Discord

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For the religion, see Discordianism; for the RationalWiki Discord server, see RationalWiki:Discord
“”It's pretty unavoidable to be a leader in this [alt-right] movement without participating in Discord.
— Keegan Hankes, SPLC.[1]

Discord is an instant messaging, voice and video communication platform originally marketed at gamers, but has since expanded to become more universal. It quickly rose in popularity since being launched in 2015, and has over 250 million users.[2] A prior tagline of the service was "by gamers, for gamers". This proprietary, single company chat service engulfed older, open-source IRC clients and servers in popularity. Discord doesn't have any central community or any official community directories, despite having the ability to implement such things. Instead, all chat rooms are essentially private and gated-off from each other (with the exception of optional URL invites). As such, a wide variety of communities have emerged on the service.

Of course, the lack of any official chat room directory means that a lot of servers with nasty subjects end up popping all over the place, with entire servers dedicated to child pornography, 4chan style content, underage dating, and other problematic content.[3] The website was utilized heavily by the alt-right and neo-Nazi groups with Unicorn Riot and other outlets such as Montreal Gazette leaking chat logs from far-right chatrooms. All these problems also come with the usual tepid, lagging, vague, and empty responses by the platform holder.

Discord is also used by political activists of all types, including extremist political factions, to coordinate. Membership of a server can be restricted by invitation, meaning messages are not open for anyone to view, and members go by pseudonyms that offer a fig leaf of privacy - both elements that are attractive to activists. However, the combination of the two makes it easy for such groups to be infiltrated by opponents and Discord does not offer meaningful privacy. The alt-right activists which subvert mainstream political campaigns include such examples as 2019 #YangGang,[4][5]

Abuse[edit]

Discord has had problems with hostile behavior and abuse within its chat servers. It is common for publicly listed servers to be "raided" (the taking over of a server by a large number of users) by trolls. The trolls spam and promote topics related to race, religion, and politics, and sometimes post pornography.[6] Discord has stated that they have plans to implement changes that would "rid the platform of the issue",[7] though they have yet to implement any actual changes to address said issue, which shouldn't surprise anyone considering how long and inadequately Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, and other major platforms addressed similar problems. Furthermore, since each server is moderated separately by moderators picked by whoever started the server, some servers actively encourage or normalize troll behavior. So far, the best way to deal with problematic users, without the help of server-side moderation, is to report these users to Discord's trust and safety team. Since this team doesn't directly monitor messages, you'll just have to hope that they will suspend the troll or abusive account. Of course, the offender could always just return to the service with a newly registered account the next day, which makes the problem largely continual.

Controversies[edit]

Use by the far-right[edit]

Discord gained popularity with the alt-right. Analyst Keegan Hankes from the Southern Poverty Law Center said "It's pretty unavoidable to be a leader in this [alt-right] movement without participating in Discord".[8][9] In early 2017, CEO Jason Citron stated Discord was aware of these groups and their servers.[10] Citron stated that servers found to be engaged in illegal activities or violations of the terms of service would be shut down, but would not disclose any examples.[11]

Following the violent events that occurred during the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, 2017, it was found that Discord had been used to plan and organize the white nationalist rally. This included participation by Richard Spencer and Andrew Anglin, high-level figures in the movement.[8] Discord responded by closing servers that supported the alt-right and far-right, and banning users who had participated.[12] Discord's executives condemned "white supremacy" and "neo-Nazism", and said that these groups "are not welcome on Discord".[8] Discord has worked with the Southern Poverty Law Center to identify hateful groups using Discord and ban those groups from the service.[13] Several neo-Nazi and alt-right servers were shut down by Discord, including those operated by neo-Nazi terrorist group Atomwaffen Division, Nordic Resistance Movement, Iron March, and European Domas.[14]

In the years since the Unite the Right rally, many far-right communities have simply fled to Telegram or wherever else amidst Discord's sustained campaign to clean house of them, though some still maintain a presence on Discord, especially in servers that are not open to public invitations (significantly lower risk for Discord staff scrutiny).

