[Enshittification][DO NOT ADD] Discord Username System
Did you know? Discord is reworking/removing their partnership program (as it currently stands)
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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Honestly, and I said this in my own post, I'd rather just nuke my account and move back to text messages than deal with this.
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Please don't make this change. It is so unfair to anyone who does not use English. I would at least like to see some sort of communication before you push these changes through. The team has gone silent ever since people began to protest the change. Why are we being ignored? Why has there been no explanation to the non English speaking community?
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I also think its a bad idea.... but not just the things mentioned above, but how will it affect passwords (especially ones already stored) ? will we also have to come up with new passwords ? There was no mention of having to change passwords, but logic dictates that if you change the username, you will also have to change the password. This is almost like starting Discord over from scratch. For people who already have stored passwords, is there any support for those people to store their newly changed password ?
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oh, and by the way, how will it affect the profile, will it change the starting date ? will it reflect when we first joined discord, or will it reflect when we changed our username ?
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Awnah it doesn't effect anything else.
Please try to understand the topic, do not post if you don't understand what's happening here.
I've seen many many messages about people panicking with very wrong messages, they will just be used to "prove" the user base doesn't understand what we are talking about.Just upvote the posts and move on.
The handler doesn't do absolutely anything, it's just a human readable form used for pings and adding friends without sharing a server.
It doesn't identify the user in any way, the user is defined by an internal ID that's not visible by the user, just by the software (which includes bots, and in a way you can just discover your ID using a bot, it's not secret).This is the reason why it's idiotic, because it doesn't benefit the software.
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+1
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Made a profile just to +1 this shit
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+1
cant wait for all the video game character names I like to be taken and sold for 10000$ !!!
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Current system ain't broke, please don't try and "fix" it.
If nothing else, we can compromise on a 6- or 8-digit discriminator instead of this whole "fixed handle" idea that's gonna create more problems than it solves
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better tags than @'s because tags are way cooler and gives freedom of persona choice and tags are less likely be stolen or impersonated
+1 revert the change
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So, when Discord was trying to gaslight us in that blog post about how horribly difficult usernames are to share and remember with the discriminators, did they just forget that people who communicate primarily in non-Latin languages exist? Because this is going to make things infinitely harder for people who don't primarily write or speak in English (and similar languages) to remember the username they're forced to use the Latin alphabet to create.
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Polly That's how are out of touch they really are with their own userbase.
They actually forgot that there's thousands of languages that exist and not only English.
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Polly Ephenia Oh no they definitely remember they exist. They explicitly mention how this will affect users in countries such as Asia-- But then they go on to say that they're going to do it anyways.
"Meanwhile, people from regions where non-alphanumeric characters are common in names, such as Asia, would have difficulty fully representing themselves." (...) "After we transition over the course of this year, everyone will have: 1) A unique alphanumeric username without a discriminator (...) They’ll be limited to lowercase characters (a-z), numbers (0-9) and two special characters (period and underscore)."
They think being able to customize the display name with special characters makes up for this.
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+1
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Devs, you're obviously aware of the heat this new update announcement is getting right now which is why you guys "edited" the blog post.
So PLEASE act right and do not go forward with this new username change, literally just comprehend the negatives and consequences mentioned that would come out of this.
IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT.
The discriminator is what makes Discord unique from other platforms, why are you trying to align with other social media apps? What's next, 24 hr story feature?
Everyone is tired of devs implementing unnecessary upgrades that no one asked for whilst the shitty Support team can't get back to users to help out with account management issues and trying to work with users to develop better solutions. DO BETTER.
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+1
this is a huge step backwards14 -
discord don't add this dogshit feature. nobody wants this
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theyre only doing this for the money, so cancel your nitro and list this as the reason why!
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+1
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Just going to share something I heard that I think is an interesting idea.
Instead of getting rid of discriminators, just get rid of the need for your handle (with or without discriminator) to be unique. You log in with your e-mail anyway so you don't need it. And if you want to connect with friends, just use the system that servers already do: generating an invite link or code. You can then share that code with people if you want them to add you. This has the additional benefit of giving you more control over who can find you.
No discriminator required (though discriminators aren't a bad thing!), and you can handle not just 9999 Mikes, but 9999 trillion Mikes if you've got the capacity for that many users. It has most of the same benefits that discriminators do, as well, and it actually gives people more freedom rather than taking it away. On top of all that, no one would be required to change their username if this was implemented.
Oh, and for people who really love discriminators anyway, I have my own idea to add as well. Just keep them as an optional (but meaningless) profile feature you get access to with Nitro or something. That way you can still have your Mike#0001 through Mike#9999 and have them all be unique, without requiring anyone to actually worry about names being taken. As for Mike number 10000 who wants a discriminator, the scarcity is part of the appeal here. And I'd say 10000 Nitro users who all want to opt in to having the same name + the benefit of having it be uniquely identifiable is a good problem to have. For them, it's like a customizable invite link. And the rest of us don't have to think about it at all.
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This change is a terrible idea. For the low cost of remembering 4 numbers, people can have their username and enjoy a level of anonymity and therefore are protected from harassment, as people can't search them up without those numbers.
Now people have the choice between not having their username, or if they do pick their username, they have the choice between being open to harassment, such as if they get a sought-after tag or happen to say kill a streamer with 10s of thousands of viewers, or turning off messages and friend requests, which defeats the stated purpose of this update of making adding people easier.
It's an abject failure, and denying that it's a bad idea and pushing forward with it anyway is sad and pathetic. Hold the L, Discord.
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This nonsense is going to help nobody.
You're removing a feature that made making a market for usernames, impersonation, and other ills harder or impossible to do. And now you're expecting 350-400 million users to just change their usernames all for what? Because a few people can't figure that a four-digit number is part o your UN?
1. Forcing people to change their usernames will result in them being longer and there being even more overlap. So you're also forcing people to make more complex names that will be harder to remember for no benefit to the community.
2. Removing the discriminators will make impersonation much easier, because all it will take is a similar looking name and the same icon as the original person to complete the con. Discriminators prevented this practice, and now you're removing that layer of protection from all your users... for no good benefit.
3. Further more this will allow people to scoop up masses of usernames to squat on and hold ransom to sell to people in order get them, making them have to come up with ridiculous usernames or pay up. Numerical discriminators tied to the account assured this was basically impossible. So again, another change for no benefit.
Get out of your echo chamber and engage with your community!20 -
discord if you do this youre stupid
the way usernames work is fine and honestly alot prettier & easier to use15 -
Discord has been slowly killing itself for a very long time and their changes get worse and worse…..
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god this is a hellish change. +1
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+1
I love my numbers!! I like having matching names with my friends sometimes, and not only that but I really think Vaya_1_2_3_4_5_mynamewastaken is gonna be so much more sucky than Vaya!#1234 (not my real numbers, just an example!). Like- not only that, but me and my friends genuinely love our numbers! We've grown to like them there, and I use those numbers for things outside of discord cause they've become important to me! Please don't roll out this new change. And if it can't be stopped, please revert it as soon as possible. But ofc, give people their numbers back, or at least the choice to choose them once(if it rolls out and gets reverted). My nitro is about to end and I can't buy it back with this new change, I just really don't want to.
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This is so frustrating. As others said this allows for greater user privacy, this is a safety measure for many. It is not a public facing social media website, keep the numbers!
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+1
This is the dumbest change I could ever hope to think of... how did this make it through?15 -
+1
Horrible change. Please don't do this, Discord.15 -
+1. Cancelled my nitro.
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