“discord takes once thriving active communities and fractures them into a thousand little private chats where people start drama and talk mad shit about other people from the community”
[Preface]
The forced adoption of discord and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. discord is directly responsible for the fracturing of thousands of communities, the loss/privatization of knowledge relating to various technical topics, the debasement of mass culture, a massive explosion of real child abuse on-line, and the promotion of fake/anti-social behavior. Most of this article will focus on the social and cultural issues that have arisen in the past few years that I believe discord has played a major role in producing. A lot of this article will be written from my personal perspective and opinion, so first I will start off with a bit of a history lesson.
[Chapter 1: History]
I was the first person in my group of friends and likely my entire school district to use Skype, probably in late 2006. Back then Skype was really convenient. It had standard minimalist text chat but was focused on voice. At that time Skype even had custom themes! In a way Skype was a lot like discord because it combined text and voice communication into one very accessible system. Before Skype became mainstream, most people I knew used AIM which was mostly text chat. AIM actually did have a voice chat feature, but it was seldom used. For voice chat in the AIM era we would just call each other on the phone. Even though Skype was the best one-on-one voice system, there were plenty of decent alternatives. At no point were there ever Skype extremists, except for a short period of time around 2010-11 when the program “oovoo” suddenly became popular and was then immediately forgotten. From 2006-2015 there was never a “culture” formed around what VOIP software someone used. IRC had some of this extremist culture and continues to today, but nothing on the level of the discord fanaticism that we see today.
I was somewhat involved with, but mostly a listener of the original on-line Skype-based prank calling group (which predates ownage pranks) “The 4chan Vent” aka “Partyvan Pranks”. These guys were some of the first people to utilize Skype's feature of being able to call real phone numbers, and they would broadcast prank calls to a live audience. The audience however, was not using Skype. We used Ventrilo! The only people using Skype were the ones doing calls and broadcasting to the Vent, otherwise all chat and communication took place in Vent. My Skype still is (if I could actually access it) FILLED with numbers of people we would regularly call or other members of the Vent. Many good times were had. We played countless hours of CS: Source with live prank calls or hardstyle music.
You see, Skype and Vent filled two totally different roles. Skype was more focused on person to person private communication, usually with people you actually knew or had communication with outside of Skype. It was always one on one or just a few people together talking, although anyone who actually used Skype will remember the hectic never ending group calls with a thousand people in the chat. Vent, TS3, Mumble, and the likes all filled a different purpose. They were less of a messaging system like Skype but more of a place where you would go to talk to people in real time, like an on-line bar or something. These programs typically did not have a way to send an off-line user a message like on Skype, or at least it was very uncommon.
There was also one major feature these programs had that Skype didn't: push-to-talk. There is nothing in the world more annoying than hearing your friend furiously rage typing away on his overpriced cherry blue switches (the most low iq and worst of all mechanical switches, besides the derivatives). Back then, Skype was mostly open mic/voice activated unless you muted yourself. Yeah, there were ways you could do ptt with skype, but few people did. Since video games are push-to-talk by default, it is natural that people in public group voice chats focused on games probably want PTT as well. I actually prefer voice activation myself, but if I'm talking to random people that I don't know I would much rather have PTT.
I went through pretty much every VOIP program with multiple groups of friends, but the entire time, no matter what VOIP system we used we always had each other added on other programs like Skype and Steam. For a long period of time I went from using Skype, to Steam voice, to Vent, to TS3, to Mumble, to Raidcall, and so on etc. There was never pain or dismay over “having to install a new program”, everyone was smart enough to install and configure the settings of new software. We used whatever we had available, or whatever the group we wanted to be in were using. For example, back when I played “EVE Online” my corp had a TS3 server we would all hop in when we were doing our bullshit. At the same time the friends I played LoL with were using Raidcall. I knew my league friends personally so we also had each other added on steam and skype, but the people on EVE I had no interaction with outside of that group. This will become important later when I talk about discord.
