Mapping Discord’s darkside

Distributed hate networks on Disboard

Bibliographic Data

ID12654779
AuthorsDaniel Grant Heslep (0000-0001-9229-5085, The University of Alabama, USA, corresponding author), PS Berge (0000-0001-8984-7432, University of Central Florida, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume26
Issue1
Pages534-555
Publication date2021-12-14
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew Media & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1461-4448 • E-ISSN: 1461-7315
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/14614448211062548
OpenAlexW4225834520
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited15

Discord, a popular community chat application, has rhetorically distanced itself from its associations with white supremacist content through a public commitment to proactive moderation. However, Discord relies extensively on third-party services (like bots and server bulletins), which have been overlooked in their role in facilitating hateful networks. This study notes how Discord offloads searchability to server bulletin sites like Disboard, to deleterious effect. This study involves two parts: (1) we use critical technoculture discourse analysis to examine Discord’s blogs, policies, and application programming interface and (2) we present data scraped from 2741 Discord servers listed on Disboard, revealing networks of hateful and white supremacist communities that openly use “edgy,” raiding-oriented, and toxic messaging. These servers exploit Discord’s moderation tools and affordances to proliferate within Discord’s distributed ecology. We argue that Discord’s policies fail to address its reliance on unmoderated third-party services or the networked practices of its toxic communities

Affordance · Computer security · Exploit · Human–computer interaction · Microblogging · Moderation · Political science · Public relations · Server · Social media · Sociology · White (mutation · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Digital Communication and Language · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Psychology · Social Media and Politics · Social Psychology