CHI Company Investigation · Social Media
Discord
The Core Bargain Held. The Friction Moved to the Edges.
Chat, voice and community platform · Nitro · Server Boosts · Shop · Quests
Standard company investigation · No score assigned · Research current through 5 October 2026
Discord has become more monetized since 2023. The evidence does not show that it broadly became more hostile to the people who use it.
Discord promised in 2017 that core voice and text would always be free. That promise appears to have been kept, and the US price of Nitro has not moved since October 2018. Around that core, Discord has added advertising, a cosmetics shop, a currency earned from ads and a second layer of paid server perks. CHI tested whether this added up to a worse deal for users. Most of that thesis did not survive verification. What remains is narrower: ads that paying subscribers cannot switch off, and weak protection for users when account, billing, enforcement or data systems fail.
The core relationship Mostly intact
A free product, an optional subscription, and a price that has not moved.
Text, voice, video and community servers remain free. Nitro is optional, and its US monthly and annual prices are the same as in 2018.S4S5 Costly features such as encrypted voice and video shipped to everyone at no charge.S7
At the edges Materially weaker protection
Locked accounts, billing disputes, false bans and sensitive-data reviews.
When an account is lost, disputed or wrongly enforced against, the user’s position is weak. Discord cannot remove two-factor authentication without backup codes, a bank chargeback can suspend the account, and unused subscription time is not refunded if access is lost.S19S20S22
This distinction is the finding. The core relationship held. The concerns that survived verification sit at the edges, where a user who arrives has little leverage.
01Why we looked
A free platform with a growing list of things to buy.
Discord is a chat, voice and video service built around invite-only community “servers”. For most of its history it earned money from an optional subscription, Nitro, and from Server Boosts that communities buy to unlock perks. From 2023 it added a cosmetics shop, sponsored “Quests”, a reward currency called Orbs, a second layer of boost-funded perks and, in September 2026, a self-serve advertising platform.
The proposition tested was plausible: that Discord had moved from a generous free product towards steadily greater extraction from the same users, by taking things back from the free tier, raising what it charges, and making it harder to leave or to get help.
CHI ran two research passes. The first built the case. The second reopened the primary sources, retrieved archived pages, recalculated prices against official inflation data and checked the court dockets. Most of the hostility thesis did not survive the second pass. This page reports what did, and gives equal room to what did not.
One distinction runs through the page. More monetization is not the same as more hostility. Selling optional things is normal. The question is whether the bargain users already had got worse.
02The bargain Discord made
“The core voice and text communication of Discord will always be free.”
That sentence is from the January 2017 post announcing Nitro, which continues: “No server fees, no user cap fees, no messaging fees, none of that.”S1 Discord restated the aim in 2019, “keep Discord’s core features free”,S2 and its current Terms say: “We won’t charge you a fee to use the basic functionality of our services, but you may be able to pay for additional features and products.”S3
CHI found no evidence that the commitment has been broken. Archived Nitro pages from 2017, 2019, 2021, 2023 and 2024 show paid perks staying paid; none shows an established free feature being moved behind the subscription.S5
Free core, optional Nitro
Nitro launches as an add-on. Voice and text are promised free for good.
Nitro at $9.99
Nitro is repriced with a games library, later removed. Server Boosts launch.
Price held, tools added
Boost levels get cheaper. Free AutoMod. A $2.99 Nitro Basic tier.
Monetization broadens
Shop and cosmetics. Activities made free. Sponsored Quests. Free uploads cut.
Core still free, price still $9.99
Orbs, a second boost layer, age assurance and an ads platform arrive. Free uploads partly restored.
03What users still get for free
The free product is unusually complete, and some of it got better.
The value side of the ledger is substantial and documented. The criticism later on this page concerns what Discord added around this core, not the core itself.
