I first joined Discord back in 2017, and since it's 2024, that makes my account around 7 years old. If you have used Discord for a long time, you may remember an era before constant CAPTCHAs or phone verification needed on every account. I certainly do. Though if you've used Discord for a long time, you can certainly also recall plenty of DMs and messages from scammers and spammers. As the site has grown, it has attracted a lot of people looking to abuse the platform, which have made increased security checks a requirement.
If only they worked.
I have a friend who coded up a program to flood a server with dummy user accounts in one day that sends the CAPTCHAs off to some AI service somewhere to solve. It costs almost nothing. He didn't even do it to spam people, he was just bored and learning Python. The ease of flooding Discord with spam is incredible. As a developer, I empathize with the struggle to weed out bad actors.
Unfortunately, sometimes things go a little too far.
When Discord keeps mounting pressure against these spammers, they're bound to catch a few innocent people along the way. Today, that was me. I have never spammed anyone in my entire time on Discord, and yet I was caught up in their filters. I think I've been on their radar for years after they required me to verify a phone number. Today, the straw that broke the filter camel's back was when I DMed someone a game server link who I had never DMed before. Sure, it's a little suspicious to DM a person you've never interacted with a link, except for the part where I did interact with them because we share a mutual server and talk to each other in general chat 🙄.
This, of course, couldn't have happened at a better time, given that Discord support staff are on holiday break, and will have a massive backlog to sort through when they return.
I feel like there should be a little more leniency for accounts that are 7 years old, have a verified email and phone, are in good standing, have a hardware authenticator linked, and have paid for Nitro Classic for years. Something tells me that accounts like mine aren't exactly spamming.
Anyway, hopefully Discord Support responds soon. For now, I'll leave you with the email I got telling me my account was disabled. Enjoy.
Update on 3:45PM on 2024/1/7, account reinstated:
Update at 12:12PM on 2024/1/8, IT HAPPENED AGAIN
I DMed a person the word "ugh" after I got an automute in the Rec Room Discord, and boom I was insta-banned from Discord. I am so pissed at this point. Hopefully they respond more quickly this time.
Update at 8:01 PM on 2024/1/10, ban finally lifted... again
Update at 3:01 AM on 2024/1/15, account suspended... again... again.
This is absurd at this point. Here's the ticket I sent in:
In case you're curious, here's the exact moment (trimmed from original clip) that I got suspended:
...so I guess I'll be spending the next 2 days refreshing the tab with the Discord ticket on it. 🙄
Update 4:32:18 AM on 2024/1/17:
Finally back... again... again...
