Overview

#ChangeDiscord is a hashtag campaign launched by Discord users in response to perceived abuses of power by Discord moderators and administrators who identify as furries.

Background

On January 15th, 2019, YouTuber QuackityHQ uploaded a video titled "I Got Banned From Discord," in which he revealed that his Discord account had been banned for violating Terms of Service against "raids" for encouraging fans to troll users on games like Animal Jam (shown below). Within one month, the video accumulated upwards of 1.1 million views and 26,000 comments.

In late January 2019, a screenshot of an email between a Discord admin TinyFeex and a user began circulating online, in which TinyFeex claims that the company did not recognize "cub" art to be a violation of their restrictions against the sexualization of minors.

Developments

On February 3rd, 2019, Twitter user @MrTempestilence^[3] tweeted various screenshots associated with the Discord controversy, along with the message "Fellas, I'm going back to Skype" (shown below). Within five days, the tweet received more than 8,100 likes and 2,700 retweets.

On February 4th, freelance journalist Nick Monroe launched a Twitter^[2] thread about the Discord controversy, with the initial tweet gathering upwards of 8,100 likes and 4,200 retweets over the next four days (shown below).

On February 5th, Twitter user @BrintRevised uploaded a video about the controversy along with the first use of the hashtag #ChangeDiscord (shown below).

On February 7th, Newsweek^[1] published an article about the controversy titled "Discord Comes Under Fire for Alleged Moderator Abuse and Furry Corruption." That day, YouTuber Stryxo uploaded a video titled "A Message to Discord…", which was accompanied by the hashtag "#ChangeDiscord" (shown below).

Discord's Response

On February 13, 2019, Discord created a blog post^[5] in response to the backlash and tweeted out the link(shown below)^[4].

the exact text on the post relating to the issue is as follows.^[5]

Over the past couple of weeks, posts have appeared inquiring about Discord’s stance on a niche area of NSFW policy, which is cub porn. A screenshot of an email we sent about a year ago in February 2018 has garnered significant commentary and criticism about our policy.

As our Community Guidelines state, the following immediately results in account deletion:

* Sharing content related to minors that is sexually suggestive or violent. Do not share or post links to images that depict minors or underage individuals engaged in violent, sexually suggestive, pornographic, shameful, or otherwise inappropriate situations.

Furthermore, the following will lead to content removal and a warning (or ban depending on the severity):

* Sharing illustrated or digitally altered pornography which depicts minors (such as lolicon or shotacon).

One major reason this policy is in place on Discord is because there is a federal law in the United States against the sexualized images of minors, which includes cartoons and drawings. You can see this distinction in action on Google Images which does not show results for lolicon but does show results for cub porn.

Discord’s current policy is that anything human or humanoid is forbidden (including anthropomorphized characters). This includes most cub pornography.

While this is already more restrictive than what the law requires, we’ve received feedback that we’re not comprehensive enough here. As of today, we’re changing our policy to ban all cub porn. This means the sexualization of minor ban now extends to non-humanoid animals and mythological creatures as long as they appear to be underage. We’re adding “cub” to the list of categories, after lolicon and shotacon, to our Community Guidelines to clarify that this content is not allowed on Discord.

Search Interest

On February 13, 2019, Discord made an official response to the controversy, making a blog post and tweeting the link on their official account(shown below).

on the blog post, Discord stated that

External References