Discord Is Built On Safety

Update 6/14/17 5:52pm PDT: After rolling out our report button feature to a small subset of players, we noticed some flaws with the feature design. The report button has been rolled back and is on indefinite hold while we figure out how to best implement it. We’ve removed content concerning the report button from this article.

A long long roughly two years ago, in May 2015, Discord began as a way for us to all play games together, better. And safer. Turns out, a lot of other people found it useful too.

As Discord grew, large communities started to adopt Discord as a home. It was simultaneously surprising and amazing to see groups like /r/LeagueOfLegends create servers so people could talk together about something they love. Fast forward to today, and Discord is now over 25m users strong.

Unfortunately, with all this growth and popularity, Discord has also seen some baddies show up and mess with the fun we’re having.

We’ve always wanted Discord to be a place where one could safely play games with friends. Our foundation is built on security (client-server technology which hides everyone’s IP and prevents individual DDOS attacks). We’ve also implemented various security features to help users maintain safety.

This includes things like IP Location Lock, Two-Factor Authentication, Streamer Mode, File Warnings, Virus Scanning, Verification Levels, and our unreal CX team which handles inflammatory events with insane response times.

To further fight the baddies, we are upgrading our security starting today. You’re going to see a bunch of little tools and tricks added to the Discord experience as part of our quest to continuously improve safety and security for all you amazing people (note that the features may change marginally before they’re live).

In fact, today we’ll be adding Safe Direct Messaging, a Global DM Privacy setting, and our spoopy link filter to DMs.

Safe Direct Messaging

By default, Discord allows any two people who share a server to direct message each other. Unfortunately, the baddies can use this behavior to send you stuff that you don’t want to see — everything from Harry Potter spoiler memes (Snape killed who!??) to much worse.

To keep the baddies at bay, we’re adding Safe Direct Messaging. Images you receive in a DM from a non-friend will be automatically scanned by our robo-hamsters using fancy machine learning. Any flagged images will be deleted.

As seen in the image above, you have the option to turn off Safe Direct Messaging for your account under the User Settings > Privacy tab. Now, go finish Harry Potter because that twist is nutty.

Global Privacy settings for DMs

Want to turn off direct messages from all strangers? Previously, you had to do this server by server. We’re adding a handy dandy one-click global option so you can set whether or not you want DMs from non-friends.

Don’t fret, Bret. If you want to, you will still be able to override the global setting on a per-server basis.

Spoopy Link Filter

When you click on a link from a non-friend in a DM, we’ll pop up a quick reminder that the internet is a bit spoopy.

This is similar behavior to how masked links already work in Discord — we’re now bringing it to DMs for that double safety dip.

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That’s a good start but we can kick it up a couple more notches. Other upcoming safety features include:

Enhanced (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ Verification Level

Table flip supreme.

This new optional enhanced verification level will require people in the server to have a verified phone number on their account to send messages (including DMs).

The bonus for this feature is that server bans will now ban baddies by phone number in addition to IP Address making their baddie lives even baddier.

Server Auto-moderation

To tackle the baddies at any time, all the time, we will be exposing the same fancy machine learning used in Safe Direct Messaging but in servers. Turning on Explicit Content Filtering will automatically detect and delete images and uploads deemed inappropriate.

By default, this will be off for all existing servers. To enable this, simply check the Explicit Content Filtering option in server settings.

Update 3/28/17 9:54pm PDT: We initially wrote “Discord Partner servers will have this turned on automatically.” After reconsidering our approach, we’ve decided to make this optional for partners as well. We genuinely care what you think, so thank you for keeping this a conversation.

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We come to work every day — we get out of bed BEFORE 10 AM — because we want to provide a safe and high quality place for you to game with your friends and we will keep striving for that goal.

As always, we love your feedback and your thoughts on what we’re building, especially on a topic as sensitive as this. Please hit us on Twitter or support@discordapp.com with what you think.

We hope you continue to stay safe on the internet.

Discord Security Team (and Safety Jim).