for those unfamiliar, Signal is a free, end‐to‐end encrypted instant messenger. its feature set has steadily grown since 2014, and the whole time, the non‐profit Signal Foundation has never known anything about its users besides what phone numbers have been used to register accounts and when. neither the Signal Foundation nor anybody who hacks or subpoenas them will ever know who you talk to or what you talk about on Signal, and Signal will never subject its users to ads or trackers. maintaining this strict privacy‐first model requires complex encryption and fully‐custom protocols, which makes adding features difficult, but with the recent release of all their Signal 7.0 clients they’ve finally finished all the work needed to let people talk on Signal without knowing each other’s phone numbers. (you still need a phone number to register, as an anti‐spam measure.)
i’ve already been using Signal for all communications with my close friends and loved ones for many years. (compared to the previous hodgepodge of SMS/e‐mail/Facebook/Skype/Discord/Google Hangouts i assume is dead by now/iMessage/WhatsApp, they’ve much preferred just having us all on Signal instead!) but now that Signal’s also an option for talking to people whom i don’t trust to have my phone number / PII, i intend to use it for almost everything. i know Signal unfortunately can’t fully replace Discord for me as they have some big differences (particularly w/r/t large groups/communities), but it’s certainly much more competitive now. (and my understanding from others is that Signal handily trounces Telegram now?? i’ve never used or seen Telegram so i don’t know its merits, i just know it’s not a secure messenger despite people thinking it is.) so to understand when and when not to use Signal over Discord, and to help people who use Discord understand Signal better, i’ve compiled an exhaustive list of all the differences between Signal and Discord that i can think of. if you’re interested in Signal and want to know if it has X or Y features that Discord has (or doesn’t have), you’re in the right place!
glossary of icons
- these
🖥 icons/emoji indicate that a feature is exclusive to the Android, iOS, or desktop PC clients respectively. when not specified, features should apply to all clients. - these
icons hyperlink to a relevant support article for the respective service, when one is available. these only appear for features both services support, otherwise there’s just a regular hyperlink. (several Discord support articles have links to specific sections within the document that do not function. i try to link to them anyway but it’s not my fault that they don’t work, there just aren’t ids assigned to the headers sometimes despite other links in the document referencing ids that should exist.) - these ▶ things can be clicked on (except for that example one) to expand an aside with additional details.
here are all the things Signal has going for it which Discord doesn’t:
- private usernames: change or delete your username without your contacts knowing
▶
after changing or deleting your username, your old username cannot be claimed by anyone for 7 days. - username discriminators: eschews discoverability in favour of standardized identifiers on the ends of usernames that keep them recognizable and easy to share (2–9 digits)
▶
Discord famously used to have 4‐digit discriminators of the format “#1234” at the end of usernames, but they got rid of them last year in a fit of stupidity (well after Signal had already decided to use discriminators for their own usernames, incidentally). Signal was initially considering using the same #hash character as their separator for discriminators, but changed it to a .period later. - 100 MB attachment limit, compared to Discord’s 25 MiB, or 50 MiB if you pay for Nitro Basic or Nitro Classic
- 65 536 character limit, versus Discord’s 2000, or 4000 if you pay for Nitro
▶
the entire Bee Movie script can be sent in 2 messages, but “read more” buttons appear on messages >⁓1000 characters, unlike Discord. - no group join limit, versus Discord’s 100 server limit, or 200 if you pay for Nitro
▶
while Discord doesn’t appear to have a limit on the number of group DMs one can join, those are limited to a maximum of 10 users, and they have no permission management features at all. in particular, only the creator of the group DM will ever be able to remove users, yet other members can always add other users to the group DM. - verifiable end‐to‐end encryption: no selling of your personal data, ever, because it is impossible
- no chance of suddenly losing years of conversation history due to instantaneous, unjustified, unappealable bans from the service provider (ask me how i know!)