Encrypted voice and video, for everyone
End-to-end encryption became the default for voice and video calls, completed in March 2026, at no charge.S7
AutoMod at no cost
Automated moderation tools for community owners, launched free in June 2022.S8
20MB per file
The free upload limit is 20MB, above the 8MB of 2023. It is still below the 25MB it briefly reached.S18
Graduated warnings
“Most violations expire after 90 days.” In-app appeals were extended worldwide at the end of 2025.S23
Cheaper boost levels
The top server level needed 50 boosts in June 2019. It has needed 14 since at least 2021.S17
A useful data package
Users can download their own data, including, for servers they own, the audit log and channel permissions.S27
04How monetization expanded
Discord did not freeze its monetization. It built new layers around a price that stayed still.
- January 2017
Nitro launches as an optional subscription.S1
- October 2018
Nitro moves from $4.99 to $9.99 a month, bundled with a games library that Discord removed in October 2019 without changing the price.S5S2
- June 2019
Server Boosts let members pay for server-wide perks.S30
- October 2022
Nitro Basic adds a cheaper $2.99 tier.S30
- October 2023
The Shop sells avatar decorations and profile effects.S30
- March 2024
Sponsored Quests: Discord’s first advertising format, after trials in 2023.S14
- 2025
Orbs, a currency earned from Quests, and “Additional Perks” paid for with dedicated boosts.S30S17
- 29 September 2026
Ads Manager: auction-priced advertising, in managed access, with full self-serve planned for early 2027.S15
Changed
- Advertising: sponsored Quests, now on an auction platform
- Shop and cosmetics, plus Orbs earned from ads
- Additional boosts for perks outside server levels
- Age assurance for all accounts outside the UK and Australia
- Recourse terms, tightened in 2024 and 2025
Held
- The free core, as promised in 2017
- The US Nitro price: $9.99 a month, $99.99 a year
- Basic text and voice access without a fee
- No broad paywall on established free features
Normal monetization is not hostility. Optional cosmetics, paid subscriptions, premium server perks and, in itself, advertising are ordinary commerce. Stable prices and added value count in Discord’s favour. The CHI concern is narrower: whether friction and monetization are accumulating around a core that is still intact, and whether users are protected when the edges fail.
05Advertising: the biggest shift
In 2019, Discord told users they were its customer because it sold no ads.
“Moreover, unlike many other free apps, Discord does not make money from ads. And because we don’t make money through ads, ad buyers are not our customers. Our customer is you!”S2 That was a description of the business at the time, not a promise never to advertise. CHI found no such promise.
Discord began sponsored Quests in 2024.S14 In its own words, “Discord Quests are a rewarded ad format.”S10 On 29 September 2026 it opened Ads Manager, where, “rather than a fixed CPM, ads compete in an auction with pricing that fluctuates dynamically”.S15
Ad-free positioning abandoned. Not a promise broken.
The change is real and significant. It is a change of business model, and it should be described as one.What users can and cannot control
| Control | Available? | What Discord says |
|---|---|---|
| Hide a particular Quest | Yes, one at a time | A specific Quest promotion can be hidden. Others still appear.S10 |
| Stop ads being personalized | Yes, opt-out | “You may still see Quests promotions, but they won’t be based on your activity on Discord.”S10 |
| Block ad topics | Yes, since September 2026 | “This setting doesn’t turn off all Sponsored Content.”S11 |
| Turn off all Quest promotions | No | “These steps will not remove Quests entirely, as that is not currently an option.”S12 |
| Pay for an ad-free Discord | No | No Nitro tier is exempt from Quests. CHI found no document saying otherwise.S13 |
Paying subscribers are drawn further into the format, not out of it. Since 8 May 2026, Nitro members earn Orbs from Quests at a 1.2× rate, a perk Discord labels a beta, and some subscribers receive 250 Orbs a month.S13
The format itself is restrained. Taking part is opt-in, and video plays only when the user starts it. CHI found no autoplay video, interstitial or unrewarded display ad. The ad controls also got broader between 2024 and 2026, not narrower.S10S11
Ad data. Discord’s US-state privacy disclosures, last updated on 29 August 2025, say it may combine its data “with information from other businesses to deliver more relevant sponsored content”, which it treats as targeted advertising under certain state laws. Users can opt out in the app. Its Privacy Policy now lists sponsored content as a source of funding, and it states that Discord does not sell personal information.S16
06Boosts and the second spending layer
Server levels got cheaper. Then a second layer appeared beside them.
