The Problem

Discord selfbots - automated user accounts - are used for spam raids, phishing, and coordinated attacks. Traditional moderation bots scan message content, but that requires the MESSAGE_CONTENT privileged intent and raises privacy concerns.

I wanted to catch bots without reading what people type.

The Insight

Discord's gateway broadcasts a TYPING_START event every time someone begins typing. This is metadata - it tells you WHO started typing, WHERE, and WHEN.