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Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

173 points by asdojasdosadsa 4y ago

I recently tried to make a separate work account in Discord. To do so I created a new account with my main accounts phone number. This caused discord to delete my primary account phone number and used it for the new account. However, this alone caused me to be instantly banned. After reaching out to support, they basically told that me I could not use my present phone number for verification and that they couldn't tell me why, and couldn't help me further with that. I would really like to keep my primary Discord account, is there anything I can do about it? I have contacted Discord support through their ticket system twice, I have contacted Discord on Twitter (DM); but to no avail

throwawayuydw 4y ago
This happened to me - they absolutely will not unblock your # unless you know somebody who works there beyond the support queues. I was told by a friend who did a stint at Discord that standard flow is churn new accounts, and that's acceptable because their users are already used to name churn.
- celdon25 4y ago
  Wait, are you implying they’re doing it to cook the books for inflating the total # of accounts on the platform? Somebody call Elon.
  - throwawayuydw 4y ago
    This is not at all what I meant, my implication is that they don't care about the poor user experience. I'm sure they don't count the banned accounts.
zamalek 4y ago
> I recently tried to make a separate work account in Discord. You should explain this to your employer and not use a gaming communication platform for work purposes. Matrix is trivial to self-host.
10g1k 4y ago
Discord, Reddit, and Twitter are notorious for being infested with pedos as moderators. You're better off without them. And there are alternatives.
mdrzn 4y ago
Seems like it's an old issue that hasn't been fixed [0] [0] https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360055677152-Anyone-else-with-two-accounts-and-one-mobile-phone-number-problem https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/3600556...
- asdojasdosadsa 4y ago
  Wow, how can a system be designed like this? There is no warning or notification when creating a new account, the old account just goes to 'limbo' mode... I still get notifications on my phone from the logged in account, but when trying to access it's asking for phone verification, which obviously doesn't work because there is no phone number tied to the account!
  - desindol 4y ago
    There is literally a topic with the problem in their help. Their phone number is on timeout for a week. Sucks but not being able to read sucks even more. >>Have an alt account, or help a friend complete their verification? Your phone has just been registered and is on timeout. Unfortunately we can not lift this, and you will need to wait for the end of the timeout to use the number once more, or use a different number to verify the account.
32gbsd 4y ago
Putting your phone number into anything is a big mistake.
- IntelMiner 4y ago
  This is not a helpful nor constructive answer
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    Though you're not wrong, what would a constructive answer be in this case? Discord is ignoring OP and they alone can restore service. I don't see what constructive answer you can expect in these threads other than "I work at <company> and I DM'd the CEO for you"; I've seen FAANG companies and Stripe respond that way here on HN, but never Discord. The best alternative I can think of is "that sucks, rotate phone numbers and try with a new account" which is just as completely useless for OP. If that were an option, they'd already done so.
    - 32gbsd 4y ago
      this a common trend with technocrates defending technology that can basically be ripped out from under you at any moment. hopefully OP will get some help but there are many in a similar situation in many other similar apps.
  - _V_ 4y ago
    Well technically you are correct but the underlying issue is Discord and unability of their tech support to change anything in regards to these blacklistings/flaggings. It is infuriating and I don't see why these services would need my phone number.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
raxxorraxor 4y ago
Any service that forces a telephone registration for verification is crap in my opinion. If you need an account professionally, you need a mobile phone to be provided for you. This is in your interest and that of the company if they decide they want to use your account beyond your employment for example.
- naasking 4y ago
  Do you have a better way to increase the probability that the signup is a real human being and not a bot of some kind?
- groffee 4y ago
  > Any service that forces a telephone registration for verification is crap in my opinion. I agree with you, but it does dramatically cut down on spam registration.
- SnowHill9902 4y ago
  iPhone requires a phone registration no?
wodenokoto 4y ago
So you can just snipe peoples accounts if you know their phone number?
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  Only if you can verify the phone number from what I can tell. You'd need to have access to the phone number's texts for that to work.
huhtenberg 4y ago
HN needs a separate section for this sort of "media shaming" posts. I understand why they are being made, but it's getting a bit tiring to see these on the front page so frequently.
- chinathrow 4y ago
  > I understand why they are being made, but it's getting a bit tiring to see these on the front page so frequently. It's getting a bit tiring to see that these large corporations still can't figure it out on how to treat your user base regarding de-platforming.
  - bruce343434 4y ago
    This is barely "hacker" and definitely not "news".
    - Rathseg 4y ago
