Discord's smart move was emulating the concept of servers (including all the teenage drama coming from having administrators and moderators more interested in (ab)using their power than community building) while making them accessible to anyone without technical knowledge.
But it's important to remember that Discord is not that. Discord holds all your data, in luxurious detail, with no option to delete. They go as far as ignoring GDPR when people ask for their messages to be deleted. "Deleting" your account will not even anonymize your ID, it unsets your avatar, renames you, kicks you from all guilds and disables logging in. That's it. And if they ban you there is no place to move on to.
That used to be a huge issue, less with Client-Server model software, but more the P2P mechanisms in Skype.
These days? Well, most server providers have some sort of basic flood mitigations in place now, and even more advanced protection has become affordable.
>These days? Well, most server providers have some sort of basic flood mitigations in place now, and even more advanced protection has become affordable.
Hmm
I didn't meant your server being DDoSd, but you being DDoS (but probably that's what you meant with Skype P2P example?)
Well yeah. Though Vent, Teamspeak and Mumble never had these issues (if you could trust the server admin).
Skype (at the time, no idea now) was a very shoddily written piece of software. It was trivial to query the IP of any online user, even if they were not on your contact list or appearing offline.
You had to use a VPN or carefully conceal your Skype ID, I did work with a somewhat popular live streamer back then (so a VPN wasn't feasible), and their ID was a very random string that was not to be shared under any circumstances.
But it's important to remember that Discord is not that. Discord holds all your data, in luxurious detail, with no option to delete. They go as far as ignoring GDPR when people ask for their messages to be deleted. "Deleting" your account will not even anonymize your ID, it unsets your avatar, renames you, kicks you from all guilds and disables logging in. That's it. And if they ban you there is no place to move on to.