[DO NOT ADD] Discord Username System
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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I've already made a thread about this, but I'll go ahead and post it here too, since I know someone will ask me to
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Yes, this is umpteenth post made about this and I'm just beating a dead horse, but the point still stands. Absolutely nobody asked for this change and we don't want it either.
Personal and account security are going to be severely compromised by this change. What, people are hard to find right now? That's the point. Discriminators serve the purpose of keeping people and their accounts safe from malicious parties looking to cause harm while also allowing more freedom for what their usernames can be. Removing discriminators will put them all in danger. What kind of danger, you ask? Scammers, name snipers, hackers, impersonators, you name it. Microsoft added discriminators partly because of this very issue -- and Discord wants to remove them? Are you daft?
There's already a huge thread full of people that are very much against this change -- I've honestly never seen a single post have over a thousand upvotes. I think that should say something about how much people do not want this. Even outside of that particular thread, there are several other threads, this one included, urging Discord to not go through with this. Everywhere I look, every person I talk to, not a single person wants this. How many times do we have to say it before it finally gets through your thick skulls?
Furthermore, as it has been a few days since this was announced, it suddenly occurred to me: Discord stated about 40% of the userbase don't know what discriminators are and/or their purpose, and the link they provided as proof... was a Reddit thread?
Excuse me? No.
As of posting, that thread has a total of 284 comments. 40% of 284 is 113.6. Discord has over 350 million registered accounts with roughly over half of them being active monthly, estimated around 196.2 million. 40% of 350 million is 140 million, and 40% of 196.2 million is 78.48 million. 114 people not knowing and/or misunderstanding the purpose of discriminators is not even close to representative of 79 million people, never mind 140 million.
All that thread proves is that 40% of active Discord users who also actively use Reddit and follow that particular subreddit did not know and/or misunderstood the purpose of discriminators. That is an incredibly small minority, not to mention 40% is being incredibly generous as I'm certain the actual percentage is a lot smaller than that. As such, that Reddit thread -- really any Reddit thread at all -- is insufficient proof of anything and thus invalid as evidence.
What you should've done was conduct an in-app survey to gauge what the active userbase actually knows and what they don't know and move on from there. I can almost guarantee you there are nowhere near 79 million people that don't get what discriminators are or what they're for.
Contrary to what you've stated, you did not think this through at all, you did not get sufficient feedback from the userbase, and this is not, and I quote, "the right thing to do to help more people hang out with their friends on Discord".
I'll close with how I ended my ticket about this, which Support is being dismissive of:
And just on a personal note, don't make Discord more like Twitter with this change. Discord is the cooler and better version of Skype. Twitter is an on-fire garbage can. Don't sink to Twitter's level.
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If the bombardment of posts on this forum isn't enough to show you what a horrible idea this is, your doubling down by editing the original post does not help. What part of your team thinks that the username-picking process is the problem? Countless posts here have listed the other issues with this new course of action, and honestly getting the username we want is one of the least concerning issues compared to concerns of spam, identifying users, uniqueness to Discord, other moderator issues, and a few others.
Discord, tear down this username change!15 -
saying four digits are "complicated and obscure" is ridiculous because I think dealing with @John26374990 @Johnny88_883 and @jon283000000 in my friends' list will be more complicated and obscure. Also, I really don't want random people to start adding me because i use the same username across most platforms and games
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Agreed. Unnecessary update, I like the way it is.
My current handle on Discord is pretty universal-- I can hand it to work friends, or longtime friends, or folks I meet at conventions, and it's short and sweet and memorable. It gives me privacy as well-- Discord's the only place where I don't get random DMs for my other online presence. I don't want to have to snag my other username on a separate account or apply it to this account and lose that privacy/anonymity
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I also love that the discussion on reddit where the "40%" came from has been filled with people being like "this completely sucks" just like this thread!
https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/1255udc/your_thoughts_on_the_proposed_new_username_system/14 -
If remembering 4 randomly assigned digits is an issue, why not change the system in a way that lets us choose our own numbers instead? It would fix all issues in one go.