Pornography[edit]

In January 2018, The Daily Beast reported that it found several Discord servers that were specifically engaged in distributing revenge pornWikipedia and facilitating real-world harassment of the victims of these images and videos. Such actions are against Discord's terms of service and Discord has shut down servers and banned users identified from these servers, but the ease of creating new accounts and servers allows such servers to continue to proliferate.[15]

In July 2018, Discord updated its terms of service to ban drawn pornography with underaged subjects.[16] A social media movement subsequently criticized Discord for selectively allowing "cub" content, or underaged pornographic furry artwork, under the same guidelines.[17] Discord moderators held that "cub porn" was separate from lolicon and shotacon, being "allowable as long as it is tagged properly."[16] After numerous complaints from the community, Discord amended its community guidelines in February 2019 to include "non-humanoid animals and mythological creatures as long as they appear to be underage" in its list of disallowed categories, in addition to announcing periodic transparency reports to better communicate with users.[18]

Espionage[edit]

Jack Teixeira, a US Air National Guard member, was charged in 2023 with unauthorized leaking hundreds of classified documents on Discord to unknown parties.[19] This particular use of Discord is likely indicative that Discord executives' promise to clean up the site of bad actors following the Unite the Right rally did not amount to much.[20]

External links[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ↑ The New York Times; Kevin Roose, August 15, 2017 : This Was the Alt-Right’s Favorite Chat App. Then Came Charlottesville
  2. ↑ CNET; Ian Sherr, May 13, 2019: Discord, Slack for gamers, tops 250 million registered users. (archive snapshot)
  3. ↑ Luke Winkie, November 4th 2019 : Teens Are Running Illicit Dating Channels on Discord (Archive Snapshot)
  4. ↑ Mother Jones; Ali Breland, April 10th, 2019 : Here’s Why Andrew Yang’s Alt-Right Supporters Think He’s the 2020 Candidate for White Nationalists
  5. ↑ Splinter News; Erin Corbett, June 3rd, 2019 : The Leaked Chats That Show How a Far-Right Group Is Trying to Infiltrate the GOP
  6. ↑ Menegus, Bryan (February 6, 2017). "How a Video Game Chat Client Became the Web’s New Cesspool of Abuse" (in en-US). GGawker Media. 
  7. ↑ Alexander, Julia (July 27, 2017). "Discord has a major raiding issue, but the developers are trying to fix it". Archived from the original on October 9, 2017. Retrieved October 9, 2017. 
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Roose, Kevin (August 15, 2017). "This Was the Alt-Right’s Favorite Chat App. Then Came Charlottesville." (in en-US). The New York Times. 
  9. ↑ Barbaro, Michael (August 18, 2017). "‘The Daily’: The Alt-Right and the Internet" (in en-US). The New York Times. 
  10. ↑ Bernstein, Joseph (January 23, 2017). "A Thriving Chat Startup Braces For The Alt-Right" (in en-US). BuzzFeed. 
  11. ↑ Menegus, Bryan (February 6, 2017). "How a Video Game Chat Client Became the Web’s New Cesspool of Abuse". Gizmodo. Retrieved August 20, 2017. 
  12. ↑ Newton, Casey (August 14, 2017). "Discord bans servers that promote Nazi ideology" (in en-US). The Verge. 
  13. ↑ Alexander, Julia (February 28, 2018). "Discord is purging alt-right, white nationalist and hateful servers". Polygon. Retrieved March 1, 2018. 
  14. ↑ Liao, Shannon (February 28, 2018). "Discord shuts down more neo-Nazi, alt-right servers". The Verge. Retrieved March 8, 2018. 
  15. ↑ Cox, Joesph (January 17, 2018). "The Gaming Site Discord Is the New Front of Revenge Porn". The Daily Beast. Retrieved January 17, 2018. 
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Radulovic, Petrana (January 30, 2019). "Discord’s lax policy on furry ‘cub content’ leads to user outcry". 
  17. ↑ Asarch, Steven (February 13, 2019). "Discord comes under fire for alleged moderator abuse and furry corruption". 
  18. ↑ Radulovic, Petrana (February 13, 2019). "Discord adjusts policy on furry ‘cub content’". 
  19. ↑ Leak suspect indicted on new counts of mishandling classified material by Devlin Barrett & Shane Harris (June 15, 2023) The Washington Post.
  20. ↑ ‘Problematic pockets’: How Discord became a home for extremists by Samuel Oakford et al. (December 12, 2023) The Washington Post.
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