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What's going on with Hackaday and Discord?

I asked AI about it

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At first I thought I'd been hacked. Other colleagues have also asked what is going on. So I asked Google AI. I'm grateful for hackaday.io for hosting everyone's projects for free, but it is worrying that conversations I've had are no longer accessible. Will I have to start backing up all my projects on my hard drive?

This probably explains why I haven't had any friends comment on our shared project pages for days!

  • Conversation with Google AI

    Keith • 07/19/2026 at 14:55 • 7 comments

    The redirection of hackaday.io/messages to the official Hackaday Discord server is an intentional move to deprecate the site's legacy messaging system, confirming this is a server-side change rather than a local browser issue. All user communications and community chat are now handled directly through the Hackaday Discord guild. For more details, visit Hackaday.

    Is discord another website?

    Yes, Discord is a completely separate website and platform from Hackaday.

    What is Discord?

    • Independent Platform: It is a distinct communications app and website owned by Discord Inc.
    • Chat Community: It uses "servers" (like private chat rooms) for text, voice, and video communication.
    • Hosting Choice: Hackaday simply chose to close their own messaging system and move their community conversations over to Discord's platform.

    How to use it

    • Account Needed: You need to create a free Discord account to view or reply to messages there.
    • Access Options: You can use it in your browser (discord.com) or download their Linux desktop app.

    Are my old messages there?

    No, your old messages are not on Discord.
    Because Discord is a completely separate company with a distinct database, Hackaday could not migrate your private inbox history or user credentials over to the new platform.
    Here is what you need to know about your old data:

    • The redirection blocks direct access: Because the hackaday.io/messages URL now forces a redirect straight to Discord, you cannot click through the standard interface to read your inbox history.
    • Data is not automatically deleted: Your old messages likely still exist on Hackaday’s underlying backend servers unless they officially announced a complete database purge.
    • Workarounds to view them: You can try bypassing the redirect by disabling JavaScript in Chrome specifically for hackaday.io, using a command-line tool like curl to fetch your profile data, or checking if the Wayback Machine cached your profile structure (though private messages themselves are never publicly crawled).

    When did they do this?

    Because Hackaday didn’t publish a major front-page announcement or official timestamped blog post specifically detailing the hackaday.io/messages deprecation, the precise date of the silent redirect isn't public. Instead, it was deployed as a quiet, backend site update.
    The transition process unfolded in stages:

    • The Foundation: Hackaday began shifting its primary real-time community engagement, event chats, and live Hack Chats over to their official Discord server over the course of recent years.
    • The Final Phase: Once the massive volume of day-to-day conversation completely moved over, maintaining the legacy private messaging codebase on hackaday.io became an unnecessary security risk and server expense. The hard redirect on the messages URL was quietly enabled to finalize the platform's migration. [1]

    If you have important project data locked in those threads, it's best to check if the Hackaday API still permits data calls, or you can open a line with their team to request assistance.

    Are users angry?


    Yes, a significant portion of the user base is highly annoyed and frustrated by Hackaday's push toward Discord. The anger stems from deep-rooted ideological and practical clashes between Hackaday's traditional open-source community and Discord's corporate structure.
    The primary reasons users are upset include:

    • The Loss of Historical Data: Silently cutting off hackaday.io/messages without giving users a formal grace period to archive their private project collaborations, technical notes, and contact lists felt like a breach of trust.
    • The "Walled Garden" Philosophy: Hackaday readers are heavily biased toward open-source, decentralized standards like IRC, Matrix, and RSS. Forcing users onto a proprietary, closed ecosystem like Discord—where content is completely hidden behind a corporate login—is viewed by many as corporate hypocrisy. [1, 2]
    • No Search Engine Indexing: On the old platform, community discussions were transparent...
    Read more »

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svofski wrote 07/26/2026 at 11:38 • point

I never used Discord much but I have an account. Tried to join HaD server using the link from the announcement and it seems to lead nowhere. What's going on?

  Are you sure? yes | no

Keith wrote 07/26/2026 at 13:53 • point

Discord asked for so much personal information I thought "yep, identity thieves here". Even if Discord had no such intentions, it makes them a very tempting target for hackers who want that information. So I would not touch Discord at all. I disabled Java for their site, just for safety.

