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Comment by gochi | Hacker News Reader

Wonder how many people are going to think discord.io is officially related to discordapp.com/discord.com.

And this is exactly why companies protect their trademarks. A site called discord.io which offered services on top of Discord but wasn't affiliated with it in any way (but tricked users into believing so by using its logo and screenshots) should have been nipped in the bud a long time ago.

Apparently, this sort of thing happened to Mr. Beast with regards to Mr. Beast Burger. Even though his agreements/contracts forbade the company making the virtual restaurant supplies from doing so, that company trademarked his likeness and brand in half a dozen foreign countries. He's currently suing them for damages, and for not paying him the agreed amount for his participation. (Apparently, they had paid him $0!)

Did Mr Beast not realise that creating thousands of ghost restaurants would be a bad idea?

He created the idea at the beginning of the pandemic. His thought process was that the Mr Beast brand would allow smaller stores to carry his product and incentivise people to buy take out from those shops and help during lockdowns.

I don't believe the contract between him and VDC is out outlining the contractual obligations, SLAs, trademark and marketing issues etc.

There was an explicit agreement that VDC was not to trademark his brand/likeness. They just went and did it.

Is there anything particularly wrong with a delivery-only restaurant? That is the standard definition of “ghost restaurant” I know of.

Not really anything super wrong with it, other than perhaps it would be harder to air grievances with them because there’s usually nowhere to go, and QC issues.

“Ghost Kitchens” have a more nefarious connotation than “delivery only” though because often it will be a single kitchen yet be advertised as many distinct restaurants. I saw one in one major city that was something like fifteen “different restaurants” operating from the same small space, which is sketchy.

But I think the person to whom you’re responding was relying more on the word “thousands” here. So given the connotation I think opening thousands of these things is pretty sketchy for some random YouTube personality with presumably no experience with restaurants to be opening simultaneously.

quality control

should be no different than any other franchisee. If you are worried about them ruining your reputation then you should QC them with secret shoppers, inspectors, etc.

Why are we acting like Mr Beast didn't also steal the moniker from Mr Beast (of Exit Through The Gift Shop notoriety)?

Are you thinking of Mr. Brainwash?

Yeah, they have to be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Brainwash

(Don't read if you don't want spoilers. Exit Through the Gift Shop is phenomenal and should be watched without knowing about this guy. Watch it, then read the Wikipedia article for yet another surprise.)

His name was generated by xbox for a gamertag

Who?

This is going to get harder unless the US government or US tech companies censor the Internet to block ones that don't follow US affiliated trademark law. Which I hope you wouldn't support.

That's not how it works. They just wouldn't be allowed to do business in the US, which seems reasonable.

See the sister comment about Mr. Beast.

Thanks for pointing that out. I genuinely thought that was the case!

(My dog uses the native Discord client because he's too cheap to pay for a baby cam.)

Have you tried to increase the allowance for your dog?

Maybe the lazy dog should get a part-time job like rescuing people in the Alps while carrying a little barrel of liquor or barking at people with drugs, money or fruit at the airport.

Sort of. He just had a bath and my partner fed him. But we had to bribe him with a grissini to get into the tub.

Can you pay for Discord in grissinis?

Hold on, I'm making a deck right now to get funding for such a marketplace.

Your dog has more financial acumen than some humans...

Come on, your dog has a ruff life…:)

Serious question though, do you use it as a dog monitor? That’s a good idea.

Yeah, he has his own separate account and a video channel.

This way both my partner and I can check up on him if we both leave the house for longer and it's noisy outside. He's a rescue and sometimes gets anxious/loud, but he's getting better.

Side effect: once I came home to spot him with my brothers who live across the continent chatting and drinking beer.

That’s an excellent idea for rescues. I’m going to pass a link to your comment to a couple of friends who are heavily involved in animal rescues - it sounds like an excellent way to help dogs through trauma! Thanks so much for sharing!

