Discord Updates Its Punishment Policies To Give Offenders A Chance To Change Their Ways

Discord will be going slightly easier on rule breakers going forward as it makes changes to its punishment policies. Over the next few weeks, the popular VoIP and chat platform will be doing away with permanent bans for a wide range of offenses in favor of temporary year-long bans, although permanent bans will still be handed out to for “extremely harmful” offenses.

“The new system gives users more room to learn from their mistakes and correct misjudgments,” said Savannah Badalich, Senior Director of Policy at Discord. According to Baladich, the policy changes will help foster a safer environment for users while also giving offenders more opportunities to hopefully change their ways.

In line with the updated punishment policy, Discord will be implementing a warning system that will inform offending users of their violations and their corresponding punishment, along with links to the specific policies that they broke. Certain actions and features will also be disabled for offenders, depending on the violation. Posting an inappropriate image, for example, will result in the loss of image-posting privileges for a limited time.

While moderators already have the ability to restrict users from performing certain actions, the sanctions were only limited to that specific server. The recent policy changes, however, will apply to the entire platform. Break a rule in one server and your punishment will apply to all other Discord servers, even those you haven’t joined.

The platform will also be introducing a new account rating system that will allow players to check their overall account standing via a new tab in the privacy and safety settings menu. While it’s possible to simply create a new account in just a few minutes, Discord hopes that users will become more invested in their accounts once the cosmetic shop opens its doors to non-premium users soon.

“We’ve found that if we tell people what they've done wrong and give them an opportunity for rehabilitation, we can actually encourage better digital citizens,” said Badalich. “We think it’s worth trying to take a more nuanced approach because it does right by our users, upholds our values, and could potentially lay out a different way of approaching content moderation at scale that others can learn from.”