[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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Username Ransom scams are going to be so fun...
25 -
This entire thread is silly. You all know minimal about how the transition away from discriminators will work. This was announced mere hours ago. Nobody officially has access to change their name yet other than employees. The only names that are already reserved are attached to employees and companies + those in the public eye. The blog post (that most of you haven't seem to have read) literally said they acknowledge how this will affect those who have specific names/have had a specific name for a long time. I really don't care if this gets downvoted (seeing as this place looks like the subreddit I already know it absolutely will)
-55 -
people forget their usenames all the time so the rationale that having a four digit number at the end of your username makes it harder to remember when you can usually just pull it up on your phone (and people adding you would more than likely have that information by way of you literally being in a server with them) to seems like a stretch
this change isn't good
22 -
This is an absolutely terrible idea on multiple fronts and for so many reasons.
TL;DR - If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
1. Admin confusion
Yes, we know that Discord is under the impression we use IDs for flat out everything in moderation. Sure, it's useful, but we use the normal usernames WAY more than you think. If you're thinking that this is a good idea for safety, it is absolutely not. Take for example that an admin attempts to ban someone for breaking a rule and they have a common name, for example, my name, Spoon. I break a rule. Admin goes to punish me. Cool, there's probably 6958 other people named "Spoon" and having handles would just make the problem of similar names even worse. Instead of having the # indicator at the end, you'd be stuck with finding the correct Spoon's handle for 2 hours before finally banning them.
2. Developers
This is a part I'm more unsure on, but when it comes to development, I have a foggy idea about some of it.
Bots would absolutely break apart as part of this change, and that means subjecting developers to weeks or maybe even months of pain just to update everything in their bot to use the new handle feature.
Even some frameworks, such as Discord.js and Discord.py, might have to be updated as well.
3. Handle Sniping
This is by far the most prevalent one. This is already a business on Twitter, and we don't want it to become one on Discord. Prime example can be drawn to Monstercat's official server. Say a new artist is up and coming and signs with Monstercat for a while, and they don't already have a Discord account. As they go to make a new account, they notice that the name they wanted is taken by someone already, and the person who is already in possession of that name is wanting to force the artist to pay for that specific name.
Discord team, be real with yourself for a moment. Do you really want something like that to happen because of a shittier system than the one we already have in use?
4. Impersonation
Impersonation already happens to an extent. Hell, look at the amount of Valve accidental report scams going around impersonating official Valve employees. But, this system would just make the problem worse. Hell, I'VE BEEN TARGETED BY A FEW OF THESE. If you employ this system instead of the current system, it will make it harder to fact-check the actual employee's account, rather than with the system that we have right now, you can just ask and somebody probably already has them on a blacklist of accounts that are associated with this type of thing.
And last, but most certainly not least:
5. Financial Loss
Investors and shareholders are a hell of a thing, but the part that can set you guys back financially is the amount of profit you lose to people unsubscribing from Discord Nitro. Example:--and this is me incredibly undershooting the actual numbers here--you had 1M Nitro users, each charging 10 USD a month to have their benefits, leaving you with a monthly profit of 10M USD. A large portion of the community has expressed disappointment with this change, so undershooting the amount here, we'll say 60% of the community doesn't want this change and unsubscribes from Nitro, thus losing you 600K Nitro users, 6M USD in profit, and leaving you with 4M USD monthly profit, not even factoring in the power that it takes to run all of these servers, server upkeep, payment of employees, taxes, or anything. That is a 6M loss just from this change alone. Discord team, do you, collectively, as a company, want to lose 60% of your profit just from changing something as simple as a username, not to mention any of the other drawbacks I mentioned here?
I didn't think so.
So please, listen to the people who are actively trying to keep your platform popular (most of us here), and don't implement this new change. This is going to make it worse. Keep doing technical improvements to your servers and offering us occasional new features. (Frankly I find the soundboard feature very stupid for multiple reasons, but KEEP DOING THINGS LIKE IMPLEMENTING ACTIVITIES. HANDS DOWN ONE OF THE BEST THINGS YOU DID.)
DO. NOT. IMPLEMENT. THIS. CHANGE.
-CD "Spoon"42 -
Every time I think of resubscribing to Nitro, Discord pulls some bull💩 that nobody asked for. First the chatbot, now this.
This change will lose Discord money (users who subbed to Nitro to get a custom discriminator no longer have that incentive.) It's "fixing" a system that wasn't broken and crapping on existing users for- what, exactly? Are shareholders pushing for this or something?
30 -
+1
17 -
+1
well this is not good :/22 -
This is horrible.
Issues include:
- Name sniping/selling will start happening
- New users will have a harder time getting the names they want, and will have to add a string of numbers anyway just to have the url they want
- Impersonators will be more likely, as being one character off with the right avatar is much harder to spot than a unique number PLUS nametag
- People trying to dodge stalkers will have a harder time doing so, as the forced unique username makes someone easier to trace.
- When making a new account for whatever reason, it then becomes more costly because they have to abandon that funny unique username.
- People like the feature of the unique identifier. WE LIKE the ability to have exactly our username and then a little number. I have seen very few people complain about this compared to those who like it a ton and were drawn to discord because of it.
I urge discord to reconsider this move VERY strongly.
