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man this is like the worst year for tech and websites

discord is forcing a username change that no one wants, twitch nearly banned sponsored streams, imgur is banning NSFW and removing old pics, reddit is restricting their API usage and killing off all mobile apps, apple introducing some shitty overpriced AR headset, the amount of fuckups twitter is doing i cant even count on my own two hands its all becoming too much i hate technology i hate you silicon valley

tucsonhorse

The Discord change is good tho, it’s finally just a username and not username#random numbers

vaspider

It’s not, actually. It’s terrible.

Those “random numbers” allow multiple people to use similar/the same usernames with a differentiator at the end, so you can be bob#1212 instead of having to be bob12121212, which makes it possible for your friends to easily @bob. Without the #1234, you end up with the ‘firstnamebunchofnumbers’ phenomenon, which is truly annoying. Where before it would just assign you four numbers, now you have to either guess a unique differentiator which is more difficult to remember, or come up with another name.

Those random numbers also mean that it’s hard for people to find you and harass you with DM requests/friend requests/unsolicited DMs. That may not be a problem for you, but I’m sure not looking forward to some of the random assholes on the internet who love to bother me trying to find me when there’s no longer a #9756 (not my differentiator, lol) at the end of my Discord login.

Sure, I could pick a different username on Discord from everywhere else I’ve ever been on the internet for the past 25 years, but why should I have to do that in order to not be harassed, when the present system already protects me from random harassment? It’s a change with no upside for me and lots of downsides.

Likewise, there’s an issue of impersonators, because getting your new username is ‘first come, first serve.’ I’m sure there will be no problems with impersonation or blocking someone from taking the username they’ve used everywhere, or people impersonating others for the purposes of harassment and defamation!

Hey, did you know that on places which use unique usernames like this, there’s always a black market for desirable usernames? Do you have any idea how much money changes hands over URLs and usernames? Did you know that a grandpa was killed (he died from a heart attack brought on by the stress) after teenagers SWATted him because he wouldn’t sell them his Twitter username? I literally sold my old professional top-level URL, the one connected to my deadname, for three thousand dollars.

Anytime a black market opportunity opens up, spam and abuse skyrocket. I will bet you money right now that once this change goes through, you’re going to see a huge increase in phishing, spam, etc. so that scammers can get hold of 'desirable’ usernames and then either sell them back to the people they stole them from, or sell them to others. Why do I think that’ll happen? Because it already happens everywhere else:

Sonderman targeted at least five people across the country, demanding they give up their social media handles, according to an indictment. Herring was the only victim who died. If the person surrendered the handle, Sonderman would then put it up for sale on internet forums, the indictment stated. If they refused, Sonderman and his co-conspirator would “bombard the owner with repeated phone calls and text messages” and harass them in an attempt to get them to change their mind, according to the indictment.

Did you know that a lot of people were paying for Nitro specifically so they could have custom number discriminators, so once that’s gone, there will be no reason for a lot of those people to continue to pay for Nitro, so in terms of money, Discord is shooting themselves in the foot again. They think they’re going to be able to present Discord as a social media site rather than a messaging service, and… like… none of the users actually want that, because that’s not what Discord is to them.

Last (well, last of the things I feel like writing about, but actually not last of the reasons this is an ill-advised idea) but not least, this actually reduces the system’s capacity for unique and understandable usernames! It used to be that you could have bob#0001-9999, and then bob1#0001-9999, but now you only have bob, bob1, bob2. That doesn’t even take into account that they’re doing away with capital letters, so where before you had bob#0001-9999 AND Bob#0001-9999, now you only have bob, bob1, bob2, etc. They’ve actually reduced their capacity for unique usernames, which seems weird in terms of creating opportunity for growth.

Edited to add: oh hey look, I was already right!

Another thing that seems to be quite interesting; users who will soonest have access to this feature (still primarily Discord staff, partners, affiliates, etc) are operating on a reservation basis – claiming their username, so that it can’t be taken by another high-priority user. Thing is, there are some well-known personalities, in addition to production studios, business groups, etc. that are unable to access their own names because, turns out, someone beat them to the punch. Public statements from indie title, Rust Lake’s team, reads, “A warning for all the indie devs waiting to claim their own username, we just received an email that we, as Verified Owners, could finally submit a new username and wow… ‘rustylake’ is already taken!” In addition, several partners have discovered names like “markiplier” (a well-known YouTube content creator and online personality) were not reserved early, and now, the affected individual(s) will not have access to their identifying name on this platform.

Anyway, I’m checking out new chat platforms because this is about to be a whole fucking mess.

#PSA #not art #somebody took ''piranhapunk'' on discord & its NOT ME !!!

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