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PSA: Don't base your business around Discord.7yr account banned for posting ASNs

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Re: PSA: Don't base your business around Discord.7yr account banned for posting ASNs

#71

Post by maxbond »

sneak wrote: post #50
version_five wrote: post #24

I'm super risk averse so I would never build a business around a single point of failure like that - but I know that there is money to be made taking this risk (at least VC money, presumably real money). Look at everybody building off OpenAI, look at AWS, Shopify, etc. I'll never base my business around a platform, but I'll miss out on many opportunities, even if it's a big risk. All that to say the warning won't sto…

The Apple App Store is a similar single point of failure and both Uber and Instagram would not have become what they are today if they had not built their businesses on the back of the concept that Apple will not arbitrarily ban them. When they launched, their web apps didn't exist (and you couldn't access gps or photos from web apps anyway, so their services were impossible except for via the App Store). Then again,…

Cynically, if you run the gamut become hugely successful, the rules stop applying so strictly to you (eg banning Uber unilaterally would be a great way for Apple to create Android users, especially if you think about Uber drivers on iPhone) but become a moat to new challengers.

Re: PSA: Don't base your business around Discord.7yr account banned for posting ASNs

#72

Post by paulddraper »

GuB-42 wrote: post #67

It is probably a bad idea do rely entirely on any one of the "big tech" companies, including the big names like Amazon and Google. There are many stories of companies being kicked out for random reasons, and with no one who can resolve your problem on the other end. I would treat them as a risk. You can work with them, but you have to consider that they can fail you randomly, and have some kind of backup plan or insu…

RIP AWS

Re: PSA: Don't base your business around Discord.7yr account banned for posting ASNs

#73

Post by quickthrower2 »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #63

So discord is something I use for voice-chatting and shitposting with friends, typically while also playing video games. Can anyone tell me why they would ever use it for anything remotely serious? Can you tell me why you'd want to stake your livelihood on a walled garden designed for video game voice chat and sharing rickroll videos? Not only that, I can't take seriously a business that uses discord. Like, what are…

Having a discord link probably sets some expectations about what to expect over there: chat, community, maybe voice chat, chilled vibe, temporary. All that from seeing the smiley joystick logo. It also signals cool modern startup. It may be be super convenient if your audience typically has an account already. Yes a tonne of downsides of course.

Re: PSA: Don't base your business around Discord.7yr account banned for posting ASNs

#74

Post by ivanmontillam »

ThatPlayer wrote: post #68
gruez wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Every time I see a business inviting me to a Discord, I feel like I'm putting myself in a position to be mistreated either by the platform or by the company inviting me. I feel like they don't quite understand sound business principles like Platform Risk. >If keeping up the business afloat is your mission as a business owner, why'd you base your business off a platform you don't control? [...] Why is discord any dif…

I'd say the difference is I can make a full backup of my data on office365 or AWS. From office365, I can export my documents, my emails, my drive storage. AWS: I get full access to my databases, my files. Even comparing Discord to Slack: Slack has export capabilities.

Given what you just said in your comment, I guess what makes them different is that Microsoft 365 and AWS are enterprise-ready, so you can take away your data easily. With Google, with a regular account, you could as well using Google Takeout.

With Discord... you might have to strong-arm them into a GDPR claim or similar, so, vendor lock-in in a B2C SaaS is a thing.

Re: PSA: Don't base your business around Discord.7yr account banned for posting ASNs

#75

Post by quickthrower2 »

version_five wrote: post #24

I'm super risk averse so I would never build a business around a single point of failure like that - but I know that there is money to be made taking this risk (at least VC money, presumably real money). Look at everybody building off OpenAI, look at AWS, Shopify, etc. I'll never base my business around a platform, but I'll miss out on many opportunities, even if it's a big risk. All that to say the warning won't sto…

AWS staples like EC2, S3, RDS are safe as long as you control the domain outside of it and have backups outside.

Re: PSA: Don't base your business around Discord.7yr account banned for posting ASNs

#77

Post by quickthrower2 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #67

It is probably a bad idea do rely entirely on any one of the "big tech" companies, including the big names like Amazon and Google. There are many stories of companies being kicked out for random reasons, and with no one who can resolve your problem on the other end. I would treat them as a risk. You can work with them, but you have to consider that they can fail you randomly, and have some kind of backup plan or insu…

Had 24h production outage (could temporarily rebuild in a test account luckily) due to this so it is a real thing.

Re: PSA: Don't base your business around Discord.7yr account banned for posting ASNs

#78

Post by Earwig »

bottiger1 wrote: post #22
slau wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any chance someone reported you (the message, more specifically) for doxxing? I use Discord with a variety of clients, and there’s _a lot_ of technical logs, including lists of locations, and in some cases even addresses. I’ve never had an issue. I also run a small community of a few thousand users, and haven’t seen anything like this… unless someone was reported. In any case, commiserations, and I hope you…

Yes it is very possible. I have also posted asns in private channels before and nothing ever happened. It was only after I posted it in a public channel that I got banned. There are a few competitors that are really jealous of our success.

From googling your username, it sounds like you are connected to Skial, the TF2 server?

So I'm guessing you posted ASNs of (in your words, basically ISPs) of some players on your server, indicating generally where they live. Was it connected to specific people? I can see why Discord would consider that private info.

Re: PSA: Don't base your business around Discord.7yr account banned for posting ASNs

#79

Post by atomicnumber3 »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #63

So discord is something I use for voice-chatting and shitposting with friends, typically while also playing video games. Can anyone tell me why they would ever use it for anything remotely serious? Can you tell me why you'd want to stake your livelihood on a walled garden designed for video game voice chat and sharing rickroll videos? Not only that, I can't take seriously a business that uses discord. Like, what are…

Discord is a very featureful chat and voice app that is similar to slack in terms of managed-ness but they have completely different roots.

Slack is basically just business email but IMing instead of email, if you know what I mean. It's very business. Business happens there. Synergy and collaboration and so on.

Discord, meanwhile, grew out of some combination of gaming/tech IRC servers and gaming ventrilo and teamspeak servers. It's a completely different vibe and clientele that just happens to have a very similar feature set to slack.

So having a discord for anything that's gaming or programming/techy-adjacent makes a lot of sense and there's a big preexisting community there. I launched an OSRS plugin and we set up a discord channel for it. It was a niche thing, very niche, and we never really took it very far (it was sort of partly just an excuse to try out using managed k8s for the backend server that the plugin was a client for). We did 0 marketing aside from listing in the OSRS plugin marketplace and putting the discord link in the description.

Suddenly me and my pal had like 100+ people in our discord and as many users of our site. With 0 marketing and a very simple MVP.

And we didn't do any BI or anything but afaict the attach rate of discord joining to using our plugin at least once was very high, well over 50%. People even asked a few questions and said the project was cool.

So yeah. While I wouldn't literally run my business on it, as a "fan site" it's very useful and valuable.

Re: PSA: Don't base your business around Discord.7yr account banned for posting ASNs

#80

Post by bottiger1 »

Earwig wrote: post #78
bottiger1 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is very possible. I have also posted asns in private channels before and nothing ever happened. It was only after I posted it in a public channel that I got banned. There are a few competitors that are really jealous of our success.

From googling your username, it sounds like you are connected to Skial, the TF2 server? So I'm guessing you posted ASNs of (in your words, basically ISPs) of some players on your server, indicating generally where they live. Was it connected to specific people? I can see why Discord would consider that private info.

It was just a list of ASNs. There was no other information that would allow you to connect them to a user.

And it was also not "malicious" as described by their email to me.

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