Having multiple choices meant software had to stay competitive and not suddenly sabotage itself for “no reason” aka intelligence operations or shady corporate deals. That is of course in theory, because eventually microsoft bought Skype and immediately began sabotaging it, as it does with everything it touches. The slow death of Skype began in 2011. microsoft changed Skype servers over and started killing support for older versions of the client. For years people struggled to find ways to NOT update Skype, since every microsoft update made Skype worse and worse. Eventually microsoft caught on and began artificially locking out old versions for no real technical reason, the software still worked, but you couldn't use it anymore. You can see this kind of thing in action in video I made Today I am not even able to access my ms-skype account even though I know my password, due to microsoft's horrid automated support system locking me out.
Probably around 2014-15 I tried to phase out ms-skype, in favor of a new program called Tox. Tox was obscure, unusable, and buggy; but I still got cute girls I knew irl and a lot of my friends to use it. Tox wasn't actually as bad as I'm making it out to be, but multi person calls, video, and a few other features were essentially non-existent or totally busted. It was great for one-on-one though. Tox had major potential, but as all open source software is, it lacked in human usability. Tox was also under constant attack because it was created by independent people with security in mind. Being security minded in those days was highly stigmatized for some reason! People using privacy focused solutions back then are not likely to fall for the modern fake-privacy movement going on today.
Before I go further, I should touch on text chat programs since tox was leaning more towards the modern style of text chat systems. Just like voice chat programs there were two kinds of text chat programs, and like the two kinds of voice chat programs both could be used for what the other did but people usually kept them separate. Think of it like this, AIM was to Skype as IRC was to Vent. Some text chat programs were more focused on talking to people you actually knew (instant messaging) and some, mainly IRC, were focused on talking in groups of people you usually didn't know. Public chat rooms go all the way back to the very early days of computer systems before the true internet was formed, and even phone party lines before that. I've found youtube comments I made in 2007 asking “what's your aim or skype username”. I have used multiple text focused chat programs, AIM, Steam, Jabber, ICQ, IRC, Xfire, etc. Even website or game based chat systems like Runescape clans, Gaia, crtypto.cat, Bricklink, btc-e, and so on.
The history of text chat is much more vague than voice chat. Text chat focused programs were originally simple and basic. However the text chat ecosystem began moving in a whole different direction, departing from the basics of AIM, XMPP and the likes to the later versions of ms-skype, and finally the “modern” systems we have today. Custom emoticons were phased out in favor of the soulless emoji system we are still stuck with today. Inline media was becoming a standard feature across all text chat, including IRC. Eventually every chat program became a clone of one unified model with only a few standout features between each program. Today there are plenty of choices for text chat, but every single one of them works and looks more or less the exact same way. I refer to this model as “mixed media chat” or MMC. MMC is any chat software that supports the sharing of images, audio, video, or even generic files through the software, usually accompanied by media thumbnails/previews. I believe the big reason MMC is so popular is the simple ease of sending files. Sending a pic to your friends via drag and drop without having to rely on an external image hosting service is pretty much the default minimum expected behavior of all chat clients now, making them all MMC to a degree. I do not have a name for the way these programs “look” besides nue-modern, dark theme, round icons, contacts on the left, chat on the right, touchscreen focused, and always combined into a single window. Pre MMC focused chat programs typically featured light themes and separate windows for each chat.
Today I mostly use Telegram, although I'd like to phase it out since recently it is trying to become one of these “modern platforms”. I specifically use telegram to talk to friends, it has basically replaced all other text chat for me besides steam, and it is occasionally useful for voice calls. But like I said, they keep adding bloat such as broadcasting, “channels”, animated stickers, streaming etc. things like that. Big Telegram channels, specifically ones where you can't post in, are probably worse than their discord equivalents. Don't get me started on the popular political, anime, and “meme” channels with stupid names I constantly see people forwarding non-original content from. Every chat or channel I am in on telegram is with friends of mine or ran by friends of mine. The only exception being audio file sharing channels for a podcast. Telegram will never be a pure replacement for classic Skype, because it is a text-focused system. Telegram also shares many of the technical and privacy related issues that discord has. Telegram at the very least has an open source client and the company started off without direct venture capital investment, although that has changed.