Server Boosts are monthly payments members make on a server’s behalf. The original ladder became much easier to climb: the top level needed 50 boosts at launch in June 2019, 20 from September 2019, and 14 since at least 2021.S17S2
Boosts for Level 3 at launch
After Discord cut the threshold
Still the requirement in 2026
A separate layer of perks outside the levels
In 2025 Discord introduced “Additional Perks”, such as Server Tags and Enhanced Role Styles. Each needs its own dedicated boosts: “Boosts used for additional perks are dedicated specifically to those perks and don’t count toward your server’s level progression.” Level perks keep a 72-hour grace period if boosts lapse; Server Tags and Enhanced Role Styles “are disabled immediately”.S17
| Configuration | Boosts | At $4.99 a boost |
|---|---|---|
| Level 3 only | 14 | $69.86 |
| Plus Server Tags and Enhanced Role Styles | 20 | $99.80 |
| Plus all four badge packs | 33 | $164.67 |
| Plus experimental perks and one game server | 44 | $219.56 |
In short, Discord created a second boost layer that raises the maximum a community can spend without adding level progression. Discord says it will keep adjusting it: “We regularly review and adjust the Boost requirements for perks.”S17
Read the table carefully. It is the documented maximum-style configuration among the boost-funded perks CHI identified, not what a typical server spends. Some perks are experiments offered only to “some servers”, and game servers can be added beyond one. $4.99 is the US App Store price of a single boost; Nitro subscribers get 30% off further boosts. No data on how many servers buy these perks was found.
07The free-upload rollback
One free allowance was cut, then mostly restored.
Free per-file limit
Raised for all users
Cut for free users only
“increasing from 10MB to 20MB”
Discord’s stated reason for the 2024 cut was storage: “In order to maintain our service without compromising on quality of storage, we decided to reduce the free file size upload limit.”S4 Paid limits were not cut. The 10MB limit lasted about two years before Discord announced on 13 August 2026: “Starting today, the free upload limit is increasing from 10MB to 20MB.”S18 The 25MB allowance has not returned, and Discord’s own help page warns that Android users “may hit the size limit more often than you did previously”.S18
This is the cleanest example CHI found of a free entitlement being reduced while paid ones were left alone. It is a reduced allowance, not a paywalled capability. Free users can still upload files, and today they can upload more than they could in early 2023.
08Where the bigger concern actually sits: recourse
When something goes wrong with an account, the user has little leverage.
The verification pass found Discord’s recourse rules harsher than the first pass recorded. These are Discord’s own published terms and help pages. How often they are applied in practice was not established.
No reset without backup codes
“If you do not have access to your backup codes, Discord is unable to remove MFA or issue you new backup codes.”S19
A chargeback can suspend the account
Filing a chargeback “may result in account suspension pending further investigation”. Data of accounts suspended for chargebacks “is deleted or anonymized 90 days after the suspension process begins”.S20
Outside the policy, the account is at risk
“Any refunds outside our standard refund policy will result in account disablement per our terms.” Another Discord article says “may”.S20
Some suspensions cannot be appealed
A “Fraudulent Charge” suspension “is considered permanent and is not eligible for appeal”.S20
Unused time is not refunded
If an account is “terminated, suspended, or you otherwise lose access to your account, you will not be entitled to a refund for any unused portion of your subscription”.S22
A one-year deadline, added in 2025
Since 29 September 2025 claims must be brought within one year. US and Canadian users are bound to individual arbitration unless they opt out by email within 30 days.S3
There are real mitigations. A locked-out user can cancel and ask for a renewal refund without logging in, and Discord says it aims to resolve those requests within 72 hours.S21 Chargeback handling is graduated, Discord cancels a terminated user’s subscription “where possible”,S22 the warning system expires most violations after 90 days, and appeals can be filed in the app.S23 When enforcement failed at scale in 2026, Discord corrected it in bulk (section 09).
