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As Discord nears 100M users, safety concerns are heard

polygon.com

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Re: As Discord nears 100M users, safety concerns are heard

#31

Post by [deleted] »

distantsounds wrote: post #15
AFNobody wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is nice not to have the gated access like Slack does. Fyi, it is gated by Discord and (for instance) I'm unable to create an account under this psuedonym. So, I (personally) will never use Discord as they locked my account when I attempted to create one.

your account name is not the same as your display name, which you can customize on a per-server basis. Also, signups are done via email. And your "username" is not unique by design, it gives you a numeric identity alongside it (much like how Blizzard's battle tags work).

[deleted]

Re: As Discord nears 100M users, safety concerns are heard

#32

Post by AFNobody »

wbond wrote: post #14
AFNobody wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is nice not to have the gated access like Slack does. Fyi, it is gated by Discord and (for instance) I'm unable to create an account under this psuedonym. So, I (personally) will never use Discord as they locked my account when I attempted to create one.

I was under the impression anyone could join who had the server address?

I'm actually blocked for registering/banned during registration.

I literally cannot have a Discord account 'cause it'll just get disabled immediately.

Re: As Discord nears 100M users, safety concerns are heard

#33

Post by AFNobody »

distantsounds wrote: post #15
AFNobody wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is nice not to have the gated access like Slack does. Fyi, it is gated by Discord and (for instance) I'm unable to create an account under this psuedonym. So, I (personally) will never use Discord as they locked my account when I attempted to create one.

your account name is not the same as your display name, which you can customize on a per-server basis. Also, signups are done via email. And your "username" is not unique by design, it gives you a numeric identity alongside it (much like how Blizzard's battle tags work).

The account was disabled immediately after registration.

Re: As Discord nears 100M users, safety concerns are heard

#34

Post by AFNobody »

thomas_howland wrote: post #28

It appears by "safety concerns" the author means "right wingers might be able to chat on the platform". I'm not sure Discord wants to put themselves in the position of weaponizing their platform to suppress particular kinds of private political speech.

More or less, yes.

Fringe political views will get you permanently blocked by Discord and/or Twitter.

I'm not a right-leaning person but even the concept speech should be free and uncensored if you aren't enabling a crime is an issue.

Re: As Discord nears 100M users, safety concerns are heard

#35

Post by superkuh »

AFNobody wrote: post #34
thomas_howland wrote: post #28

It appears by "safety concerns" the author means "right wingers might be able to chat on the platform". I'm not sure Discord wants to put themselves in the position of weaponizing their platform to suppress particular kinds of private political speech.

More or less, yes. Fringe political views will get you permanently blocked by Discord and/or Twitter. I'm not a right-leaning person but even the concept speech should be free and uncensored if you aren't enabling a crime is an issue.

That's the problem with centralization, walled gardens, and proprietary protocols. You won't ever have a problem if you just don't go into the gardens. Self-host with mumble, teamspeak, matrix, or something.

They all use the same Opus voice codec so it's not a quality issue.

Re: As Discord nears 100M users, safety concerns are heard

#36

Post by hsod »

thomas_howland wrote: post #28

It appears by "safety concerns" the author means "right wingers might be able to chat on the platform". I'm not sure Discord wants to put themselves in the position of weaponizing their platform to suppress particular kinds of private political speech.

Where are you getting "right wing" from? I saw this:

> “Raiding and spamming is explicitly against our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines,”

Re: As Discord nears 100M users, safety concerns are heard

#37

Post by meebs »

hellbanner wrote: post #26
NelsonMinar wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American Nazis were using it to organize the Charlottesville demonstration. That's not a form of legal liability nor brand identification you want. https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/26/discord-chats-may-help-c... Also the bad people never stay confined to their private hate club. See the linked article here about "raids" on other channels or literally the entire history of Internet social media.

So it's every communication service's responsibility to keep only the people they like using their service?

Responsibility to not allow it to be abused by Nazis at the very least.

Re: As Discord nears 100M users, safety concerns are heard

#38

Post by skybrian »

hellbanner wrote: post #26
NelsonMinar wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American Nazis were using it to organize the Charlottesville demonstration. That's not a form of legal liability nor brand identification you want. https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/26/discord-chats-may-help-c... Also the bad people never stay confined to their private hate club. See the linked article here about "raids" on other channels or literally the entire history of Internet social media.

So it's every communication service's responsibility to keep only the people they like using their service?

Companies that try to prevent their customers from attacking each other tend to do better than companies that don't protect their customers. This isn't new. For example, Gmail hit it big in part by being better at spam filtering. The specific issues have changed, though.

Re: As Discord nears 100M users, safety concerns are heard

#40

Post by axlprose »

hsod wrote: post #36
thomas_howland wrote: post #28

It appears by "safety concerns" the author means "right wingers might be able to chat on the platform". I'm not sure Discord wants to put themselves in the position of weaponizing their platform to suppress particular kinds of private political speech.

Where are you getting "right wing" from? I saw this: > “Raiding and spamming is explicitly against our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines,”

Perhaps from this tidbit where the politics were explicitly mentioned in the article:

> Resmini’s statement comes just a few months after Discord took action against a number of nefarious ALT-RIGHT servers. One of the largest servers, Centipede Central, became heavily monitored by Discord administrators and in the past few months, underwent its own implosion.

And more importantly:

> “The team has confirmed that they are aware of Centipede Central and will take action IF they find CC is in violation of their terms of service and/or community guidelines”

In other words, it sounds like the politics of that group alone was probably enough to justify keeping them under close surveillance. It wasn't necessarily just responding to "raiding and spamming" once it happened.

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