Lately I often just give people my personal cell # even though SMS is the least secure communication channel and all texts and calls you make over a phone are being read by some depressed nerd or an AI in Utah/Virginia. I am far more concerned about data collection from corporations such as discord than I am the US or most other governments (not that the phone companies aren't also reading your SMS). Like discord, just assume anything sent over SMS is public info. I actually use iMessage, so add apple to the list of companies that are collecting data on me. If I am talking about phones I gotta mention snapchat. I absolutely hate snapchat. The whole UI is designed to piss you off and the way it works stops you from having an actual conversation. snapchat is aimed at kids, and they love to push the worst sexual/political agendas right into the users face. Besides being a brainwashing platform, snapchat is basically an avenue for depressed girls to harvest validation from simps and not for actually chatting. Snapchat has been likely far worse than discord for culture as a whole. People who have a “bitmoji” need to be sent to a re-education facility. But I'm getting away from the topic.
[Chapter 2: Gaming]
Going back to 2011 when I started playing League of Legends. This was still in the early ms-skype days so it wasn't that bad yet. All my friends who played used ms-skype, or we had a friend group that used Raidcall, which was just another TS3/Vent/Mumble clone. League of Legends is VERY important in gaming and internet culture history. Some of the meaningless newspeak terms people use today like “toxic” are directly from the LoL culture. LoL trained people that they had to fall in line with a specific “meta” play style, it actually eventually built the “meta” directly into the game lobby. Don't you dare come up with cool new ways to play the game! You must fall in line and do what everyone else does.
League also marked the beginning of the modern egirl simping phenomenon. Yes, simping for girls on-line existed long before like in WoW or other MMOs. But the LoL culture made simping for an egirl an acceptable and mainstream thing to do. Almost as if the people doing it were trying to be an ironic caricature of themselves. An entire culture was built around this and still exists today. Another thing you can blame LoL for is the snitch culture of players reporting you for talking shit or a lot of times for no reason at all. LoL was the beginning of the corporate controlled speech we have in video games today. LoL is why most games don't have cross-team voice anymore, talking shit makes these modern fake-gamers upset! But there is a far more important reason as to why I'm bringing up LoL.
Nearing the end of my league playing days, there was this trend with the games. Essentially before the game began someone would post a link to their on-line, web browser based (I think) voice chat service. I cannot remember which one it was because there were tons around at the time, it could have been curse voice, lolchat.me, or maybe one of the other various weird league focused voice services. I always thought this was stupid and never joined any of their chats. If I wasn't already talking to friends while I was playing, I was listening to music. More importantly, I knew I didn't want to talk to these random raging nerds who are super sweaty silver 4 players who think they are going to go live in the TSM gaming house and play league for the rest of their life as a “pro e-sports player”. This is another thing you can blame league for, making “e-sports” mainstream, and putting the “competitive” game style into the mainstream casual gamer mind. Game streaming also plays a large part in this. League also popularized the forced “matchmaking” system in games and “ranked” modes. Both have become vital to the modern fake-gamer, with many of them refusing to play games that lack these elements, unless the game in question is extremely popular. Many of these fake-gamers do not play games for enjoyment, they do it because of peer pressure.
Anyway, when you didn't join their stupid voice chat they would without fail, get mad at you or act passive aggressive towards you. Usually they would flip out on you in game chat for doing one thing wrong ONCE and of course they would blame the entire match on you, these kinds of people still exist today! “Oh you bought 2nd round in CS:GO???? Now I'M not able to shoot straight and the entire game is lost because of YOU buying!!!!” This was the first time I noticed people having an emotional reaction to someone not wanting to use their software. Before I finish talking about league, I must mention Fates Forever. This was a game created by the discord developers before discord existed and was essentially a bootleg version of league for mobile devices. The majority of people involved in the creation of discord were and are league players. Many people high up in riot games are involved in some way as well. As a classic season 1-6? ex league player who knows many people that still play it, I can assure you the modern stereotypes about most players are extremely accurate.