      Actually, I would consider it news. I learned something new as I have considered making a second discord account, one personal, one for more professional things since orgs seem to be picking it. I only have one phone number and and now know not to use it for both if they ever ask for it. I also learned that they may ask for your phone number and lock you out for no reason if you refuse to give it them even if you already have an account(I have yet to give them my phone number). This lets me know to be even less trusting of them and to make sure I don't depend on anything from their service.
    - naasking 4y ago
      Hackers build these platforms. It's important for them to see and understand the common failure modes.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ctrlmeta 4y ago
The popularity of Discord always surprises me! It takes hard work and time to create an active community. Why put all that hard work and time into a corporate-controlled platform that can lock you out of it anytime they want? How do people feel ok taking such a big risk? Why not use an open protocol like Matrix (or IRC if you're savvy) to form your community?
- vouaobrasil 4y ago
  It's just because other people are there and it's a trend. That is why most people do things.
- Suzuran 4y ago
  Having experience with both, the big win with Discord vs. self-hosted services is that I don't have to directly fight the losing war/arms race vs. organized spam.
- zarzavat 4y ago
  What alternative is there that has: screen sharing, voice calls, all your friends across every community in one DM list, meaning that you can make group chats across communities?
  - ctrlmeta 4y ago
    But once the company locks me out, I would neither have screen sharing nor video calls nor the DM list. Isn't it better to just use Matrix which may have less features but those features I can rely on for a long time without the risk of being locked out?
    - the_lonely_road 4y ago
      Some people refuse to get in the ocean for fear of being killed by a shark. Most people swim, boat, surf, parasail, etc and enjoy that aspect of their life without more than the most casual thought of sharks. Neither group is right but one group has a much more enriched life…assuming they don’t get eaten by a shark of course.
ropeladder 4y ago
I triggered some Discord flag where now they require me to give them my phone number to log in via the web. I won't give it to them. Luckily I have a still-logged-in instance on my home computer, do I can still use that for the time being. Super frustration though.
- _V_ 4y ago
  I have the very same problem. It seems that my IP @ home was somehow flagged and I was unable to access Discord without giving them phone number. I will never give my phone to Discord/Twitter etc - just a matter of principle.
- kouteiheika 4y ago
  Same here. Still logged in through Firefox, but can't login through Chrome anymore. Exact same computer, exact same IP address. I contacted support and they refused to help me, quote: > I just checked with my team, and upon review of your account, it appears that our detection system has triggered successfully and we will not be removing the phone verification requirement on your account. You'll be required to register a phone number to your Discord account in order to continue the use of it. This is *after* I explained that I'm still logged in and can fully use Discord in another browser without registering a phone number. I tried to also get an answer as to whether I'll be locked out of my account if I log out of my account in Firefox, but they didn't tell me.
  - sanitycheck 4y ago
    They probably just don't have a way to invalidate tokens. When it expires you'll be locked out on Firefox too - better tie up any loose ends.
  - aaronmdjones 4y ago
    > I just checked with my team, and upon review of your account, it appears that our detection system has triggered successfully That's exactly the same response I got, word-for-word, to my lockout ticket [1]. Initially I thought it was a human replying to my ticket, now I'm not so sure. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31398660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31398660
sebastianconcpt 4y ago
Top G style.
- sebastianconcpt 4y ago
  It's fascinating to see how the more downvotes he gets, the stronger the the expression of truth becomes evident.
cloudwalk9 4y ago
Discord Trust and Safety in particular is downright useless. I feel I should share my story. It's a personal hell I've been stuck in for a while. I'm disabled from severe depression resistant to first line treatments, bedridden a lot of the time, and I rely on the platform for most of my social interaction and resources for my hobbies, as far as I can pursue them of course. Discord is invaluable and is basically a monopoly in my cultural bubble. On Jan 13, they disabled a 7 year old early supporter account with an active Nitro subscription with the reason "Your account posted content that sexualized individuals under the age of 18, or was involved in servers dedicated to such unacceptable content". I've never done this. I learned a lot of people were getting disabled for being in a server that they haven't touched in years and it went rogue or was raided and that stuff was posted there, so I figured I was a victim of a carpet bombing and it was a one-off. But they continued to disable every new account (12 so far, I lost count). Most of the accounts were disabled in the last two weeks. They left me alone for 6 months until Sep 1 when my 4th account was disabled without the usual explanation email. I made an appeal and not only was it ignored, it was marked solved within 4 hours. In fact they have not communicated with me at all. They have ignored all of my tickets, have not sent emails for each account that was disabled after the first. Except one time I got an email but the reason was left blank. A few days ago I made three accounts to try to test ways to get them off my back. One was made on a virtual machine on a VPS located a thousand miles away from me and had no connection to me. Although I did give vague hints to friends that it was me. They banned all three accounts, even the VM one. I had a nervous breakdown knowing I may never be able to participate on the platform again. I also felt like I was being watched. In the last two weeks it was always the same Discord staff assigning themselves to my appeals, "Violet". This includes the one that was marked solved without communication. And they're supposedly experiencing increased ticket volumes. I'm not sure what I'm gonna do. Only thing I can hope for is Discord to basically die and everyone moves elsewhere, or they leave me alone.