33 -
I’d rather have that crappy new UI than this username change. At least then I can keep my name
25 -
A huge problem with this change is that it will be so much harder to avoid harassment. Previously, if people wanted to find and harass you, they'd have to not only know your username but also guess the numbers (which could be changed at any time even without nitro due to an unintended side effect of the system, though doing it this way just gave you a new random number instead of one you could choose). Now, however, anyone with just your username will be able to find you, which puts vulnerable people at risk. This issue comes on top of every other one mentioned in this thread, which puts into perspective just how bad this change will be.
32 -
+1, I think this is a terrible idea and I already have friends who are planning on leaving over it.
25 -
+1. Terrible idea. If they go through with this, I look forward to being 'ActualRealSameow'.
Why are they doing this? What's the point? Discord, your user system is fine the way it is! This just makes a TON of new problems you wouldn't have otherwise!
Also, though this is a minor thing, the current naming system is iconic and unique. You see four numbers after a hashtag in a name online and you KNOW it's somebody's Discord.
30 -
+1. This is only going to cause more problems than actually solving them. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
23 -
yeah let’s just not
21 -
+1
Not a good update at all, it's worse than the new logo update. Worse than the Roblox audio privacy update. Worse than NFT collabs and sponsors. The new username update is by far, the world's worst update on record
23 -
+1 awful idea
19 -
this change is a terrible idea. the current system is great for content creators or other well-known figures who want to have their username, but don't want to have their account be publicly known (opening them up to spam, potential harassment, etc.). you might notice that Streamer Mode hides your 4 digit discriminator when activated, so it's clear this is an intended use case.
the discriminator system is also really smart because while it's quite likely that multiple users of the platform will want the same username (especially with ~140 million monthy users), the chances of multiple users with the same name actually coming into contact or both being seen by another user is quite slim (I've never seen another Penguin_Spy, but I know a few exist). this is a pretty unique feature of Discord, and I thought it was really cool when I first joined the platform.now the average user will have to put random numbers at the end of their name (ugly), and content creators will have to make the choice between having their account's username be their username and have their account be public, or not doing that for privacy and, idk, shoving their username onto an alt so someone else doesn't steal it and try to impersonate them. oh, and impersonation (already a issue with the platform) will 100% get worse when you have [at]REAL_username, [at]username_official, [at]TheRealUsername, etc.
one last thing, a neat perk of Nitro was getting to choose your discriminator. i'm not sure if i ever would have purchased Nitro, but i for sure know that I won't now because that feature was one of the main things i was interested in. now, it looks like nitro will give you exactly 0 new username customization features, even though it's like the second most looked at thing (the first being message content).
tldr; cringe change, less unique platform, privacy headaches for content creators, and very likely less Nitro subscriptions.
29 -
such a stupid change. all they had to do was deal with the case sensitivity and unique characters. the ID system was perfect and there's a reason discriminator ID's have worked well over the years on every website that uses them.
Not only that but this is just opening up a whole slew of problems and risks targeting users for hacking like many others have said. Minecraft has had the issue of rare name accounts being hacked for ages. We're gonna be having account selling going rampant because of a pretty name.
+1
24 -
Very bad idea +1
18 -
This will be incredibly convenient for the first John Smith to grab JohnSmith, and all subsequent John Smiths will have to have to settle for JohnSmith2, or JohnSmith2023.
Just like JohnSmith#2023, don't you think?
24 -
This update is definitely going to cause quite a stir if it actually ends up being published.
I can understand the reason behind it due to the discriminator, but this is also going to cause issues with as impersonation and all of those issues. It should be reconsidered and another method should be imposed. :)
21 -
I'm not excited about losing my username, but not having to pay to keep my chosen discriminator means I no longer have a reason to keep on paying for Nitro Classic. So it's a mixed bag :)
22 -
+1
Please don't do this. This is such a bad idea.
18 -
Here is the stated list of reasons for why they are making this change:
And here's my list of responses to each:
- The new system would force us to do the same thing as the discriminators already do, except now it's worse because placeholder letters like "x" and "_" are involved and scattered all over the place.
- To solve this, either restrict the use of the upper case or just make it explicit to people that they need to tell their friends what case each letter is in, as well as tell people to make their usernames easy to communicate to others.
- I find it baffling to think that there are 9999 users with any common name, even ones as common as John. Yet the obvious solution to this problem is to simply just add a fifth digit, or expand the discriminator to include letters in addition to numbers. Adding a fifth digit increases the number of users who can have the same username by 10x.
- Who on earth is changing their username frequently and quickly enough that they are getting rate-limited???
- Just ban the use of special fonts and symbols in usernames.
29 -
Terrible idea. Can't wait to pay up to $1,000 or even more to get the username I want because it was sniped.
23 -
Hey Discord. Kindly screw off. As many others have pointed out, this is a moronic change that benefits no one. Just don't do this. The usernames are fine as they are
26 -
This idea is so bad that I created an account here just to protest it. For the love of all that is holy, please don't do this. You will gain nothing. I promise you.
25 -
+1
This is going to cause major, major issues across the platform. Simply put, there's a reason why other services(like Battle.net) use a similar 4-digit system. It's literally impossible to make everyone happy with this one. So many people with the same or similar names will lose their user names, and you WILL see people dropping Nitro over this, because they wanted to set their own #'s
23 -
+1
Chances are we'd probably have to add numbers to our username with how competitive the username selection would become. We might as well keep the discriminators.
23 -
+1
This is such a bad update, if they go through with this it's probably my last straw before I move to Guilded or something.23
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