[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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Made an account just to second this. Do not ruin one of the only things that makes Discord unique from other platforms.
25 -
bruh i have dyscalculia and i've been managing with the numbers just fine, i don't think it's as big of a deal as you're making it
27 -
PLEASE don't do this update. nitro sales are going to plummet, people are going to be selling accounts, people are going to get hacked, there will be a ton of impersonators, someone got murdered over a twitter handle a few years ago and this is going to happen again.
29 -
This seems like such a bad idea on so many fronts. I have no idea of the benefits of this system, except to "act" like Twitter.
KEEP THE DISCRIMINATOR DIGITS23 -
extreme +1, this can make stalking problems worse on some, which nitro can even help prevent -- a lot of the unsubscribing from nitro is because of "features" that negatively impact the userbase on a regular basis and this would just kind of make everything worse. the times i've given my discord to people irl it's gone completely smoothly. the edge case of "both have really weird unicode" can be solved easily with just adding each other in the moment before parting ways. this is just stupid and removes one of the only layers of privacy we have as users on this app.
24 -
I am in favor of the removal of special characters from usernames, because they are an enormous detriment for blind users.
The removal of discriminators is terrible and I would probably pull my nitro sub in response, as I pay for my #1848 for a reason.
25 -
I... Did they discuss this with one other person, or what? Is this some sort of elegant inside job to make Discord suck more to make other social medias look better?
26 -
A game I play literally just *added* the current style of username, there's a reason they switched to it! And it's the same reason you chose it originally!
27 -
please keep the discriminators
I even went ahead and reset my password so I could add my voice here
this will suck for everyone who uses a first name or short regular English noun as a tag
being able to pick a handle without worrying about someone else using it is one of the strengths of discord presently27 -
poochyena I like how you're just assuming that you'll get the name you want. That you won't have to be like, "Poochyena4421" or somesuch anyway. Like someone won't beat you to using a name that's literally just a pokemon name with no alterations.
25 -
This is the absolute dumbest thing I think Discord could do. What a waste of resources, and way to piss off your entire userbase. ESPECIALLY professionals who will find their brand or username stolen by some rando before they get the chance to claim it. You're literally going to be allowing impersonators and extortion.
27 -
Delta I will be able to choose the numbers or alterations if need be. I am ok with that, since I will be able to choose it. Do you not like having choice?
-35 -
poochyena
You are making excuses for this without explaining how its better for me or anyone else.
You know, i'm not unreasonable, i'm willing to concede that discriminators are not a perfect system. but they fix more problems than they create.
I concede that there's definitely an inconvenience with verbally saying out loud your username and discriminator to someone.
the root of this problem however, does not stem from the 4 digit number. the problem is that the names are case sensitive and if you've got some wacky name like "Po0ChyeNa#3876" then i think saying that out loud is going to be a nightmare. but we have the ability to change our usernames as well as our 4 digit discriminator. if someone finds it difficult to say their name to people, then that's kinda on them. they should simplify their username if it's a problem for them.
i think, the 4digit discriminators do hold some blame, but not the system it's self,
i think the devs could do a better job of making it "idiot proof". prominently displaying some way for people to link up.
perhaps an automagically generated QR code system?
you hold your phone up with the code on it, other person uses their phone to scan the code, job done. just one more way to link two accounts (of course keeping the other normal methods too)
making that "show QR code" button really visible so people can access it quickly.
maybe add it to ios and android wallets like an ID card? no need to even open discord at all?
there are LOTS of ways to make connecting accounts easier while keeping this system in place. discord are simply choosing not to explore them. and therein lies a lot of the anger displayed here. changing the system over to unique identifiers is a LOT OF WORK. so they aren't doing this on a whim.
And unfortunately, i fear it may be driven by greed.