- quikoa 4y ago
  Perhaps it's worth to consider taking them to a small claims court. I don't know what the odds of winning are but it's quite the hassle for a company.
JonathanBeuys 4y ago
I don't get it. We keep seeing these dystopian stories again and again and again. Does anybody really believe it will ever stop? Or will we all live in fear of losing a lot of work and valuable connections by being banned from one of our social accounts? I already lost one Instagram account that I put a lot of work into. One day, Insta suddenly asked for my birthday. After me putting it in, all I saw is "Sorry, this page isn't available." and thats it. Whenever I try to log in, all I get is "Sorry, this page isn't available.". Some kind of ban or bug. I dunno. I never managed to get it back. Feels very 1984. But when say "Ok, let's build social tools where the user owns their social graph via cryptographic proof" then there is nothing but (blind?) hate. Sometimes there are real discussions. Then the main argument is always "But what if you lose your private key?" Well, we could build something like Discord (FB, Twitter, Insta, HN, you name it) where losing our private key throws us back to the current system. So if the platform owner (say a DAO) "decides" to deplatform you (say via a DAO vote) you can use your private key to prohibit it. This way, you can only become deplatformed if the platform decides to deplatform you AND you lose your private key. If you only lose your private key, then you can ask the platform to please transfer your account to a new private key. Then the usual authentification mechanisms (email, phone, id etc) kick in. I could sleep way better if I knew that two have to mess up for me to lose my digital life. Me and the platform.
- Sebb767 4y ago
  For each unreasonably banned user, there are 5 concerned ones and 100 ones who joined the platform blue-eyed. It'll be hard for the few of us to fight the network effect.
- vachina 4y ago
  Not your server, not your data. Host your own mission critical services, and don’t commit too much to (especially free) third party services.
  - onion2k 4y ago
    In the case of the user who started this thread, there's no option to 'host it yourself'. They're trying to be part of the community that Discord hosts. Discord is stopping them. You can't just fire up an IRC server and ask everyone on the Discord to move because you can't join in. That's not how life works.
_V_ 4y ago
I have also tried to contact support and it was painful. At first you get an automated response from some bot which is unhelpfull. After some more diggin and poking around you get to a human but they just told me that they don't know details about flagging and cannot do anything in regards to these processes. So basically useless. I really don't understand why it got so popular edit: typo
- Sebb767 4y ago
  > I really don't understand why it got so popular Because enough people never contact support for it to not be a major problem, I assume.
PaulKeeble 4y ago
When they were doing the massive bans in November/December/January it looked like it was to try and boost their new user stats for the rumoured upcoming public sale. But more and more it just looks like they have an errant security algorithm that bans legitimate customers with no recourse. I suspect much of Discord's new user signups are people who have had accounts banned and then have to make a new account, there probably isn't much real growth happening now and there is growing disquiet about their terrible customer support.
msoucy 4y ago
Yeah you're SOL. Discord has a habit of banning people, saying that they investigated themselves and determined themselves to be correct in banning you, and then deleting accounts.
superkuh 4y ago
Stop depending entirely on corporate systems for your personal communication and recreation (I say on HN...). And absolutely stop calling for the use of violence (regulations by government) in these situations. Just because Bob says you cannot come over to the weekly neighborhood BBQs in his backyard does not mean it is ethical for you to call up your police friend to threaten Bob and to make sure you can go. It doesn't matter if you're right and he's wrong. It doesn't matter if everyone in the neighborhood continues to chose to go to his BBQs and you can't. It's still Bob's backyard and he isn't inititing violence against you. Don't do it to him.
- helpfulclippy 4y ago
  I hear you about saying no to depending on the rings of power. Not sure about the regulatory part with Bob’s backyard. What about when Bob intentionally persuades everyone to route all their packages and mail through his house, which he routinely opens, reads and studies to determine their preferences and desires and compile psychological profiles of everyone in the neighborhood which he then discloses to various unidentified third parties including law enforcement, debt collectors, abusers and criminals? What about when Bob uses his control to deny people access to their own communications and stuff, on the grounds that they’re actually his now because it’s at his house and he decided for unspecified reasons that they broke one of his vague and unilaterally-defined rules? What if Bob does this at such a scale that he can now assist the government in undermining the constitutional protections against unwarranted searches, or uses his influence and knowledge to purposefully stoke and manipulate anger in ways that he KNOWS he can’t control and will get people killed or at least ruin their lives, but at least makes him more money? Do Bob’s property rights need to be balanced against other societal needs then?
