The Use of Discord Servers to Buy and Sell Drugs

The focus of current research on social media drug markets is the use of mainstream platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram. No research currently exists examining how lesser-known social media platforms may facilitate online drug supply. This paper presents the first analysis of the use of the social media platform Discord to buy and sell illegal drugs. The study utilizes observational data and qualitative interviews with Discord drug market participants in New Zealand, including sellers and a drug server administrator (n = 12). Our findings demonstrate that the Discord platform, which was initially established for gaming, is also being used to facilitate drug transactions. Discord is used to establish local drug selling groups called “servers,” which can be joined by accessing an “invite-link.” The advantages of Discord drug servers cited by interviewees included competitive prices and the ability to greatly expand local seller and customer bases beyond pre-existing personal networks. However, accessibility, server size and management varied considerably between drug servers, giving rise to a range of issues and concerns. We use drug market typologies based on theory of “open” and “closed” markets to understand how “lower tier” and “higher tier” Discord drug servers provided different buying and selling environments. “Lower tier” drug servers were generally characterized by greater ease of entry, larger size, higher rates of opportunism among participants and variable server management. Conversely, “higher tier” drug servers typically involved tighter market entry controls, more active server management and were generally smaller in size. The emergence of Discord drug servers illustrates how the evolution of social media platforms presents their users with new spaces that can be adapted to function as drug markets and the tensions that may emerge during the process of learning to buy and sell in a new social media space.