Feature Request: Server-Side DM Settings
Hi! With the new Community features and servers growing in general, bot raids on servers are getting more and more frequent, harassing our users and causing people to leave.
There is a very simple fix that I have to imagine wouldn't take much development work: Server-side DM management.
- A server should be able to control if unsolicited/non-friend DMs are allowed through the server at all
- We should also be able to manage that permission on a per-role basis.
This would, effectively, stop this issue in its tracks and help keep Discord from having the same issue Skype was plagued with when Discord took over.
This is a desperate plea from a server admin who's server just keeps getting raided - which also hurts our retention numbers when we have to mass-ban them minutes later.
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100% agree! As an administrator of a few fairly large servers, you can imagine that bot spam is a somewhat regular issue, as well as trolls seeking info on why their friends were banned for disgusting behavior and thinking they should bother community members to try to somehow prove a strange non-existent point. If we could limit these DMs to people that are trusted (it doesn't take long to become trusted enough for something like this), then we can automatically take care of a good amount of moderator work without having to rely on moderators to be active and not busy (they have real lives too).
As much as we'll always need moderators no matter what, the more we can do to make it easier on them while maintaining the safety of our communities, the better off everyone is regardless of their role/s.
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Hey Adam hope you can make this reach the higher ups on discord, don't own anything like this but sure is annoying for people who do.
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I agree completely, even with a smaller community server of 500 people this is becoming an increasing issue.
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Absolutely 100%! Would help a lot! There are instances where people don't know how to change personal DM settings, or don't like it, but don't care enough to turn it off
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Definitely need this, been having issues with someone in a server I mod too lately and this would help a lot.
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^ I'm in the same server as Scrungus.
For the past few weeks we have been dealing with a malicious user who has been DM'ing gore/NSFL images to various users in the server. Every time he gets banned, he keeps coming back with more and more alternate accounts. Many people in the server are now fearing being the next target to recieve these images.
Such a feature would stop said user in their tracks entirely.
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This would be an awesome addition! Please spread the word about this so we can get this implemented ASAP! 😀
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i agree. this would be great for the server owners and users
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I agree with you, but I have to state publicly that as an individual who refuses to friend people to prevent my friend's list from becoming bloated with individuals I do not speak to. It's a good idea but unrealistic as this would prevent me from helping out programmers personally through Direct Message as I often handle long situations from DM rather than flooding chat. So while there is value in your request along with the reason it just doesn't solve more issues than it causes.
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Reheight the point is to use this setting in tandem with roles so that new or untrusted members cannot DM other users (i.e. users without a role) but established members can. Using this with a bot that manages roles based on certain actions/criteria for example would prevent dumb bots from DMing users without manual intervention. Typically when we get this kind of spam it's 10+ accounts which are not manually managed so they wouldn't be able to obtain the "trusted" role in order to send DMs.
And it's worth noting that we're asking for this to be used on a per Discord setting so if a user can reach you outside of that specific Discord they can still DM you if the other Discord allows it. Basically for that specific Discord the option to DM users is removed/greyed out.
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Reheight, if by some odd chance you were on a server that specifically chose not to allow you to send DMs and you needed to speak with developers, you could always ask them to DM you. I must say that would be quite the unlikely scenario to be in with a feature that is role-based on an application where DMs are common and administrators are well aware they need to be possible. This is literally an optional role-based permission in order to protect community members from being harassed by bots rather than something that will inhibit regular members of a community from sending a DM, or even from receiving a DM upon request in rare situations where such a thing might be necessary.
If you can DM a developer, you can ping them just as well and ask for them to DM you in the highly unlikely instance that for some reason you can't send a DM to someone. Your friends list is irrelevant to this and you can keep it as barren as you want while still retaining the ability to send your necessary DMs.0 -
I don't see how this is useful at all. What happens if the same two people are on different servers? because your server has unsolicited DMing disabled, now it's disabled on another? Why not just go to your personal settings and uncheck "Allow direct messages from server members". If it's that big of a deal, discord should just change the default option of that.
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Kemikals we're not requesting a global setting, it would be specific to each individual Discord. And yes, they definitely should make the default unchecked for users but they don't so it's up to the staff on each Discord to find a solution (and one that doesn't punish Discord server owners trying to make partner).
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Reply for Kemikals btw.
I think the big problem is that a lot of servers have members, who aren't incredibly tech-savvy and have a hard time wrapping their head around how the Discord UI works.