  - superkuh 4y ago
    I can only control my own actions. If Bob does that then I'd stop being friends with Bob and stop going to his BBQs. If other people want to keep using Bob's services thats entirely up to them. And their continued use is entirely voluntary. If they want they can stop. It's already balanced. All anyone has to do is make a personal choice rather than invoking calls for coersion.
hrbf 4y ago
It fascinates me to no end. On the one hand many people more or less voluntarily use private companies’ free services and are surprised when they are shut out for arbitrary reasons. On the other, regulation is decried as government overreach. Then there are the inevitable technologist voices calling for yet another technical solution for an issue created by technology and economic liberalism in the first place. This is a social and legal issue, not a technical one.
jimktrains2 4y ago
Somehow my phone number was removed from my account and now i cannot add it again. When asking support why it was removed they've responded multiple times with the same canned email saying they can't remove the phone number requirement. I repeated said I don't want it removed, just to know why my number was removed and how to add it back, but yet i receive the same canned message.
chrisked 4y ago
Write abuse@ and you stand a good chance they revert this quickly.
- dannyw 4y ago
  No chance whatsoever, they legitimately don't have a flow for unbanning people outside of knowing an employee.
  - cinericius 4y ago
    This isn't true. I've been banned and then unbanned in this exact scenario - they re-enabled my account after 2 days. I had my messages flagged as spam for a further 6 weeks, but it was eventually resolved. My only contact with Discord was emailing support@.
  - chrisked 4y ago
    No true for me. I was banned and recovered my account within 2 days by emailing abuse@discordapp.com.
senko 4y ago
We really need a platform that would run open source for you as a service. In many cases there are reasonable OSS alternatives (here, Discord itself!) but not everyone wants to be a part-time sysadmin. Free/Libre Open-Source Software as a Service, anyone?
- rjmunro 4y ago
  There are loads, but they have to ban people too.
readsadhours 4y ago
dancemethis 4y ago
Be happy they somehow think they have enough of your personal data and metadata.
AlwaysRock 4y ago
Are you using a google voice number or something? A lot of big tech wont accept that type of number for verification.
chmod775 4y ago
I did the same thing (also wanting to create a work account) with a similar result. Luckily it was the new account that got banned instead of the old one. I hadn't added the phone number to my old account and when I later wanted to do so I was informed it could only be assigned to one. So I removed the number from the new account, which immediately got banned, and then added it to my old account without a problem. Something about "new account without phone" discord seems to dislike. My old account also had some money spent with them, which possibly saved it.
cookingrobot 4y ago
My idea is we should regulate a lot of online services like we do landlords. I remember years ago Microsoft thought someone was pirating their software so they started reading their emails looking for evidence. That seemed wrong to me. A landlord wouldn’t be allowed to snoop through your drawers if they thought you were stealing, they’d need to convince the police to get a warrant. And in this discord case, once a company agrees to create an account for you and start providing service, they shouldn’t be allowed to “evict” you overnight for no good reason. There should be a proper process with protections when ending the relationship.
- DrWumbo 4y ago
  Legislation has actually taken us in the opposite direction. With FOSTA/SESTA online platforms were required to make an effort to go through user content. I think a better analogy to use is these platforms being like bars or cafes. You don't expect the wait staff or bartender to snoop on your conversations, but if law enforcement asks what they know they might be forced to comply. If a bar notices you pimping and doesn't act, they could be liable.
saati 4y ago
They did the same to me, then I asked for a GDPR delete and they restored my account instead. If you are an EU citizen it's worth a shot.
gaws 4y ago
> I would really like to keep my primary Discord account, is there anything I can do about it? Why? Discord has no obligation to its users, and it's a volatile platform to conduct any mission-critical or business-related communications. The best thing to do is to stop using it.
yieldcrv 4y ago
Honestly at this point I just went to the cell phone store and added a new line with a new sim card Its like $5-20 dollars/mo, circumvents phone number based account barriers, circumvents voip and burner number discrimination each iphone has 2 sim card slots, can give dates and strippers a phone number that doesn't have green bubbles when texted, amplifying my broad population legitimacy by an order of magnitude (its USA obviously it matters), while still keeping them segregated I pay more for an uber, or a drink, or some stupid SaaS seat. just a social and internet freedom tax. at this point just make it normal
meonmyphone 4y ago
I had a similar issue where the support was useless (said I triggered some flag and nothing could be done). My conclusion was to avoid using the service.
Dr_ReD 4y ago
Really. At this point legislature is the only way out.
wojciii 4y ago
My discord user was initially blocked as they thought I was a bot. I had to write to support several times before it was unblocked and it wasted two weeks of my life. Discord sucks. The only reason that I use it is because of work.

