[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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+1 stop adding things no one asked for that were clearly not given an ounce of common sense!
13 -
discord changed the proposed rollout so now nitro users will get username opportunities first, effectively punishing you for cancelling nitro in protest.
they know we're alarmed about getting our usernames squatted, and they are using that against us.
discord is run by actual sociopaths.
23 -
I love my # it is a part of my account and has been for so long. I do not want to lose it. On top of that I will be heartbroken if I have to change my username from the handle I have been using for most of my life. This is a terrible idea. The @ symbol is not aesthetic in any way. You will be effectively forcing me to change from a username that I love to one that I hate. No one ever asked for this. Stop trying to fix something that was never broken. Having to remember "@aBh0r3Nt" will be far more difficult than having to remember "Abhorent#2768"
Please, do not do this!
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+1
Quoting someone else here but I fully and completely agree with them 100%
This is an absolutely terrible, bad idea. Do not fucking do this.Financial Effects
Like literally there are no benefits for Discord to doing this. Not even their shareholders since their income will drop from this change.Since most of the "market research" they did in that article, they probably should've done one on how many people buy nitro just for changing their discriminator. Discriminators and tags are not only signature to Discord but crucial to the platform and it's mostly how people communicate with each other. People buy Nitro just to have a simple discriminator.
Scams and Frauds
It will be so easy to impersonate someone, for example if I wanted to impersonate @Juju#0001, all I would have to do is just make a fake letter (such as like... J), use the same profile and become @JujuJ. Boom! I have now successfully impersonated someone. Tags make it a lot easier to identify fake identities, such as "the only real moderators are Juju#0001".Not only that, but this feature benefits account stealing, hacking, and selling to a new level. People with short usernames such as @Rek would become targets for scammers to sell their accounts for a profit. I'm sure this doesn't give Discord the PR it wants.
Community Appeal
99% of the community on Discord have taken well to discriminators and don't want to change to a Pomelo system. It does not benefit the community in any way, shape, or form. Pomelo tags (@username), are absolutely not what the community wants, and that is shown by the immediate community outroar in pretty much every official Discord-owned community server, such as Townhall and Discord Developers.Impersonations
As talked about earlier in the Scams and Frauds section, people without a significant following or new to the platform (within 4 years) are going to be impersonated! Even YouTubers or internet personalities with hundreds of thousands of followers could be impersonated by a simple internet scammer with an older Discord account.The system is flawed
The current implementation of Pomelo tags is absolutely terrible for the end-user, as well as pretty much any member of the Discord platform. Sure it makes identifying people a lot easier in the eyes of Discord, but this just makes the lives of Discord users infinite amount times harder and for no significant benefit.There are so many ways to ruin this system, and it can be abused in so many ways. This isn't good for Discord, at all.
So yeah +1 on the original post here, This is an absolutely terrible bad idea.0 -
+1
there's no real benefit to this change and if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it and just make it worse than it was!!
14 -
+1
13 -
++++++1
they're killing discord by doing this, everyone cancel your nitro and protest this!!
15 -
i've already seen people selling their 2016-2017 accounts for early access to claim usernames. if people are doing this already, what won't they do to get a username they want?
14 -
furious at this change. i cancelled my nitro, i will only resub if you guys reverse this choice. otherwise? ill be looking for the next platform to join.
16 -
+1
11 -
+1
This is such a buttfudgingly stupid idea that whoever at Discord is trying to push it through should be required to take a vow of silence so no more moronic ideas can dribble out of their mouth.
13 -
looking forward to seeing what discord alternatives spring up in the coming months/year!
14 -
+1
This is stupid. I'm extremely attached to my username. I might just stop using Discord completely if they end up doing this. All these updates are awful.
10 -
+1.
If this shit goes through, I'm gone. This update cripples privacy, creates an account market, enables blackmailing for accounts and invites targeted harassment.
I don't know what you all and Citron were thinking, but you sure as shit are on some bad juju, probably makes The Room look like The Fifth Element.
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please for the love of god keep discriminators. if 40% of users don't even know what they are it's their problem, and still a minority. if that's one of the major reasons this change is being made add in some tutorial about it upon account creation idk
11 -
I agree with all of these complaint points (as well as the ones mentioned on the change.org page), but I'll add a more personal point about this as well (it won't relate to everyone, but this was important to me and is a big reason why I'm against this).
One of the reasons I was so happy with using Discord when I first found it was knowing that I could change the names that people could see on my profile, and it would work. I wouldn't have to keep wondering if I'd regret my name choice a few weeks later, and then never be able to use an older name again because it was better-known and someone had swiped it. ("Sure, but the display name is supposed to handle that" is the answer that Discord is claiming will solve that... except for the part where your username is something that's still public, that other people will still interact with, and is something that they'd absolutely have to see if they're adding you as a friend!)
11 -
Please don't make this change, I personally love the discriminator with the numbers and adore that mine is IT related.
