July 11, 2023

How Discord Prevents and Removes Spam

Spam can be a problem on Discord. We treat this issue with the same level of seriousness as any other problem that impacts your ability to talk and hang out on Discord, and in November 2021 we told you what we are doing to combat it. Since then we've continued to improve at proactively detecting and removing spam from Discord.

This article will discuss some of the work we've done, and where we're heading to make sure that we're building Discord to be the best place for people and communities to hang out online.

The work we've done

We invested a substantial amount of time and resources into combating spam in 2022, disabling 141,087,602 accounts for spam or spam-related offenses, with a proactive removal rate of 99%, before we receive a user report.

We observed a significant increase in the number of accounts disabled during the third quarter of 2022, leading to an elevated but lower fourth quarter, and then to a substantial decrease in the first quarter of 2023. These trends can be attributed to both increased and ongoing investments in our anti-spam team and a shift in our approach to reducing the number of disabled accounts by placing greater confidence in our proactive spam mitigations and avoiding false positives. As a result, only .004% of accounts disabled submitted an appeal during the past quarter.

Spammers are constantly evolving and adapting to new technologies and methods of detection, moving to use new parts of the platform to target users. Combating spam requires a multi-faceted approach that employs new tools and technologies, while also remaining vigilant and adaptable to changing trends. We're constantly updating our approach to remove spam, and as our proactive efforts have increased, we've observed a steady decline in the number of reports we receive for spam.

New features, products, and tools to help combat spam on Discord

The above trends were made possible over the past year due to a number of technological advances in both back-end and front-end features, products, and tools to help prevent and remove spam from Discord.

  • AutoMod: We launched AutoMod which enables server owners to set rules to better detect spam in their servers. This filter, powered by machine learning, is informed by spam messages that have been previously reported to us.
  • DM spam filter: We recently launched a DM spam filter that enables users to filter messages detected as spam into a separate spam inbox.
  • Friend Request clear all: We also launched a new feature to allow people to clear out all their friend requests with the click of a button.
  • Anti-Raid protection for servers: We’ve been developing and investing in features to help reduce server raids based on feedback from the community to stay on top of an ever-changing landscape.
  • Actions beyond bans: We've developed new methods to remediate spam on Discord by creating interventions that don't exclusively result in disabled accounts. This includes account quarantines and other blockers on suspicious accounts.

Our commitment to this work

Discord is committed to combating spam and building a safer environment for people to find belonging. We've grown our teams, shipped new features, products, and tools, and continue to listen closely to users about how spam impacts their experience on Discord.

We're constantly updating our approach to remove spam and remain vigilant and adaptable to changing trends. We will continue to prioritize safety and work hard to combat spam in order to help make Discord the best place for people and communities to hang out online.

Tags:
User Safety
Server Safety

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