Discord has released a new transparency report detailing complaints about spammers, harassers, servers violating community guidelines, and criminal activity in the first half of 2020 and the actions taken in response. Not surprisingly, the company received twice as many reports as it received in the second half of 2019, with a surge this year thanks to many people staying home.

Discord's Trust & Safety team received roughly 235,000 reports, ranging from cybercrime to harassment. The latter is the largest category, accounting for 86,048 of the reports, but also the most difficult to address, according to Discord.

"There are also reports of malicious ban evasion and floods of friend requests, which are generally addressable," Discord said." However, it is more common for someone to call someone a name, file a report for harassment, or simply state that they don't like the person or what they say." This cannot be addressed by Trust & Safety and can be more appropriately addressed by blocking the user whom the complainant does not like.

Spam, on the other hand, appears to be the most addressable issue, with 65.72 percent of reports leading to some action, compared to 13.26 percent of harassment reports. 4,083,444 spam accounts were banned between January and June, with spammers being banned more than anyone else BANNED more than any other.

The next most common reason for banning is exploitative content, even though it accounts for only 8% of complaints; Discord says this is because they go looking for exploitative content to remove, such as servers involved in child exploitation or non-consensual pornography. It also removes servers that are being used to disrupt peaceful protests.

"We are very proud that we were able to shut down some of the worst organized groups before they could do any harm," says Discord.

"In specific numbers, going into the first half of 2020, the ratio of active to passive extremist servers rose to 5:1.

Discord has been something of a haven for white supremacists and alt-right troublemakers in the past, and they still use it today, but as it has grown into this huge, mainstream platform, it has faced more scrutiny and begun to clean up its act.

"We have a responsibility to ensure that Discord is not used for hate, violence, or harm," Discord said in a June blog post on racial equality. Our goal is that Discord be used to build meaningful relationships and strong, positive communities."

However, it was not until the Charlottesville violence in which Heather Heyer was murdered that Discord really began to crack down. Before that, white supremacists had been using the platform to organize and recruit in preparation for "Unite the Right" rallies.

Discord says it is working on a number of projects to "make Discord safer," including ones to reduce spam, make reporting easier, and assist moderators. These will be announced in the coming months. They also plan to release a transparency report every six months, with the next one coming out in January.