Discord.
An American-made free application for smartphones and computers that allows people, mostly gamers, to communicate through voice, text, or video.
All in real-time.
It is a sort of a combination of online-calling features of Skype and Reddit kind forums.
Discord started as a gamer-only community but soon turned into a social platform for “tribes” of all kinds, including those not related to games:
- TV shows
- Anime
- Music
Some even use it as a simple team-chatting tool for their friends.
However, where there’s a community, there are also those who simply don’t know how to behave and chat. Spammers. Flamers. Haters. You name it.
Discord just isn’t free from offensive messages.
Although some of those messages are meant to humor other people, other Discord users may see the content and get offended. This is what happened in the case of iFunny, and then it was followed up by getting into Neo-Nazi propaganda.
If you experience this and decide to report someone, you can find yourself in trouble.
Why?
Because the other person can delete Discord messages. And you’ll have a hard time to view deleted messages on Discord.
Fortunately, there are some workarounds to this issue. And in this article, we’ll help you figure out just that—how to view deleted Discord messages.
How to Check Discord Logs
While text messages are just one part of the app, Discord users employ them more than others. Yes, Discord is, for the most part, a voice app.
However, text chats are still huge.
This is because not every individual has a microphone, or is in a position to voice chat while commuting, sitting in a class, or working, so there’s always more text messages than voice chats.
Audit Logs
This is where audit logs come in handy.
They’re an efficient moderation tool that the app offers to let you know what happened in a Discord server.
For the moment, this is the only way to aid you in determining the user id and mod action.
Unfortunately, events like messageDelete and guildMemberLeave don’t give out information on moderating actions that caused them, making audit logs an essential feature.
However, keep in mind the two following things about using audit logs First, there isn’t a guarantee that they’ll arrive when you expect.
It is questionable if they will arrive at all. Moreover, there aren’t trigger events for creating audit logs.
People most often use audit logs to view deleted messages on Discord. Especially user for user id and server id.
However, currently, Discord doesn’t give out an audit log if the individual who erased the message is a bot that deleted a single message, or if the author themselves deleted the message.
Discord Bots
You can use Discord bots to keep track of deleted messages from Discord users.
Well, you can have a bot that collects the message logs, so you can easily report those who harras and then instantly erase messages.
When you enable Discord bots on your own Discord server, you’ll be able to select a channel where the bot will send the logs, and thus, view erased messages.
Bots are a perfect replacement for capturing malicious content than just taking screenshots yourself. Bots will do that for you.
Yes, you can create a ‘Read Only’ channel, but where’s the fun in that? Bots save you time while allowing you to customize your experience.
For instance, let’s say a know flamer jumps in your Discord server.
Rather than having to stop your gaming and taking a screenshot for reporting them, you can utilize a bot to do it for you.
One of the best bots around is Logger. It is an excellent resource for keeping logs of your own server. If you’re tech-savvy, you can also make your own bots.
However, Logger comes with a lot of positive reviews and clearly focuses only on logging content, or messages.
You won’t have any trouble adding a bot on your server.
Depending on the one you select, you’ll just have to click on the ‘Acquire’ or ‘Invite’ buttons and complete the verification process.
Once the bot enters your channel, go to the app or internet browser so you can access the server.
Customize your settings and make sure that the bot is running properly before you start to rely on automation.
How To View Deleted Discord Messages
The short answer is, no way.
Unfortunately, you won’t be able to find and look at your deleted Discord messages.
When you, or someone else, deletes a message, it is gone forever. The same is true for any text chat. Direct Message as well.
All of these instances were verified countless times by both Discord company and Discord users themselves.
Just to repeat—when you delete your own chat messages they’ll disappear from your server for good.
Also, a part of Discord Terms and Conditions states that server owners can’t see your chats.
Although it’s possible that Discord has their own audit logs that contain deleted messages, as far as you can do within the app, you can’t retrieve them.
If you’ve deleted your own DM by mistake, you can be sure it’s gone from Discord for good.
It’s possible that the other side of your private messages may still have their copy, but yours is gone for sure.
Unfortunately, even as an owner of Discord server you likely won’t have an audit log for this.
There are several reasons behind this Discord’s decision for deleted messages.
For starters, keeping track of deleted messages is against the officials norms of the platform.
Moreover, this could breach the privacy of Discord users.
In addition, since Discord was designed according to classic Internet Relay Chat — IRC — it doesn’t enable its owners to view their users’ private messages. Both IRC and Discord work like this.
This is why you’ll have so much trouble to find a deleted message. Once the user errases it, it is wiped from the server at an instant.
Can you Report Deleted Messages on Discord?
Yes, you can. Here’s how.
You’ll need to send all three IDs along with your request to the app’s customer support.
This is so they can take relevant action against the abusing party.
If you ever see an abusive message, you should record all the IDs in question and send them along a screenshot to Discord’s support department.
Even in the case where you have erased the messages by mistake, you are still able to send a complaint.
However, you’ll need to send server ID, user ID, and attach any proof you have— for instance, a screenshot. Or, you can follow these next several steps:
- Find the bottom-left corner of the screen, and press the gear button in order to go to the Settings Page.
- Click on the “Appearance” icon, and from there visit the “Advanced” section.
- Find the key next to “Developer Mode” and toggle it on.
- Search for the message you would like to report.
- Then do a right-click on the user ID, and select “Copy ID” option.
- If you need some more user’s names, you should include all of these in a text file and keep it before going to the next step.
- After this, you’ll have the ID of the message in question. Everything stays the same. Right-click at any place on the message, select “Copy ID”, and copy/paste that ID in the same text file.
- Last but not least, you’ll want the server ID where the abuse occurred.
- Ensure that you wrote all the user and server ID accurately, and then go to the next step.
- Once again, you’ll have to press the right mouse button on the server ID, choose “Copy ID”, and paste it to the same document.
- Ensure all three names are written correctly. This includes user ID, server ID, and message ID.
- Select the app’s request form and press “Trust and Safety” from the dropdown menu. Then, enter your email address and the required information until you fill up the entire form.
- From here, visit the “Report Type” page, select “Harassment”, “Abuse”, or however the option was named for your particular issue.
- You should also include the reason for the complaint along with the required information.
- Make sure you correctly paste all the required IDs in the “Description” input field.
- You may even want to include additional information, or attach a screenshot. You can do this through the “Attachment” box below.
- In the end, after you’ve filled up the form, completed the basic requirements like reCAPTCHA, you will need to submit the form to the app’s customer support.
How To Recover Deleted Discord Messages
Here’s one way to recover deleted discord messages:
- Go to any mailbox, and then press the Closed folder you can find in the left part of the screen. Go to the bottom of the Closed folder, and then press the “Recently Deleted” button.
- Pressing on any conversation can show you a preview of the erased messages.
- From here, you’ll just need to press the “Restore Conversation” icon in order to restore it.
However, for better or worse (depending on your goal), any deleted app’s message is in fact erased.
Without leaving any record. This is because Discord itself doesn’t keep any messages on its own servers when you erase them. You should check out Discord’s Privacy Policy for more details.