throwawayuydw 4y ago

This happened to me - they absolutely will not unblock your # unless you know somebody who works there beyond the support queues. I was told by a friend who did a stint at Discord that standard flow is churn new accounts, and that's acceptable because their users are already used to name churn.

celdon25 4y ago
Wait, are you implying they’re doing it to cook the books for inflating the total # of accounts on the platform? Somebody call Elon.
- throwawayuydw 4y ago
  This is not at all what I meant, my implication is that they don't care about the poor user experience. I'm sure they don't count the banned accounts.

zamalek 4y ago

> I recently tried to make a separate work account in Discord. You should explain this to your employer and not use a gaming communication platform for work purposes. Matrix is trivial to self-host.

10g1k 4y ago

Discord, Reddit, and Twitter are notorious for being infested with pedos as moderators. You're better off without them. And there are alternatives.

mdrzn 4y ago

Seems like it's an old issue that hasn't been fixed [0] [0] https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360055677152-Anyone-else-with-two-accounts-and-one-mobile-phone-number-problem https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/3600556...

asdojasdosadsa 4y ago
Wow, how can a system be designed like this? There is no warning or notification when creating a new account, the old account just goes to 'limbo' mode... I still get notifications on my phone from the logged in account, but when trying to access it's asking for phone verification, which obviously doesn't work because there is no phone number tied to the account!
- desindol 4y ago
  There is literally a topic with the problem in their help. Their phone number is on timeout for a week. Sucks but not being able to read sucks even more. >>Have an alt account, or help a friend complete their verification? Your phone has just been registered and is on timeout. Unfortunately we can not lift this, and you will need to wait for the end of the timeout to use the number once more, or use a different number to verify the account.

32gbsd 4y ago

Putting your phone number into anything is a big mistake.

IntelMiner 4y ago
This is not a helpful nor constructive answer
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  Though you're not wrong, what would a constructive answer be in this case? Discord is ignoring OP and they alone can restore service. I don't see what constructive answer you can expect in these threads other than "I work at <company> and I DM'd the CEO for you"; I've seen FAANG companies and Stripe respond that way here on HN, but never Discord. The best alternative I can think of is "that sucks, rotate phone numbers and try with a new account" which is just as completely useless for OP. If that were an option, they'd already done so.
  - 32gbsd 4y ago
    this a common trend with technocrates defending technology that can basically be ripped out from under you at any moment. hopefully OP will get some help but there are many in a similar situation in many other similar apps.
- _V_ 4y ago
  Well technically you are correct but the underlying issue is Discord and unability of their tech support to change anything in regards to these blacklistings/flaggings. It is infuriating and I don't see why these services would need my phone number.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

raxxorraxor 4y ago

Any service that forces a telephone registration for verification is crap in my opinion. If you need an account professionally, you need a mobile phone to be provided for you. This is in your interest and that of the company if they decide they want to use your account beyond your employment for example.

naasking 4y ago
Do you have a better way to increase the probability that the signup is a real human being and not a bot of some kind?
groffee 4y ago
> Any service that forces a telephone registration for verification is crap in my opinion. I agree with you, but it does dramatically cut down on spam registration.
SnowHill9902 4y ago
iPhone requires a phone registration no?

wodenokoto 4y ago

So you can just snipe peoples accounts if you know their phone number?

jeroenhd 4y ago
Only if you can verify the phone number from what I can tell. You'd need to have access to the phone number's texts for that to work.

huhtenberg 4y ago

HN needs a separate section for this sort of "media shaming" posts. I understand why they are being made, but it's getting a bit tiring to see these on the front page so frequently.

chinathrow 4y ago
> I understand why they are being made, but it's getting a bit tiring to see these on the front page so frequently. It's getting a bit tiring to see that these large corporations still can't figure it out on how to treat your user base regarding de-platforming.
- bruce343434 4y ago
  This is barely "hacker" and definitely not "news".
  - Rathseg 4y ago
    Actually, I would consider it news. I learned something new as I have considered making a second discord account, one personal, one for more professional things since orgs seem to be picking it. I only have one phone number and and now know not to use it for both if they ever ask for it. I also learned that they may ask for your phone number and lock you out for no reason if you refuse to give it them even if you already have an account(I have yet to give them my phone number). This lets me know to be even less trusting of them and to make sure I don't depend on anything from their service.
  - naasking 4y ago
    Hackers build these platforms. It's important for them to see and understand the common failure modes.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ctrlmeta 4y ago

