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Comment by Amasuriel | Hacker News Reader

I’ve used discord for a long time and greatly prefer it to slack, teams and Mattermost (the three competitors I’ve used most often). Ironically the only think stopping me from strongly advocating for its adoption in business is that I’m already a user!

Much like GitHub and to a lesser extent teams, they seem to not get the idea that I have different personas related to different parts of my life that absolutely should not mix.

If I could stay logged into my social discord servers with my gamer handle and be being logged into work servers with work handles, especially on mobile, they would gain traction I think. Add active directory account management as a paid option and would be an easy sell some places.

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> Much like GitHub and to a lesser extent teams, they seem to not get the idea that I have different personas related to different parts of my life that absolutely should not mix.

This. It's pretty much impossible to run several identities on Discord. If we ever move work to it i want it separate from my gaming discords.

I don't understand why is it impossible to run several identities? I have one account for work and one personal account for gaming. It is possible for me and I did not have any issues.

I assume you use workarounds like separate browsers/browser groups/1 in browser 1 in app. In slack for example, you can have completely separate accounts that you control through the same window/app and I haven't seen the option for that in Discord.

I just use Firefox containers here. One tab in one container for personal, one tab in one container for more professional contexts. Having container tabs rather than private mode or separate browsers lets me have them in one window.

Yeah, you basically have multiple different browser identities that you use as a workaround since Discord doesn't support multiple identities "natively" in their own platform.

So, we're right back to where this conversation started, that Discord doesn't support multiple identities.

A workaround with Firefox container tabs is too complex to bother. Not to mention it doesn't work on mobile?

Edit: and besides, I am the potential customer. They want business use, they should help. I don't even understand why I'm allowed one gaming identity.

I have to agree with this. I find discord better than slack and I don't want to mix my gaming life with work.

> I have different personas related to different parts of my life that absolutely should not mix

Looks like the only one who support this is Telegram. Might be because they (supposedly) don't mine your data.

I am curious now can you explain more? As far as I know Telegram requires a unique phone number for every account on registration.

It does require a phone number to make an account, which makes actually creating multiple accounts a huge pain, but bizarrely enough once you have the account set up you can log into as many of them as you like in their mobile app (I don't think any of their 3(!) web apps support it though, but that's not hard to work around with containers). In comparison discord makes setting up multiple accounts easy but the app has no concept of this so it's a pain to manage (I don't know of a good way to have two instances of it logged into different accounts).

Yes, you register your work account with your work number and your personal account with your private one.

Telegram clients support multiple active sessions with multiple accounts, you can switch between them easily and receive notifications from all accounts.

Discord now lets you change your username and avatar per server. Though to have a different avatar on different servers you need nitro.

Still doesn't solve the problem. In Discord you only have one account, loose access to that account for some reason, you loose access to both private and work related matters.

Instead, if Discord want to be taken seriously, need to allow multiple accounts on the same device, so people can switch between things.

Sorry for this, it doesn't add to the conversation but it's lose*. Not loose, lose.

As far as I know this is still in A/B testing as well, and not a fully rolled out feature. I've had a friend with it for the better part of the year, yet I have yet to get the option on any of my servers.

People can still click your name and view your account name#number. They can also view mutual servers and friends. I don't necessarily want people in two communities to know or care that I am the same person.

I'm by default a private person, I feel uneasy sharing my preferences with people (even basic things like music that I like) and I don't like these broadcasted social features. The first thing I did when installing Discord was turning off the feature that says what game I am playing.

And that's why you want federated, pseudonymous networks and not a centralized walled gardens who gets to decide who you are and what you can do.

I've switched to Jami and was pleasantly surprised that I was be able to create multiple accounts in seconds. You can even have a video conference between your multiple accounts!

It's now my first choice chat app, but there's no social features so it's nowhere near a full replacement for Discord.

> Much like GitHub and to a lesser extent teams, they seem to not get the idea that I have different personas related to different parts of my life that absolutely should not mix.

I think there are quite other social networks that tried to retain the "universal identity" idea while completely and entirely missing this point.

Do you mean on the web? You should use separate browser profiles for home and work.

(Speaking generally. I haven’t used Discord, but I don’t trust websites to keep multiple logins straight.)

Similarly for mobile, look into keeping apps separate at the OS level or carry two phones.

I've thought exactly this for years now and I'm so surprised nothing has happened.

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