As i mentioned before, i believe this is discord's attempt to create a problem that they can charge people to fix. (verified account checkmarks.)
this is known as "Dark Patterns" or "Hostile design". A lot of big companies like Twitter and Youtube do this for various reasons. for example, Twitter doesn't embed tweets very well in Discord. Videos do not play or don't even show at all on mobile. This is intentional, because they want you to click through to the tweet and give traffic to their website. they wish to track what you're looking at and they wish to show you ads.
as another example, Youtube doesn't allow you to play videos while minimised on a mobile device's browser. they want you to use their app instead. and even then they want you to subscribe to whatever pay thing they're peddling.
we know these inconveniences are intentional because there are browser plugins that circumvent them. (VXtwitter or UXtwitter for example will embed tweets correctly in discord.)
I hope any of this has been informative to you and you might, perhaps understand a little of why a lot of us are up-in arms over this.
i haven't even began to scratch the surface as to why unique identifiers are worse than the discriminators solution, i shouldn't have to explain this stuff because the choir is singing right now about why this is a bad thing, but if you don't understand why people are upset about name sniping or the grey markets for username trading, then you should perhaps do some reading on the problems people have faced over twitter handles in the past. from the little things like not having a consistent brand so people can find your stuff anywhere on the internet, to the big dangerous stuff like people literally having the police swat teams raid their house to harass them or people impersonating them and causing people to lose their real life jobs or defamation to where they lose their livelihoods because of misinformation spreading. or , you know, scammers. pretending to be famous people, trying to steal and cheat people out of money.1 -
Im already contacted by random people at least once a month trying to buy/scam my account because of the short username and 0001 tag, i cant even imagine what it will be like if i got just the short username :/ this sucks on many levels, dont roll it out, how its set up right now is perfect
25 -
poochyena I don't care what my four digit identifier is since it's not part of my username. My USERNAME is Delta. My discriminator is separate and does not affect my username.If this change goes through, I'll be forced to change this name and figure what kind of arbitrary crap to staple onto the end.
29 -
Discord, what about listening to your userbase AT LEAST ONCE? Literally everyone I know is against this.
Nobody ever has had any problems with the current system. Don't fix something that is not broken by creating more problems out of it.
30 -
+1
I hate the idea of this change
24 -
+1
I'm sure most points have been covered already, but I'd like to reiterate, were any common Discord users asked or polled about how receptive they'd be to this specific change, at all?
The argument of being able to friend people easier, as written in the Discord Blog post, reads very speculatively. I've input usernames wrong many times--likely half of the time, as written in the article--and it really didn't matter because the person was either physically present, or I had secured alternative methods to contact them.
The devs' argument runs on strange and honestly presumptuous assumptions of the average Discord user's capability to adapt, whether preemptively or spontaneously, to lapses in memory, especially considering we live in an era where swapping alphanumeric usernames is a growing part of daily life.
Why would a person who simply holds out their phone to show another person their Username#0000 bother remembering it themself? (How many phone numbers do people bother memorizing these days, rather than opening their Phone/Contacts app?) How does not knowing that the #0000 at the end of your username is referred to as a "discriminator" -- an issue of terminology, not function -- prove that people don't know how to add friends? Discord's profile and friend-adding pages are very effective in conveying the friend-adding process - do the devs really have that little faith in their own design?
They've assigned singular explanations to phenomena--misinput usernames, misremembered discriminators--that can have a far larger range of causes, expecting this weak evidence to be satisfactory justification for a change that will impact far more than just adding friends. Changing usernames to be unique & alphanumeric will introduce many new problems that I'm sure everyone else has written plenty about, so I'll keep it short: this affects moderation, monetization, Discord's selling points, etc, far more issues than just discoverability (which, in itself, likely won't improve much at all--as unique usernames accumulate, people will resort to usernames that are increasingly liable to being convoluted and difficult to remember), and Discord's explanation for all of this comes off as one-dimensional and poorly thought through.
Please reconsider your approach to this issue. Discord is a great messenger app that I would love to continue using for the years to come, but introducing drastic fixes to a problem that most users don't even perceive as such -- and that the blog post really doesn't convince me is a problem at all -- is not incentivizing me to stay or give you money.