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It's an absolutely terrible change. Companies are moving towards discriminator usernames because of discord, because it was an amazing idea. Microsoft and Valorant are two that come to mind. It's an almost future-proof system that (almost) fixes the issue of eventually running out of usernames. It's so good that even if every single name is taken 9,999 times, you can just add another number! or do how Valorant does and allow letters as well. This is almost definitely a big step backwards. The only way to fix it now is to actually listen to the community you are fucking over here.
0 -
+1
discord hq pulling an elon musk speedrun12 -
it's impressive how niantic, a company also in hot water for the changes they've made to their game, have a better system than this. yeah usernames are unique but people seem to be just fine with the 12 digit friend codes and qr code scanning. if the four digit discriminator is that difficult add one of those. people know what friend codes and qr codes are
also if people "don't know what discriminators are" give them a handy tutorial when they first register for discord with cute graphics saying what it is. did we forget that discord is for gamers who are used to this stuff. i know the company has evolved, but let's not forget that foundation
16 -
terrible idea. Discord is supposed to be a good place to be named however you want, and people can tell who they're talking to based on the "username notes", profile pictures, previous chats, the friend nicknames, and much more!
People with rare names are 10000% getting hacked for their accounts. Y'all are just making a decision that's making me regret being a nitro sub for 3 years. I don't even use the #s personally but I know people care for them. Don't fix what's not broken maybe?
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I feel like switching the name system is kind of removing half the point of discord, I always liked discord because it wasn't like normal social media, because it had a sort of character to it that makes it feel safe and apart from the rest of the internet. This change will totally mess up the vibe yknow
14 -
The clamour for usernames is gonna be absolute hell with hundreds of millions of accounts.
Rather than simply being unable to get your usual username, you most likely won't even be able to get anything close to your usual name, unless you put 2, 3, even 4 digits on the end of it.
Wait, wasn't the whole point of this to avoid digits on the end of names?
12 -
How is the new system a benefit? How is it simpler than copy + pasting a
username?You're intentionally implementing a superfluous feature that you KNOW is
unpopular and RIFE with issues. You're just recreating mid-2000's
username scarcity bs that lead to the rise of "xx_sephiroth_69" style
usernames. How is that easier to parse and share? You're just forcing
people to move the discriminator into their usernames instead of having
it a baked-in feature. How is the rise of "j4m3s", "j4me22", and
"james2938" better than the system in place?"We recognize that some users may have concerns"
You're literally forcing people to anglicize their usernames. How is
that simpler? How does that help non-english speakers connect with their
friends?How is any of this simpler? How is any of this "more Intuitive"? How is
any of this a benefit?
It's change for the sake of change and people are NOT happy.16 -
Really? there is no benefit to this. When i first logged in to discord it was clear what it was and now your wanting to change that? No, i think not, the system works as it is as i can give out my ID to who i want and i don't have to worry about 26 different people trying to reach out to me and send me invites after i blew their brains out in a game to bitch me out. This is not a good change, for god's sake you need to rethink this as you WILL LOSE people for this.
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inb4 they close this like that other time
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I have issues with the code
-1 -
I feel like this is an absolutely useless update for MANY reasons (tl;dr/summary at the end, it's quite a read).
Not only does this open the way to many problems that trouble other social medias like Instagram and Twitter (these problems include but are not limited to: impersonisation, username trading, user harrassment for their username which even goes up to assault and beyond), but this is also a change which will most likely aggrivate a lot of Discord's user base.A quick disclaimer before you start reading:
Although I've been on the internet for the majority of my life, I'm still a non-native English speaker so there will still be mistakes here and there. Thank you for understanding
For further reference:- Usernames in this context is referring to the way users are named and searched for at the time of posting; the "old" system
- Usertags in this context is referring to the new system that Discord wants to implement where everyone has a unique tag linked to their account; the "new" system
Let's list all of the problems that Discord has mentioned in their blog post
You want to use a common name like “Mike” or “Jane” but there are already 9,999 Mikes or Janes so you’re blocked from that name altogether.
I think this is a very valid problem, or at least the MOST valid out of all of them. From what I've personally noticed a lot of people on Discord use very unique and complex usernames to begin with, however this is only a small part of the 200 million users that use Discord monthly. So let's say there's 9,999 Mikes already on Discord and you're Mike that just got to Discord. Yes it sucks that you can't get a username that's just "Mike" but this isn't the end of the world for many people. Okay, say you're using Discord for your job and you HAVE to use just "Mike" as your username, this isn't the way to approach this problem. Of course I don't know how difficult all the programming and username database infrastructure is at Discord, but considering they'd have to make drastic changes anyways, it'd better if they just changed from a 4 digit discriminator to a 5 or even 6 digit one. The more digits the longer it'll take for users to reach the limit of usernames, it's not that much more complicated than the current system and although I know that in programming a simple problem is never solved in a simple manner, Discord would have had to change their databases anyways with the usertag system that's currently being implemented.
To further list the problems Discord mentioned in their blog post:
You try to share your username outside of Discord. Unfortunately, you either can’t remember the discriminator, have to explain which letters are uppercase and lowercase, or have to try to specify which special characters your name uses.