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please do not actually ask me how i know, i hate talking about this. Signal data is all stored locally, and there is functionally no moderation of what happens on the service from the service provider besides the server‐side spam heuristics (even though their terms of service stipulate that you can’t use Signal for illegal activities — despite the Signal Foundation transparently enabling and supporting circumvention of government censorship). - no requirements to take and send a picture of your face and photo ID to the service provider due to underage reports
- no annoying gamer memes in the UI or official correspondences
▶
app changelogs do contain jokes, but they’re more like dad jokes. i’ve seen people voice appreciation for their levity in the wild, even if it’s not my thing. there is also occasionally light humour in their blog posts. - Note to Self: send messages and files to yourself across clients
- Stories: like Instagram or Snapchat; can be disabled
- location sharing
- contact sharing
- generate QR codes for others to add you or join your group
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Signal also has links you can give people to add you by your username. these don’t actually contain the username itself, however — instead, they point to a resource that then points to your username. this is done in such a way that when you change the link or change or delete your username, it’s no longer possible to use the old link to determine what your plaintext username was. - pending group invites: have admins manually approve every new member that joins a group
- scheduled messages: queue messages to send at custom times
- repeat alerts: play notifications multiple times to make sure you don’t miss them
- per‐conversation notification settings/sounds/ringtones
▶
giving all of my frequent contacts notification sounds that are sound effects or music tracks from one of their favourite video games has greatly enriched my life. this isn’t hyperbole; not only is it extremely functional to know who sent me a message without having to look at my phone, but also having my loved ones make their own unique noises at me throughout the day brings me great joy. - notification profiles: manual and scheduled control of per‐contact, call, and @mention notifications
- replies that don’t @mention by default
- message forwarding: quickly copy a message to multiple conversations without using the clipboard
- message delivery indicators
- read receipts (can be disabled)
- option to disable typing indicators
- disappearing messages: set timed auto‐deletion of messages globally and per‐conversation
- view‐once media: like Snapchat (can only be sent from )
- local‐only and batch message deletion
- media auto‐download and low‐data call options
- data‐saving sent image quality options, chat pinning, image editing, and voice message recording on desktop PCs
▶
to elaborate: both Signal and Discord support these features on their mobile clients, but Discord’s web/desktop PC clients do not. the Signal image editor’s blur tools are only at present. - voice message downloading
- waveform previews for audio files besides voice messages
- audio file playback on mobile, plus opus audio playback
▶
both Signal and Discord play mp3, ogg, mp4, and flac files on desktop PCs, but in my testing opus files did not work on Discord’s web/desktop PC clients, and no audio files would play in the Android client at all. (despite this, voice messages recorded and sent using the Discord mobile client do obviously play just fine on mobile.) - audio and video picture‐in‐picture and playback speed controls (video controls are 🖥 only)
- video trimmer: cut down sent videos to one shorter segment
- option to use the system emoji font instead of Signal’s
- chat archive: tidy your chat list without deleting conversations
- local backups: daily backups of your chat history, connections, profile, settings, etc.
▶
my understanding is that cloud backups are currently being worked on. the desktop PC client’s data can technically be backed up as part of a normal backup solution, though currently this is not officially supported. - Screen Security: block Signal from being previewed in the app switcher, and block screenshots on Android
- Screen Lock: require your device’s unlock credentials to open Signal after a custom inactivity period
- Incognito Keyboard: tell your keyboard app not to remember what you type in Signal
- proxy support and censorship circumvention
- automatically fuck with the integrity of digital forensics from law enforcement just by having Signal installed if software from Israeli digital intelligence company Cellebrite DI Ltd. is ever used to attempt to extract data from your device
- improved account security
▶
this point could be debated (as security always can), but i would say it’s true. Discord account hijacking and phishing scams are rampant and never seem to be properly addressed by Discord (for god’s sake, clicking Nitro affiliate links in the Android app opens an in‐app browser that you have to sign in to in order to complete the subscription, how is this real). most of these kinds of attacks don’t even apply to Signal’s account security model. for instance, because one cannot “sign in” to Signal using username/password credentials like with Discord, those types of phishing attacks are impossible. session hijacking a desktop PC client, as is quite common on Discord, also wouldn’t give access to any account management functions like changing the phone number or PIN or deleting the account. the tradeoffs are that the devices a Signal account can be accessed from are more limited, and account/data recovery are more difficult (the Signal Foundation can’t help you access data that they also can’t access). - …payments, i guess…
▶
uses a cryptocurrency. this keeps private who you’re exchanging assets with, but “assets unregulated by design are purpose‐built to fund underground economies and are therefore worse at everything else than the pre‐existing solutions we already have” still applies here. plus you need to use a third‐party “exchange” to transform between actual currency and these digital assets, which are all inherently untrustworthy. just mail cash instead. (hey, at least it’s not an NFT scandal or OpenAI chatbot.)
