Goon Discord Network
 | |
| Formation | October 28, 2015 |
|---|---|
| Founder | IAmKale |
| Extinction | October 6, 2021 |
| Status | Active |
| Website | goondiscordnetwork |
Goon Discord Network (Mostly shortened to GDN) is a bot and associated website that organizes Goon Discords and allows users to auth on said Discords using their SomethingAwful account. The bot was written by IAmKale with the website being made by Tempus Thales. The bot and network have frequently come under fire for security concerns, specifically that it is being used to gather data on Discord users and that the admins are using it to spy on private Discord channels. These accusations have led it to be removed from many top Goon Discords such as Serious Overchill and SA Elite Gamers.
History
GDN was initially conceived by the trio of IAmKale, Tempus Thales, and Kimsemus to grow to be a community that would rival SomethingAwful, which the creators saw as a dying platform. Kimsemus specifically saw it as an opportunity to leverage the network to rekindle the old times of SA, specifically times with less rules and less political correctness. This was a common sentiment held by the creators, and was the common goal in the early days. The bot and networks usefulness led it to be quickly adopted by many burgeoning Goon groups like BMW, Serious Overchill, and Unofficial SA Discord.
The network enjoyed a boom in activity and signups in the wake of Lowtaxes abuse scandal, seeing dozens of Discords added to the network, mostly bomb shelter Discords from various subforums.
Collaboration with BMW
In late 2016, GDN began to partner with BMW. Kimsemus, who was also a cofounder of BMW, spearheaded this partnership, taking advantage of Taylor Swifts marketing and branding skills and Rejs programming skills. The partnership proved fruitful and GDN continued to grow. By 2017, Unofficial SA Discord had become the main hub of the network, with Taylor, Rej, and Kim all as admins.
However, in 2018, Tempus Thales began growing increasingly paranoid that BMW was growing at a much steadier rate than his own Discord, and in part to collusions with FAT32, banned all of BMW from his network.
Controversies
Spying accusations
In the years following the BMW collaboration, GDN came under fire multiple times for collaborating with "Nazis", to which Tempus Thales would cuck out each time and bend over backwards to apologize for. However, this did little to slow down the hate GDN received. An anonymous leak from Kiwifarms [1] showed proof that GDN admins had been using the bot for years to spy on users. This was further fueled in the GDN thread on SomethingAwful when users came forward to recount their own experiences, including accusations that the bot was spying on rival clans admin channels, going as far as someone speaking through the bot to taunt them.[2]. These accusations of course came with the added implication that Tempus was somehow still a Nazi.
Alleged BMW Involvement
Deletion
After the Scouring of Tempus, Kale deleted GDN and took down its related sites in conjunction with Tempus deleting the SA Discord out of ongoing frustration with Goons, wishing to finally be done with them.