Official Discord plugin support
As a lot of people might be aware, there's methods to modify your Discord client so you can install a lot of interesting and useful plugins.
Now, as you might also know, this is against Discord's ToS and hasn't changed from back in August when I last asked them about it on Twitter.
I can definitely understand why they think this is bad - there's developers with malicious intent that could end up stealing specific ways of authenticating as yourself to do very dangerous stuff, ranging from removing friends, spamming servers, all the way to deleting entire servers.
This is where this idea kicks in:
Basically, instead of having to rely on a method to modify the Discord client that is against the ToS, why not implement a way to let users install plugins directly from Discord's client?
To ensure better safety, they should be hosted on Discord's own CDN.
Any update the plugin developer uploads would need to go through screening (as in, comparing the previous version with the new version to see if they have put malicious code in)
This way users could already use features such as Server Folders up until you eventually implement that yourself.
A few notable Discord plugins that are available right now include:
- Character Counter - Adds a character counter to your textarea
- Complete Timestamps - Replace all timestamps with complete timestamps (customizable)
- Creation Date - Displays the Creation Date of an Account in the UserPopout and UserModal (very useful for Moderators of servers to check for potential multiaccounts / ban evaders)
- Edit Users - Allows you to change the icon, name, tag and color of users (good to keep track of people that keep changing their username)
- Server Folders - Adds the feature to create folders to organize your servers
- Show Image Details - Displays the name, size and dimensions of uploaded images (does not include embed images) in the chat as an header or as a tooltip
- Personal Pins - Similar to normal pins. Lets you save messages as notes for yourself
Some of these are simple plugins, like the Character Counter, but others are a bit more in-depth, like Server Folders.
All in all, I feel official plugin support would only really benefit Discord in the long run - there's a reason games with decent modding capabilities are still so alive (e.g. Skyrim)
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There's a lot of pros and cons to this one.
I'd say something like this isn't a farfetch'd idea, but it's not something that is risk-free. There is a huge potential for abuse, and this would take some moderation on Discords end.
They've discussed, if briefly, possibly doing things like this but there is a lot of overhead to operating and maintaining something like this on a platform as big as Discord.
Imagine adding a tool that let people share a virus with everyone, and you need to be able to delete that virus within minutes of it being added. That is the hoops Discord theoretically needs to jump through to make it work.
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i feel like this could open up many diffrent types of security flaws. 5 -
Well, I think add-ons would be a good idea, but they have to be approved by devs, and follow some strict guidelines 5 -
But what happens if I use a feature provided by one of those plug-ins which I purchased on the marketplace and post something it can handle in chat - but you haven't got that plug-in? Could this mean you cannot see what I'm trying to share? Having a marketplace and ecosystem for this stuff works fine in some areas - Discord Bots being a prime example over here. And they also work well with content management systems on websites since you can add functionality in one place and it's just there for everyone. But client-side add-ons for Discord? I'm not so confident on this because features mainly need to be available to everyone or no-one in some way. -6 -
@Blastoise186 That's a great point, but I suspect there is a middle-ground there to mitigate that. Say, perhaps a core set of functions that don't change across the server, but the user experience may be different depending on how the user's client is setup. Perhaps when setting up, a dialog pop-ups up saying, "Hey there! Are you sure you want to configure this this way? Because it might just break something for you.".
My points referenced more the topic of the client-side experience than cross-client compatibility. You've definitely raised something that should be dived into if such a marketplace was to come to fruition. Thanks for sharing!
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A previous suggestion (which has now been merged into this one) was originally posted two weeks previously, but was swallowed by a bug.
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Very well written and an interesting idea - best compromise between bloat and features. Furthermore, about the problem of incompatibilities between clients - there is no clear solution in private chats, but specific features could be enabled, if the server owner owns the plugin, completely serverside so that all clients in that server, regardless of ownership of the plugin, could see the outcome of that plugin (without being able to use the plugin itself).
Alternatively, plugins COULD be sold on a per-server basis with client opt-in.1 -
@Blastoise186:
Well, there's a bunch of these, but I thought I'd make one with a proper explanation.
Also, I posted this around a month ago and as you can see it barely got any traction to begin with... So you could say this one was also swallowed by a bug, hehe
@Hurtz:
I'm not too sure how a per-server "plugin marketplace" could work out though... It's an interesting idea, but where would the money go to?
Discord? The server owner? The plugin dev?
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@LordMau5
To Discord and the plugin devs, yes. The server would be the customer - the server owner buying a plugin license to be allowed to deploy it to one of their server, after which each client of that server can opt in to the new features.0 -
I feel like something like this really needs to be in DiscordApp, but I feel like a community style plugins library could never happen as it is very much possible for malicious code to fit in a certain plugin, but I do think Discord could make some sort verified developer verification and let them make plugins, themes, ect.
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this what bot's are for you can make a lot of different things with them even game! -3 -
I get your point, I like the idea, but it would be easily abused, people could grab your token so easily, people would stop using discord.
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This would introduce massive security holes, things like Better Discord and other client mods do. All of which are specifically banned in the ToS.
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This needs editing...
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being on-topic would be nice
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Being able to group together favourite channels is a fantastic idea, especially in large servers. 0 -
This so much!
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true
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I think people are overlooking the fact that if this is implemented, it wouldn't be quite as difficult as people think for Discord to prevent abuse of it. Just restrict access to methods and things from the API. Make an Extension API or something.
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Maybe we could do it like the nitro game store where plugins have to be approved before getting added or something like that
Also taking stock features from discord would also be really nice for lower-end devices or if you want a discord with less startup time.
So basically just make the almost majority of features into plugins2 -
I think this idea would be amazing. It would give Discord's users the ability to customize their Discord experience the way they like it. And the security flaws that might come with it isn't something Discord can't handle. I would really like to see this feature being added to Discord!
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If this is in Discord, and Discord is being responsable, i don't see how dangerous codes can get in. If this is not a foreign app such as BetterDiscord, then Discord can easily keep no no codes out. However, taking this way means that it will be harder to come by plenty content if they undergo strict moderation. I think thats a sacrifice we can take.
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One possibility is to outsource the plugins to a degree.
Discord is built on Electron, which is built on Chromium.
Theoretically, the Google Chrome App Store Majigger could be used as a Discord Plugin repo. I believe Google moderates these to some degree, and on the Discord side I'm sure it'd be possible to limit plugin access at the Chromium level.Similarly to how LibreOffice uses Firefox's App Store to host it's themes. You just copy the theme URL, paste it into a box in LibreOffice settings, and LibreOffice installs it from there as a plugin.
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There should be a verification proccess.
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developers should be able to make google extensions and stuff but there is a verification process that completely scans everything and is also monitored by discord 24/7 plus it is not linked to your account only your discord page(s) and nothing else
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As long as Discord provides secure API for plugins there is no need for scanners. As a dev I would be happy enough if plugin Im installing is open sourced. Maybe Discord could just open websocket or HTTP API to provide hooks between local machine and Discord client and implement "in app" plugins as a second step.
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I also wish that discord releases more official clients or allows multiple users to tie in(basically a way to handle more than 100 guilds for users).
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As a developer, it would be a pain in the ass to wait 2 weeks for discord to review every release of my plugin
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