33 -
+1
I'm sure it's already been said, but I believe the reasoning is faulty. Some of the points such as it being harder to remember a name and tag simply don't hold up. Even when I didn't have Nitro, I could set my username to be as short as I would've liked so I don't have to remember as many things. It's literally just my name at this point; ox. No capitals, no nothing. If things like case-sensitivity are truly an issue, then maybe consider addressing that itself instead of taking away the discriminators as a whole.
Furthermore, the issue of account dates comes up. I used to have an account from 2017 but, because I had remade my account, I (and others in my shoes) will end up waiting longer just to have a chance at a unique username.
Like others have said, one thing that I loved and praised about Discord was the ability to have any name you wanted for a username. This could be something as simple as "Jeff#1234", something with spaces like "Jeff The Cool Guy#9147", or even something with characters outside the Latin alphabet such as "こんにちわ!! (°▽°)ﾉ #3841". It gives you the opportunity to express yourself and do a lot without worrying about limitations. If you are having difficulty sharing your Discord handle with someone, then the easiest solution would be to change your own handle! You can do that with no repercussion. If a name such as "★ɢᴀᴍᴇʀ★#7000" is too hard to share because of the special characters, you can change that to "gamer#7000". The solution to this problem is within the users' hands. But if that isn't enough, then releasing something (preferably an in-app 'tutorial') that would teach a user how discriminators and Discord's username system works would do a lot more. It's something that all Discord users had to learn, so why change what's been fine for years?
28 -
+1
this update is literally so stupid
23 -
This is going to lead to rampant impersonation -- a lot of people have usernames that are incredibly common, and the beauty of the 4 digit identifiers is it was made irrelevant. Lots of people will use different usernames on other social media sites like Tumblr/Twitter/Instagram because the odds are good their usernames were taken. So they will pick an account name and then put the handle they respond to in their personal profile. How does Discord ditching that, requiring people to put the same information in their personal profiles, a better system? What are people going to do if they registered later than others and find out someone else has stolen their username that functions as their brand?
27 -
+1
Having a four digit code instead of arbitrary periods and underscores makes usernames so much easier to remember, not harder
Not to mention the account selling, hacking, username sniping, and impersonation that is inevitable with this change, along with general privacy concerns
Genuinely considering moving back to Telegram if this change occurs
26 -
+1
this is quite possibly the worst idea of all time24 -
I hate this change and don't want it.
23 -
I'm going to say that I support not changing the username system PARTICULARLY due to the fact that, as Discord has now been out for a good few years that means there's also been a good amount of people who have chosen to use it for less great means.
Users that may not have the best intentions whom have chosen to attack another might decide to hold a grudge and therefore take that person's name to convince people of something that could honestly harm the individual. The system in place as it is, while being a little confusing, is something that works best for security. At least in my eyes.
The other points about account selling and other such things are also really important.
Please don't change things.
27 -
+1
I definitely do not want more randos and scambots contacting me out of the blue instead of people I actually want to chat with, who I am already chatting with. And definitely not looking forward to so many people losing their handles to whomever happened to sign up first, great idea
What is even the point of this
25 -
I figured out why they’re doing this! You would be shocked (sarcasm)
It’s because they’re going after more money in investors, one in particular being Pomello. Give em hell!
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Delta The four digit identifier is part of your username. "Delta" is your display name. A username is a unique identifier. Delta is what people see, Delta + the four digit identifier is how people find your account, which makes it your username.
-26 -
+1
I, like many others will probably do, am going to cancel my Nitro subscription if this change goes through. Read the room, Discord devs, no one likes this change.
23 -
The most annoying and stupid possible course of action. Absolute idiocy. Said before, but I'll say it again- don't cite user misunderstanding for removing a feature you never even bother to explain. If you simply said it was akin to a phone number, everyone who isn't a longtime user would have understood. I'm not going back to the dark ages of internet communication. this isn't kik or messenger. be better. or perish.
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