Private Threads for Bots

[gnubufferoverflows]

Threads are a great feature, and have tons of potential for use in ticketing bots, verification bots, and bots that needs to prompt users for information. However private threads are currently locked behind a level 2 nitro boost, and for smaller servers, that effectively means a $45/month paywall. Additionally, if someone decides to unboost a server, that could break bots that are using them. There are some solutions such as using direct messages and things like that, however this doesn't fit in with Discord's recent push to have bots fit more natively into Discord.

Some much better alternatives could be adding an exemption for bots that allows them to make private threads (I believe something similar is done for animated and off-guild emojis), or allowing them if the creator of the bot subscribes to Nitro.

[Skye-31]

What's to stop people just using bots to bypass the private thread limit for their server?

[gnubufferoverflows]

It's a valid concern, however a very similar system exists that lets bots use animated and off-server emojis and rarely, if ever, do you see this abused. Now of course private threads are different from animated emojis, but I think in this case the potential for paywall bypassing is far outweighed by the benefits of having a feature like this.

[Skye-31]

The difference is, emotes are purely for the bot's account while threads are for everyone in the server. There aren't really any exploitations to allowing a bot to use animated/external emojis, whereas a bot could easily entirely bypass the private thread boost requirement maliciously with this request.

[gnubufferoverflows]

It's not a perfect idea, I will concede that. But again, I think the positives far outweigh the downsides, and you have to consider to some extent not what people might do, but what they will actually do. I don't see it as malicious. The vast majority of people aren't going to cough up the money (for me, around $45 USD a month) to boost up to level two anyways, so I don't see how Discord would necessarily be losing out here from a profit point of view.

[RivenSkaye]

I agree that this seems like a very valid solution for things like ticket system bots and modmail, especially since those are very valid usecases to have a closed environment for talking in.
I also think this could make for a very good usecase of allowing message content to be read by the bot without the need for a privileged intent, to make the user experience better. They could even implement it as a special subclass of threads to make it happen without the worry of people abusing it, by only allowing access to the thread to the caller of the command and an initial set of users or roles provided by the bot upon thread creation. Heck, that might even make it a lot easier for people to complain about misbehaving mods and admins!

[Hyperclaw79]

Something which would help balance things out:

1. Only X number of private threads can be active at once if they're created by a bot.
   OR
   Rate limit the private thread creation by bots.
2. Only Admins, irrespective of Join Private Thread perms, should be allowed access to these threads. That way server owners can't abuse it by giving that perms to everyone.
3. [Optional] Only users with 2FA enabled can join these threads.

[RivenSkaye]

1 Seems like a good idea. Base the maximum amount on the server's member count to prevent a large server from constantly capping out.
2 Seems like a terrible idea, with ticketing systems being the example it would be great if the one that opened the ticket can view it too. And the ticket could be "admin x was abusing power" and then admin x can go and close the ticket saying it's a BS complaint.
3 Please don't lock more stuff behind 2FA, it should be a choice to use and will drive away users if that choice means not being able to use platform features

[gnubufferoverflows]

It's nice to see this idea is getting some traction, honestly with Skye's post which most people had upvoted (despite me responding to her point) I assumed it had died there. I think the first option would be the best, although it wouldn't surprise me if there are already thread limits in place to stop people from just creating a ton of threads, as remember it can be done by anyone and not just server admins.