The popularity of Discord always surprises me! It takes hard work and time to create an active community. Why put all that hard work and time into a corporate-controlled platform that can lock you out of it anytime they want? How do people feel ok taking such a big risk? Why not use an open protocol like Matrix (or IRC if you're savvy) to form your community?

vouaobrasil 4y ago
It's just because other people are there and it's a trend. That is why most people do things.
Suzuran 4y ago
Having experience with both, the big win with Discord vs. self-hosted services is that I don't have to directly fight the losing war/arms race vs. organized spam.
zarzavat 4y ago
What alternative is there that has: screen sharing, voice calls, all your friends across every community in one DM list, meaning that you can make group chats across communities?
- ctrlmeta 4y ago
  But once the company locks me out, I would neither have screen sharing nor video calls nor the DM list. Isn't it better to just use Matrix which may have less features but those features I can rely on for a long time without the risk of being locked out?
  - the_lonely_road 4y ago
    Some people refuse to get in the ocean for fear of being killed by a shark. Most people swim, boat, surf, parasail, etc and enjoy that aspect of their life without more than the most casual thought of sharks. Neither group is right but one group has a much more enriched life…assuming they don’t get eaten by a shark of course.

ropeladder 4y ago

I triggered some Discord flag where now they require me to give them my phone number to log in via the web. I won't give it to them. Luckily I have a still-logged-in instance on my home computer, do I can still use that for the time being. Super frustration though.

_V_ 4y ago
I have the very same problem. It seems that my IP @ home was somehow flagged and I was unable to access Discord without giving them phone number. I will never give my phone to Discord/Twitter etc - just a matter of principle.
kouteiheika 4y ago
Same here. Still logged in through Firefox, but can't login through Chrome anymore. Exact same computer, exact same IP address. I contacted support and they refused to help me, quote: > I just checked with my team, and upon review of your account, it appears that our detection system has triggered successfully and we will not be removing the phone verification requirement on your account. You'll be required to register a phone number to your Discord account in order to continue the use of it. This is *after* I explained that I'm still logged in and can fully use Discord in another browser without registering a phone number. I tried to also get an answer as to whether I'll be locked out of my account if I log out of my account in Firefox, but they didn't tell me.
- sanitycheck 4y ago
  They probably just don't have a way to invalidate tokens. When it expires you'll be locked out on Firefox too - better tie up any loose ends.
- aaronmdjones 4y ago
  > I just checked with my team, and upon review of your account, it appears that our detection system has triggered successfully That's exactly the same response I got, word-for-word, to my lockout ticket [1]. Initially I thought it was a human replying to my ticket, now I'm not so sure. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31398660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31398660

sebastianconcpt 4y ago

Top G style.

sebastianconcpt 4y ago
It's fascinating to see how the more downvotes he gets, the stronger the the expression of truth becomes evident.

cloudwalk9 4y ago

Discord Trust and Safety in particular is downright useless. I feel I should share my story. It's a personal hell I've been stuck in for a while. I'm disabled from severe depression resistant to first line treatments, bedridden a lot of the time, and I rely on the platform for most of my social interaction and resources for my hobbies, as far as I can pursue them of course. Discord is invaluable and is basically a monopoly in my cultural bubble. On Jan 13, they disabled a 7 year old early supporter account with an active Nitro subscription with the reason "Your account posted content that sexualized individuals under the age of 18, or was involved in servers dedicated to such unacceptable content". I've never done this. I learned a lot of people were getting disabled for being in a server that they haven't touched in years and it went rogue or was raided and that stuff was posted there, so I figured I was a victim of a carpet bombing and it was a one-off. But they continued to disable every new account (12 so far, I lost count). Most of the accounts were disabled in the last two weeks. They left me alone for 6 months until Sep 1 when my 4th account was disabled without the usual explanation email. I made an appeal and not only was it ignored, it was marked solved within 4 hours. In fact they have not communicated with me at all. They have ignored all of my tickets, have not sent emails for each account that was disabled after the first. Except one time I got an email but the reason was left blank. A few days ago I made three accounts to try to test ways to get them off my back. One was made on a virtual machine on a VPS located a thousand miles away from me and had no connection to me. Although I did give vague hints to friends that it was me. They banned all three accounts, even the VM one. I had a nervous breakdown knowing I may never be able to participate on the platform again. I also felt like I was being watched. In the last two weeks it was always the same Discord staff assigning themselves to my appeals, "Violet". This includes the one that was marked solved without communication. And they're supposedly experiencing increased ticket volumes. I'm not sure what I'm gonna do. Only thing I can hope for is Discord to basically die and everyone moves elsewhere, or they leave me alone.

quikoa 4y ago
Perhaps it's worth to consider taking them to a small claims court. I don't know what the odds of winning are but it's quite the hassle for a company.