Signal has these (and all) features available for free, which you have to pay Discord money for:
- global and per‐conversation chat colours and wallpapers (wallpapers are only), where accessing more Theme presets on Discord requires a Nitro subscription
- custom stickers everywhere, which on Discord requires a Nitro subscription (and joining servers to get the stickers)
▶
the free, open‐source, unofficial / unaffiliated website Signal Stickers allows anyone to upload and search for sticker packs for Signal, making thousands of sticker packs available for free to all Signal users. many are imported from other apps like Line and Telegram. - multiple app icons, which on Discord requires a Nitro subscription
▶
some of Signal’s extra app icons are meant to conceal its presence on your device, by masquerading as e.g. a weather app.
Nitro and Nitro Basic pricing reference:
“Nitro” costs ⁓USD $10/mo.; “Nitro Basic” costs ⁓USD $3/mo.; “Server Boosts”, as well as “Nitro Classic” (which can no longer be newly subscribed to), cost ⁓USD $5/mo.. purchasing a year subscription costs 10× the monthly rate. an active Nitro or Nitro Classic subscriptions gives a 30% discount on Server Boost purchases, and an active Nitro subscription includes 2 Server Boosts. these are now subject to localized pricing, so prices may differ between regions.
Signal and Discord both have the following features:
- usernames: unique identifiers for adding people; separate from display names
▶
on Signal, you should set and remember an account PIN if you have any connections for which you don’t know their phone number, or who don’t let anyone find them on Signal by their phone number. this is so that if your smartphone breaks and you need to re‐register for Signal on a new smartphone, you can recover those connections from Signal’s servers. the Signal Foundation does not want to know who you talk to on Signal, so they will only store those connections for you if they are encrypted using your PIN so that they cannot read them. (this technology is called Secure Value Recovery). - optional phone number discoverability: let people who already have your number in their contacts automatically find and add you on the service
- desktop PC client with keyboard navigation 🖥
▶
neither Signal nor Discord support Windows on ARM at present. Signal made these retro‐styled reference cards for their keyboard shortcuts, and now i wish every single piece of software could provide these. - screen sharing on desktop PCs
- group audio and video calls
- group chats
- basic group permissions: control who can add members, edit the group info, and send messages
▶
Signal only has 2 group roles — members and admins — and permissions apply either to both roles or only the admin role. Discord enables far greater complexity with its custom roles system. - group/server invite links
▶
Discord allows multiple server invite links at once with built‐in expiries or member join limits, but Signal only allows one invite link at a time which is unrestricted. - spam prevention and reporting
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the Signal Foundation does not handle spam reports, as that would reveal information about their users to them. instead, they use server‐side heuristics to restrict suspected spammers, such as by forcing them to complete a CAPTCHA to continue using Signal. the precise algorithms used for spam detection are the only closed‐source part of the server software by design, to hamper spammers’ attempts to game it. - blocking
▶
Signal additionally lets you block groups. in Discord, group DMs are opt‐out (you are immediately added without prompting when a member adds you), but servers are opt‐in (you must click through an invite link) and are also the dominant group conversation type. (Signal’s groups implement both instant adds and invite links.) my understanding is that this means you cannot stop yourself from being repeatedly added to a group DM in Discord without unfriending its members, but the impact of this is likely minimal in practice. - chat pinning / favourites on mobile
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as mentioned in the first list, Signal also supports this in its desktop PC client, which Discord does not. - notifications
- in‐chat notification sound controls: do or don’t ding for conversations you’re already reading
- manual and timed conversation mutes
- mark as unread
▶
Discord supports marking as unread from a specific point in a conversation, whereas Signal just marks an entire conversation as unread generically. - @mentions: trigger an elevated notification class for someone by tagging their display name in a message
- replies: quote and link to an earlier message in a conversation
- typing indicators
▶
these are mandatory in Discord; recipients are forced to see them, and senders are forced to send them. Signal has a control to opt out of sending and seeing them, just as it does with read receipts. - message editing
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edits on Signal are limited to ≤10 edits within 24 hours of sending, and all revisions of the message are available for recipients to review. both services only ever let you edit your own messages. - global message deletion