As for people who share multiple servers with the raider, if the server settings conflict, then this would obviously be bypassed.
I've been dealing with a some kid whos been raiding my server on and off for the past month or so, and we posted a message clearly stating how to change your privacy settings, but we still had to guide 5-10 different members through how to do it.
This would make moderating during raids much easier, it'd at least for the most part solve the problem my servers been dealing with, and from what I can tell, quite a few other people's servers as well.
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As a long time discord user (since 2016) and server Moderator I think this would be a great idea because me and my teams don't want to tell the community to deactivate direct messages just because some people can not behave... We want our communities to grow together. But this will only be possible if there is a way to help them filter out trolls.
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This is a really, really terrible solution. Make the default setting that DMs are deactivated for newbies if necessary, but don't hand control of who we can DM outside of servers to server controllers.
This forum lacks regular user representation, and this would strip those users of the freedom of association "rights" that they currently enjoy. Don't do this.
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Now the primary reason this is getting upvoted is because server operators are brigading. Regular users need to form a union :D
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This is a really good feature idea, it would solve/minimize a lot of problems.
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@electric-skeptic If you have a better solution we're all ears. Yes changing the default setting would be awesome and might fix this but at the end of the day we need a solution to handle bots that doesn't punish Discord server owners. DM spam is a minor inconvenience for most users but a HUGE problem that hurts Discord server owners in a real and impactful way. The Discord dev's infinite wisdom decided that server retention is an important metric and here we are.
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@KuJoe there are any number of better options - rate limiting DM spamming of new server members, server operator notification of possible mass DM events, better spam account detection by checking for mass messaging or template messaging (as mail servers do), a 'report to admin' or 'report to Discord staff' button inside the interface for new DMs (near the block button?)... just handing all control over user association over to server operators is lazy and disproportionate.
Also; downvoting my contribution to the discourse simply because it's a dissenting one really proves my point about this being a one-sided discussion0 -
"Rate limiting DM spamming of new server members" - Might work depending on the implementation. Submit a feature request and I'll upvote this idea.
"Server operator notification of possible mass DM events" - Won't help because the bots will still do their damage and affect retention numbers.
"Better spam account detection by checking for mass messaging or template messaging (as mail servers do)" - Fully agree 100% that this should be handled much better on Discord's end. Submit a feature request and I'll upvote this idea also.
"A 'report to admin' or 'report to Discord staff' button inside the interface for new DMs (near the block button?)" - While this is GREATLY needed, it doesn't really solve the same problem. Again, submit a feature request for this and I'll upvote this one too because it is needed to protect users.
"Downvoting my contribution to the discourse simply because it's a dissenting one really proves my point about this being a one-sided discussion." - I think you missed the point of the voting, we upvote what we agree with and downvote what we disagree with. I disagree with your stance on this feature request just as you disagree on mine and hopefully you downvoted this feature request and the comments to it you don't agree with. As you can see we're still having a civilized discussion regardless of the votes on the side. ;)
At the end of the day Discord server admins are ill equipped to deal with spam bots and any tools that Discord can give us are greatly appreciated. If they can't do basic spam prevention or provide us with basic protections we're going to go with the nuclear option which I agree that within the wrong hands will be bad for users and communities but in the right hands will have no noticeable impact for anybody except for the people running spam bots.
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Just going to add something to KuJoe's list here that's been bugging me.
"Just default DM's from server members to disabled" - We literally have issues with walking people through how to disable them. This only flips the spectrum and gives us issues with walking people through how to enable them.The appropriate solution is role-based management that allows for regular members to DM others as they already are able, but stops bot accounts from jumping in and advertising nonsense and/or potentially harmful links. A setting for risk-taking users to override that allows members to DM them anyway isn't a bad idea, but disabling it for everyone by default or allowing it to remain as is are both pretty bad solutions that only lead to additional problems.
"Server operators are brigading" - Not really. Server operators are the only line of defense in a server and are literally there specifically to protect the other members of a given community. They handle the tech behind the scenes whether its programming the bots (or configuring if they don't write their own), configuring the roles and permissions per channel (sometimes per user even), handling the removal of toxic, abusive, or otherwise undesirable/unsafe members, or assisting with technical issues. We're trying to have a feature implemented that would mostly benefit larger servers, and would not need to even be enabled on smaller and/or private servers, and the reason we're trying is for the protection of everyone. This doesn't benefit server operators nearly as much as it does regular members of any Discord community.