When discord first came around in mid 2015, I was in college and pretty big into CS:GO. I would mostly play with either my irl friends or this britbong guy I had known for a while. I was unbelievably good at the time, easily holding my own on high ping european servers against global elite rank players. For voice chat we used either tox (in the case of my close friend group), skype, steam voice groups, or TeamSpeak3 (with my Britbong friend). Text chat was done almost entirely via steam or skype, even when using other voice services. Me and my bong buddy hopped TS3 servers a lot. He had a new server every few weeks, mostly because he used some temp free server service.
One day my bong friend messaged me asking to play cs, but this time he sent a link to discord. I clicked it but it wanted me to set up an account first so I was like “yeah I can't be bothered right now bro just get on your TS3 server”. Immediately I noticed a change in tone from, wanting to game with the boys, to: mad because I wasn't using discord. I suspect my bong friend was trying to impress someone he just met who had talked up discord to him or something. We played that game and ended up partially using the in game voice chat but the entire time the tone was negative against me. When people were actually speaking in game it was mostly me getting blamed for stuff with the condition that if I were in discord they wouldn't have died or something. We probably lost the game. Call it a gut feeling, but I knew something was up with discord. This was also YEARS before the modern stigma against discord. My bong friend was an actual computer hacker (and not some white hat loser either) and acted as if he was way more paranoid about security than most people, but when it came to discord he didn't care, STRANGE!
The Bong came to me a few more times trying to get me in discord, eventually just kicking me out of the game lobby because I wouldn't use it, but after that first experience I was hell bent on never using discord with him or his new tryhard discord friends. He shortly after vanished completely from my life. Funny because I had just lent him like 0.19 bitcoin which was probably less than 40$ back then but today would be worth quite a lot more. It seems like any time I loan bitcoin to anyone they just vanish forever, I have a few other people who owe me bitcoin, Anthony owes me 1.913 btc, Alex .3, Jmar .05, and Zen .09. This was all btc I mined myself with my baller HD6950 (dual bios with unlocked shaders ofc) back in like 2012. I have never bought or sold bitcoin for usd and I own no crypto currency personally.
Today when you tell someone you don't use discord you are usually met with understanding or confusion, a lot of people have been brainwashed into believing that discord is the only communication system that exists on a computer. Back in the early days if you didn't use discord you were the worst nightmare to those people who were trying to push it on you. You see it wasn't just my britbong buddy who had a visceral emotional reaction to me not wanting to use the software, but it was actually every single user of discord. Almost as if they all had some kind of cognitive dissonance where they knew in their mind discord was shitty but needed validation by you also using it. I remember the discord users would always ask the same stupid question, “well what do you use, skype!??” As if they didn't also have skype installed back then.
discord's own website used to state: “We think it is time to ditch Skype and Teamspeak. ...PC gamers use these apps to communicate while playing on-line games yet they haven't been updated in years and no longer meet our needs. As gamers ourselves, we got fed up with these tools and decided to fix the problem ourselves.” No mention of Mumble, Vent, or the myriad of other voice chat solutions that were very popular. The use of the phrase “apps” which is modern nuespeak gibberish and should be substituted for the word “programs” in this context. “yet they haven't been updated in years” is an even stranger statement because even today both skype and teamspeak are still getting regular updates, to the detriment of their users. “our needs” what exactly are those needs discord? But the one phrase that really makes me sick is “As gamers ourselves”. Yes they mean “gamers” but only in the modern nuespeak re-definition of the term. These fake-gamers are people whose entire personality revolves around the made up corporate “culture” of modern “gaming”.
