A one-man band and a band of moderators discuss how Discord is changing

The chat platform originally meant for gamers now has a thriving community of influencers, brands and individuals hosting virtual events too.

Apart from its chat rooms, Discord also enables features such as viewing parties, which let users chat while viewing media, which could be a new series or film, live streams of cricket and football matches, or a live event broadcast by another user.

For Pune-based college student Aditya Dokewar, 17, Discord has been a safe space to live-stream one-man gigs where he sings while playing the electric, acoustic or bass guitar, piano, ukulele or mouth organ.

Posting videos on Instagram made him nervous, he says. On Discord, he’s just Crestyyy, “which just makes me more confident and comfortable”. The community is also more forgiving and encouraging on Discord, he says.

Meanwhile, talent management companies are popping up to help influencers make better use of the platform. Snoopervisor helps influencers and brands build Discord communities and moderates them too. “You can programme bots that will mute and remove people using abusive words and block spammers,” says Siddhant Kashyap, 20, a medical student who co-founded Snoopervisor with 19-year-old engineering student Rohit Mohite in 2020. They also have human moderators who work in shifts to supervise content posted on their client’s servers.

“We look for NSFW comments, hate speech or toxic statements and warn users,” Kashyap says. “It’s interesting to note though that even when people talk about their deepest, darkest secrets on the platform, the community responds with surprising levels of kindness.”