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all message deletions on Discord work this way; there is no local‐only message deletion option because of how conversation histories are stored on their servers and not on‐device. Signal’s global message deletions can only be done within 24 hours of sending a message, and you can only globally delete messages you sent. - chat history search
- optional link previews: embed some content from a hyperlink’s destination so recipients know where it will send them
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both Signal and Discord use their own servers to connect to the link destination for retrieving embed content, but Signal maintains reasonable privacy by proxying the client’s queries to retrieve the link’s embed data through its servers in such a way that Signal never knows what the linked URL is or precisely how much data you’re downloading, and the destination site never sees your IP address. - text formatting: italic, bold,
strikethrough, monospace, and spoilers
▶
Discord uses Markdown syntax for text formatting, whereas Signal uses UI‐based WYSIWYG controls and has no plans to implement Markdown. - automatic emoticon :-) to emoji 🙂 conversion option
- emoji shortcodes: use a :double_colon: format to search for or type emoji (e.g. :joy: → 😂)
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i literally had no idea Signal had this feature until i tried it on a whim a minute ago just to make sure it didn’t. but it does. apparently Github invented this syntax? sure. - emoji picker: look for emojis by category or with a text search
- emoji reactions: use emoji to respond to messages quickly and minimally
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Discord allows multiple different emoji reactions to the same message from one user, but Signal only allows one reaction. - stickers: build a library of emoji‐like images you can send as messages
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on both services, uploading new stickers is limited to 🖥 only. - sticker suggestions: type an emoji to see relevant stickers
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Discord additionally has a name for each sticker that can be typed in verbatim to suggest it. Signal does not have an option to disable sticker suggestions, but they’re much more annoying on Discord when undesired because of how Discord has hundreds of global stickers you can’t remove from your library which are all mapped to extremely common words like “thanks” and “sad”. - GIF picker/search on mobile
▶
Discord uses Tenor, while Signal uses GIPHY. to maintain reasonable privacy, Signal proxies the client’s GIPHY API queries through its servers in such a way that Signal never sees your search terms or precisely how much data you’re downloading, and GIPHY never sees your IP address. Signal does not support GIF search in its desktop PC client yet. - share multiple photos and videos in the same message
- built‐in image editor on mobile
▶
Signal additionally has image editing in its desktop PC client. Discord brands this feature “Remix” for some reason. honestly it’s so confusing how they have so many “branded” features like this that all just use A Different Normal‐Ass Word to refer to them. imagine having to go through all of them by compiling a comprehensive list of features or something. - data‐saving sent media quality options on mobile
▶
Signal additionally has data‐saving sent image quality options in its desktop PC client. - voice messages
- shared media/documents view: review all files sent in a conversation
▶
Discord’s web/desktop PC clients don’t have a dedicated interface for this like Signal does, but it still functionally implements this there with its search filters. - light and dark themes
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Discord’s mobile client additionally has a pure black theme meant for devices with OLED displays (they call it “midnight”). this can be manually replicated in chat views in Signal by giving them a pure black wallpaper. - font size controls
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Signal’s control for this in its desktop PC client is just zooming in the whole UI. - subscriber badges and subscription gifting
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donations to Signal (gifted or otherwise) don’t have any functional difference other than optionally showing off a badge by a user’s profile image.
Signal doesn’t have these things which you can use on Discord if you pay them money:
- 500 MiB attachment limit (requires a Nitro subscription)
- avatar animations and decorations (requires a Nitro or Nitro Classic subscription)
- profile colours, banners, and effects (requires a Nitro subscription)
- additional background colours on desktop PC clients (requires a Nitro subscription)
- custom invite links: claim unique server invite URLs (requires 14 Server Boosts for each server, valued within USD $51.91/mo. – USD $69.86/mo.)
▶
implementing invite links without randomized keys would necessitate Signal knowing those keys, which goes against their privacy‐first design ethos. also Discord specifically documents that trying to create a custom invite link to a server with no “read messages” permissions enabled for the @everyone role will give you a misleading error message written for an entirely different issue which just drives me up the wall, UX is not this hard. - invite backgrounds: set a background image to show with invites to a server (requires 2 Server Boosts for each server, valued at USD $9.99/mo.)
