Tell HN: Discord explicitly allows ban evasion

3 points by sdkgjajggaf 4 years ago | 3 comments

I saw one user get banned from the site for violating TOS (hateful content) and he created a new account right away with the same name and said so. I reported this and got the response:

Hello,

Thanks for writing in. Discord investigates and takes action on accounts which are in violation of our Terms of Service. However, we generally believe in targeting rule-breaking behavior instead of targeting an individual, in most cases.

If the user is continuing to violate Discord’s Terms of Service on their new account, we’ll need you to provide the message links of the violating content for us to investigate the situation. Alternately, if you feel that the past violation was so egregious that the user should not be allowed back on Discord under any circumstances, please let us know and provide any additional context about the situation, and we will investigate further.

Sincerely,

Discord Trust & Safety

So they don't just turn a blind eye to ban evasion, but it is their policy to let TOS violating users create new accounts without consequence.

dtagames 4 years ago |

Discord is different from other social media sites in that you, the server owner, must also be the moderator. You may ban or re-ban a user, but what I see Discord saying here is that it's not going to get them a platform ban. The platform isn't public. Only your server users saw that content and only if you didn't take it down.

hdjsksjd 4 years ago | |

If the user was banned from Discord for voilating Discord TOS I don't see why the burden should fall on server owners. It should be Discord's responsibility to enforce sitewide rules and take down hateful content.

dtagames 4 years ago | | |

There is nothing on Discord is that is "sitewide." It just doesn't work that way.

The user was not banned from Discord. The person was banned by the server owner. The "TOS" in this case refers to the server rules, set by the server owner.