Recourse and Account-Control Asymmetry: the platform controls the account, the purchases, the identity and the community, and the user’s means of correcting the platform’s mistakes are much weaker.
Discord prompted CHI to consider whether this belongs in its cross-company taxonomy. It has not been given a pattern code. One company cannot show that a mechanism repeats; that needs testing across other companies. It is recorded here as a finding about Discord, and as a question for the methodology.09False bans and enforcement error
About 8,400 accounts were wrongly banned in 2026. Discord fixed it in bulk.
On 7 July 2026 Discord’s support account said: “This weekend, our safety systems incorrectly triggered and banned around 200 accounts. Everyone affected has been reinstated.” It added that around 8,200 more accounts had been affected since May 2026.S24 Discord’s chief technology officer posted: “I want to apologize for a bug we fixed that over the weekend wrongly banned ~200 users over grid-like images, and ~8,000 more since May over other benign images.”S24
Benign images were matched against known harmful material and the accounts that posted them were banned. Discord described the cause as a bug.
AcknowledgedDiscord said staff had reviewed and cleared the earlier accounts, but the same bug kept the bans in place, for up to about two months.
AcknowledgedDiscord restored the affected accounts in bulk. Individual appeals were not required for the final remediation.
Corrected at scaleWhether subscribers were refunded or credited, whether any purchases, boosts or server ownership were disrupted, and whether any account remained lost. No post-mortem was published.
OpenThe enforcement failure was real. So was the correction, once it was identified.
The weakness this event exposes is not the bug itself, which can happen in any automated system. It is that users whose bans staff had already cleared stayed banned, unnoticed, for weeks.10Age assurance and the ID breach
The concern is not compliance. It is how much burden, and how much data, Discord chooses to take on.
The 2025 breach
Discord disclosed on 3 October 2025 that “approximately 70,000 users” may have had government-ID photos exposed, images a vendor had used to review age-related appeals.S25 Its notice to affected users says an unauthorized party accessed “our customer service platform through a compromised vendor device” between 20 and 22 September 2025.S25 Discord ended the vendor relationship, retired the ticket-based ID process and offered US recipients of its notice 12 months of credit monitoring.S25
Users were asked for sensitive documents to settle an age question, and the harm came from how those documents were held. CHI records this as compliance-data custody harm, a cross-cutting factor, rather than as evidence that Discord passed regulatory costs on to users. Litigation over the breach is ongoing; a notice of settlement was filed on 14 September 2026, and its scope is not established.S28
The September 2026 age-assurance system
Discord announced global “teen-by-default” settings on 9 February 2026, delayed them on 24 February after a backlash, and launched a revised system on 22 September 2026.S26 Most accounts are now placed in an age group by a model that Discord says “never uses messages, uploaded media, usernames, or profile bios”. Discord’s forecast is that “more than 90% of you won’t be asked to confirm your age”; that figure has not been independently checked.S26
| Required, or Discord’s choice | Privacy and access risk |
|---|---|
| Required by law in the UK, under the Online Safety Act, in Brazil, and in Texas for mobile app-store age signals. Meeting those duties is not hostility. | In the UK and Australia the model is not used, so adults who want age-restricted content verify through a vendor. |
| Discord’s choice elsewhere: “including where it isn’t yet required by law”. | The model runs over most accounts with no opt-out, and draws on signals such as server activity, message counts, subscription history and device type. |
| Privacy-protective design: card, app-store and other non-biometric routes; facial age estimation processed on the device; Discord receives only an age signal. | ID scans still leave the device and go to a third-party provider. Deletion is contractual, not independently audited. |
| A correction route: an unclassified user confirms their age group in Account Status. | Until then, probable adults cannot use age-restricted servers or content. Messaging friends, voice calls and ordinary servers are not restricted. |
The September system is materially more protective of privacy than the February plan. The CHI question it leaves open is how much access burden and data risk Discord chooses to impose in meeting an obligation that, outside a few jurisdictions, it took on voluntarily.
