How to Report a Discord server

Video games have been around for a long time, so players need to stay connected to their gamer friends. Earlier, players used TeamSpeak and Skype to chat with their friends while playing games. Although they didn’t like these platforms much, there wasn’t much choice then.

Slowly, as time passed, gamers realized they wanted to be in touch with their friends or like-minded people even outside the game, and there were other things besides games that they wanted to talk about. We may not realize it much, but gamer friends were “real friends” to the people in the community.

Enter Discord in 2015, which had text chat, but voice chats were the key highlight and better than anything. So naturally, this led to a rapid rise in the platform’s popularity. Cut to a few years later, and Discord is the go-to platform for gaming enthusiasts and people who want to stay connected with their friends and speak about diverse topics.

But as it so happens with community-based platforms, Discord wasn’t untouched by people breaking community guidelines, and negative interactions arose. In addition, many people leveraged the platform to scam or harass users. If you have experienced such cases and are looking for a way to take action against such a server, read on to learn how it’s done.

Reporting a Discord server

If you’re wondering how to report discord servers, you should know that this is different than reporting a Discord user on the platform. Reporting a discord server is a bit more complicated, and while the platform has received complaints about the complexity, it isn’t entirely in vain.

Reporting a server on Discord isn’t as easy as reporting a Discord user because of the evidence required to back the complaint. This move has been made because it’s straightforward to make false accusations. Without the process of evidence submission in place, it could lead to entire servers being falsely reprimanded and eventually wiped out.

To-Dos before you report a Discord Server

Before hitting the “report” button on a discord server, review the community guidelines to ensure your claim. If the server you report follows the guidelines, it could backfire, and you could, in turn, receive flack from Discord on charges of harassment.

Discord Community Guidelines

The Discord community guidelines can be found on the Discord website. We have crunched and simplified Discord’s guidelines below for your easy understanding.

Here’s what the Discord moderators will not tolerate:

-If you organize or promote attempts of harassment or share harassment spam messages.

-If you organize, promote, or participate in hate speech or other illegal behavior.

-If you share threats of violence or harm others, send offending messages, or even self-harm.

-If you share videos of animal cruelty or any individual user sharing images of the same, it is also violating the -terms.

-Use Discord to organize, support or support violent extremism.

-If you share information that violates anyone’s intellectual property.

-Sexualizing children in any way – This includes sharing child pornography.

-Making adult content available to anyone under the age of 18.

-Sharing sexually explicit content of others without their consent.

-Sharing content that supports, glorifies or promotes suicide.

-Sharing false or misleading information through a Discord account or sharing pirated software.

-Indulging in activities related to spamming and hacking.

Check if the problem is on the server or because some individuals

Check if it is a server-wide problem or just because of a Discord user. If the problem occurs because of the indiscretion of a few members, you could avoid reporting the Discord server by reaching out to the server administrators and reporting the individuals.

Reporting an entire server because of the actions of a few individuals could lead to potentially shutting down the server and will disrupt the experience of hundreds and thousands of users, which isn’t justified.

In case you are receiving threats or abuses directly from 1 or 2 users on the server, blocking or reporting those users without having to report the server in totality would be ideal. Another way to tackle such users is to mute or block them so they can’t reach you with hateful or concerning messages.

To reiterate, evidence is of prime importance when you want to report a Discord server. Regardless of what you might have heard or read, it’s advised that you go through all the messages to gather all the evidence that you can – messages, links, and user ids. The more evidence you have, the stronger your case will be.

Also, make sure to keep all the user ids, messages, links, images, etc., with you after you have shared your complaint so that you can refer to them, if needed, at a later date. Getting user ids is a little different process. For that, you will have to turn on Developer mode on Discord. Let’s learn how to do that.

How to enable Developer Mode on Discord

iOS users who wish to report a message do not need to turn on developer mode. The process is as simple as long tapping on the message you want to report and tapping on the big, red option that reads “Report”. Select the reason and hit the Report button at the bottom of the window.

However, if you wish to report a discord server id, you will need to enable Developer mode to get the same. So let’s learn how to do that on different devices.

Before filing a report, however, make sure to collect the following information:

1. Server IDs of each of the Discord servers you wish to report. Every server on Discord has its unique id, so make sure you have documented all the ids that belong to the respective server to avoid confusion at the time of reporting.
2. Gather the message links where you see messages that violate any of the Discord terms mentioned above. The message link can be similar to getting the server’s ID. Ideally, three message links per server should suffice in your complaint, but the more you have, the stronger your case will be.
3. Gather the user id of the users engaged in malpractices. Know that the user id isn’t the same as the username. The user id is a permanent id allocated to a user; unlike usernames, they cannot be changed.
4. Give a brief explanation citing details of the activities the server has been involved in. Although not mandatory, a description surely helps give direction to the administrators to take proper action.