- server banners: put a background image at the top of a server’s channel list (requires 7 Server Boosts for each server, valued within USD $27.46/mo. – USD $34.93/mo.; animated server banners require 14 Server Boosts for each server, valued within USD $51.91/mo. – USD $69.86/mo.)
- role icons: set an image or emoji to appear next to the names of users in chat with a role (requires 7 Server Boosts for each server, valued within USD $27.46/mo. – USD $34.93/mo.)
- Super Reactions: add intense animations to emoji reactions (requires a Nitro, Nitro Basic, or Nitro Classic subscription)
- Clips: record short videos of your streamed application and its audio, your microphone audio, and the audio of others in the call who haven’t opted‐out 🖥 (Windows PCs only) (requires a Nitro subscription)
▶
this feature is still being actively developed, and is only being made available to Nitro subscribers during this period. it is unclear whether it will remain a Nitro‐exclusive feature when it is considered complete.
Nitro and Nitro Basic pricing reference:
“Nitro” costs ⁓USD $10/mo.; “Nitro Basic” costs ⁓USD $3/mo.; “Server Boosts”, as well as “Nitro Classic” (which can no longer be newly subscribed to), cost ⁓USD $5/mo.. purchasing a year subscription costs 10× the monthly rate. an active Nitro or Nitro Classic subscriptions gives a 30% discount on Server Boost purchases, and an active Nitro subscription includes 2 Server Boosts. these are now subject to localized pricing, so prices may differ between regions.
and Signal does not have these Discord features:
- bots and all related automation features, including AutoMod, the bot API, and app integrations
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most such types of application interfacing are simply not possible to have on Signal with its end‐to‐end encryption. for instance, Signal would have no means to distinguish between human users and bots, so it would not be possible to remove the phone number requirement for bot accounts or give them unique APIs / abilities. “self‐botting” is probably possible with custom clients, but clients all have full control over their connected accounts, so this is extremely dangerous and only really feasible for self‐hosted solutions, which is prohibitive for most users. - online statuses and Active Now: show other users if you’re online and what you’re doing, or if you don’t wish to be disturbed
▶
Signal presumably does not implement this for privacy reasons. i certainly can’t imagine they’d ever want to idly snoop on what applications you’re running on your PC. - pronouns: dedicated profile field for typing preferred pronouns
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Signal does also have an “about” profile field for arbitrary text you could put pronouns in (as some people used to do on Discord before the pronoun field was added separately), but obviously this impedes your ability to use that field for other purposes. - profile notes: keep private notes about users (works just like on cohost)
- Server Profiles: show different profile details per‐server
▶
pronouns can be set per‐server by everyone. Server Nicknames can be customized if the server permissions allow this. (server permissions can also be configured to allow moderators to force specific Server Nicknames on their members.) customizing other profile details, including avatars, “about me” sections, banners, effects, and themes, requires a Nitro subscription. - channels and categories: organize multiple “rooms” for text chats and group calls in the same group server
- pinned messages: assign specific messages in a conversation to a dedicated viewable list
- advanced permissions: restrict or permit many more types of actions for server members, from adding reactions to attaching files to speaking in voice calls
- roles: assign roles to multiple users for fine‐tuned permissions and mass‐mentions, and to change the colours of people’s names in chats
- Time Out: temporarily restrict users from interacting with a server as a disciplinary measure
- explicit image filtering: let black box algorithms determine whether or not the picture of your dog you’re trying to send is actually pornography
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as Signal cannot access the contents of any messages, it would be impossible for them to implement any server‐side filtering like this. - Community Activity Alerts and Security Actions: alerts and quick actions to help moderators have agile responses to raids and spam
- groups with >1000 members
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Discord’s server member cap is normally 500 000. exemptions to exceed even this can be manually granted by Discord staff on request, given that certain criteria are met. - group calls with >40 participants
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Discord apparently has no actual limit on the number of users in a voice channel, allowing it to extend well into the realm of total impracticality. - high‐quality calls without exposing your public IP address
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Discord always routes all call data through their servers. Signal has an option to enable this, but it degrades call quality (the extra layers of end‐to‐end encryption mean this will inevitably always be less performant). using a commercial VPN can mitigate this; my personal recommendation is Mullvad, which you can also purchase as Mozilla VPN. - high‐performance streaming