  Are you sure? yes | no

svofski wrote 07/26/2026 at 15:52 • point

I wonder why HaD can't have its own IRC channel.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Paul McClay wrote 07/23/2026 at 05:21 • point

Playing "follow the money":  Siemens acquired Supplyframe -- owner of HaD & (then) Tindie -- in 2021. Tindie just went through a very rough, like apparently not even slightly planned or prepared, transfer from Supplyframe to Chinese or China-adjacent ownership in April.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/04/29/tindie-is-back-online-and-now-owned-by-eetree-llc-a-suzhou-fpga-tutor/ 

  Are you sure? yes | no

Paul McClay wrote 07/21/2026 at 20:39 • point

I'm surprised that people (who are not saying they've been away for a while) are surprised. Notice has been at the top of my "My Feed" for quite some time. Not so for all? People access HaD by direct links to content and don't see "My Feed"?

Anyhow, in small defence of HaD: they weren't /completely/ silent about it.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Keith wrote 07/21/2026 at 20:51 • point

Sure, I read the notice, but I did not appreciate that existing messages would become inaccessible. If I had, I would have gone through everything to find anything important and save it. My colleagues made the same assumption.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Paul McClay wrote 07/21/2026 at 22:15 • point

Ah. Indeed they didn't specifically say existing messages would become inaccessible.

I assumed that would be the case and "meant to" harvest what was there before the cutover date, but procrastinated that away so I can't pin that on HaD. I may ask for a dump, assuming (as I do) they didn't actually scrub the data.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Ken Yap wrote 07/21/2026 at 21:07 • point

My bookmark for HaD is the global feed. I only look at my feed once in a while and it usually has notifications that some newbie or spammer who will never post anything again has followed me.

I reckon HaD owes us a takeout feature for PMs.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Paul McClay wrote 07/21/2026 at 22:22 • point

Hmm. I've been getting the same notice on my global feed too -- but I get there by switching from "my" feed. Anyhow, it seems like the sort of thing that would warrant irritatingly intrusive notification.

Agreed about a 'takeout' capability.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Eric Hertz wrote 07/22/2026 at 23:54 • point

I've been keeping in touch with people via the message-system here by clicking the "see message at hackaday.io" link in my email notifications of private messages' having been received. So, no, I haven't looked at feeds for quite some time, especially when working on my own and/or collaborative projects. No time for keeping up with feeds at those times!

The only way I knew the discord change happened was because I clicked one of those notification-email links and it sent me to discord's site. We were mid-[multi-day]-conversation!

Well, they got me now checking the feed in hopes of an update about how to download our logs. Going the route of legal-threat/demand seems kinda obnoxious, but at this rate seems increasingly-necessary. Sheesh. Never would've expected this from *this* site.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Forthnutter wrote 07/20/2026 at 10:01 • point

Also I think that "1 Message" is some kind ploy to get you click on the button.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Keith wrote 07/20/2026 at 10:48 • point

Probably "Welcome to Discord", terms and conditions, you can't sue us if your details get hacked, etc. in the small print.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Eric Hertz wrote 07/20/2026 at 19:04 • point

Mine actually says 14 messages(!). But it's always been a weird number that didn't seem to corroborate with anything I could figure out. Maybe 'cause I joined a groupchat I'd forgotten about...

  Are you sure? yes | no

Forthnutter wrote 07/20/2026 at 09:50 • point

eevblog maybe an option, I have set up Applix space on google chat that is very simple to run. Access only via invitation.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Ken Yap wrote 07/20/2026 at 00:42 • point

Sorry, I don't have much to add to your extensive research. As good practice I've been saving the HTML sources for my project details and logs and of course i have the images in case I have to repost my projects elsewhere. The contacts and messages in PMs are lost. No way I will join Discord. This is a loss for the HaD ecosystem.

I wonder if https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/ could be a alternate site for project discussions. PMs between forum members is available.

PS: Just noticed that the My Messages icon that redirects to Discord has a "1 message unread" indicator on it now. Not sure what that means.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Keith wrote 07/20/2026 at 13:38 • point

It is not intensive research, just a quick AI query. AI is often wrong. I don't have time to do deep research. Most of my projects did not have chat, but when I did have chats they were important. Mostly the Applix rebuild projects.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Eric Hertz wrote 07/20/2026 at 19:10 • point

Mine says 14! But It's always been a bit weird... I think maybe because I joined the general hackchat group(?). I'll keep my eyes open to see if it changes.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Dave wrote 07/21/2026 at 22:14 • point

I have the same thing, 1 message stuck in limbo. Very annoying as I was working with someone to buy an old computer. No way of contacting him now.  Yes I did see the chat being closed but I though the history will be kept or messages ported to Discord somehow. I use Discord all the time but unless every project gets their own channel  I don't think its the right tool for this sort of collaboration. IMHO 😊

But I'm with Ken and Forthnutter. Thinking eevblog would be the way to go. 

  Are you sure? yes | no

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