removing the number discriminator is bad call

discord, as it stands for me, is one of the safest and easiest to use platforms for gaming and messaging. this is, in part, due to its number discriminator username style. it's personal, private, a way to curate your friends list in a way that allows for only the people you approve being able to get your tag and friend you.

if you get rid of the number discriminators, that's all gonna go downhill pretty fast. people who know your username (as most people tend to use the same username social media-wide) can find you pretty easily. they can spam you with friend requests, if your DM settings are open then they can send you hate or bombard you with triggering images. it isn't fair for it to rely on the user being attacked to go into hiding or change the username they love to prevent this.

the second topic i'd like to bring up that possibly worries me the most: impersonation. what about content creators and artists that live on discord? discord is a social media, yes, but it is above all a private messenger. you cannot follow discord users, only friend them. what will they do about the huge wave of friend requests besides turning them off? and, if their usernames are taken, what steps is discord going to take to prevent users from impersonating them? how are the content creators going to get their usernames back to prevent impersonators from causing harm? the number discriminator was unique in the way that even if someone took your username, you could still clarify the number.

i read the blog post stating why these changes were being made, but really... the problems that the discord team listed already had features to solve the problem. the issues listed were all verbal. misinterpreting a spelling, or the issue of special characters not being translated well verbally. if you're talking with someone face-to-face in a manor like this, you could just... type in your username into their discord itself. or better yet, use the bluetooth finding nearby friends feature discord has implemented. otherwise, in text-based situations, usernames can just be copy and pasted. it isn't hard. it's 4 numbers, in comparison to a potentially long and easily misunderstood social media username.

this is getting pretty long, and i could probably go on. but TL;DR, the discord username change is unnecessary, and rings true to my long repeated mantra of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." at best, it's boring and falling into the same monotony as every other social media. at worst, it's a security issue that could lead to waves of harassment and impersonation that has an easier fix than doing a complete username override.