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Re:Jeremy Vaught spent 16 years to build @music on Twitter, ... by tiltowait on Saturday August 05, 2023 @09:14PM (#37017964)
Beyond making each name available to 10,000 (or more) people, randomizing the numbers puts everyone on a playing field. It’s an elegant solution—and why it’s such a baffling shame that Discord recently abandoned it for the terrible, outmoded “one unique username for everyone” approach.
Re:Jeremy Vaught spent 16 years to build @music on Twitter, ... by terribleperson on Saturday August 05, 2023 @09:21PM (#37018016)
Yes, I was quite annoyed that Discord decided to abandon their 4-digit numbers. The first place I saw the approach was Battle.net, and was happy to see it when I joined Discord. I'm glad Discord decided to provide the ability to have a separate nickname from your actual handle, but there was no good reason to dump the numbers.

edit: I agree the randomness is important. Without random numbers, the first person to get in will pick "0069".