Your last paragraph gave me a funny mental image of your dog sitting in front of a monitor, beer in paw, chatting with your brothers! :)

That's a tall tail now

Probably most, considering it's Discord's logo and screenshots of their app used in the article, and discord.io isn't loading with 522 errors right now so you can't exactly check.

Howdy, my first thought after seeing this headline was basically that the Discord messenger App got hacked and user info was stolen.

FWIW they were discordapp.com until May 4, 2020

https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/360042987951-D...

I remembered vaguely that it was something different from discord.com, and was fooled by discord.io :D

It sounds more official than discord.gg

It shouldn't really.

.gg and .io are being used for novelty value.

.io has been used as a sort of general-purpose tld to signal sort of… I dunno, hip, dev-focused sites, right? It is at least slightly less novel than gg.

Agree, but it’s important to point out that .gg grew popular in the gaming crowd because “gg” in gaming means “good game”. It’s used in-game in the chat by many players of online multiplayer games as a way of thanking each other after a match. It can be used sincerely or it can also be used sarcastically but in the latter case you’d typically say “ggez” as a taunt implying that the win was easy (“ez”) because you are more skilled than your opposing team.

And for .io of course that one is/was popular among tech companies because it looks similar to “I/O” (input/output).

.gg means "good game" so I can see why Discord would use it.

Definitely, it is a sort of quirky and fun use of .gg.

It is a little surprising given their field that they didn’t also grab the .io.

It's "winning" personal user data with ease. It fits.

It's definitely not just me but I only have a data point of one to use: Anytime I see something that isn't .com, .org, or .gov I immediately assume it's less than reputable at best and actively trying to scam/phish me at worst.

I got curious and decided to check which popular websites that I use are not on a .com / .org domain.

I found: kubernetes.io , sentry.io , codepen.io , itch.io , not to mention lever.co , elastic.co and last but not the least, notion.so .

It had been that companies that “made” it would eventually pick up the .com. But it seems like it is more common to stick with whatever TLD they had before.

The .so TLD, very dynamic.

With the obvious exception of sites correctly associated to the country of their domain.

A tourist attraction in Guernsey can very reasonably use .gg and maintain full credibility.

As an American I don't trust most things with a .us TLD. I wouldn't trust another country's TLD, either. But like I said originally -- this is just me. I'm sure others feel like I do but I am not trying to speak for them.

You can, of course, treat domains however you like, but it would be unfortunate to extend your approach worldwide. In many, many other countries the local domain is a strong signal of trust, often more so than a .com/.org.

Thinking through websites I use in Denmark, I struggle to recall one that isn't .dk.

Supermarkets (netto.dk, foetex.dk), public transport (dsb.dk, m.dk, cph.dk), newspapers/TV (politiken.dk, berlingske.dk, dr.dk), University (ku.dk, au.dk), local government (kk.dk), other retailers (computersalg.dk, proshop.dk, elgiganten.dk) ...

The largest grocery delivery company uses nemlig.com, and Ikea uses ikea.com.

As another example, if I'm applying online for a visa to Thailand, that site had better end .th.

Yeah, there's a difference between .com .net .org .gov and many of the country code TLDs when you're looking for non-local content.

What is Discord.io?

discord.io is a service that provides redirect/invite links/URLs to Discord servers.

"This service provides links for a chat app" is a crazy sentence.

Getting a custom URL for a Discord server (e.g. discord.gg/hackernews) requires 14 "server boosts" which cost $35/year each, so nearly $500/year. There's a discount if you have their premium Nitro package, but even then it's something on the order of $300.

Meanwhile discord.io is free and you won't lose your URL to a crypto scam server when someone forgets to renew their boost. Kind of inevitable that such a service would pop up.

I'm pretty sure it predates the ability to have a custom server url from boosting.

Me, I've changed my password, until I read the title again and then this comment xD

Better safe than sorry ;)

Rotations don’t hurt

But he forgot the new one

Best kind of security

Not using particularly privacy-hostile platforms is the actual best kind of security.

I would add: "unofficial" to the title or something that clarify the brand issue.

That should be clarified in the HN title, imo

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