About

Discord is a chat application which allows users to create and join own VoIP and text channels. While initially created for online video game enthusiasts as a replacement for existing chat services such as Teamspeak and Skype, the service has since been adopted by a wide variety of online communities.

History

On March 6th, 2015, the Discord^[10] alpha build was released by Hammer & Chisel, who had moved toward developing the chat application through YouWeb's 9+ incubator after releasing the MOBA game Fates Forever.^[3] The service be accessed using Microsoft Windows, macOS, Android, iOS and Linux clients, or through a web browser interface.

Online Presence

On May 15th, 2015, the /r/DiscordApp^[2] subreddit was launched. On March 20th, the official Discord Facebook^[4] page was created. Meanwhile, the @discordapp^[1] Twitter feed was launched, garnering upwards of 265,000 followers over the next two years. As of writing, the company advertises a network of over 25 million members worldwide.

Highlights

Notable Public Discord Servers

Controversies

Alt-Right

On January 23rd, 2017, BuzzFeed^[6] published an article claiming that Discord had "found favor" with the alt-right, citing the /pol/Nation server on the platform. The following day, BuzzFeed published another article claiming that "Trump supporters" were pretending to be French on Discord to manipulate the 2017 French Presidential Election. On February 6th, Gizmodo^[9] published an article titled "How a Video Game Chat Client Became the Web's New Cesspool of Abuse," claiming that the app was being used by the alt-right for harassment campaigns.

Child Pornography Copypasta

In late March 2017, a copypasta began circulating claiming that "a group of people" were joining Discord channels and sending mass private messages containing child pornography. In a post about the rumor on /r/discordapp,^[8] Discord staff member Cilantrelle claimed the company was looking into the matter, and provided instructions on what to do if illegal activity is seen in chatrooms.

Phishing Scam

In mid-July 2019, a website containing an SQL dump of 2,500 Discord emails and passwords was released on the website Discordgg.ga.^[12] On the site, a message was displayed claiming the logins were obtained through "simple old phishing site that utilized Discord's own moronic API" (shown below).

On July 18th, 2019, Redditor Lavendor06 submitted a post to /r/OutOfTheLoop^[13] asking "What's up with the whole 'Discord getting nuked' thing?", to which several users cited the phished accounts. Additionally, the post contained a screenshot of a phishing message (shown below).

The following day, Vice^[11] published an article about the phishing attack titled "Hackers Publish List of Phished Discord Credentials."

Search Interest

External References