[Chapter 3: Hype]
It seems discord gained initial popularity by paying big youtubers or streamers to make discord groups for their communities. As most know, just paying popular people to promote a product isn't a perfect practice of persuasion. As such, discord also employed what are essentially unpaid shills to possibly infiltrate communities and create fake grassroots usage of discord. The program was called “discord hypesquad” which is split into on-line and real life marketing strategies. The web page for the program is still up on the official discord website, complete with an animated soulless corporate art style dead eye character to go along with it! Originally discord would send select users an email asking them to join the on-line part of the “hypesquad”.
The hypesquad program shifted some time around 2018, closing off applications for their real life program and completely changing the on-line program into 3 secret clubs or “houses” as they call them. Today these “houses” can be accessed by anyone and you get a special little icon on your profile if you join! All it takes is answering a few personal questions disguised as wacky scenarios. This kind of carrot-stick system is a form of crystallizing opinion for users. People that are part of a “hypesquad” will naturally promote discord even if it is not a conscious effort by the person. The mere act of suggestion by being in these groups is enough to form an emotional bond with the software.
Information about the inner workings of the “hypesquad” program is tightly controlled. The website used to state that members would need to “receive training online or IRL”. Members who are part of the still active, yet closed to new applicants, real life program are all in secret discord groups. I believe members of these groups sign an NDA or simply act as if they signed one. What is known about this group is that it publicly has two tiers; attendees and organizers. The attendee level will receive a T-shirt and become a walking discord advertisement at conventions and other events. These members would sometimes also be given the opportunity to help out at discord-run events.
The organizer level is a little more interesting, these are people who are hosting their own events, big or small, and are given a bunch of discord merch to hand out at those events. Or at least that is how they claim it works. The reality is the entire “hypesquad” program is simply a form of.. you guessed it GROOMING! Whether on-line or off-line the program is designed to groom people into dedicating significant time and emotion into promoting/grooming others into promoting discord. Clearly people who work for discord are familiar with the work of Mr. Bernays.
The complexities and psychology of how this works, how it spreads, how and why people do it for free could be an entire article itself. I suspect there is or was more going on with this “hypesquad” thing than what info is publicly known. I believe there may have been an element of community, forum, and IRC infiltration in the early days of this program. It would be extremely convenient if large on-line groups suddenly had various members beg for a discord “server” while also having people higher up in the groups advocating for it as well. It only takes one or two people with influence to seed an idea that will grow inside of a community. All of this assumes it is being done for free by volunteers.
The practice of paying shills or AI bot farms to promote something on-line is extremely common and is slowly becoming more well known. While discord would never admit directly to using paid shills or bots, it is extremely likely that it indeed is or was the case. There are also plenty of marketing firms that employ these methods that discord could hide behind and claim innocence. The first few years of discord and the vicious emotional backlash to someone not wanting to use it is simply not organic. Whether done by paid, unpaid, or unconscious shilling something was certainly going on and likely still is. It is foolish to think otherwise, as not employing these extremely effective and inexpensive strategies would be limiting the potential user base of discord, and I don't think discord's investors would be too happy about that.
I was actually planning a big video on discord back in the day when I had noticed this unique behavior of discord users. The video was going to be based around the idea of a “social virus”. I never did make the video because I figured discord was just the new flavor of the month thing that these e-sports freaks were all using. discord didn't actually get super popular till sometime after 2017. Sadly to everyone's dismay, discord has stuck around. The original idea of the social virus is of an actual computer virus (malware, etc) that is spread via peer pressure. Today that term can be expanded to real life behavior (mask wearing, etc). While discord might not be a virus that destroys your computer, it certainly is a form of spyware that is harvesting data from your computer.
