[taberiand]

It's probably a mix of both. Namespacing often seems to be an afterthought in many systems, and it can be hard to refactor in once an architecture has solidified.

It's not always the wrong choice to mingle identifiers of different types, but I think often people err on the side of convenience (/ laziness) instead of thinking through all of the potential issues.

[Gigachad]

The discord username namespace is weird. You get to set a display name which doesn't have to be unique so you can have the name "Bob" and that's what shows up when you message people, but then you also have a unique version on your profile that looks something like "Bob#3922" I'm not sure what happens if 10,000 people pick the same name but as far as I know, there is no limitation to how many people can have the same username.

So it seems almost impossible that this is some technical limitation but rather Discord cracking down on a common deception tactic.

[Eavolution]

It don't let you if there are no numbers left when I changed my discord name last

[askiiart]

I think it could also be for the purpose of preventing imposters, as what Clyde says is what Discord says.