[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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"problems" 1 and 2 that you say this would fix are the exact same, besides, when you share your username you usually text it to someone else
"problem" 3 will happen regardless, you really want me to believe that "Mike" wont be taken in the first 5 seconds of implementing this?
"problem" 4 ..... pretty sure it will be limited same as 3; cool I'll be able to change from @mike35465 to @mike45289 or @mmmikeee since Mike would have been taken in the first 5 seconds
"problem" 5 can be "fixed" in so much easier ways than remaking the entire naming system, like yes, limiting usernames to certain ranges of characters, OR having character converters that recognize (eg) "á" "à" "â" as "a" in searches
all 3 first (if not all 4) "problems", I'll summarize how it'll pan out
"hi hello yes I'm Mike21654, no written mmi_kee21654"
"yeah, I wanted just mike but it was already taken, as was mike1, mike01, mike001, mike007 and mike_007 so I opted for my favorite number combo"
it's just like with emails, you think people wont start adding weird letter or number combinations before and/or after their chosen name until it gets allowed?and you think people wont start sniping and selling usernames????
13 -
+1
This is worse than any edit Elon has made to twitter . Don’t do this , don’t be idiots
edit : added a +1 , I wanted to be clear I am very very very against the proposed changes to user names . This is also my first time on the forum . I made an account just to show how much of a bad idea this is
17 -
+1
I strongly believe Discord should not go through with this change, not only because it is unpopular, but because I believe it is not a good business decision either.
This change massively increases friction during onboarding. Look how easy it is to sign up on the Discord homepage right now. After you enter your username (and complete a CAPTCHA), you're in, and you don't have to deal with "username is taken" because Discord auto-assigns a suitable discriminator—in other words, it takes almost no thought to sign up. Now, new users will likely not get their preferred username, possibly have to try multiple times, and maybe end up not signing up at all ("no thanks, I'll just keep using Telegram/WhatsApp/Messenger/whatever I was using before"). I strongly anticipate new user signups going down because of this change.
Furthermore, @username#tag has immediate brand recognition: if you see it, you know it's a Discord username. I believe that throwing this brand recognition away is a poor business move.
I think that not knowing what the "discriminator" is by name is especially poor motivation for this change: Discord often doesn't even use this term in their in-app interface. For instance, in the "add friend" screen in the Android app: "You will need both their username and a tag. Keep in mind that username is case sensitive."
Thank you for reading, and I hope Discord leadership considers these points and cancels this change to the username system.
23 -
Rishov, well said; those are my main issues. While I likely won't be affected by impersonation or someone taking my name, I know how painful it can be to create an account when you have to think of a name. That's what made Discord good and different. And now if you see a username out in the wild like "@name", people will be like "sooo... on what platform? twitter? instagram? YOUTUBE now? I have no idea." They certainly won't think of Discord because that's not even available on a web search.
14 -
If it isn't broke, don't try and fix it.
16 -
This is the first time I'm truly being vocal about my disagreement with a new Discord feature. There have been updates in the past that I haven't liked, but this is the first one where I truly see no benefits, whereas the amount of problems is sky-high. I'm sure all of you already know the gist of why this is a bad update; it's already been discussed heavily in the rest of the comments. I just wanted to post this to show my support and hopefully persuade Discord otherwise.
20 -
+1
10 -
+1
10 -
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Account selling
There will, 1000%, be people grabbing the long-time-used tags of popular people, for later blackmailing or impersonating.
And just in general. -
Lack of privacy
I want my discord to stay hidden. Now someone from, say, twitter, can just type my twitter name and bam, I am here, instead of them requiring to do that, at worst, 1, at best, 9999 times (or 10000? #0000 is a tag, right?). -
Terrible experience for old and new users
The annoyance that comes with adding various symbols to your name on every single platform is well known, why add it here? If some Joe wants to be a Joe, let the Joe be Joe#[four random numbers], instead of horrendous Joe_1352. It is just bad.
I don't know, add a fifth number to the end, but don' do that shit.
Discord is a messaging app, not a social media platform.18 -
Account selling
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I'm glad that we all think this is a bad idea. Beyond the obvious big things like impersonation, public figures getting their names sniped, account selling, ect., it also just... removes a nitro feature? One that I actually liked????
15 -
I have been using Discord since the early beginning, and I like having my username be something I can pick out without worrying about someone else having taken it. This change is not only unfair to all users, but it causes way more problems than it solves. Already people are cancelling their Nitros in protest, and all of the reasons why Discord is changing usernames are only going to get worse with this change, not better.