[Chapter 4: Data]
discord is without a doubt harmful software. The discord client is based on the bloated electron framework, which has numerous reasons for avoiding. People claim discord is more resource efficient than other solutions, but that simply isn't true. In fact it is possible the discord client can significantly tank the performance of certain games. It has been shown discord's client scans what programs you are running, although the developers have claimed this data isn't sent to the servers (in 2016). However the same developers also have said discord does collect programs you launch if you have the overlay enabled. The functionality exists within the program, so it is very possible that discord is in fact logging your running programs as well as other data such as; names of windows (meaning what pages you are looking at on the browser), geo location data, and every click you make on the program. I have read claims that discord also collects info about browser cookies, history, accounts, and things like that.
discord also obviously collects all voice, text, image, or video data sent through the program. It has been shown that the discord server software actively inspects and is capable of modifying a user's data. It is also known that discord can track users through deleted and alternate accounts. You may think you are being slick with your 10 alts, but discord just sees you as the same nerd no matter what account you use. Who knows what other kinds of data discord collects, or what kind of access it has into your computer or phone. Jason Citron, ceo and creator of discord has been involved in numerous ventures that have had privacy issues, specifically concerning data collection without the user's consent. The first of which was all the way back in 2008 with the iPhone game called “Aurora Feint”.
“Aurora Feint” was a free shape matching puzzle game which released to rave reviews and extreme success. That was short lived however, as it soon got the title of “the first spyware for iphone”. The game would ask the user for a phone number and email to create an account, this data would be stored on the AF servers. However the game would also send your entire contact list, and possibly other information to the AF servers any time you pressed the “refresh friends” button. While the developers claim this contact info isn't stored, there isn't a way to prove that it wasn't stored initially. Before people found out about this issue, Aurora Feint had no privacy policy. Meaning they could have stored/sold it if they wanted. Once this issue came to light the community features were disabled. Jason and his associates went and ran damage control claiming that AF does not sell or rent any user data that is stored on their servers. He also wanted to make it very clear that it was all opt in and you didn't have to use the on-line community features of the game. The fact that the data was all sent unencrypted however, means a “third party” could “sniff” the connections to the AF servers and collect all of the data it wants.
There is also the question of how Aurora Feint was supposed to make money, being a free game with no ads built in. A perfect candidate for money made via data collection. Apple removed AF from the app store but it was back after some updates and the addition of a privacy policy. Jason's next venture “OpenFeint” would bring even more privacy concerns. OpenFeint was not a game at all but a social network system that would be built directly into mobile games. OF operated from 2009 to 2012, many notable mobile games such as bomberman, fruit ninja, world of goo, and geoDefense included the OpenFeint network. Odds are if you owned an iphone you had a game on it with OF integration. OF was free for anyone to add to their games, but it is very likely OF was paying some developers to implement it. This is a somewhat common practice in software development. Developers will be paid to add special middleman software. Nvidia GameWorks for example, which causes games to run worse on competing or older graphics hardware. OF also had standalone software as well, which was for a short time pre-installed on AT&T phones.
The amount of data collected by Aurora Feint and OpenFeint was clearly significant, so much that OF got the attention and money of a few ad network/venture capital companies. Gree Inc. a Japanese company who had recently partnered with Tencent, decided to purchase OpenFeint in 2011. A few months later a class action lawsuit was filed against the company over computer fraud, invasion of privacy, breach of contract, and eight other statutory violations. OF collected info such as GPS location, browser history, and social media profiles. All of which was done without authorization or knowledge of the user. The lawsuit was dismissed due to lack of article 3 standing, meaning the plaintiffs had no personal stake in the outcome. OF claimed that no “data breach” was identified which is legal speak for, “we did collect your data but we never had any of it stolen from us”.
Soon after OpenFeint was sold, Jason Citron left and went on to start a new company “Phoenix Guild”. This later became “Hammer and Chisel”, where he would create the League of Legends ripoff game “Fates Forever” as mentioned earlier in the article. This game also included social network aspects kind of like Aurora Feint. After the game died Jason would once again take the social aspect from the game and use it to create something new, discord. It is clear Jason Citron and his associates are deep in the data collection game, and have connections with some of the largest ad and marketing corporations in the world. There is very little information about the connections Jason's family may have, besides that his father owned(?) two ice cream stores, and his grandfather ran a consulting company. So it is very possible he doesn't come from a connected family, or at least these connections are well hidden. I haven't looked too much into the families of other discord founders as the information is hard to come by.
