Discord is a proprietary instant messaging platform by “Discord, Inc.” that was released on May 13, 2015.¹⁾ The platform is quite mainstream, so it gets a lot of pushback, but the company is planning to go public in the near future,²⁾ which has allowed the issues to become more apparent.

The platform was initially advertised as a 'gamer-oriented' platform to Reddit communities in 2015,³⁾⁴⁾ then it would gain serious momentum when video calls rolled out in 2017,⁵⁾ which was the death knell for Skype.⁶⁾ Around 2020, the platform dropped 'app' from most of their handles⁷⁾⁸⁾ and phased out the 'gaming' label,⁹⁾ but the private company behind the platform was slowly becoming more 'corporate'.^{10)11)12)13)14)}

In 2025, Humam Sakhnini replaced co-founder Jason Citron as CEO,¹⁵⁾¹⁶⁾ while the platform began to test out age verification,¹⁷⁾ but then came the 5CA¹⁸⁾ hack.^{19)20)21)22)23)} In 2026, the company had made progress on its IPO plans²⁴⁾ and, despite poor timing, announced a global 'teen by default' rollout²⁵⁾ that some noted used Persona.²⁶⁾²⁷⁾ However, the backlash only delayed said rollout.²⁸⁾

There are a number of third-party clients and mods for Discord. Most people use these to: simply improve the user experience (e.g. custom CSS, extensions, plugins, etc.), or avoid their official Electron client. A few known examples are shown below, often with the disclaimer that 'third-party clients' could get you banned in uncommon scenarios (e.g. broken code tripping 'anti-spam' measure, self-snitching,²⁹⁾ etc.).

• Discord uses device fingerprinting and reCAPTCHA, so it can flag your account as 'suspicious' and demand a phone number.^30)31)32) Ban evasion is a pain now, but it's not impossible.
• For the record, a Discord 'server' is technically considered a 'guild',³³⁾ which shouldn't be confused with the discontinued 'guild' feature³⁴⁾ that only exists because it was competing with Guilded.
• In 2018, the company added an arbitration clause to impede class action,³⁵⁾³⁶⁾ requiring you to opt-out by emailing arbitration-opt-out@discord.com within 30 days of your account's creation or the terms going into effect.³⁷⁾³⁸⁾ It was never clarified if you have to repeat this, if you do the latter.
• During the Among Us trend, Discord jumped the gun on announcing 'social party games' in 2020,³⁹⁾⁴⁰⁾ which didn't actually roll out to the public until its 8th anniversary event on June 15, 2023.⁴¹⁾
• Back in 2021 and 2022, the company used 'latinx' during National Hispanic Heritage Month.⁴²⁾⁴³⁾
• In 2025, Discord lets you to create 'game servers' through Shockbyte using 'server boosts'.⁴⁴⁾ This isn't advisable as the price in inflated and the service has a poor reputation, especially with Minecraft.
• When every other artist makes a Discord guild, don't be surprised when people rarely speak in it. :)
• For small guilds, I'd personally disable the 'activity feed' and 'system messages' options.
• If you join a guild with join messages, specifically join messages from 'system messages' and not from a bot, you can technically delete the message if you're fast or stealthy enough.

• Fixing Discord Embeds

• Discord (Status) - The front page of Discord.
  • @discord + @discord_support on Twitter - The official English-language accounts.
• /r/discordapp - The official Reddit community, a mix of complaining and support.
• Discordless - A general list of Discord alternatives, not including IRC. Take with a grain of salt.