Quick question – is there actually a way to distinguish between someone self-deleting their account and Discord banning them?
I see the ‘Deleted User #####’ tag pop up in old chats sometimes, but I’m never sure if that means they chose to leave or if they got nuked by Discord. Is there a specific way to tell the difference just by looking at the profile, or does it look the same either way?
tbh it looks exactly the same for both. once the account is fully gone, it just turns into that generic ‘Deleted User’ tag regardless of what happened.
unless you knew they were about to get banned for something specific, you’re basically just guessing. could’ve been a ban, could’ve just been them rage quitting the platform 
Technically speaking, there is no difference in the final User Object that the API returns, but the timing can sometimes give it away.
When a user self-deletes, the account enters a ‘pending deletion’ state for 14-30 days. During this window, the account is disabled but not yet anonymized. If they were banned for a ToS violation, the token is often invalidated immediately, and the account is disabled instantly.
However, once you see the name change to Deleted User with a generic discriminator (like #0000), the account has been fully scrubbed from the database. This process (anonymization) is identical for both bans and deletions to comply with GDPR and privacy laws. It effectively strips all PII (Personally Identifiable Information) while keeping the unique Snowflake ID attached to the messages for database integrity.
So, unless you were monitoring their API status code during the transition, the end result is indistinguishable because the data has been wiped in the exact same way.
there is no way to know this unless you have a contact at Discord HQ