Getting new members to your Discord server is always an exciting occurrence as you have someone new to interact with while also getting a new addition to your server.
However, not all new additions to a Discord server are something to be celebrated, especially if you experience a sudden influx of members in a single sitting.
Having a lot of newcomers to your server is often a sign of a raid which often can cause damages to a Discord server and eventually lead to a nuke which is when a server gets disabled and deleted either by the server owner or Discord themselves.
Discord raids are scary and can happen to any server at any given time. One of the best ways to stop Discord raids is to prevent them.
Here in this article, we will be going over how to stop your Discord server from raids and preventive measures you can have.
Here are several ways to stop Discord Server from Raids:
1. Change Moderation Verification Level
One of the things you can do to prevent a Discord raid into your server is changing your server’s minimum verification level. This can be found in your server settings under the Moderation tab.
There are 5 verification levels a member must have to join the server. If they don’t meet the server’s minimum verification level, they won’t join it despite getting invited to the server.
The 5 verification levels are as follows:
- None – This verification level is unrestricted, meaning anyone can join the server. This is extremely dangerous for public servers as it makes you more prone to raids as a bot, and spam accounts can easily access your server.
- Low – This verification level requires a user to have a verified email on their Discord account
- Medium – This verification level requires a user to be on Discord for at least 5 minutes
- High – This verification level is similar to the previous one but requires 10 minutes.
- Highest – This verification level requires users to have a verified phone number on their Discord account.
Choosing the highest verification level will immediately boost your server security as it is harder for bot/spam accounts to join uninvited because it is harder for them to meet the minimum requirements.
2. Turn on Explicit Media Content Filter
Another feature in the Moderation tab in the server settings is an explicit media content filter. This particular feature is helpful during a raid on a server.
Most raids in servers usually use explicit and malicious messages that would cause an irreparable server damage.
Turning on the explicit media content filter allows Discord to scan and analyze any messages before sending them to everyone on the server.
This allows a spam message to be deleted before being sent to a channel if deemed malicious.
Furthermore, the filter itself has three levels on how the filter will work between each member in the server.
3. Change Default Role Permissions
One of the most effective methods of preventing a Discord raid is disabling several permissions from the default (@everyone) role.
Disabling the permissions to send messages and read them in the @everyone role will prevent any raiders from doing anything harmful on your server.
This works the best because any new members who join the server will be automatically assigned this role.
If they lack a role that has these permissions enabled, they won’t send messages or read old ones. This lets you verify that each member isn’t a bot and not there for raiding.
4. Add a Meet & Greet Channel
With the previous method, one way to prevent a Discord raid from happening on your server is by setting up a public welcome or greeting channel on top of hiding every other channel from new members in the server.
Having this set up in your server allows new members to join but not cause any lasting damages from raids as they lack access to the general channels.
Having a welcome channel also allows members to go and queue through a verification process to gain access to the other channels.
This can be done through bots or manually by server mods. This assures that all new members to the Discord server are humans and not bots.
This prevents server nukes from happening because of raids while also preventing raiders from doing what they intended to do as they are severely limited to the welcome channel.
5. Bot-Controlled Auto-Moderation
Discord bots are one of the most useful additions to any Discord server. They don’t only allow you to do simple tasks on servers but also allow you to do server moderation on your behalf.
We briefly touched upon this in the previous method, and for a good reason, Discord bots that have auto-moderation features allow your server to not only be more secure as you can use them in conjunction with other preventive measures but also can dampen the effects from a raid.
Auto-moderation bots come equipped with several features such as text filters and anti-spam.
Similar to Discord’s built-in explicit media filter, these features of an auto-moderator allow for messages to be thoroughly scanned and subsequently deleted if they contain malicious things.
Additionally, they can prevent spam from occurring and ban or kick members who continue to commit violations.
Here are several auto-moderation bots you can use:
- Gaius – Perfect for large servers as they have the most robust and diverse toolsets available for auto-moderation. It also has several features, such as raid detection and raid prevention.
- YAGPDB
- Carl
- Dyno
- Mee6 – The most popular bot for smaller servers as they have simple auto-moderation options that can easily be set up. While not as versatile as Gaius, it gets the job done.
6. Captcha Discord Server Verification
We all are familiar with captchas as they are one of the best security measures you can have against bots.
Many popular websites use it for new account creation, so using it on Discord will also prove helpful to stop and prevent Discord raids.
Captcha.bot is the most popular bot for this exact function as it allows you to create a captcha system to verify your members in your Discord server.
The captcha is also done locally in Discord, making the process easy for your members while also being compatible with many other Discord bots used for verification which adds another layer of security to your server.
Captcha.bot works by combining the third and fourth methods where members interact in a channel to verify themselves.
Captcha.bot has 2 verification methods done through web verification or image verification. This bot is a simple yet effective way to prevent Discord raids from bots.
7. Disable Instant Invite
A feature exists in Discord where you can invite your Discord friends to servers you are a member of.
The unfortunate thing about this feature is that raiders can abuse it as they can easily hand out Discord invites to their friends (or fellow raiders), making raiding Discord servers easier and faster.
Disabling Instant Invites in your features allows you to stop Discord raids from happening too fast and prevent raiders from sending invites the moment you disabled the initial invite that brought the raiders in the first place.
It also prevents Discord mods from going rogue as only the server can make invites and manage them.
Read how to disable invite link on Discord here.
8. Delete Server Invites/Set Invite Limit
In addition to the previous method, another thing you can do to prevent raids from happening in your Discord server is properly managed server invite links in your server.
Good practice with Discord invites to set a time limit for each Discord invite made and avoid making Discord invites that don’t have a time limit.
Additionally, be sure to delete any old server invites that might be still active, as this can lead to a Discord raid from occurring should raiders get their hands on the invite link.
Are Raids Allowed on Discord?
According to this tweet from Discord, raiding Discord isn’t allowed. The same tweet states that raiding different servers on Discord is strictly against ToS guidelines.
Users could be banned by Discord if they were found organizing and participating in raids. Users can be reported through emailing abuse@discordapp.com or support@discordapp.com.
