In Russia, Discord was blocked. This messenger was created for gamers, but even participants in the war in Ukraine use it

Service audience in the Russian Federation - 40 million people

Roskomnadzor blocked the Discord messenger in Russia. Earlier, the department made five decisions on violation of Russian legislation in relation to this service. As a result of blocking the messenger, several tens of millions of people will lose another convenient means of communication. Medusa tells what Discord is and why it interfered with the Russian authorities.

The fact that the discord of the Discord service can occur in the near future, in late September, Kommersant said with reference to a source familiar with the situation. The basis for this is five decisions on violation of Russian legislation, which journalists found in the register of prohibited sites of Roskomnadzor. Another interlocutor of the publication noted that the game industry is discussing a probable slowdown in the service.

Over the past one and a half months, Russian users Discord have encountered at least four times the problems of the service. In August, a large -scale failure occurred , as a result of which, in addition to the messenger, many other popular sites and applications ceased to open, including Telegram, WhatsApp, VKontakte and Steam. Roskomnadzor explained this to DDOS Ataku on Russian communications operators. Experts suggested that the Russian authorities tried first of all to block the Telegram messenger, but their actions were reflected in the work of other resources.

On September 18, Discord stopped working with users from different regions of Russia. In some cases, the VPN connection helped to return access to the service. No failures were observed at the global level. Commercant journalists wrote that the service was partial blocking, since several Discord pages were included in the register of prohibited sites of Roskomnadzor. Another failure was recorded on September 26 - users complained that they did not work for either the site or the application.

On the morning of October 8, Discord again stopped working normally in Russia. At the same time, the official service website said that all the messenger systems work as usual. A little later, representatives of the RoskomSvobod project said that the problems in Discord are related to the actions of the Russian authorities. A few hours later, Roskomnadzor confirmed to reporters a complete blocking of the service in Russia.

Initially, Discord was a gamers platform. In the early years there was practically no moderation there

Initially, Discord was created for gamers. This service allows players to communicate with their voice, which helps to better coordinate actions in multi -user games. In addition, users can join various thematic servers, both public and closed, the entrance to which is possible only by invitation. This allows the audience of the service to communicate on any topic outside the video game.

In 2020, when the pandemic began, Discord began to position itself as a universal communication platform. This, in particular, made it possible to attract an additional $ 100 million investments for the further development of the service.

“Games are what has brought many of you to the platform, and we will always be grateful for this,” the founders of Discord wrote in the official blog. “Over time, many of you understood and voiced that you just need a place created for a comfortable pastime and communication with your own communities and friends.”

One of the reasons for this comfort is the lack of strict moderation. Discord Vice President John Redgrave, heading the Trust & Safety department, said that in the first two years of his existence of service there was practically no content monitoring in it. Changes in the policy of the company began to occur only in 2017 after riots in Charlotsville. It was Discord that became a platform where the protesters coordinated their actions, simultaneously exchanging anti -Semitic and racist jokes.

One of the most high -profile scandals with the participation of the messenger was associated with the leakage of the Pentagon's secret documents, which the US Air Force soldier Jack Teisher published at least three separate servers for more than a year, without attracting the attention of the T&G department. He was detained in the spring of 2023. In March of 2024, Taisher concluded a deal andfound himself guilty of six points of prosecution.

Despite the fact that Discord after this case has amended the rules for using the service, there can still be found extremist messages. The company also does not plan to introduce automatic servers scan to search for potentially dangerous content.

Apparently, it is the lack of control and the inability to track what is happening on closed servers that Roskomnadzor does not like. In addition, it allows users to remain anonymous, which the Russian authorities also continue to fight consistently.

The lack of strict moderation also led to the fact that now the service is actively used during the war in Ukraine by both parties. The first to use Discord to manage the combat operations began the Armed Forces in 2022. The messenger interface can also be regularly seen in the videos shot in the headquarters of units and formations of the RF Armed Forces.

Through Discord, you can get broadcasts from drones, which allows officers to promptly lead by assault groups on radio communications. It is not yet clear how possible blocking will affect the use of the service by military personnel of the Russian Federation.

The service created two fans of the video game. They dreamed of uniting people

The Discord service in 2015 was created by entrepreneur Jason Citron, American Jewish descent, and programmer Stanislav Vishnevsky, born in Kharkov. Both continue to manage the company so far. Citron holds the post of general director, and Vishnevsky - the technical director. Both are also large fans of the video game.

In 2008, Jason Citron released Aurora Feint's mobile game. He could not earn it, but one of the technologies - a kind of built -in gaming social network - looked promising. His partner Peter Relan suggested turning her into an independent platform called OpenFeint.

In less than a year, the service attracted more than 10 million users. It was also used by more than 900 games from the App Store mobile application store. In 2011, the Japanese company Gree bought OpenFeint for $ 104 million. At the same time, Sitron continued to work in the company for some time.

Around this period of time, he met Vishnevsky, who worked in Gree as a senior developer, and also at the same time developed his own social network for Guildwork gamers. In 2013, they tried to return to the development of games together, but their Fates Forever project, like the first game of Citron, could not achieve commercial success.

As a result, they came to the idea of ​​creating a service that would allow gamers to interact with each other during the game. “All my life I tried to create sites or applications that would unite people,” said Vishnevsky. At one time, he was one of the best players in the online multiplayer role -playing game Final Fantasy XI. However, he lacked a convenient means of communication with the team. This service has become Discord.

In Russia, Discord use almost 40 million people. And he does not have a full -fledged alternative

The official website of Discord states that 150 million people use the service monthly. This is probably a little outdated data. In April 2024, Jason Citron in an interview with The Verge mentioned that the number of active users already exceeds 200 million people.

In Russia, according to various estimates, the number of registered Discord users is from 29 to 40 million. Such data are quoted by Kommersant with reference to the managing partner of the HeadsMade communication agency Yaroslav Meshalkin.

These figures generally coincide with the data that the World Population Review, which tracks demographic indicators. According to her, in Russia there are 39.9 million active Discord users - in this indicator the country is second only to the United States and Brazil.

Discord in Russia is used not only for communication in video games, but also in the field of education, as well as as a means of corporate communication. One of the game developers in the commentary of Kommersant noted that sometimes it is more convenient and cheaper than using alternative communications, such as Slack.

Another component of the success of Discord is an active community of developers creating thousands of useful bots to perform different tasks (like those that exist in Telegram). The popular service for II images of Midjourney INTERNITION AT firstly through Discord.

Vasily Ovchinnikov, the head of the development of the video game industry ( RVI ), added that there are currently no direct analogues of Discord. However, he admitted that, as in the case of the departure from Russia, Miro and Notion, tiles of this service can quickly appear on the market. The only problem is that the usual communications with communities around the world that will continue to use Discord will still be broken.

Mikhail Gerasimov