I attended this workshop, in which an employee from LGBT Youth Scotland promoted an a social media platform for other youth workers in Scotland to use, to replace physical groups.

‘How to use Discord in your youth work practice’ was the unironic title.

30 attended.

LGBT Youth Scotland have only just started to use the platform, so it seems premature to recommend it.

Discord is a platform mainly used by gamers, and the name itself suggests that it invites, well, discord, rather than harmony.

Net Aware gives Discord a fairly favourable rating, in comparison to Facebook, and other popular social media platforms.

Family Zone, an Australian website, gave what I intuitively feel is a more comprehensive understanding of what Discord is about.

Like many platforms, it also has problems with radical racist groups popping up and pornography. https://www.familyzone.com/anz/families/blog/discord-what-parents-need-to-know

But, ’First and foremost, Discord is a social networking tool that is geared toward adults.’

I signed up to Discord. It’s the kind of place you would only really feel comfortable if you were into gaming and anime in a big way.

Craig Wynn, digital youth work officer, LGBT Scotland, began by explaining that they wanted Scotland to be the most 'inclusive LGBTI country' in the world.

The age range of their youth groups is 13-25 years of age, which is concerning in itself.

Wynn explained that he’d begun researching online forums to hold digital youth groups on before the pandemic. Ninchat was initially chosen but when he asked the kids what they preferred they had apparently all chosen Discord.

LGBT Scotland received support from JP Morgan, the global investment bank.

Despite the team at LGBT Scotland finding the server not that easy to use, they asked JP Morgan’s computer developers to develop the server for them.

Then the pandemic happened and LGBT Youth Scotland decided to bring forward the roll out of Discord, as the ‘kids’ hated Facebook groups (remember many of the users will be over 18 years old).

Wynn also said that Facebook was problematic for LGBTI people because it required them to use the name on their passport.

Today I signed up to Facebook as a 14 year old with a fake account with no problems, so I’m not quite sure what the context of his comment was.

Facebook was also a risk for ‘outing’ people, but surely if the settings for a Facebook group are set correctly, this shouldn’t be any more problematic than any other platform.

Wynn said Discord was ‘weird’ and played to its own ‘exclusivity’ (i.e. adult gamers).

He played a nauseating ad Discord made 3 years ago.

I have given it a bit of thought and I think it’s message is Discord is a vacuum which you can disappear into.

Wynn said that Discord had specific permission settings which meant only approved users could be added into the LGBT Youth Scotland group.

He also displayed the new user screen - picking pronouns is mandatory.

A custom list of emojis was available, which the ‘kids’ love.

Wynn said that the ‘kids’ (reminder, some of whom will be aged 18-25) don’t have to use their real name, nor do they have to appear on camera/ show a photograph.

Some of the role building for users is done by a bot.

Moderation was a mix of automatic, user feedback and youth worker involvement.

Uploading of porn was barred, though did result in some false-positives.

Automatic profanity searches were enabled.

‘Kids’ were asked to provide trigger warnings for any sensitive images/posts.

Wynn emphasised the project was led by the ‘kids’ and they would drive changes.

He was excited by the results with 80% positive feedback and that people had returned who had been absent before (ignoring the possibility that this is strictly as a result of lockdown).

Q&A
Why do kids prefer Discord?

Because Gaming is a kid’s thing. Kids said it felt safe to them and that they would be less likely to be bullied.

Though Wynn did finally admit that some had said they were happy with FB, and unhappy to move to Discord.

Zoom, by comparison, they were not keen on, as most don’t want to appear on camera.

I was interested to know how youth workers would verify new participants, which I asked in the chat box, but all of the questions put in the chat box were ignored.

In fact, there was no discussion about safeguarding at all, but then if you accept it is appropriate to put a 13 year old, who may still be pre-pubertal, in with a 25 year old, who may be married with kids, you probably don’t care about safeguarding anyway.

@threadreaderapp unroll please