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Discord can use their servers to transcode video calls into lower quality for viewers on bad connections, but because Signal cannot see the contents of calls, it cannot help transcode anything. the more complex end‐to‐end encryption Signal employs also slows things down. Signal clients do dynamically raise and lower video quality for recipients according to connection conditions, but it cannot be as responsive at this as a dedicated server, so it gets especially sluggish with high‐resolution desktop sharing (which i think it always does at maximum share resolution for visual clarity over framerate). i find Signal unusable for game streams in practice, and will instead use Discord or Steam or even YouTube concurrently for streaming purposes. - simultaneous camera and desktop streaming
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Signal forces your camera stream to stop when you start sharing your desktop, likely for processing / network performance reasons. - application streaming: stream both video and audio from an application 🖥
▶
Discord’s desktop PC client on Linux cannot do application audio streaming. - multistream: multiple simultaneous desktop streams in one group call (viewing more than one stream is 🖥 only)
- screen sharing on Android
- Streamer Mode: hide sensitive information in the UI while sharing your screen 🖥
- video backgrounds: blur your surroundings on your webcam, or replace them with an image 🖥
▶
using custom video backgrounds requires a Nitro or Nitro Basic subscription; only some preset images are freely available. - Streamkit Overlay: show call voice activity unobtrusively in a livestreaming application 🖥
- Pop Out View: show calls in their own window 🖥
- per‐user volume controls: turn down or mute other people in a call
- Push‐To‐Talk: use a key to control voice transmission
- Soundboard: play custom audio clips in calls
- Text‐to‐Speech: force users reading a channel to hear their device’s voice synthesizer speak a message out loud
▶
i have never seen this feature used for any purpose besides blatant and unapologetic trolling. - Markdown formatting syntax: access text formatting just by typing in specific characters
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Signal uses UI‐based WYSIWYG controls for its text formatting and has no plans to implement Markdown syntax, on the grounds that it interferes with copying and pasting text and confuses users who have never used a formatting syntax before. - additional text formatting: underline, # headers, masked links, • lists, multi‐line code blocks, and block quotes
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Signal limits its text formatting to inline effects only, reserves underlines for hyperlinks, and does not mask hyperlinks for security reasons. - Custom Emojis: use other arbitrary images inline with text or as reactions without submitting proposals to the Unicode Consortium
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using custom emojis outside the server they’re added to, and using animated custom emojis at all, requires a Nitro, Nitro Basic, or Nitro Classic subscription. i could’ve sworn Discord distinguished between Unicode emojis and custom emojis by calling the latter “emotes” but i guess this is just user‐manufactured terminology i’ve been exposed to? - favouriting GIFs: maintain a library of your favourite GIFs for quick sending 🖥
- GIF search on desktop PCs
- custom keybinds: change your keyboard shortcuts 🖥
- web client: use the desktop client from any modern web browser
▶
Signal does not have a web client primarily for security reasons. Signal accounts do not have credentials to enter into a web browser to “log in”. instead, clients must store sensitive encryption keys which give full account access, and doing so within a web browser vastly increases the attack surface, such as exposing them to malicious browser extensions or cross‐site scripting. storing the code for the client locally instead of retrieving it remotely also prevents interception attacks. developing for a fixed web technology framework (Electron, just like Discord’s desktop PC client) also makes development easier by vastly reducing the number of configurations to test against and easily permitting cross‐platform deployment, in addition to keeping all the code running the client trusted. - in‐app web browser: open web hyperlinks in a full‐screen popup rather than a dedicated web browser app
- image descriptions / “alt text”: provide descriptions of images and stickers for accessibility / screen readers
- interface compactness options: make chats look like IRC
- message links: hyperlink to a specific message, even if’s in a different conversation
- silent global message deletions
▶
Signal replaces globally‐deleted messages with notifications that they were deleted. - globally deleting messages >24 hours after sending
- globally deleting other user’s messages in a group
- indefinite message editing
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Signal does not allow edits to a message >24 hours after sending it (except in Note to Self), and limits messages to 10 total edits. - old group conversation history for new members
▶
besides the other obvious privacy implications of one user exposing the history of a group conversation to a new user they add without the consent of the other group members, Signal does not preserve conversation history on their servers as part of their privacy‐first design, so new group members would have no trusted source to retrieve conversation history from. - advanced search filters (e.g. “from:<user>”)
▶
