The race to secure usernames has begun on Discord.
In the coming weeks, millions of Discord users will have to say goodbye to their old four-digit names. Discord is requesting that everyone get a handle on the entire new common platform. For Discord, this is a transition to mainstream social networking conventions. However, for some users, it’s a fundamental change in Discord. teeth — The change is as much about culture as technology.
Discord has historically handled usernames using a numeric suffix system. Instead of requiring a completely unique handle, we allowed name conflicts by adding a four-digit code known as an “identifier” — think TheVerge#1234. Earlier this week, however, the company announced it was changing course and moving to a unique identifier similar to the Twitter-style “@” handle.
Co-Founder and CTO Stanislav Wishnevsky accepted the change Although it will be “difficult” for some people, he said identifiers have proven too confusing. pointed out. This leads to “nearly half” of all friend requests failing to connect to the right person, mostly due to mistyped numbers.
on Reddit, Vishnevskiy argued that Discord would allow users to set a different, non-unique display name, so the new handle wouldn’t even appear in the interface. In some of his Reddit replies he downvoted over 500. He called the original system a “half-baked measure” and rejected ideas like adding numbers to the end of handles. . “This is not a change we decided to take lightly, and we’ve been talking about for years to avoid it if possible,” he posted.
During the change, Discord users will have to navigate a process filled with uncertainty and fierce competition. Users will have to wait in-app to confirm their turn to select a new username, which will eventually roll out to all users over “months.” The company assigns priority to users based on their Discord registration date, so those who have had a name “for quite some time” are more likely to get the name they want.
Users should choose a common handle to avoid possible spoofing.
This raises a lot of obvious fears and annoyances. Is there anything that prevents people from taking on the distinctive names of particularly popular creators, depending on who sets up their usernames first? This is a problem for many social networks, but unlike some fledgling services that attract new users, all these people are already on Discord – in some cases, perhaps for a fee. is a subscriber of
In a statement to The Barge, Discord said it was trying to navigate the changes properly for its most prominent users. “A user with an ongoing business relationship with her Discord who manages a particular Partner, Verified, or Creator’s server will be asked to verify the user’s identity before anyone else, in order to reduce the risk of account impersonation. You can choose your name.”
Many Discord users stray outside of these boundaries. “Content with a relatively large fan base. As he is the creator, my handle is subject to username sniping by someone with an older account than mine,” said the artist. zesty lemonsConnect with your fans using Discord The Barge“I’m not a Discord partner, nor am I famous enough to be recognized by them, so my public handle is definitely not safe,” ZestyLemons said. do To get the desired name, there is a risk that hitting or threatening Give it up — what happened on Instagram and Twitter.
Discord users now understand that there are many accounts with very similar names, distinguished only by a random number at the end. They encourage people to look for trustworthy usernames — when someone grabs the one and only @verge (our Twitter handle) on Discord, people are more likely to believe it’s us There is a possibility.
“It’s a shame that Discord succumbs to normal social media norms.”
And this encourages people to treat their Discord name like part of their centralized identity. the user referred to them, like a personal phone number. Individuals are forced to use usernames that represent them elsewhere before anyone else does. This ties anyone on Discord to an internet-wide identity, with all its potential downsides such as stalking and a simple sense of exposure.
Despite concerns about individual users impersonating each other, the risks of server moderation are less clear, with some Discord server admins saying: The Barge they weren’t worried. “I don’t think this change is a big deal for admins and mods,” says Emily, an admin at a large company. Pokémon GO Meet the group on Discord.The server is already asking the user to set a matching server-specific nickname Pokémon GO It’s a trainer’s name, so we don’t rely on discriminators to distinguish people.
But Emily isn’t a fan of change. “Discriminator was kind of clever…it enables a lot of people [to] Share the same name without emphasizing the “perfect” username. Discord is a more personal kind of social media. You’re not publicly publishing it on the ether, like Twitter, so using a memorable and clever username doesn’t matter. “
“Sites that use handles and display names, such as Twitter, have very different reasons for using these systems.”
Supa Isaiah016, avid Geometry Dash Player He, who also runs a small Discord server, agrees. “The current username and identification system worked flawlessly, allowing thousands of people across the platform to have the same name,” he wrote SupaIsaiah016. The Barge“Sites that use handles and display names, such as Twitter, are public social media, so the reasons for using these systems are very different.”
Part of the problem is that Discord is asking its millions of permanent users to change their online identities significantly, and there’s no great way to do it without friction. But there’s also a sense that Discord’s old username style, albeit clunky, has become a different kind of social network. For many users, that was part of the appeal.
“We tend to value the freedom of anonymity on Discord.”
“Discord was originally intended to be a messaging app that many content creators use to separate their online lives from their real personal lives,” writes ZestyLemons. Verge Reader SpookyMulder said otherwise in a comment on the original news post. “Discord has a kind of pseudo-identity culture,” he wrote SpookyMulder. “We tend to value the freedom of anonymity on Discord over regular social media username IDs.”
Whether you’re a Discord user who wants to remain anonymous or someone who wants a more shareable and easily identifiable system, the race is on to get the perfect username for you. , have to wait to see where the starting line is.