11What Discord gets right
The favourable evidence, at full weight.
- A strong free core. Voice, text, video and servers without a fee, as promised in 2017.S1S3
- Long-term price stability. US Nitro at $9.99 a month and $99.99 a year since 2018, on the web and in the US App Store.S5
- Free features added. Activities moved from paid to free; AutoMod launched free.S9S8
- Encrypted voice and video by default, for every user.S7
- Lower boost thresholds. The top server level costs 14 boosts, down from 50 at launch.S17
- A graduated warning system in which most violations expire after 90 days.S23
- Global in-app appeals since the end of 2025.S23
- Bulk correction of false bans, without making users appeal one by one.S24
- Expanding ad controls: hide, de-personalize, and since September 2026 block topics. Quests are opt-in and rewarded.S10S11
- A no-login refund route for locked-out users, with a 72-hour aim.S21
- Useful data export, including the audit log and permissions for servers a user owns.S27
- Reversals. The age-assurance plan was paused and rebuilt; the upload cut was mostly undone.S26S18
12Where Discord still earns scrutiny
The reasons this is weakly supports, and not does not support.
- Ads shown to paying subscribers, with Orbs rewards that deepen their engagement with ads.S13
- No paid ad-free option at any price.S12
- Ad-data expansion: outside data may be combined to target sponsored content unless the user opts out.S16
- Dedicated additional boosts that sit outside server levels and lapse immediately.S17
- The free upload rollback, still short of the 2023 peak.S18
- Harsh chargeback, refund and recovery consequences, including suspensions that cannot be appealed.S19S20
- The false-ban governance failure: cleared accounts stayed banned.S24
- The compliance-data custody failure of 2025.S25
13CHI pattern assessment
One pattern partly supported. Three only weakly.
CHI tests every company against four recurring patterns of customer-economic change. Each finding is graded on its own evidence.
Charging for something users already had.
Weakly supportsA free allowance was cut and partly restored. No established free feature moved behind Nitro.
Getting more from the same users.
Partially supportsThe strongest pattern: ads for all, new spending surfaces and a second boost layer. Against it, a flat headline price and substantial added value.
Neglecting older products or users.
Weakly supportsDiscord’s 2024 refocus on gaming is real, but little customer harm followed. Existing holders largely kept what they had.
Passing outside costs on to users.
Weakly supportsBottom of the bandAge-assurance duties added burden but no price. Part of the burden is Discord’s own design choice. The breach is not counted here.
14Why the conclusion moved in Discord’s favour
The first pass found a partly supported case. Verification weakened it.
The first research pass concluded that the hostility thesis was partly supported. The second pass tested that conclusion against primary sources and moved it down. That change is the methodology working as intended.
Archived Nitro pages, archived and live App Store listings and Discord’s own 2026 pages show $9.99 a month and $99.99 a year.S5
$9.99 in October 2018 equals $13.23 in August 2026 dollars, a real fall of 24.5%. Measured from after the games library was removed, it is 23.2%.S6
The 2017 sentence and the current Terms both say the basics are free, and no breach was found.S1S3
Archived perk lists from 2017 to 2026 show none; one feature moved the other way.S5
Archived boosting pages show the top level falling from 50 boosts to 14.S17
One ended in an individual settlement in 2024; the other was dismissed in 2026 without being served. No regulator action on Discord’s billing was found.S28S29
Most changes predated it, and existing holders kept what they had.
Verification also cut the other way. Discord’s recourse rules proved harsher than first recorded, its ad controls were confirmed to stop short of removal, and its second boost layer proved larger. Those findings are why the disposition sits at the upper end of its band. They concern edge cases, not the central bargain, so they did not move it back up.
