this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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I hadn't kept up with the changes to Discord's naming system, but I had notived they reverted from the USERNAME#0000 to just USERNAME which seems better, was it a good change?
I remember BattleNET having the same type of usernames.
The issue with this change was, that someone who was previously named Mike for instance with a discriminator, has to now choose something else for instance: "Mike372". Discord claims this is a better and a less confusing system, when it really just boils down to the same thing. Making matter worse they claimed all Mike usernames are taken, so #0001 to #9999 which also later turned out to be false, it was just their site choosing a random discriminator, which when it was already taken told you: "This username is already taken.", when in reality there were still available discriminators.
Whether or not it's a good change is likely mostly subjective. I'm guessing Discord made the switch to be more in line with other mainstream social media platforms, and to reduce confusion.
Personally, I kind of like the old way more. It means there could be 10000 different people with basically the same name. Other than paying for a specific number, there is no issue with a person grabbing a handle and then it not being available to anyone else. Otherwise, eventually, a lot of handles will be used up, maybe even dead, so people have to come up with increasingly creative ways to get a unique handle – or just settle on adding some numbers to the end.
I'd even go a step further myself and remove handles completely. Just use a unique identifier, like a hash or GUID for the user – which a lot of platforms do under the hood anyway, since you can change your handle in many of them – and use invite codes, QR codes or similar to add friends. We don't need this username / handle rotting that just gets worse over time.
So, the actual reason for the change is likely their dumb handling of capitalization in the original scheme. To use your username as an example:
copygirl#1234, Copygirl#1234, COPYGIRL#1234, CopyGirl#1234, etc
Every permutation of capitalization is available as a distinct username. And with the low price of Nitro you get to customize your discriminator, which could make impersonation a very real problem.
I like the Steam system, having a unique login and a custom name that doesn't have to be unique.
I was lucky enough to be a Discord early adopter, so I was able to keep my username. But not everyone else could. So right now there's a lot of people having to part with long-established handles and it kinda sucks.
I'm going to be standing up a Revolt instance, but I'm giving myself a break after spending days and nights getting my lemmy instance up.
Note that setting up a Revolt instance means it will literally only be you that you can talk to, and others that sign up on your instance.
Revolt is not federated (and most likely never will be). You might be aware of this though, but it isn't like Lemmy or Mastodon at all.