You meet someone IRL that you want to talk to on Discord, and they say “I’m Phibi Eight Nine Three Six!” You go home and add “phibi#8936” only to find out you added the wrong “Phibi” because your new friend’s username is actually “PhIBI#8936”.
Again, both valid problems that need to be fixed. Ofc an easy thing to say would be "This is the 21st century, who in their right mind doesn't carry their phone nowadays" but I don't do easy, not for this.
As I mentioned, we live in the 21st century and people rarely go outside without carrying their phone on their person. Consider the following however, your phone is empty or you can't log into Discord in any other manner yet you do have access to other messaging programs at the time and can't remember your discriminator, explain which letters are uppercase and lowercase or have to try to specify which special characters are in your username.
I know that from Discord's standpoint it's probably a bad thing to place this on the user.... again, however if people would truly want to add eachother on Discord, the user would tell their possible new friend that they don't know their username at the time or whichever reason it is in that scenario and that they'll get back to their possible new friend later when they can. Say it's IRL and you can't get back to them later, add eachother in another way such as through another chatting app temporarily (assuming both users mainly use Discord for communication, luckily many social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram have chatting functions built in) or even see if you can meet up again at a specific place, time and date to arrange things.Let's continue
You like to change your username a lot and get rate limited.
I've never known that Discord had a rate limit on usernames so a quick search later I discovered that the rate limit means that you can change your username twice per hour. Personally I don't see any problem in this, I've never known anyone that changes their username that often and to those that do, I don't think they'd have much of a problem knowing that they could change their username again after the 2 hours are over. Considering I'm not that well known with this issue as I am with the other ones I'd say a good solution could be to give the user a warning on the 2nd username change telling them if they save the edit they'll get rate limited for the amount of times they've changed their username the past hour, ofc mentioning that it'll only take an hour or so for them to be able to change their name again but at least this sends the message that they'll have to be thorough with their choice.
And the last problem that Discord had listed on their blog post regarding the change from usernames to usertags
Your friend says they changed their name to “vernacular” but actually it’s “𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖓𝖆𝖈𝖚𝖑𝖆𝖗” and you have trouble finding them.
I have seen numerous people that use fonts or special symbols in their username, so once again I think this is a valid problem that requires fixing. There wouldn't be any easy fix to this either (unless once again you put it on the user) however another thing that could be adopted is a "friend code" much like Steam is using for their users. Steam also has the problem that there are many users with the same username or even similar user info that they use to search for in their "add friend" menu, so they've fixed this by giving every user a "friend code" that is consistent of a selection of numbers which are (to my knowledge) completely unique to the user. It shouldn't be any more difficult to remember than say a phone number is and even if you can't check Discord for reference of what your code would be, you can still write it down somewhere and keep it in your phone case or wallet for further reference. This solution alone already solves what appears to be 3 or even 4 problems Discord has listed. Of course I am but a mere user and my input probably doesn't say much considering I don't have any bit of experience in the field of app development however I think it's unproffessional at best and a dick move at worst that Discord didn't think of pushing a questionnaire on the Discord app to ask users about a major upcoming update and their view on it.
There you go, I genuinely hope this message reaches one of the Discord developers and they can send me a message, considering I'm far from hard headed and I don't mind being proven wrong, since there's a lot of headbutting on the internet already as is. I've loved Discord for the past seven and a half years I've been using it, yet lately I've noticed more and more flaws in how they manage their resources, for instance what feels like the neglect of the Discord mobile app, at least on Android systems, and in general the app's optimisation both on PC and mobile platforms.
My tl;dr for this however:
There are many other solutions to the problems Discord has listed, considering the current system is far from perfect and even though the solutions I've listed are not a single end all solution, they still solve the problems without opening Discord up to the problems of the usertag system.
I openly invite Discord developers to tell me I'm wrong and most importantly why the things I've listed wouldn't work in light of the usertag system and why it's superior despite all the new problems it brings. I'd tell them to message me on Discord, but considering the change my username "LoneWolfNick" will most likely also be taken so it's hard to tell what I'd be using when the update fully rolls out, considering this is pretty much forced upon users either way.1 -
TL;DR version:
New Username system is bad, first-hand experience with this kind of system, summary of this change and how they could have implemented a better username system.
Full Version:
Changing how usernames work, like how instagram or twitter has, just does not work well.
Issues arise when there's more than one person who would want to have that username. "itsmega" is pretty contested, because you think it's original, but then you find out that you weren't the only one with that username in mind. From personal experiences, I had to add a MC suffix to my minecraft account, because a year or two before I got my own account, someone else took it.
In recent years, I had to adapt and use number swaps (changing i to 1 and e to 3). In some places, I got "Itsmega", but in other places, I just used my fallback "1tsm3ga".
And now Discord is doing what many other sites done with username systems did. Allowing only one of a kind usernames and shafting anyone else who can't get that username. This will just make the problem worse, not better. A lucrative underground market will emerge for short, celebrity, online celebrity and sleek (without numbers or special characters) usernames.
They could have kept the tags, but introduced base16 into them. 0-9, then a-f. With 4 digits, that's 65,536 or a 55,537 slot increase.
16 -
It is such a bad change and needs to not go through
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