15What this means if you use Discord
Generous by default. Unforgiving if your account goes wrong.
- The basic product remains unusually generous for free. You do not need to pay to talk, call or run a community.
- Nitro has not become more expensive in nominal US terms since 2018.
- Paying does not buy an ad-free experience. Nitro subscribers still see Quest promotions.
- Server owners face more optional spend layers. None is required to run a server, but some perks lapse immediately if boosts drop.
- Most users will never meet the harshest account rules. If you do, recourse can be limited.
- Keep your two-factor backup codes somewhere safe. Without them, Discord says it cannot remove two-factor authentication from your account.
16Final CHI assessment
Discord became more commercial, but the evidence does not show that it broadly betrayed or degraded the bargain users originally received. Its core product remains free and unusually durable, and its headline subscription price has held for eight years.
The strongest CHI concerns are now concentrated in advertising, which reaches paying subscribers with no way to switch it off, and in what happens when account-control, billing, enforcement or compliance systems fail.
Why not a stronger finding? Because the central relationship held: no price rise, no paywalled core, and real value added. Why not none at all? Because the advertising shift, the second boost layer, the upload rollback and the recourse rules are documented in Discord’s own words.
17Methodology
How this page was built, and how far it can be relied on.
Two passes
A baseline research dossier, then a verification and final adjudication pass that controls wherever the two differ. The second pass corrected the first in a number of places, and its conclusion is the one published here.
What was checked
Primary sources were reopened and read from the live pages on 5 October 2026. Archived captures of pricing, boosting, refund and policy pages were retrieved. Prices were recalculated against official US inflation data, and the relevant court dockets were read.
Limits
Policy text shows what Discord may do, not how often it does it. Discord is private, so there are no audited figures on revenue, advertising or subscribers. Discord was not a participant in this research and has not reviewed it.
How the evidence was weighed. The research tested the thesis rather than collecting complaints. User reports were used as leads, not proof. Lawsuit allegations are not treated as findings. Where a claim could not be verified it was left out.
18Sources
Every claim on this page traces to one of these.
Discord blog, Nitro launch post, 23 January 2017: the free-core commitment. discord.com/blogFirst-party
Discord blog, “What’s coming for Nitro”, 12 September 2019: the games-library removal, the boost threshold cut and the statement on ads. discord.com/blogFirst-party
Discord Terms of Service, effective 29 September 2025: basic functionality, termination, arbitration, liability and the one-year claims limit; compared with the April 2024 version. current · April 2024First-party
Current Nitro pricing and FAQ: Nitro page, Nitro guide (11 May 2026), a Nitro trial FAQ stating the standard price, and the Nitro FAQ, including the reason given for the free upload cut. Nitro · guide · trial FAQ · FAQFirst-party
Archived and app-store pricing: the October 2018 repricing post and Nitro pages from 2017, 2019, 2021, 2023 and 2024, as archived; the US App Store listing in May 2023 and today. 2018 · 2017 · 2019 · 2021 · 2023 · 2024 · App Store 2023 · App Store todayArchived first-party
US Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI-U, series CUUR0000SA0: October 2018 252.885; October 2019 257.346; August 2026 334.980. Cross-checked against FRED. Real change = 9.99 × (334.980 ÷ 252.885). BLS · FREDOfficial data
Discord blog, 18 May 2026: end-to-end encryption for every voice and video call. discord.com/blogFirst-party
Discord blog, 16 June 2022: AutoMod and community tools. discord.com/blogFirst-party
Activities: listed as a Nitro perk on the archived Nitro page of 2 June 2023, and reported free to all in June 2023. archived Nitro page · APH NetworksArchived first-party; press
