Discord is introducing a native way for servers to detect and prevent malicious messages and spam. The tool, called AutoMod, is available today and will allow anyone who moderates one of Discord’s server-based communities to create a custom word list that the new bot can search for and intercept.
When one of the target words is detected, the bot can automatically block this message from reaching the server, send an alert to a specific channel to let moderators know, or put a user on “timeout” by disabling temporarily its capacity. to send messages. Discord will also provide a pre-built list of words and phrases that are usually tagged by modifications that can be easily activated without creating a custom keyword list.
“I think one of the big problems we’ve heard from a lot of moderators is that they spend a lot of time monitoring their servers, instead of doing the things they want to do, such as organizing events. [and] creating culture, ”Discord Group product marketing director Jesse Wofford told TechCrunch.
Unlike existing tools, Discord AutoMod can analyze conversations preventively, identifying anything with targeted keywords before it appears in the chat. External tools previously did not have the necessary permissions to view messages before they reached a server, but would automatically moderate them a few seconds later. Discord says it will give its developer community the ability to develop AutoMod’s preventive detection capability now that the new native tool is in the wild.
Image credits: Discord
“There are a lot of moderation robots in Discord and I think they’ve been doing a lot of heavy work so far,” Wofford said. “We’ve been very inspired by them in terms of what works for them, and in fact we talk directly to the developers and talk to our administrators about what they like.”
Discord is increasingly building some of the features that its users previously incorporated through services external to their main application. Users have long relied on the app’s external plug-in tools ecosystem to do everything from welcoming new members to the server and looking for harassment to making DJ music on channels and playing minigames.
Wofford says Discord wants developers to “come on the journey” and remain relevant even if the company integrates features that external bots previously provided to its community.
In addition to introducing AutoMod, Discord also announced that it will expand premium membership, a Patreon-like way for active community members to pay for benefits and additional server access.
This summer, Discord will begin allowing more servers to enable premium members, but the company is not yet open to anyone. Discord will allow U.S. servers with more than 500 members to request the program, but will still manually review these communities to make sure deployment is smooth and the company learns along the way.
“We want to make sure we’re very attentive to the people who come in,” Wofford said. “We think we’re creating a really new paradigm for career monetization, when it comes to the idea that community is something of value that can be monetized. And I think we’re playing the long game here.”
Discord first announced a pilot program for premium members in December. The company started by giving access to a set of features to a small group of communities, which allows servers to make some or all of their content available only to paid members. The first servers to try premium subscriptions included a community of game tutorials, The Trans Community Center and Stream Professor, which provides guides for people joining the live stream.
The idea is both to make the work of maintaining a Discord community more “sustainable” and to bring external payments made by users for premium content to Patreon or anywhere else on Discord itself. Server administrators can set their own prices based on what works for their community and what they plan to offer.
Through the first comments with its pilot program, Discord is also adding new features for premium members, such as a new dashboard, custom server emojis, and the ability to offer free premium trial members for potential members. they can try them on before they buy.
Discord also introduces two new resources for community-managing modifiers and administrators: a community resource center with educational information to help servers get started, and a special center where community administrators can interact with Discord staff. , receive news and join events.