Signal has a dedicated interface for reviewing shared media and documents, but has no comparable analogues for filters “from:<user>”, “mentions:<user>”, “has:<embed/sticker>”, “before/during/after:<date>”, or “pinned:<true or false>”. - Inbox: review mentions and unreads in aggregate 🖥
- Account Switcher: switch between ≤5 accounts in one client 🖥
▶
in the event Discord bans an account from their service, Discord explicitly reserves the right to use information about other accounts added to the same Account Switcher to determine that these accounts belong to the same user and ban all of them. - sign in to one account on multiple smartphones simultaneously
▶
Signal does support linking additional iPad clients just like with desktop PC clients. - no phone number + smartphone client requirement to register an account
▶
Discord does have a Verification Level that server administrators can set which requires accounts to have a verified phone number before they can join a server, and phone numbers cannot be assigned to multiple accounts, just like Signal. - Connections & Linked Roles: add social media accounts to your Discord profile, and use them to gain access to relevant restricted roles in select servers
▶
the Linked Roles feature would be impossible for Signal to implement for the same reasons that make other types of application interfacing impossible. - e‐mail discoverability: let people who already know your e‐mail address find you on Discord
▶
i can’t imagine this being in high demand given how public email addresses are and how much spam everyone already gets in their email inboxes. also the Signal Foundation would then be able to associate e‐mail addresses to phone numbers (just like how they can necessarily associate a plaintext username to a phone number on their servers while the username’s in use), which is more power to identify their users than they ever want to have. - Server Discovery: centralized searchable index of groups for users to join
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Signal cannot implement this without violating their privacy‐first ethos to not know anything about its users, what they do, and who they talk to. Discord servers must meet the requirements for and enable the Community Server features to use this. - Server Insights: review various metrics like “growth” and “engagement” 🖥
▶
Discord servers must meet the requirements for and enable the Community Server features to use this. - Highlights notifications: have your friends’ conversations in a server fed to an LLM in an attempt to deliver you summaries about what they’re talking about, or be shown what messages in a server some black box algorithms think are “popular”
- Community Onboarding: add a full‐screen popup to help users joining your server customize their experience on it before they even see what it’s like (setup is 🖥 only)
▶
Discord servers must meet the requirements for and enable the Community Server features to use this. - optional member join messages and prompts to reply to welcome messages with a sticker in servers
- Threads: member‐created side‐channels for separate discussions (à la e.g. Slack)
- Forums: channels structured as a collection of tagged posts with replies
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Discord servers must meet the requirements for and enable the Community Server features to use this. - Activities: custom applications created by Discord for group use in calls, such as “Watch Together”, “Whiteboard”, and small bespoke games.
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there’s a specific section of the support page for this feature that discusses how it can overheat mobile devices. - Stage channels: group calls with designated speakers and audiences
▶
Discord servers must meet the requirements for and enable the Community Server features to use this. - Events: schedule “events” to notify server members of future happenings
- Announcement Channels: publish messages that appear in other servers who follow your announcements
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Discord servers must meet the requirements for and enable the Community Server features to use this. implementing something like this in Signal’s end‐to‐end encrypted groups would not be feasible. - all types of e‐mail communications, including for Community Activity Alerts, message digests, friend requests, product updates, tips on how to use Discord, and recommended servers and events.
- Family Center: surveil your children in case they try to use the internet to interact with The Gays
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given that it’s impossible by design for the Signal Foundation to surveil any user’s activity on their service, it’s certainly out of the question for them to let users surveil other users. - Drops Quests: that support article no longer exists so i guess this feature has been ghosted?? but the setting for “In‐game rewards (aka Drops)” still shows up in the “Privacy & Safety” options section?? i can’t even give this one a sarcastic description because i have no idea what it is/was and can’t figure it out.
- dude i have gesture navigation disabled on my Android phone but i just discovered that the Discord app has its own custom implementation of the “horizontal swipe to go back” gesture for some godforsaken reason and there’s no option to disable it why the absolute fuck
please let me know if there are any inaccuracies or missing details here! information about iOS in particular is more likely to be incorrect as i do not have an iOS device to test with.