Discord is going to lose a lot of its revenue from this. I'm begging you Discord, please don't change how usernames work just because of a minority of users. I can promise you that changing usernames will only end up hurting your company from the amount of people cancelling Nitro and switching to other chat apps because of this.
You are going to put innocent people's lives in danger from this username update due to people harassing people for usernames, stalkers being able to find their victims more easily, and people swatting other people just because they have a username the person wants.
PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE HOW USERNAMES WORK. IT IS GOING TO CAUSE MORE HARM THAN GOOD FOR EVERYONE- INCLUDING YOUR COMPANY.
16 -
"Four numbers is too hard to remember!" So what about phone numbers, zip codes, SSNs, and literally every other identification number ever?
Ridiculous change. If this goes through, I'm cancelling my Nitro.
28 -
So tired of every social media site trying to streamline and strip away its unique features to make themselves a basic carbon-copy of every other site. We don't WANT our usernames to be like everywhere else, the system works just fine. Most of the time I'm copy/pasting my Discord handle for people to use to add me anyway so these problems do not exist for me and the majority of people I know.
It's just asking for people to hoard usernames to then sell on. Utterly stupid.
0 -
I would actively benefit from this change because I could get my @abadhaiku tag like I got on YouTube, and even I think this is objectively a bad change. You're replacing one problem (case and symbols in usernames) for a whole HOST of new problems, and then adding the old problem back in on top of it.
Just add a search system for adding friends. If I wanted to friend someone named "bill#1234" but I didn't know the case or symbols, let me enter that into the search box and have it show "Bill#1234", "bIll#1234", "bill#1234", or even "b|ll c1pher#1234" - any username that has that discriminator.
I agree that it's terribly hard to add a friend in person, but adding my weeb friend named "Asura (Japanese characters)" could also be done via _QR code_, which you've already added for login.
21 -
So I'll go through your reasoning behind the change and debunk your claims one by one.
- "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." People have phones, Discord. You literally have a mobile app. If for some reason people are separated from their phones and need to share their Discord handle, paper exists. Forcing everything to change for the fringe 0.0000001% of cases where neither is available is beyond idiotic.
- "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 - phones and paper.
- "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." Yeah, this is a problem, but under the current system there can be 9,999 Mikes and 9,999 Janes. Under your proposed system, there can be only one. I don't know what planet you come from, but here on Earth, 9,999 > 1.
- "You like to change your username a lot and get rate limited." This is what server names are for. Why is this even a consideration? You are pandering to the edge-cases of edge-cases here. Even then, just implementing your Display Name idea would solve this - this has nothing to do with discriminators.
- "Your friend says they changed their name to “vernacular” but actually it’s “𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖓𝖆𝖈𝖚𝖑𝖆𝖗” and you have trouble finding them." I agree that special characters in usernames is a problem, but not a major one, and certainly not one that's solved by eliminating the discriminators. Just make it so we can't have special characters in our usernames and be done with it.
3/5 of your reasons are solved by people just taking out their phone, opening the Discord app, and showing their friend their username. The fact that you think people being separated from their phones for the entire time they're with someone they want to add on Discord is ridiculous, and even if that happens, there are alternatives (like paper). Furthermore, your solution doesn't eliminate the problem for the majority of users - I would argue that it actually increases the occurrence rate of the problem. Sure, whoever snipes the handle of "mike" might have a super easy time adding friends, but what about "mike_1048231905"?
You go on to argue that simply restricting usernames to Latin characters would force nearly one-third of active users to change - but your proposal forces 100% of active users to change. How is that better? You then mention that people who speak languages with non-Latin alphabets would have problems, which has absolutely nothing to do with discriminators.
You also claimed that "More than 40% of you either don’t remember your discriminator or don’t even know what a discriminator is." and that "almost half of all friend requests fail to connect the user with the person they wanted to match with", which I find extremely hard to believe. Also, that reddit post you linked to? That's not confusion on what the discriminator is, it's just being unaware of the term. Using that as part of your justification isn't just insane - it's straight up lying to us.
If you're truly this concerned about friend requests not going through to the right person, add some sort of friend code like Steam has. For reference, Steam lets you generate a nine-digit code that other people can enter into their Steam app to add you as a friend. If the format of "username#discriminator" is so confusing to people, just give them a nine-digit code.