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If I can remember the last 4 digits of my SSN, the 4 digits of the pin of my debit, and even the 4 digit passcode to my phone.
Then, I can surely remember my Discord discriminator.
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Yeah this update is garbage, I like the number discrimators because then people cant easily find my account
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with this update + the beta for the "new mobile layout", discord is going down the gutter lmao. will be cancelling my nitro if discord proves to be violently hostile towards its userbase by pushing out these inane updates
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Cancelled my nitro this morning since discord has gone silent on this issue, but I also just want to further point out the pure hypocrisy discord has around this. Discord on twitter is @discord however they also have @discordapp which just redirects to @discord. Why? Because it's obvious they don't want someone taking their name and impersonating them yet they're fine with that happening to their own customers.
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This is a phenomenally stupid and poorly thought out change. DO. NOT. DO. IT.
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Genuinely makes me consider switching back to Skype.
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Discord shouldnt add this cause you will get the same problem as instagram that the username is already taken, the # part is what made discord unique from the rest of the social platforms and thats why i love the app so much cause its different, its easier to use, keep the # method! Stay unique, dont become like all the other apps.
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I really don't understand why people complain for impersonation/scam, I don't see a difference between "@celeb / @celeb_ / @celeb1" and "Celeb#1045 / Celeb#1378 / Celeb#1054", the later exemple is even worse for scams imo, just don't be stupid and check every DM you receive, especially when you don't know personally the person.
But yeah, the fact that many people will have to add numbers, etc to their username sucks-2 -
My own post (this one: Removing Discrimnators is TERRIBLE - A cybersecurity/long-term user perspective) went to a "Pending approval" status, so while I have one version copied here, I'm posting a continuation argument I thought out of here:
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As of today there was posted on r/Discordapp a rumor that Nitro users will be eligble for an username change sooner than other people. All I can say is, really? Despite over 99% of the userbase being agains this change, you're determined to push through with it? Why?Since the news broke, I've made an effort to try and understand this ridiculous change and I've talked to a bunch of people: some Discord staff even, and none of the staff has been in favour of the change. Okay, maybe one staff took the stance of "I don't like the discrims therefore I believe Discord is doing right", but the rest have been ambivalent at best or "I think it'll be a nightmare and I don't think there has been a plan". If your own staff says this, who came up with this idea? It's clear his change is sowing a lot of Discord (no pun intended) between your own staff, so why not listen to the userbase and cancel it?
If you truly want a feature where people could add each other easily - again, Nintendo Switch, Steam and Hoyoverse has a great system with friend invite codes. That's the best solution.
Or if that's not enough: Make a tab like the "Find new servers", but name it "Find new friends" - in this tab, only people who are whitelisted, example people with non-zalgo names, people who have 2FA turned on and people who are in good community standing can opt into this function. To reduce risk of people contacting a scammer, make it so that if you log in from a new device this function is turned off for 2 weeks - the same way Steam turns off your trading for 2 weeks if you log in from a new device. Or make a function like Telegram, where you can find nearby people (within maybe 1km) of you. This does overlook the big issue of minor safety and a lot of other stuff, but it's INDEFINITELY better than what you are proposing now.
Or if this whole bloody change comes because you want to make "public profiles" like Snapchat or Twitter where you can push "Premium content" to people - don't. Discord is still in it's core a instant messaging application: not a social media. I don't come here to create content, I come here to enjoy the communities I am in and engage with new people and make friends. I come here to talk to people and not care about what social media pushes on me.
Please listen to your userbase. Keep the Discord Discrims.
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here's a kicker - if you have ACC made in 2015 or 2016, go and sell it. You can already earn nice money for them right now xD
I haven't heard a worse idea for an update in my life, they could just auto-generate names and not let ppl change them at this point, it would be safer (no scammers at least)
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The problem with usernames is that the one you want is always taken. By forcing everyone to choose one, it's friends will be less likely to recognise each other.
I suggest a different approach to the problem. Let users choose some unique visual flair for their username. It might be hard to find the right user when you see SomeUser01, SomeUser02 and so on right through to SomeUser99, but the SomeUser with a cloak, wand and a corgi is your friend while SomeUser with a radio telescope, UFO and kitten is someone entirely different.