discord is free, meaning YOU are the product! The ONLY user based revenue streams discord offers are “nitro” and “boosts” both of which offer very little in the way of new features beyond “animated icons”, “vanity urls” and “custom emoticons”. Users of big groups will “boost” the group which is a way users think they are helping out the group by “unlocking” more “features”. The max amount of money a group can “boost” is about $80 USD. Ask anyone who runs an on-line service and they will gladly tell you that there is no possible way discord makes any profit via these methods considering the operating overhead. The cost of running discord, at the technical level alone massively outweighs the income from “nitro” and “boosts”. Having offices in San Francisco, paying employees, taxes, etc isn't cheap either. discord is only able to operate due to massive funding from various venture capital firms.
[Chapter 5: Money]
Going back to the first archived company page in 2015 discord shows it had already raised millions from venture capital firms before the service even launched. One of those big investors is Tencent, a company that is for some strange reason constantly under fire just because people think the company is “Chinese”. What most people neglect to mention is that Tencent is majority owned by the Dutch and South African corporation Naspers via their other company Prosus. Other investors in discord are the SF based IDG Ventures who was owned by IDG Capital in 2017 but now may be owned by “The Blackstone group” another mega investment company. Accel, a Palo Alto based VC with investments in Facebook, Slack, DJI, Spotify, Dropbox, and Venmo just to name a few. SF based Benchmark VC with investments in Twitter, Snapchat, Uber, Ebay, Yelp, Zillow, AOL, DOCKER, MYSQL, and many more. Time Warner which became WarnerMedia, who owned about a third of all global media also had investments in discord. With WarnerMedia's recent split I suspect AT&T may be the current owners of the discord investments as opposed to Warner Bros Discovery. Greylock partners is another big one, with investments in roblox, airbnb, coinbase, and many other extremely prominent tech companies.
The final Investor in discord I will showcase is Peter Relan's SF based “YouWeb Incubator”. Peter Relan was Jason Citron's Operating partner as far back as 2007 during the Aurora/OpenFeint era. Peter also owned half of the OpenFeint company. Not much is known about YWI's investments outside of discord but their website claims they are focused on services, education, climate change, and “green tech” companies, you know the typical SF startup grift. Other investors in discord are; General Catalyst, Sony, Dragoneer, Baillie Gifford (who owns a large part of moderna inc as well), FirstMark, Spark Capital, and many more. Many of the members of these groups are on the board of discord in some capacity. All of these groups are the ones keeping discord on-line.
Venture capital works by doing high risk investments into new companies, usually via high interest rate debt (meaning the company is expected to pay this money back) or by the investor gaining ownership in part of the company/equity. Equity is the money that the investors would receive if the company was shut down, all debts were paid off, and all of the assets were sold, so the total net value of the company. The returns are usually made when a company goes public, or it is sold off to another company. VC investments are usually run on a 10 year cycle, and discord is getting very close to being 10 years old. I suspect you will see discord sold off, or go public in the next few years. It is pretty clear internet based service companies are massively overvalued right now, but that probably isn't going to end anytime soon. discord is valued at above 12 billion, and I've seen numbers estimating Telegram to be above 60 billion. The data that these companies collect makes up a large portion of their value. When discord gets sold, all of this data becomes the property of the new owners, and that is why companies like discord and Telegram have value.
The VC investors may also have partial access to the data discord collects, depending on the deals signed when the investments were made. The investors do own large parts of the company after all. These companies could utilize discord's data in various ways. Some people claim discord is a project to monitor entire cultures and groups of people to see what kinds of things they really believe and do. This information is allegedly vital to big advertising and venture capital companies. Without this essentially “inside info” into what mass groups of people are doing and thinking, the companies might not be able to plan their future investments as efficiently. discord could also be used to sway public opinion on various topics, promote certain products, ideas, or movements. It is not just discord either, many modern services are likely part of these control systems.