JonathanBeuys 4y ago

I don't get it. We keep seeing these dystopian stories again and again and again. Does anybody really believe it will ever stop? Or will we all live in fear of losing a lot of work and valuable connections by being banned from one of our social accounts? I already lost one Instagram account that I put a lot of work into. One day, Insta suddenly asked for my birthday. After me putting it in, all I saw is "Sorry, this page isn't available." and thats it. Whenever I try to log in, all I get is "Sorry, this page isn't available.". Some kind of ban or bug. I dunno. I never managed to get it back. Feels very 1984. But when say "Ok, let's build social tools where the user owns their social graph via cryptographic proof" then there is nothing but (blind?) hate. Sometimes there are real discussions. Then the main argument is always "But what if you lose your private key?" Well, we could build something like Discord (FB, Twitter, Insta, HN, you name it) where losing our private key throws us back to the current system. So if the platform owner (say a DAO) "decides" to deplatform you (say via a DAO vote) you can use your private key to prohibit it. This way, you can only become deplatformed if the platform decides to deplatform you AND you lose your private key. If you only lose your private key, then you can ask the platform to please transfer your account to a new private key. Then the usual authentification mechanisms (email, phone, id etc) kick in. I could sleep way better if I knew that two have to mess up for me to lose my digital life. Me and the platform.

Sebb767 4y ago
For each unreasonably banned user, there are 5 concerned ones and 100 ones who joined the platform blue-eyed. It'll be hard for the few of us to fight the network effect.
vachina 4y ago
Not your server, not your data. Host your own mission critical services, and don’t commit too much to (especially free) third party services.
- onion2k 4y ago
  In the case of the user who started this thread, there's no option to 'host it yourself'. They're trying to be part of the community that Discord hosts. Discord is stopping them. You can't just fire up an IRC server and ask everyone on the Discord to move because you can't join in. That's not how life works.

_V_ 4y ago

I have also tried to contact support and it was painful. At first you get an automated response from some bot which is unhelpfull. After some more diggin and poking around you get to a human but they just told me that they don't know details about flagging and cannot do anything in regards to these processes. So basically useless. I really don't understand why it got so popular edit: typo

Sebb767 4y ago
> I really don't understand why it got so popular Because enough people never contact support for it to not be a major problem, I assume.

PaulKeeble 4y ago

When they were doing the massive bans in November/December/January it looked like it was to try and boost their new user stats for the rumoured upcoming public sale. But more and more it just looks like they have an errant security algorithm that bans legitimate customers with no recourse. I suspect much of Discord's new user signups are people who have had accounts banned and then have to make a new account, there probably isn't much real growth happening now and there is growing disquiet about their terrible customer support.

msoucy 4y ago

Yeah you're SOL. Discord has a habit of banning people, saying that they investigated themselves and determined themselves to be correct in banning you, and then deleting accounts.

superkuh 4y ago

Stop depending entirely on corporate systems for your personal communication and recreation (I say on HN...). And absolutely stop calling for the use of violence (regulations by government) in these situations. Just because Bob says you cannot come over to the weekly neighborhood BBQs in his backyard does not mean it is ethical for you to call up your police friend to threaten Bob and to make sure you can go. It doesn't matter if you're right and he's wrong. It doesn't matter if everyone in the neighborhood continues to chose to go to his BBQs and you can't. It's still Bob's backyard and he isn't inititing violence against you. Don't do it to him.

helpfulclippy 4y ago
I hear you about saying no to depending on the rings of power. Not sure about the regulatory part with Bob’s backyard. What about when Bob intentionally persuades everyone to route all their packages and mail through his house, which he routinely opens, reads and studies to determine their preferences and desires and compile psychological profiles of everyone in the neighborhood which he then discloses to various unidentified third parties including law enforcement, debt collectors, abusers and criminals? What about when Bob uses his control to deny people access to their own communications and stuff, on the grounds that they’re actually his now because it’s at his house and he decided for unspecified reasons that they broke one of his vague and unilaterally-defined rules? What if Bob does this at such a scale that he can now assist the government in undermining the constitutional protections against unwarranted searches, or uses his influence and knowledge to purposefully stoke and manipulate anger in ways that he KNOWS he can’t control and will get people killed or at least ruin their lives, but at least makes him more money? Do Bob’s property rights need to be balanced against other societal needs then?
- superkuh 4y ago
  I can only control my own actions. If Bob does that then I'd stop being friends with Bob and stop going to his BBQs. If other people want to keep using Bob's services thats entirely up to them. And their continued use is entirely voluntary. If they want they can stop. It's already balanced. All anyone has to do is make a personal choice rather than invoking calls for coersion.

