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by young_unixer 1879 days ago
Discord is bad at this.

When you receive an invitation to a server, you're presented with a textbox that reads "What should everyone call you?" and you're unknowingly creating a new account. Then you're asked your birth date and then for your email. You type your email and it's already used, obviously.

By this point you don't want to go through the whole process of deleting your browser history to log into your existing account, so you go along with the new account thing and use another email address.

Before you know it, you have 5 different accounts and don't remember which ones you use for which servers.

Yes, there is a "use existing account" link, but it's not prominent, the "What should everyone call you?" textbox with the big "Continue" button are the only psychologically viable option unless you've already gone through the whole process of involuntarily creating many accounts.

6 comments

And when you access the site directly, you are always shown the front page which is basically a full-screen ad and serves no other purpose than user conversion. Furthermore, the sign-up link literally says "Open Discord in your browser" which can be read as "go to the app".

Ideally there was one single email address field and a combined sign up / sign in button that either took you to the password or new account creation dialog. If you're concerned about privacy implications, do realize that user signup forms leak the very same information.

I think discord is great but I do agree with you. The whole "join a new server" UX is in this weird place where you might not use it that often (even if you are a heavy discord user), discord having an unusual concept of servers, combined with the flip-flop dance between browser and native app.

The end result feels slightly off. Like I can't say what should be happening, but what is actually happening feels not quite right.

Unless I'm mistaken, Slack actually forces this as part of their model: one account per organisation. It's not fun when you have to reset passwords...
I had to create a Slack account to interact with a vendor support team. Run into that mess and can't for the love of god find a "manage all your accounts" interface on Slack. It's insanely counter-intuitive.

I'll avoid Slack as much as possible unless they fix this evil UX.

The design does work very well with a password manager though.
it took me until right now to realize that this happened to me, and that I've been using the wrong account for the last six months and I actually have two accounts... so really, at this point my "wrong" account is my real one.

The reason it happened is b/c I use email aliases for stuff I sign up for, and sometimes I forget them...

Does Discord let you create multiple accounts with the same email address?
I don't believe so, they just put you in a flow that you can't back out of and stores cookies so restarting the browser doesn't help.
I think I have 4 discord accounts for that reason