I can't stress enough how much this will not affect regular members of a community and will only affect trolls and bots that are inactive besides when they DM ads and shady links to existing members shortly after joining a community. This is not about inhibiting regular users, nor is it capable of stripping "users of the freedom of association 'rights' they currently enjoy". This is a layer of protection from bots that regularly join servers and immediately begin sending off annoying and/or harmful DMs.
"This is a really, really terrible solution. Make the default setting that DMs are deactivated for newbies if necessary, but don't hand control of who we can DM outside of servers to server controllers." - Your claim is not even what the presented idea is, but your plea actually is. We're looking to have newbies unable to DM server members without taking control of who you can DM outside of servers. Even newbies could still DM members of another server just fine. If there are members someone shares multiple servers with, DMs would only be blocked if every server they were on was explicitly blocking their ability to DM because they weren't trusted enough to be handed the permission anywhere. I'm not sure where you get the idea that we're trying to somehow limit the abilities of regular users, but this is absolutely not the case whatsoever.
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@Kammesennin sure I'm not convinced defaulting DM's to being disabled is necessarily the right approach either, but it was a suggestion previously offered and one I'd opt for before this one.
Your idea of a user overridable role-based system is some middle ground between user association being entirely server controlled and having fully exposed users, I like it!
If you think you've just dismissed the suggestion brigading is happening, I'm sorry to have to say it but you don't seem to know what this is. People have said here, in this particular thread, that they're doing it and not to mention the fact that I and most others were likely directed here by the same practice.
The rest of your dismissals aren't really counterarguments, you're just claiming that my concerns probably aren't important, and you clearly haven't even understood what I said if you think your restatement of the original proposal with extraneous detail would be in any way enlightening-1 -
@electric-skeptic I really don't think you understand what the idea is or how permissions function on Discord.
"People have said here, in this particular thread, that they're doing it-" - literally only you have said this. Step up your troll game if that's what you're really going for here. This is meant to be a discussion, not finger pointing.
"The rest of your dismissals aren't really counterarguments, you're just claiming that my concerns probably aren't important" - I'm claiming that your concerns are invalid entirely because they don't depict a situation that could even potentially arise. I'll just repeat myself in saying that I really don't think you understand what the idea is or how permissions function on Discord.
I'm sure you'll think you've won whatever silly war you're trying to ignite when I don't respond to your next attempt at trolling me, but I'm simply not here to argue with people who have no idea what they're on about. Have a good day :)
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@Kammesennin Derek, for instance, is telling people here to spread the word among others who would support it. Again, you're flying off the handle without really knowing what you're talking about.
I wish you'd take the time to tell me anything you're convinced I don't yet know about role allocation or permission setting on discord, but if you've already called me a troll and refused to interact I'm left at my original conclusions about this proposal, and your baseless claims. Feel free to DM me. I feel sorry for everyone being notified to read tedious future direct personal insults.
The proposal is extremely simple and leaves some hazards unaddressed regarding it's implementation. I can see how this could be abused through role micromanagement or leaving DMs disabled entirely, depending on it's implementation, and there's a good opportunity to discuss alternatives right now. Most servers are benign, stable dictatorships, but we're human and people do make use available facilities as they see fit. You're the one attributing unreasonable certainty of innocuousness to this idea, hopefully not to "win" this argument at this point
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+1 additionally it would be nice to have an option as a user to disable DMs from non-friend, but enable it from server bots. Often you can't engage with bot functionality with DMs disabled. And sadly you can't add bots to friends to put them on the allow-list.
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Hi, I'm managing and helping manage lots of community around Crypto, and because the inability to disable DMs (we enabled gazillion of protection layers in the server itself) users are getting scammed and loosing real money (also life money sometimes).
DMs is the ONLY hole leftover that is causing this issue and there is no way to disable but only keeping remembering the community to not trust DMs or manually disable them in settings.
I understand Discord has born for games, so Discord team could not bother too much on this as worst case scenario was some kids loosing a game account, but here we are talking about real money. Direct experience was a loss of an equivalent of 18k USD in crypto currencies for a DM scam from one of our members (the overall I witnessed pass the million dollar).
THIS IS A REAL ISSUE and Discord should make this a priority one.
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Agreed!
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How is this not a feature?
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I also think this should be a feature that is available for each server, let admin decide if DM's are on/off.
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