[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
hopefully that thread will help
13 -
How stupid are the changes they are making jesus christ
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did they stop to consider for even ONE second the issues this will cause with international users who dont have alphanumeric usernames already???? yes it was mentioned in the blog but the issue goes totally ignored. the short-sightedness is disgusting
17 -
+1
It's easy enough as it is now, changing it is entirely unnecessary and would come with a whole load of other problems that many have already described14 -
very good update W discord for this..
-27 -
People have already explained with this is a really bad idea so I won't bother explaining again but I completely agree, please DON'T change the username system
16 -
+1 maybe do something about the rampant and extremely easy account theft instead of implementing new useless and poorly thought out changes
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+1 revert back!!!
ITS NOT A GOOD UPDATE!!12 -
The username change is a terrible idea. And all of the reasons given for the change in the announcement post are, quite frankly, bullshit.
22 -
Throwing my voice in here and ruining the 420 comment count.
Nothing I can say hasn't been said and probably better than I could hope to say it. This is pure stupidity and someone needs to be fired after being forced to make a public apology. This carries no merit for any user in any capacity. This change will empower horrible people in petty and irritating ways and it takes almost 0 consideration to reach that conclusion. Which means that this change was brought up with that in mind, and shows that the people behind this app hold no respect for their customers.
No more nitro for me which means I lose my cute animated avatar25 -
+1
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I just hope none of my friends ever try to find me via telephone number. That's almost twice as many numbers after my name and it's probably way too hard for them. :( :( :(
17 -
+1
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As a minority me and my minority friends sure look forward to all this new law enforcement attention we will be getting through being SWATted. We all know minorities have a real leg up when it comes to law enforcement. *barf*
This will f*** over many bot and service maintainers that have added value to discord (which rarely came from Discord itself) and drive them to burnout or project abandonment. At the same time we will see many projects pop up that will abuse these permanent Pomelo names to track vulnerable users or children to target them persistently. Governments will have an easier time tracking protest organisers or other dissidents, perverts will be able to keep going after children rigorously and persistently.
If you don't do anything about your spambot problem then yes many of the friend requests on your platform will fail because they are spam. You can't expect users to dilligently refuse and report every request, they don't have time to investigate if something warrants a report. So the only other way I can see you collect this data is with a self selecting self reporting survey, which will bias to people that have *such* a bad time adding friends to request that they will take the time to fill out a survey that takes more than 1 minute. The obvious solution here is to do FRIEND INVITE CODES omg wow amazing such a new technology we must wait another 1000 years to see if it will be viable. They can exist alongside adding discriminatored names directly. You can guide nontechnical users to sending friend invite codes JUST LIKE SERVER INVITE LINKS, and have a thing squirreled away for technical users for the requests.
If you feel so strongly about only 9999 people being able to have the username Muhammad, Clyde or Bob there is an easy way to fix this, in the system you already have! You just grow the discriminator space. Just treat it as omitted leading zeros. Add a digit every so often. Have people with an actual brain figure out how 4 vs 5 digit discriminators will be integrated into Nitro benefits in the short term. Or even bigger brain, make it hip cool and premium to have *longer* discriminators. Just like #1337 is cool I'm sure there will be coveted longer discriminators you could entice users with. And the neat part is you aren't screwing every existing user over and exposing them to threats like rampant impersonation, hostile account takeovers for black market value and being stalked persistently.
I hope this won't be rammed through and some actual design process will start happening instead. I don't really know what to do besides pack up and leave alltogether, just delete servers I'm running. I already stopped paying nitro because of other clueless decisions. I do not know how to punish Discord more, there are no other buttons for me to push as feedback. I can not comprehend the utter disdain core decision makers at discord have for their users. Instead of something actionable I'll just wish that the Discord team gets vaporised into a fine dust by their personal diety of choice, so I can sleep peacefully at night.
1 -
Hands down the single worst change I've seen made to this app in the 7 years I've been on it. Not only does this change make it impossible for people to keep the names they've had for literally years, it makes it unbelievably easy to target and harass users across the platform and other sites, which Discord has already struggled with on their current system. Add another number to the 4 digits, let us use alpha characters in the existing 4, but literally anything other than this shortsighted buffoonery.
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a lot of ppl are worried about impersonation and privacy, reasonably so! username sniping and account selling is likely gonna be a much bigger problem and having the 4 digit tag lets ppl use their preferred name without being easily found on discord if they'd rather keep it more private
also, having to add stupid alterations just to get an available username is one of the worst parts of most platforms and it Will make memorizing and sharing usernames harder
not to mention that this is kind of a huge middle finger to ppl who pay for custom tags18 -
I don't think I need to repeat what 400+ people already explained before me: The username change is bad and doesn't benefit anybody.
14 -
+1 agree with what everyone else has said. Discord even said in the blog that they never wanted to have a "this name is unavailable" screen, this is exactly what's going to happen now. It will only cause frustration when people want their username and it's already taken so they have to start adding numbers to it themselves, which is not something anybody wants to do.
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+1
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+1
we want Discord to be Discord not fucking Twitter
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Discord is not a social media. Discord is a messaging platform. They need to get that in their heads.
With messaging platforms, accounts should be private. You can not look at someone on the street and be able to guess their phone number, for example. Now why does this matter here?
