Discord priviledged intends special requirements >10k users, needs documentation.

[poVoq]

It seems like Discord is clamping down on larger bridges and privileged intends on busy bridges that have accumulated "10k users", which I am not 100% sure what this refers to, but probably the channel size the bridge bot has access to.

I am guessing they changed the "100 channels" as seen in the screenshot here to 10k users total.

Apparently it is still possible to get around this by documenting the actual privileged intends the bot uses and sharing this with discord, but right now it is unclear to me what exactly entails this.

The error shown is:

I am not directly managing the bot I am having issues with, but the owner shared this additional screenshot and link:

https://support-dev.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/6205754771351-How-do-I-get-Privileged-Intents-for-my-bot

[poVoq]

With the above settings I get a authentication error as explained here: #226

The bot owner had turned off "Server Members Intent" as they thought it wasn't needed by the bridge, but now they can't turn it back on due to the special approval required.

Maybe this could be indeed simplified in Matterbridge as access to the member list seems not really needed in most cases?

[natalie0x42]

Server Members Intent can potentially be avoided by maintaining a persistent user database locally, perhaps using redis. Looking up individual members when a channel message is received from them wouldn't require that intent, and would allow the user avatars and nick-to-username mappings to be populated gradually, instead of the current practice of requesting the entire member list when connecting.

More concerning is the Message Content Intent. The 10,000 users limit is for the count of every server member for every server the bot has joined, not just every channel member for channels the bot has joined. Even if the bot owner leaves that setting enabled, all privileged intents will now get re-evaluated annually, so we can expect that eventually, matterbridge will no longer be able to relay messages from channels on large discord servers. An exception is that the bot would still receive message content if it contains a @mention for the bot's nick.

A workaround might be to set up a dedicated Discord client and run matterbridge on the same host, and rework the bridge to use local RPC access, which doesn't require the privileged intent to read message contents. However, to enable RPC without risking Discord terminating the owner's account, each user who gets granted RPC access (up to 50 is the limit for that) needs to be an official game tester; additionally, claiming the game requires publishing it on Steam (which requires a one-time fee), and the bot app needs to be transferred to a Team instead of an individual owner.