Privileged Gateway Intent Request Denied

[Skedog]

As mentioned in a previous issue #855 - Discord is now requiring review for large servers using Privileged Gateway Intents. I submitted our ModMail bot for review to Discord on June 11th, and got a response finally today that my request was denied.

Based on the information provided, your requested access has not been granted. This is because to be granted Privileged Intent access, a request must demonstrate that the app's use case can't be achieved without the access and complies with our policies.

Your app's current Privileged Intents have not been removed at this time, so you can review your app and make any necessary changes (e.g., remove the intent and implement an alternative for your use case). If you believe your app still requires Privileged Intents access or you have a new use case that requires it, you are welcome to reapply with updated information.

This is obviously an issue as it appears that Discord doesn't agree that this bot is a valid enough reason to allow those permissions. Is the plan to have a solution to this soon (in the next 30 days?) @Dragory or should I reapply with some further information to Discord to keep delay it being removed or should I instead look into some other solution for ModMail?

Appreciate all you do as always, just wanted to put it out there that it seems Discord isn't going to approve requests for these permissions for this bot.

[enshael]

My co-moderator started a fork that doesn't need the privileged gateway intents, the code is uploaded here: https://github.com/r-grandorder/modmailbot

It works well enough for our usage of the bot with minor adjustments on our workflow.

[Dragory]

Out of interest, how did you end up describing the justification for the message content intent? I'm still working on the suggested wording for this on my end, so it would be helpful to know what they rejected outright.

[Dragory]

@enshael To confirm, in your fork you have a modal on /close warning that chatter within the thread is not saved, right? And you offer a section to enter custom notes instead?

[enshael]

@enshael To confirm, in your fork you have a modal on /close warning that chatter within the thread is not saved, right? And you offer a section to enter custom notes instead?

Yes that's correct. A modal for notes is shown upon triggering /close

[Skedog]

@Dragory I don't remember my exact wording, and I can't look it up on the Support site as it doesn't show my message, only the response (I guess because I submitted it via the dev portal?)

But I explained what the bot is, how we use it between two servers, why we need it for that purpose. I explained how it works, user sends a DM to this bot and that bot then posts in our second server etc etc

I didn't go into technical details, as in I didn't send code snippets, but I did supply screenshots of specifically how the bot works across our two servers with examples of how it handles the messages and what not.

@enshael I will have to take a look at it, thanks! So all conversations between the mod team are not logged, only the convo with the user? That isn't the end of the world for us - I do like looking back as to why a decision was made regarding a ban/unban - but that is still better than nothing I suppose.

[sapphonie]

It seems that Discord is planning on implementing this July 30th, at least from what I've seen multiple users post (and from what my own bot page says),, should we expect some sort of update by then? I have no interest in using a fork, especially with a Docker setup. Thanks for your work on this project, it's immensely useful for moderation.

[enshael]

Discord gave 90 days for the bot owners/developers to apply for the privileged intents. We got the notification around the 1st week of June and we have until September 10th to get approved.

Did your team get an earlier deadline? I assumed they sent out the notices back in June.

[Skedog]

FWIW my initial notice was June 11th with a deadline to submit before September 9th. After my submission and denial, they gave me another 30 days to submit again (and wait for approval/denial) which it will be active the entire time its under review.

So I have 26 days left as of this post to either have a solution with this bot/find a different bot/fork or resubmit to buy some time while a solution is figured out.

So you can submit the request @sapphonie and you will keep the intents for now at least until Discord responds one way or another.

[sapphonie]

Req was submitted and denied. I've been offered to "resubmit" by July 30th or get priv intents taken away from the bot 😔

[Dragory]

I've just published some guidance on privileged intents: https://github.com/Dragory/modmailbot/blob/master/docs/privileged-intents.md

[sapphonie]

Any shot we can get a flag or option to not use priv intents on the main branch (not a fork) anyway? I don't really trust that Discord will respect an appeal here, and further I do not want to resubmit this every year (per what Discord requires, which is insane lol) for what seems to be not a justifiable feature for a server w/10k+ members. Like if the bot is in a server over 10k members it should probably just default the features that require priv intents off unless bot operators specify otherwise.

[Dragory]

I will have to look into it, but logs/transcripts as they work now are a core part of the bot and would need to be heavily redesigned to not require intents, at the cost of functionality (as enshael has done in their fork).

If you save your review responses before submitting the appeal, the annual review should be a fairly quick thing to get through.

[sapphonie]

Isn't it just admin transcripts that are relevant here?

[enshael]

The bot won't see the ! commands if it doesn't have the Message Content Intent.

You need to switch the codebase to use slash commands in order for the bot to still work.

[Skedog]

FWIW - I resubmitted using your new guideance @Dragory - I will update here whenever I hear back from Discord.