How to turn on Developer Mode on the Desktop/Web app

1. Head over to User Settings. This can be found by clicking on the gear-shaped icon at the bottom left-hand corner next to your username.
2. In the menu on the left, head over to the Advanced tab
3. Enable Developer mode by toggling the switch next to the option

How to turn on Developer Mode on iOS devices

1. Navigate to the top-left corner of the screen and tap on the Menu icon
2. Towards the bottom of the screen, on the right side of your username, tap on the gear-shaped icon
3. Tap on Appearance in the “App Settings” section
4. Tap to turn on Developer Settings in the “Advanced Settings”. The toggle will show blue color when turned on.

How to turn on Developer Mode on Android devices

1. On the top left corner of the screen, tap on the Menu icon – denote three vertically-stacked lines denote it.
2. Tap on your profile icon located in the bottom-right corner of your screen
3. Tap on Behaviour in the “App Settings” section
4. Enable Developer Mode by tapping on the toggle button

How to obtain Server ID and Message Links for reporting

Now that you know how to turn on this mode, you are one step closer to filing your report. The next step is to get the necessary ids to substantiate your report. The process of getting the respective ids varies according to the ID required and the app used.

How to get Server IDs for reporting

Getting the ID using Desktop/Web application:

1. Right-click on the Server name. You can find the server name above the channel list
2. Select Copy ID from the list of options that pop up.
3. Paste it onto a notepad or a word document. Make sure to note the server name next to the ID for future reference

Getting the ID using the Android app

1. On the top left corner of the screen, tap on the Menu icon – three vertically-stacked lines denote it.
2. Find the server name above the channel list. Press and hold on to the name
3. Click on “More Options” and navigate to “Copy ID”, the last option on the list. Tap on the option to copy the server-id
4. Paste the copied id on a document for safe keep

Getting the ID using the iOS app

1. Navigate to the top-left corner of the screen and tap on the Menu icon
2. Click on the triple-dot next to the server’s name and copy the server-id
3. Paste the copied id on a document for safekeep

How to get Message Links for reporting

To get Message Links using Desktop/Web application:

1. Hover the mouse’s cursor over the message the link is required.
2. Click on the three dots that appear on the far right of the message
3. Click Copy Message Link from the menu
4. Paste it onto a notepad or a word document

To get Message Link using the Android app

1. Tap and hold on the message for which the link is required
2. Select Share from the pop-up menu
3. From the second menu, tap on Copy to Clipboard
4. Paste the copied link on a document for safekeeping

In mobile devices, only Android devices allow for copying the message link. If you’re using an iOS device, you will have to use the desktop app to copy the message links using the method mentioned above

How to report a Discord Server

Once you have recorded all the required IDs and have the information, you can report the issue to Discord’s Trust and safety team.

Here’s how to go about filling in the required information for each of the sections

• What can we help you with? – Select Trust and Safety from the drop-down menu. Ideally, this section should already be populated with this label when you navigate to the link
• Your E-Mail Address – Here, enter the e-mail address you used to sign up on Discord
• Report Type – Choose from the available options to describe the type of violation
• Description – Here, enter a brief description of your issue. Mention the user ids and message links that you have collected
• Attachments – Upload your proofs here to substantiate your case. Upload the word document with all the ids and message links. You can also upload any screenshots that you might have of the violations.

After filling in the required details, click on the Report button at the bottom of the screen to submit your report. After this, the concerned team will take up the investigation of the issue.

How to retract a report submitted

In case you accidentally (or eagerly) submitted a report that wasn’t a violation, you should seek support as soon as possible to avoid any flack from Discord’s team.

On a Mobile device, you can head over to Discord’s Twitter page and send them a DM explaining the situation and further share the e-mail id you used to sign up on Discord. The team will then delete the report. Of course, the same process can be done from a desktop.

What if the messages are deleted after you submit your report?

If a message is deleted, all the record is deleted, and no record exists. In case the messages are deleted after you submit your report, there won’t be any record left for Discord’s Trust and Safety team to verify; hence, it will be extremely difficult for them to help.

Although you can still submit your report since there won’t be much for the team to act on, there could be a possibility that there is no action taken because of the unavailability of evidence.