Discord Quests FAQ, edited 31 August 2026: “a rewarded ad format”, opt-in engagement and personalization. support.discord.comFirst-party
Manage Sponsored Content (9 September 2026) and Data Used for Sponsored Content: topic blocking and personalization toggles. topics · dataFirst-party
Discord’s official support account, 12 September 2025, on removing Quests. x.comFirst-party
Orbs FAQ, Monthly Orbs Drop for Nitro Members FAQ and Nitro Rewards: the 1.2× Quest multiplier and the 250-Orb monthly drop. Orbs · monthly drop · Nitro RewardsFirst-party
Discord blog, 7 March 2024: sponsored Quests, after experiments in 2023. discord.com/blogFirst-party
Discord press release, 29 September 2026: Ads Manager and Video Quests. discord.comFirst-party
Discord Privacy Policy (effective 29 September 2025) and US state privacy disclosures (last updated 29 August 2025), compared with the April 2024 version. privacy · state disclosures · 2024First-party
Server Boosting FAQ (edited 14 September 2026), Server Tags, Game Servers and the 16 June 2025 perks post; archived boosting pages from 2019 and 2021. FAQ · Server Tags · Game Servers · 2025 post · 2019 · 2021First-party
File Attachments FAQ (edited 30 September 2026), Discord on X, 13 August 2026, and Dexerto, 4 September 2024, on the 10MB cut. FAQ · x.com · DexertoFirst-party; press
Lost two-factor codes, edited 1 May 2026. support.discord.comFirst-party
Chargeback and suspension articles: hacked or compromised accounts; Chargebacks FAQ; Reporting Unauthorized Discord Transactions; Fraudulent Charge Suspension FAQ. hacked accounts · chargebacks · unauthorized transactions · fraudulent chargeFirst-party
Refund Policy (edited 18 May 2026; five-day window unchanged since at least 2019) and the article on renewal refunds for accounts a user cannot access. policy · 2019 · no-login routeFirst-party
Discord Paid Services Terms, effective 29 September 2025. discord.com/termsFirst-party
Discord Warning System (edited 5 June 2026), how to appeal, and the 2026 Transparency Report (March 2025 to March 2026). warnings · appeals · report (PDF)First-party
Discord’s official support account and its chief technology officer, 7 July 2026, on the false bans; the full support thread as mirrored. support thread · CTO · thread mirrorFirst-party
Discord statement on the security incident (3 October 2025, updated 9 October) and its notice letter to affected users, as filed with the California Attorney General. statement · notice letter (PDF)First-party
Age assurance: the 9 February 2026 announcement (as archived), the 24 February delay post, the 22 September launch post, the technical post on age estimation and the vendor register. February · delay · September · model · vendorsFirst-party
Your Discord Data Package (edited 25 September 2026) and Server Templates. data package · templatesFirst-party
Court records: Zarecor v. Discord (N.D. Cal. 3:23-cv-05385); Hulett v. Discord (San Francisco Superior Court CGC-24-620716); In re Discord Inc. Data Breach Litigation (N.D. Cal. 3:25-cv-08582). Allegations in these cases are not findings. Zarecor · Hulett · breach litigationPublic records
CNIL, November 2022 newsletter: the €800,000 GDPR fine of 10 November 2022, the only regulator finding against Discord located. cnil.frRegulator
Product launches: Server Boosts (Variety, June 2019); Nitro Basic (Discord blog, 2022); the Shop (Discord blog, 12 October 2023); Orbs (Discord press release, 2025). Boosts · Nitro Basic · Shop · OrbsFirst-party; press
The complete research dossier and verification report, with their evidence ledgers and register of points withheld from publication, are preserved by CHI and are not reproduced here. Quotations were read from the live pages on 5 October 2026 and may change. Discord and related marks belong to their owners; the name is used only to identify the company, and no endorsement or affiliation is implied. This page is research, not legal or financial advice.
Reading this beside the rest of the index
Every company here is assessed against the same question. On Discord, most of the answer was reassuring.
This page carries a disposition and no score. Read it alongside the methodology and the other Social Media assessments.