Terrors, menaces, and political maniacs. We have them all on Discord, but that?s nothing new. Every platform has these same people, and it?s all about how each platform handles them.
So, should we be worried about this??My kids use Discord,? ?We use Discord for work,? ?My gaming team uses Discord,? Is it safe for us!?
First question: Why wouldn?t Discord be safe?
Discord is a free-roam (but private) chat app with millions of users who all have millions of ideas about how to use the app? sounds safe, right?
If you actually think it does, you?d be totally wrong. Discord is safe, within reason. Discord is built to be safe, has many ways to be safe, but that doesn?t mean you?re safe.Dangers, beware! Trolls, Hackers, and meme-lords can come and go as they please if your server invite is spread publicly. If you post your site to a server listing then you could get spambots and other issues.
Discord is only as safe as you make it, there are the options and there are the choices you can/can?t make but you?ll either need to hide in a shell of protection to avoid it, or build a shell and not let it bother you.
Second question: How is Discord safe?
Discord is a private (but not) chat app with millions of users who all have millions of ideas about how to use the app? sounds safe, right?
If you think I?m repeating myself, this is a trick question. The answer is yes, it is safe.You can control every aspect of who can message you, nsfw image safety levels, and even what content is allowed in your server (with bots).
Discord may not seem safe to you looking at what has happened or could happen, but that falls on you as a user. You choose your safety and your decisions decided what would happen, even if you didn?t directly want that.
Third question: What the hell would a bot do for me?
Thanks for asking! Bots are my favorite topic.
Bots are the lifeblood of a Discord server. Your server is simply a chatroom to talk before them, after them it?s simply a chatroom to talk? with some extra fun tools.
Music bots
These are bots that? PLAY MUSIC, wow, nice. They join a voice channel, play a selected song from YouTube, SoundCloud, etc and that?s it!
Game bots
These bots do fun things with game stats, game information, or even allow you to play games. You can organize team gameplay, plan events, or even browse steam all inside your server.
Moderation bots
These are the kickers, they help you manage your server and prevent the baddies from showing their face. These bots can allow you to do the basic moderation functions via the bot (to create logs, or prevent abuse of perms) or they can be set to moderate themselves with automoderation.
Utility bots
I?m going to go very broad with this but Utility bots allow you to do simple utility things like trello board notifications, levels, and task lists. There?s a lot these bots do, including generate memes.
So that?s the rundown on bots, and what they can do for you. If you have any questions feel free to comment or visit your nearby google.
Last and final question? How can I be safe?
Well.. this one is tricky. There?s a lot of things you can do but it varies on what you choose to do with your community.
There are dozens of sites and servers to advertise your server on, each one of these could either help you rack up the users, or just bring you trolls and spambots. You have to make the judgement call of ?Do I feel safe enough to risk it??
There are plenty of opportunities for you to make a site for your server (or advertise Discord on it if you already have a site), and try to help people find it using Google with SEO and meta? tldr; lot of work, but that is an option. Again, this means you need to decide on safety.
And lastly your settings. Your privacy/safety settings on your own account and moderation settings on your server will make the world of difference as you go through trying to get users. You can choose who can message you, who can send you NSFW content, and set levels for who can add you as a friend.
This has been the Discord Partner Jet, have a good day and stay safe!
Discord Safety Man, Image credits to DiscordApp
