Why leaked secret documents point to the future of social listening

The top headline in the U.S. this week was how a 21-year-old member of the Air National Guard was arrested for retaining and distributing classified national defense information through a social media community. This raised many grave security concerns, but there’s also a vital lesson here about the future of social media marketing and social listening platforms.

Let’s get into it.

The Rise of Discord

The first lesson about the future of social listening is that this leak occurred on Discord … and it was undetected there. While Discord is a mystery for many right now, it’s becoming the de facto meeting place for a generation. This 2023 study from Edison Research shows the remarkable growth of this platform among young people:

If you’re viewing this on a mobile device, the chart might be hard to see. It shows that Discord use among people aged 12–34 rose from 26 percent to 42 percent in one year. By comparison, more people in the age group use Discord than Twitter or LinkedIn.