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+1
I protest this planned change.
Noone wants this change, noone needs this change.
Stop trying to fix things that are not broken, just because of some people not being able to remember 4 numbers.
Stop this madness!
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even teamspeak are dunking on discord for this.
https://twitter.com/teamspeak/status/1654476046845063171
discord, you guys are a bunch of clowns and you will be consumed by the competition.23 -
+1
I didnt sign up for a social media site and I don't want an @. I use this much like I would have AOL. This also means my abusers can find me by name. I need a space to talk to my ffriends to be free of the relatives I hada legal name change to get rid of. If they somehow learn my @, I won't be left alone. They do this when they find out my email or current phone number. Discriminators are important for abuse survivors online. I'm an adult man. I don't need my mom hovering over my life from abroad at age 30. I don't need her to be able to find me and harrass me more and worsen my PTSD. Aside from all other good points this is just an unsafe feature. If I wanted a social media site instead of a chat app, I'd use twitter or facebook. I don't use either.0 -
Following
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+1, totally agree. Don't fix something that was never broken. The current system is already good as it is.
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Want to add my voice to this too. Horrible idea to remove the tags. Discord needs to keep the 4 digits.
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Just adding my agreement to this. And describing why for any devs reading through this: This change is being done under the guise of 'simplifying' but in reality it makes things *more* complex than the current system.
Where currently if I want someone to add me I say 'It's Alphawolfy and my funny discord numbers are xxxx', instead with 1 name 1 acc we will have 1337 speak or underscores or *the same numbers anyway*. Which is harder to describe or remember.
This change solves literally nothing, inconveniences 100% of the userbase and takes away something we really want from anyone who currently shares their name with an older account.
It boggles my mind that the devs are pushing through with this, the current name system is the best in the market by miles, making it more like the objectively worse systems we are choosing not to use is insanity.
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Absolutely awful idea. I'm pretty sure everyone's comments here have covered most of the reasons why this is a completely garbage update, but wanted to throw in my own comments:
First of all, the justifications for the reasoning behind the change are absolutely nonsense
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.
Go to the Discord app and copy and paste ???
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”.
This makes it sound like normal people run into other people at the local pub and somehow both of you use Discord but... don't have it downloaded on your phone ?? Plus, this happens all the time with phone numbers -- maybe you misremember their phone number, or maybe they misspoke. Doesn't mean all phone numbers should be banned and we should switch to using our full legal names as our phone numbers instead.
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.
This is.... literally the reason why discriminators are better wtf????????
Your friend says they changed their name to “vernacular” but actually it’s “𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖓𝖆𝖈𝖚𝖑𝖆𝖗” and you have trouble finding them.
Your friend can just DM you again so their message floats to the top of your message bar. It's literally that simple.
Now onto my specific reasoning for not agreeing with this update:
The absolute joy and best perk of Discord is that I can have different 'identities' across servers without them bleeding into one another. I can have a display name with a discriminator (e.g. Pasta Enjoyer #1234) on art servers, gaming servers, school-related servers etc. without it being too weird. That way, on my art servers, I can be known as my artist name, and on school-related servers, I can be known as my real name, just by changing my display name. I can have multiple 'identities', like people have in real life, without them necessarily having to bleed into each other.
By forcing me to choose a nickname, you're forcing me (and I'm sure many others) to commit to one specific username and therefore identity. When I have to go with one username, I make a commitment to being known in one way only -- do I change it to my artist name? Do I change it to my full legal name?? Why can't we stick with the old system, that sort of works like a phone number -- where I can message family or friends, who would know my real name IRL, or with someone off Craigslist, who definitely doesn't need to know my legal name.
Completely unwanted update. Can you actually stick with stuff that would be helpful for users, like being able to change text size in app ??????