Say i'm a popular streamer with a simple name, let's go with "pink". My current discord handle may look like "pink#3829". And while it shows my name, and just my name, someone would have to go through possibly 9998 different accounts before actually finding mine. Not to mention, if i wanted to hide it more, i could use fancy characters, and make my name "𝔭𝔦𝔫𝔨#3829" instead. Now not only will people have to brute to get the discriminator, they'll also have to find the correct font! It makes it effectively impossible for someone to correctly guess my name.
Now let's look at the new user system. First of all, it would be basically impossible for me to get "@pink", but let's say i somehow did. Now everyone can easily guess my user, and with popular people, they will get harrassed. And in the more likely scenario that i don't get that username, someone else will have, and will highly likely be able to impersonate me, and even if they get banned, someone else will snipe it soon enough. Not to mention, i won't get to have a name that shows me accurately, it will have to have numbers with little to no meaning attached to it. And that still leaves us with the original problem, that you still have to tell people the specifics of your name.
If this isn't enough to prove why this new system is a bad idea, then the people managing this site are clearly not cut out for running a messaging platform.21 -
+1 more person saying they agree here. DO NOT CHANGE THE USERNAMES!!!
14 -
DO NOT implement this change. No one asked for it, no one wants it, and no one I know has ever had a single issue adding friends on Discord just the way things are. Who is out in the real world exchanging discords and not simply pulling their phone out and adding them right and there? No one is "waiting until you get home only to discover your friend didn't specifically describe their capitalization". That's ridiculous.
Not to mention the insult to the intelligence of your whole user base by basically saying "it's too hard to remember four digits". The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two, look it up. I promise it's not hard to remember 4 numbers, and if you forget, it's one of the easiest accessible things on desktop and mobile discord both!
The discriminators as they are now are UNIQUE. You know what you see username#1234 and know without a doubt that is a Discord handle, full-stop, no questions asked. Why change a thing that makes you stand out against the rest? Why be the boring same as literally every other social media platform out there? No thanks.
There's something DEEPLY ironic about claiming you never wanted people to have to hit the “Your Desired Username is Taken.” page, and turning out this new system that will, inevitably, do EXACTLY that.
There's also the fact that plenty of people are paying for Nitro just to have custom discriminators. And for that support, they're earning a slap in the face despite cash out of their own pocket! Implementing the change would be an absolute insult to your already-paying users!
And don't get me started on the bloodbath this will turn into between username sniping, account selling, brand-stealing, and impersonations of content creators! This is A BAD IDEA all the way down. Nothing good is going to come from this.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it, my dudes. DO NOT GET RID OF DISCRIMINATORS!25 -
As it turns out, this change is horrible for a lot of reasons. Content Creators are more likely to get personified if their account isn't older, this can mess up a commissioners credibility, a bot can take your username before you get there, and it also just makes it incredibly-- hard to find? The article announcing this change states:
The biggest problem: our current usernames can often be too complicated or obscure for people to remember and share easily
We're going to have the exact same issues but with usernames. Every single issue relating to this that they have listed, will come up with usernames too. Guess what! People are forced to remember numbers everyday, from their phone number, to the numbers in their instagram username, to the discriminators on discord. They're going to be forced to remember numbers too, when their username can no longe be blank#1234 but now has to be blank49231, because blank has already been taken! That isn't even accounting for: Bl_4nk Bl4nk23924 B1ank Bl_ank_ and other variations. This will make it harder. I don't believe that they're doing this to better discord for it's users, I genuinely see this as just another way to fit in with every other social media platform ever, without asking their userbase what they thought of the change.
Cannot wait to be estr3lla_la_l4 cause i couldn't just be Estrella#123419 -
+1
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This is the worst idea you could have ever came up with. Do not add.
12 -
+1
Who in the right mind thinks this is a good idea? Names will be sold, namesniping will happen, impersonification will happen. This'll only bring problems, there's no positive to this, did no one in the team even think of it? All kinds of content creators will have a hard time on discord 'cause their name will FOR SURE be sniped. Scam bots will get an easier time since it wont have to go through the discriminator section. Nitro subs will go down, a lot of people liked having their own custom discriminator.
I see 0 positives here.16 -
Bad awful stinky idea
+112 -
girl i pay partially to keep my 0069 are u fr discord
+1
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I made my ownpost but I'll also comment this here:
So obviously the proposed changes to the Discord usernames are unpopular at best and could be catastrophic at worst for Discord as a company. I myself do not support them.
In the blog post, it mentions that a big reason for the change is difficulty adding friends due to case sensitivity and the discriminators.
In response to that, I think a different solution is possible. As you may know Steam has a system for adding friends called friend codes, it provides a unique code to users that they can share with their friends so they can add each other without having to remember their display name or scroll through hundreds, or even thousands of profiles with similar or identical names.
My solution would be similar to this, however, instead of using a unique number sequence my idea would implement a sort of hybrid between Steams's friend codes and an idea the app "What 3 words" uses whereupon every discord account would be assigned 3 or more random words from the English (or it could be localised based on region) dictionary in a unique sequence (e.g user 1 could be assigned "banana horse cola", user 2 could be assigned "peanut water fist", and user 3 could be assigned "cola peanut banana"). The app What 3 Words uses this system in a way that allows the world to be mapped in 3x3 metre squares each with its own unique identifier that makes it easier for other people and emergency services to find a location that someone in need is in. Discord could implement this idea in a similar way and if properly implemented this would remove almost any confusion when adding friends in regards to case sensitivity and discriminators and would also allow for an easy-to-remember and unique code to give to their friends not to mention that the English dictionary alone has so many words in it that any combination of the 3 would likely never run out in the foreseeable lifetime of Discord as a company.
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