Further problems with your proposal, most of which others have pointed out already:
- Name sniping/impersonation. If a popular content creator joined Discord relatively late, chances are that their handle is going to get sniped. Your help article says that usernames that impersonate people are not allowed - but how do you plan on policing that? How do you decide whether someone is impersonating someone else, or just picked a username someone else wanted? These are questions that need an answer before rolling out this change - unless you want to start dealing with lots of letters from IP lawyers.
- Account stealing/selling. People already pay stupid amounts of money for "desirable" badges like "Early Subscriber" - what do you think the market is going to be for accounts that manage to grab usernames like "mark"? That'll just make those users even bigger targets for scammers and account thieves.
I'll leave you with a fun fact: Xbox Live swapped to a discriminator-based system a couple of years ago, because it's a good system.
Edited to make it more readable and add more points.
34 -
+1 discord is not a social media app and its about time they stop trying to act like one.
26 -
+1
Terrible decision.
Internet users were already competing for names in 2010, Discord outright solved the problem *and* made something monetisable at the same time in what was a genius move. Discord is not TweetGramTok, do not follow their crappy designs purely because it's "the norm".
"iTs hArD tO fInD yOuR fRiEnDs" my siblings in christ, there is a button to copy your full username to the clipboard. This is a UI problem you can fix with a tiny UX addition in the introductory steps that points out you can click it to copy your name to send to other people. That or make a less-bad friend search tool??
Cancelled my nitro until this is reverted.
33 -
I feel bad for the people who are being harassed or targeted by others. Now they won't be able to easily change their username in such a way that makes it impossible for ppl to send them messages. Before you could just change the numbers, but now they'll have to give up a unique username. Discord isn't a fucking social media site, its a goddamn chat client, and it doesn't need this username bullshit. What we have already works great and all this is gonna do is hurt people. I'm canceling my nitro until discord can get its shit together.
0 -
+1
This is a really bad feature for small YouTubers with 100+ subs and for those that want their username.
17 -
Many people have written very thoughtful breakdowns of why this is a terrible change. And it really all boils down to: it’s pointlessly disruptive to all users. It’s going to result in people canceling their subscriptions at least, and abandoning discord all together at worst
17 -
I find the thing about not being able to remember your discriminator the weakest arguement, as if it is impossible to find a source, like, i dont know, CLICKING YOUR PROFILE??? and if you dont have access to discord at the time....... why is it even being brought up?? it's the most stupid hypothetical especially in the age where you can access it from anywhere. you can highlight and copy it easily so like... huh. it's so out of nowhere and the flimsiest excuse ever.
23 -
+1 You cannot treat this chat program as a blogging platform. That's not what drew your audience to it. The unique handle system doesn't even work well on blogging social networks. Please stick to your original system and cut out these useless changes that do more harm than good. Do not try to fix this nonexistent issue. Fix your UI, remove special characters and give people more tutorials if you really think it's bad. This is the dumbest update.
25 -
I love all the breakdowns that many users have provided about this upcoming change. Man, this username update is gonna make things a whole mess. I really, really hope we can get the message through to the staff here to try and come up with an alternative so we can keep our silly numbers because at the end of the day, they work better than a social media username.
Besides, discord is a messaging platform, and that's that. It's not Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon, and so forth. It is and always will be a place for people to connect with each other without the feeds, endless scrolling, etc.24 -
+1 This seems like a colossal unforced error. The cons vastly outweigh the pros, and while I'm sure the pain points listed in the explanation blog are valid, not every nail requires a sledgehammer.
19 -
+1, this is an awful idea and I hope discord does not go through with the change.
others have listed very comprehensive reasons as to why this is a bad idea. I hope discord listens.17 -
Battle.net solved this issue by adding an extra digit on new accounts and renames. Downgrading to this inferior system is a step backwards for discord.
19 -
+1, this is literally the absolute worst idea Discord has come up with to date. The tags are so easy to memorize, and this isn't going to help impersonation whatsoever. If someone doesn't know what the #s after their username mean, or how to use them, they're the minority. Plus, the majority of Discord users I personally know don't even USE Reddit so that's a skewed and biased way to poll your user base. Maybe consider doing an optional survey mentioned in Discord announcements or something next time? Either way, this idea is awful.
22 -
+1 This is the single worst decision made by Discord leadership. There is literally no reason to do this from an engineering or user perspective. Please reverse this decision and use those resources elsewhere!
17 -
we can always move to guilded, it's much better anyway. their devs have some sense
10 -
+1
10
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