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awful idea and i recommend to anyone with nitro whos concerned about this, cancel your nitro. money talks and theyll take people seriously if they start literally losing money over this like they deserve. discord doesnt need to be mainstream and its literally good because people have so much freedom. unbelievable
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It's baffling that the blog post literally says that they get complaints from usernames being taken when there are more than 9999 of that username, without showing the presence of mind to realise that it means they're going to get those from everyone going forward. It's listed as a problem when one of the strongest reasons to keep the system is that it mitigates that issue for everyone else.
Mike or Jane number 10000 may be having a bad time picking a username, but do you really want Mike or Jane 2-9999 to also have a bad time? In fact, perhaps Mike/Jane number 10000 has just added their surname and gotten away with a simple change like that. But unless that surname is practically unique, that name would likely also have been taken under a system without discrinimators.
Here's a rule to live by: it's better to be unequally good than to be equally bad. Just because you can't make something work for some people doesn't mean you should drag down the whole experience so that everyone can be equally as miserable. It's too bad that something doesn't benefit absolutely everyone, and perhaps you can look at some compromises to see what you can do about it... but at the end of the day, if you need to make a decision, it's usually best to make the one that has the most merit overall, not the one that has its merit the most equally divided.
Users clearly benefit a lot from discriminators. Whether it's as a means of self-expression, to prevent impersonation and name sniping, or because JohnDoe#7257 is easier to remember than e.g. JohnD0e_1 due to the uniformity of the discriminator format, people would lose an awful amount by removing the feature.
On the other hand, what has been said to prove that discriminators are bad? That people don't remember what they're called? (Why should I need to know the exact name of the feature when I can just call it "the number" and people know what I'm talking about from context?) Or that people don't remember them? (Why should I have to remember my discriminator when it's right there for me to see in the Discord client at all times?) Or that friend requests often miss the discriminator? (If you send an e-mail to "JohnDoe@" without anything after it, it's obviously not going to work. Same deal with Discord. If people don't get that, you're either not explaining it clearly enough, or those people also fail at sending e-mails.)
In other words, nothing of substance. It's just assumed that they're bad because they're "complex" when most of that complexity only shows itself in the back-end when writing code for it. People use combinations of names and numbers for things all the time. Street and address for instance. City and postal code. Often if I need to identify myself, I'll be asked for my name and date of birth. This is not a new concept, and it's in fact a highly effective one that reduces complexity overall.It's crazy that you'd even consider removing discriminators, let alone actually planning on going through with it.
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“We’re going to be just like everyone else!” Why? Isn’t that a bad marketing strategy? Isn’t the thing that makes people want to use discord the fact that it’s different? I really like discord and don’t want to stop using it, but I’ll have to if they really hold their userbase in such little regard.
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@n
You fail to understand the current workings of the handler: you change your display name across the servers, you do not change your handle.
Your handle is "Pasta Enjoyer#1234", but your display name changes wherever you want.
By default, when you land on a new server you land as "Pasta Enjoyer", then you can change it to "Pasta Hater" for that particular server.
Every interaction with the one server with "Pasta Hater" will see that as your display name, but if anyone looks at your profile they will see that the handler is "Pasta Enjoyer#1234".Then you can change your default name to "Pasta Eater" and discord would add a new discriminator after that. All the servers will be updated to "Pasta Eater" but not the one with "Pasta Hater", but looking at your profile they will see that the handler is "Pasta Eater#4321".
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i downloaded discord to have a way to talk to people where i have complete control over who can find me and who i interact with, because the discriminator system prevents anyone from finding me unless i choose to join a server they're a part of. there are no friend requests from strangers and no unsolicited interactions. removing discriminators would jeopardize that. i am a queer and trans person who isn't out to everyone in my life. however, i've been able to put my pronouns and labels in my discord profile because the only people who can see it are those who i have shared it with. it isn't discoverable and no one can find me without my help. i don't want to have to worry about curating another profile that can potentially be public; discord was a safe space because i didn't have to worry about who might come across my profile by accident. i had been considering buying a nitro plan since i use the app so often, but i don’t think i will anymore since i can't see myself wanting to use it very much if this feature is implemented. please keep discriminators; they're easy to find in the application and copy/pastable for those who forget them, and they're an important security feature that is the prime reason many of us even use discord in the first place.
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