Discord Unveiled: A Comprehensive Dataset of Public Communication (2015-2024)

TL;DR

This paper introduces Discord Unveiled, the largest publicly available dataset of Discord communications from 2015 to 2024, enabling extensive analysis of online community dynamics, moderation, and social trends.

Contribution

It provides the most comprehensive, anonymized dataset of Discord public server messages, covering over 2 billion messages from 4.74 million users across 3,167 servers, facilitating advanced social science research.

Findings

Significant growth in user engagement and bot use over time.

Linguistic diversity with English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese.

Emergence of community themes beyond gaming, like art and memes.

Abstract

Discord has evolved from a gaming-focused communication tool into a versatile platform supporting diverse online communities. Despite its large user base and active public servers, academic research on Discord remains limited due to data accessibility challenges. This paper introduces Discord Unveiled: A Comprehensive Dataset of Public Communication (2015-2024), the most extensive Discord public server's data to date. The dataset comprises over 2.05 billion messages from 4.74 million users across 3,167 public servers, representing approximately 10% of servers listed in Discord's Discovery feature. Spanning from Discord's launch in 2015 to the end of 2024, it offers a robust temporal and thematic framework for analyzing decentralized moderation, community governance, information dissemination, and social dynamics. Data was collected through Discord's public API, adhering to ethical guidelines and privacy standards via anonymization techniques. Organized into structured JSON files, the dataset facilitates seamless integration with computational social science methodologies. Preliminary analyses reveal significant trends in user engagement, bot utilization, and linguistic diversity, with English predominating alongside substantial representations of Spanish, French, and Portuguese. Additionally, prevalent community themes such as social, art, music, and memes highlight Discord's expansion beyond its gaming origins.