Loading...
Start Date
23-6-2022 12:00 AM
End Date
23-6-2022 12:00 AM
Abstract
Voice/video/text chatting application Discord, and its legacy of proliferating hate and harassment, remains critically understudied. While previous research contextualizes hate networks within Discord’s distributed ecology [redacted for review], little attention has been paid to Discord’s reliance on third-party bots: code that interfaces directly with its API. Jiang et. al (2019) have found that bots are an essential part of moderation within Discord communities, but our study shows that bots perpetuate hateful structures within Discord’s ecosystem. This case study examines, through mixed-methods and critical technoculture discourse analysis (Brock, 2020), the public code repositories for several Discord Bots: “DankMemer” (hosted by 7.6 million servers), “BoobBot” (584k servers), and the now ‘banned’ “N-word Counter.” By examining these GitHub repositories, and the contextualizing discourse surrounding them, we explicate how these Discord bots perform whiteness through their code and drive interaction through misogyny, homo/transphobia, and racism.
These structures constitute a technocratic and opaque network. This network centers white, cis, straight, and masculine users and reinscribes white supremacy across purportedly neutral technical constructs; they gamify an environment of harassment, toxicity, racism, and libertarian individualism. In doing so, bots and their supporting structures impose connectivity and automated engagement between communities which Discord brands as private and uncurated. Ultimately, we make a cyberfeminist argument that Discord’s approach to third-party bots and their developers both exploits their labor for the gamification and automatization of sociality in discrete Discord communities, while simultaneously eschewing responsibility for the hateful structures they foster.
“!pls deletethis”: How Discord bots perform and center white cismasculinity
Voice/video/text chatting application Discord, and its legacy of proliferating hate and harassment, remains critically understudied. While previous research contextualizes hate networks within Discord’s distributed ecology [redacted for review], little attention has been paid to Discord’s reliance on third-party bots: code that interfaces directly with its API. Jiang et. al (2019) have found that bots are an essential part of moderation within Discord communities, but our study shows that bots perpetuate hateful structures within Discord’s ecosystem. This case study examines, through mixed-methods and critical technoculture discourse analysis (Brock, 2020), the public code repositories for several Discord Bots: “DankMemer” (hosted by 7.6 million servers), “BoobBot” (584k servers), and the now ‘banned’ “N-word Counter.” By examining these GitHub repositories, and the contextualizing discourse surrounding them, we explicate how these Discord bots perform whiteness through their code and drive interaction through misogyny, homo/transphobia, and racism.
These structures constitute a technocratic and opaque network. This network centers white, cis, straight, and masculine users and reinscribes white supremacy across purportedly neutral technical constructs; they gamify an environment of harassment, toxicity, racism, and libertarian individualism. In doing so, bots and their supporting structures impose connectivity and automated engagement between communities which Discord brands as private and uncurated. Ultimately, we make a cyberfeminist argument that Discord’s approach to third-party bots and their developers both exploits their labor for the gamification and automatization of sociality in discrete Discord communities, while simultaneously eschewing responsibility for the hateful structures they foster.
Bio
PS Berge (they/them) is a doctoral student in UCF’s Texts and Technology program where they research queer gaming communities and toxic technocultures. You can find them online at https://psberge.com/ and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/theiceberge.
Daniel Heslep (he/him) is a masters student at the University of Alabama. He is currently researching Discord, and platforms more generally. He can be found on twitter @danielheselp.