hrbf 4y ago

It fascinates me to no end. On the one hand many people more or less voluntarily use private companies’ free services and are surprised when they are shut out for arbitrary reasons. On the other, regulation is decried as government overreach. Then there are the inevitable technologist voices calling for yet another technical solution for an issue created by technology and economic liberalism in the first place. This is a social and legal issue, not a technical one.

jimktrains2 4y ago

Somehow my phone number was removed from my account and now i cannot add it again. When asking support why it was removed they've responded multiple times with the same canned email saying they can't remove the phone number requirement. I repeated said I don't want it removed, just to know why my number was removed and how to add it back, but yet i receive the same canned message.

chrisked 4y ago

Write abuse@ and you stand a good chance they revert this quickly.

dannyw 4y ago
No chance whatsoever, they legitimately don't have a flow for unbanning people outside of knowing an employee.
- cinericius 4y ago
  This isn't true. I've been banned and then unbanned in this exact scenario - they re-enabled my account after 2 days. I had my messages flagged as spam for a further 6 weeks, but it was eventually resolved. My only contact with Discord was emailing support@.
- chrisked 4y ago
  No true for me. I was banned and recovered my account within 2 days by emailing abuse@discordapp.com.

senko 4y ago

We really need a platform that would run open source for you as a service. In many cases there are reasonable OSS alternatives (here, Discord itself!) but not everyone wants to be a part-time sysadmin. Free/Libre Open-Source Software as a Service, anyone?

rjmunro 4y ago
There are loads, but they have to ban people too.

readsadhours 4y ago

dancemethis 4y ago

Be happy they somehow think they have enough of your personal data and metadata.

AlwaysRock 4y ago

Are you using a google voice number or something? A lot of big tech wont accept that type of number for verification.

chmod775 4y ago

I did the same thing (also wanting to create a work account) with a similar result. Luckily it was the new account that got banned instead of the old one. I hadn't added the phone number to my old account and when I later wanted to do so I was informed it could only be assigned to one. So I removed the number from the new account, which immediately got banned, and then added it to my old account without a problem. Something about "new account without phone" discord seems to dislike. My old account also had some money spent with them, which possibly saved it.

cookingrobot 4y ago

My idea is we should regulate a lot of online services like we do landlords. I remember years ago Microsoft thought someone was pirating their software so they started reading their emails looking for evidence. That seemed wrong to me. A landlord wouldn’t be allowed to snoop through your drawers if they thought you were stealing, they’d need to convince the police to get a warrant. And in this discord case, once a company agrees to create an account for you and start providing service, they shouldn’t be allowed to “evict” you overnight for no good reason. There should be a proper process with protections when ending the relationship.

DrWumbo 4y ago
Legislation has actually taken us in the opposite direction. With FOSTA/SESTA online platforms were required to make an effort to go through user content. I think a better analogy to use is these platforms being like bars or cafes. You don't expect the wait staff or bartender to snoop on your conversations, but if law enforcement asks what they know they might be forced to comply. If a bar notices you pimping and doesn't act, they could be liable.

saati 4y ago

They did the same to me, then I asked for a GDPR delete and they restored my account instead. If you are an EU citizen it's worth a shot.

gaws 4y ago

> I would really like to keep my primary Discord account, is there anything I can do about it? Why? Discord has no obligation to its users, and it's a volatile platform to conduct any mission-critical or business-related communications. The best thing to do is to stop using it.

yieldcrv 4y ago

Honestly at this point I just went to the cell phone store and added a new line with a new sim card Its like $5-20 dollars/mo, circumvents phone number based account barriers, circumvents voip and burner number discrimination each iphone has 2 sim card slots, can give dates and strippers a phone number that doesn't have green bubbles when texted, amplifying my broad population legitimacy by an order of magnitude (its USA obviously it matters), while still keeping them segregated I pay more for an uber, or a drink, or some stupid SaaS seat. just a social and internet freedom tax. at this point just make it normal

meonmyphone 4y ago

I had a similar issue where the support was useless (said I triggered some flag and nothing could be done). My conclusion was to avoid using the service.

Dr_ReD 4y ago

Really. At this point legislature is the only way out.

wojciii 4y ago

My discord user was initially blocked as they thought I was a bot. I had to write to support several times before it was unblocked and it wasted two weeks of my life. Discord sucks. The only reason that I use it is because of work.