So Discord Dropped Us
I'll be honest, I've rewritten this article like 4 times at this point. There are so many things that I want to say, and every time I try, I feel like I'm just endlessly venting and getting everything out. But I think I'm coming to realize that it's impossible to say everything without this turning into unreadable sludge. So, I'm just going to go for it with a less perfectly formal approach, and see what happens.
As of about two weeks ago (at time of writing), the Zooey Dot Pub Discord server was taken down. We first went up publicly in September of 2022, and at the end of our time we had just under three thousand members, making us the largest public zoo group out there by far. If you're a regular reader of the magazine, you've probably heard us talk about it a ton. So many people put their time, their energy, and their hard work into making that space something I think was pretty special. We helped zoos connect and make friends with one another, we gave younger zoos a safe space to be themselves without a bunch of adult content they have to avoid. We helped a ton of antis realize that they might just be overcompensating for a bit of self hatred. We had taco nights and hung out in voice calls together and ran a death game one time but it was fun I promise. Me and the mod team spent hours every week trying to keep the space safe and fun, and our amazing members gave us their trust, and chose to come and visit and hang out in our space, and I'm so appreciative to everyone who ever came to take a look at our server.
But, now it's gone. It happened while I was on my computer. I got a notification from Discord themselves. I clicked it, assuming it was just some kind of update or something. Instead, it was a Content Violation.
"Your server Zooey Dot Pub! broke Discord's rules for Violent and Graphic Content."
My first reaction was shock. I was just trying to figure out what happened. I, stupidly, felt so safe within that Discord server that my first thought wasn't even that it was a zoo related ban. I figured something else must have happened. I thought maybe there was some kind of raid, or an auto-detect error, or something like that. But then I clicked to get more details, and saw this.
That's really the moment that the reality of the situation dawned on me. They just decided to crack down on zoos.
Maybe I felt overly confident because we'd been around so long. Maybe my confidence was because we'd applied to be a community server. We applied to be in their partner program and it didn't get us taken down back then. I mean, hell. We literally got permission from Discord before we even started the server. We followed all the ToS, and we didn't even allow 18+ stuff. In my head, we'd done everything right. But, along the way, I guess I just forgot that the thing that's "wrong" when it comes to zoos isn't anything we do. It's our existence in the first place.
Of course, we tried to appeal. That came back with a robot answer.
"At your request, we reviewed your content and confirmed it violates our community guidelines."
But, I'm optimistic to a fault, so I didn't give up there. I sent an email to Discord support, and it got sent back with the same kind of answer. I emailed the guy that first gave us permission, but the email bounced. Maybe he doesn't work there anymore even. It's been a long time. I sent a DM to Discord support on Twitter, and they told me that they don't handle that kind of thing, and I have to email support. When I told them I did, they didn't reply. It was hard. Every point of rejection just opened the wounds up again. I kept saying to myself, if I could just talk to a person, any person, I could fix this. I could get the server back. But I never got my chance. I'm not going to lie, dear readers, it's been a tough two weeks. Every time I pull out my phone, I open up Discord and look to see what Otter is up to, or how Ozane is doing, or who Stoat has been antagonizing, or what weird way Plat is spelling "meow" today. There was always something going on. But the server is gone, and instead I just feel sad. On my computer, I always had the server up on my second screen, and would read chat as I wrote, or played games, or whatever I was doing. Now as I write this it's just my wallpaper. It feels weird having anything else there.
I want to quickly say, I really appreciate all the love and support that people have been giving to me and to the team. When I was at my lowest, it was those kinds of messages that stopped me from just giving up, and even now hearing about people's experiences meeting friends or even just getting into the community make me so happy to hear.
This is the fourth in the series of articles about major things dropping us, but it's been so many more than just those four things. If I wrote an article about every service we'd been denied usage of, it would get very old very fast. As zoos, we're constantly limited as to what we can use, and even when we try our very best to follow every single rule, the best that we can hope for is that we get a good long life before we're brought down. And in that sense, I am happy about the Zooey Dot Pub Discord server. Right now, it still hurts. But at the end of the day, at least we had the chance to do something cool, at least for a little while.
So, if you've made it this far, you're probably wondering what's next for the space previously known as ZDPD. And I have good news. We are definitely going to be opening up again. It's just going to look a little bit different, and it's not going to be on Discord. Me and the team are still working out the details, but even though we know nothing lasts forever, that doesn't mean we still don't want to try. I've sent a ton of emails to various apps trying to get a vibe for whether they'd let us exist, we've looked into self hosting a bunch, and we've been talking a lot about if there's any extra ways we can make the space better when it does launch. I don't have more to say on it today, I don't want to say things that might end up changing, but we should have news for you soon, so keep a lookout for an article about that in the future, or follow our social medias, which currently still exist thankfully.
Hopefully this is the last time I rewrite this article. If you're seeing it, it probably means it was. But, it's likely not going to be the last time I write an article like this. It's so hard sometimes, feeling like anything you build can come crashing down any second just because someone decides to flip a switch. But, just because one group, one site, one project falls doesn't mean that the community itself is dying. Every day the community is growing, we're getting ourselves out there, and we're changing perceptions on zoosexuals. This is a setback, but we're going to get back on our feet and keep swinging. That's really all there is to do.
Thank you so much to everyone who was a part of the ZDPD. I hope we get to see each other again, in another time, and another place.
I'm gonna go grab a drink.
Article written by Tarro (June 2025)
Find Tarro at https://twitter.com/hereforthezoo
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