Random severe bans and permanent suspensions on Discord. Zero explanation.
What do you say to the fact that we have a server with more than 1500 people, where we've been doing everything the same way for years? It's an 18+ server mainly centered around a local celebrity we all follow. We're foul-mouthed, we swear, we share SFW images that are freely available on the internet and aren't extreme, don't depict people against their will, etc. Everything worked perfectly fine for the past 5 years. No issues at all.
Now for the past couple of weeks, people have been getting permanent bans and long suspensions daily for all kinds of random reasons. Most of the time there's not even an explanation. They don't even show which message supposedly broke the rules. Why would they? You're just an NPC expected to silently accept everything and keep paying with your time and money.
Several of us appealed immediately, and 5–6 hours later we received emails saying the accounts had been restored because no violation had actually occurred. WTF? Then the next day it happened again, just with a different reason... This is nonsense.
Child abuse? Where? We're all around 30 or older, and nobody is linking anything involving kids. Random threats? Against who? Non-consensual sexual content? Where? When we're literally just using GIFs freely available on Google to express emotions...
We don't mass report each other, yet this is happening. They've ruined the platform, our community, and our entertainment with this AI-slop garbage that randomly bans people without context, despite many of us never having received a warning anywhere in our lives.
So what's the real reason?
- They want to pretend child protection exists, even though it doesn't.
A few months ago, on another server, I saw two real videos where boys around 13 years old were being kicked on the ground while other guys lit their hair on fire as they begged them to stop hurting them. Real videos, not AI. You know what happened? I reported both the user and the messages through Discord, then repeatedly reported them via email too. I even stayed on the server afterward. Absolutely nothing happened. A month and a half passed and the user who shared those videos kept having fun while the videos stayed up exactly where they were. Child protection? It's all performative nonsense.
- They're trying to pressure users into accepting age verification without question, even though neither Discord nor any other platform can guarantee that this kind of data will be handled safely. Here in Europe that still means something. I know Americans don't really care. They'll swallow anything politicians tell them is necessary. But I care about privacy. What's the solution? What happens if the data leaks? Then there'll be a database somewhere containing information about every kid...
I don't want to be forced into sharing my personal data on a platform where the verification isn't even handled by Discord themselves but by some unnamed third party.
That data should only ever be used to verify your age and secure your account, then immediately deleted everywhere afterward. And if underage kids aren't allowed into 18+ servers anymore, then let adults talk to each other like adults without some prison guard standing beside us slapping our hands every time we swear at each other.
I refuse to accept that we're moving toward a world where strangers control our lives. And the idiots saying "just don't use the platform" are not offering a real solution, because from Windows onward every major platform already works like this. You can't avoid them anymore. The only option left is to defend our rights and hold these platforms accountable.