Don't use discord. In addition to all logs being forwarded to the FBI, the NSA, and probably British and European intelligence agencies, discords are frequent spaces for intrigue and drama. I've seen it spill onto reddit from otherwise, at the outside, normal, well-adjusted seeming groups multiple times.
But what do you expect from something used primarily by gamers and kids? Kids who may not be serious about Marxism and become ultras or outright anti-communists or just be deeply unseriuous like those channer leftypol types.
Discord is meant for FOMO group chats. It's not meant for intelligent discussions, that's what forums are for and lemmy is a forum-like place. It's meant for memeing, for forming secret access channels that the 17 year old owners (or 26 year old owners who act like 17 year olds and certainly the appreciation and admiration of teenagers) can create and hand out access to those whose memes they like and who make them laugh and who are yes-persons and then those people are given mod powers and abuse them for personal vendettas and disputes and go on power trips. There was that severely mentally ill and dangerous woman in one who would find lonely people, talk to them in discord, private message them, get them in her claws, make them cut themselves and declare her their owner/goddess whatever and abuse the shit out of them and use them to manipulate others and servers. And I'm not talking about general discord, she was in left-ish spaces discords and probably still is as she got something from hurting and controlling and abusing people. Anyways she had several server owners in her sway under her thumb and a number of mods. Basically cult leader.
Discord is the height of evil on the web. If reddit killed forums, then Discord aims to kill all open, easily searchable discussion online by siloing it in ten million different partially feuding little silos run by one million different power tripping weirdos. Knowledge that can't be found via search engines. It's basically a way to kill info on the web. It's useful for raid night with your world of warcraft guild and coordinating virtual D&D and tabletop but not for serious discussion.
Discord is only a good replacement for Teamspeak. I can't stand how nowadays a lot of community projects like open source development is managed via Discord rather than forums. Using a chatroom instead of a forum for things like assistance is absolutely idiotic, since nobody can find the already answered questions so you end up with experienced members answering the same exact thing 10 times a day.
Damn...is people acting culty and convincing each other to self harm really that common? I know a girl in a Discord just like that, and I met someone close to me in a Discord that was full of people exactly like that, two separate instances. And yeah, both Left-ish. This is fucking nuts.
It seems to happen in specific communities. On a large scale, perhaps it doesn't seem like a large number. I only know that a few fashion/aesthetic/disordered communities overlap with these self-harming ones, so it is a notable thing within those specific groups (?) Like, maybe you won't find them in regular anime groups but more niche ones
From what I heard this was an individual (perhaps untreated ASPD would be my guess but I'm in no position to diagnose and not qualified anyways) who gains something out of controlling, dominating, abusing, and hurting other people. What I would describe as someone with severe dark traits in their psychology who seems to have some significant grasp of psychology and the propensity to weaponize that. This is the type of a person who spends months grooming their victims, insinuating themselves into their lives, building dependency, etc.
It wasn't so much from what I recall just wanting people to get into cutting it was more "cut yourself to show you love me enough" or "carve my name into your skin to show your devotion" type stuff.
My point was this person was quite at home like a fish in water in discord, it was a nice hunting ground for them and they were able to gain power and insulate themselves.
Yeah, I wonder what makes it so appealing to predators though, I'd assume the type of communities within it (like lots of art, mental health, or e-dating spaces with vulnerable demographics) would be a pull factor. There's lots of grooming on basically any other messaging services but it seems one would have to know the victim beforehand, making me think that something about the way Discord itself is set up makes it prone to being used for that. Maybe something about the sheer volume sizes of groups and easily slipping under the radar, idk though.
What do you think makes Discord so "useful" to those types? Not just in this person's case, as there are loads from what I've gathered :O