when you finally push enough people to jump ship.
You ceaselessly prove yourselves as a company to be a disappointment. Seldom a good feature has rolled out in recent times that wasn't a clear piece of visual candy to distract everyone from just how terribly you update things. Listen to your community before you lose it.
25 -
I've enjoyed using this service and the convience of the discriminator, because I've dealt with the whole situation of "unique" usernames whic just leads to 50 different people copying the name and adding a number to it. Don't you dare try to go forward with this. I agree with what lots of people say above. +1
17 -
Absolutely scathing remark, Blues. So true.
8 -
+1
This is an absolutely terrible idea and I hope that Discord reconsiders and rolls back this decision. Please listen to your community. I know so many people whose usernames are just their first name, so it’s simple and easy to recall – switching to enforcing unique usernames will only make usernames harder and harder to obtain and thus harder to remember.
This is going to displace so many identities, disrupt content creators, and encourage impersonation and hackers and spam.
18 -
This better not happen. Just imagine the content creators who will be bombarded with friend requests on a regular basis because they don't have the discriminator to protect them.
18 -
+1
maybe if enough people say they dislike it, discord will actually listen!14 -
I disagree. This is a good change.
edit: lol -7 votes, people are REALLY salty over this change
i just can't wait to not have to memorize random numbers every time i don't renew nitro
-40 -
+1 this is going to cause so many people to lose their username and be impersonated. Not to mention make it so much easier for people to harass you, and as someone who's dealt with a stalker, this is a HORRIBLE decision for privacy.
18 -
i hope you guys see that literally nobody wants this, what were you thinking
18 -
+1
honestly what a godawful idea15 -
I like the incoming update :)
-34 -
What is the point of spending development time on new, worse, system for usernames when the current one works better?
Instead, how about developing actual features like using the system date/time format or providing a boolean search system that actually allows you to find EXACTLY what you type into the box?
18
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