Starting in early March, the platform will place every account into a default “teen-appropriate” experience unless it has proof that users are adults.
The move has brought widespread criticism from Discord users, who are citing privacy and security concerns following a recent breach of a third-party vendor that ended up exposing around 70,000 government ID images used to verify the age of Discord users.
Good
Don’t forget to review bomb
I tried to get into it but with it being presented as IRC but “fun” on their website, I couldn’t really understand why so many nearly empty projects sites keep telling me to try their server for more (or any, really) information… Then I did try to accept an invite, but why the fuck to I need to create an account to know if I want to create an account to begin with? So now, anything promoting Discord as the main method of getting information simply set off my scam alert.
you need to create an account for everything so that complaint rings hollow. Discord doesnt even have a high barrier as an account can be created in a few seconds and you can use it in the web.
I didn’t have to in order to figure out if Lemmy was something I wanted to use. Neither for IRC. That makes Discord vastly inferior to both.
your internet usage must be very limited.
As far as internet user goes you basically arnt real. Your usage must be so beyond limited that any opinions you have are going to be massively skewed and you are entirely out of touch with the reality of what the modern internet user is.
Because I try things before committing? ok.
I could just be me being a doomer, but I doubt any significant exodus will happen. People really about to drop discord? Right…
Yeah I think people will just strive to keep their servers sfw
Yeah I think these articles are trying to push people to leave discord and not actually reporting a real trend. Even on lemmy where people are far more likely to be halfway out the door or wanting to leave discord its still a low amount saying they left.
Across the 20 servers im in i’ve seen 0 movement. People arent even talking about it.
I’m with you.
Considering that age verification will only be mandatory to browse NSFW content, and that without it you can still join servers and keep calling during gameplay as per usual, my bet is that exodus won’t happen. There is going to be part of people who will verify, and the unverified half either gonna leave or keep using discord just without NSFW.
Reddit exodus, unfortunately, barely had any impact. Bluesky had a good influx of new users, but it didnt kill xitter. Doubt that there anything going to happen with discord.
I mentioned dropping discord in my gaming group chat. Five non political normies and myself. Literally nobody is fighting to stay on discord. We’ll try a few alternatives and even if I’ve gotta fork over a few bucks a month, I will. Any site that requires id is dead to me.
That’s like when people say that this time we won’t pre-order games anymore, and the new call of duty is the steam bestseller a month before release.
There’s no way in hell I’d upload my ID. Especially since discord recently had a data breach.
Though, threatening to delete (and maybe actually doing so) might make them reconsider.
Already looking into alternatives. My friends and I are going to switch asap. They aren’t that tech savvy, so it’s pretty much up to me to find a good alternative and teach them how to use it. I don’t mind tho lol
Please, try Stoat.
That’s the one I’m leaning towards
Fluxer is good tol.
Does Stoat have voice chat?
It does, though screen share and web cameras are labeled as “coming soon” for now
Labeled as coming soon for years. They ain’t ever coming that dumpster fire of an app is spinning its wheels. Wayland development moves faster.
some teenagers were publishing, inmoral or unexcepted content like beheading, black mailing small girls. i think as alternative solution, they should ai to detect their messages/content and automatically report/ban them!
Yeah! Using the lying machine to detect things! Genius!
/Sarcasm
do you have better alternative ? they can open source tools to detect them
add a better reporting system, one that automatically spoilers posts with multiple reports, and labels them as having received multiple reports, then asks the human server moderators to approve/delete
It’s what Reddit and Lemmy and Piefed use and it works wonders. And no AI involved.
Yes, good feedback
I am just not going to participate in that verification shit, and, for now, I will just not see that stuff anymore.
This is the part, young-but-becoming-wise friends, where the company doesn’t give a shit about you and starts to prey on children, who, for a while, become very lucrative.
The chances of discord pushing ahead anyway, even with this very public outcry, is still 50/50.
I figure losing half their users while making money on their new surveillance scheme might be more profitable. Than have 100% of their user continue to use the app as is.
And after they lose 5% of their addicted users, all they have to do is continue to grow 5%. Oh no!
Do it, pussies. I remember when sites would actually topple when they made poor decisions.
The obvious solution here is for DEVICE manufacturers to add verification steps in the OS for parents to configure.
How would that work on PCs?
Bios.
Ok, honestly with some caveats, this might have legs.
What most of us want: to use our services anonymously and privately
What some of us want: to keep youtube/discord/roblox from enabling pedofarms. yes i get the obligatory people should just raise their kids
What companies say they want: to keep kids safe
What companies really want: to appease some users and farm as much data about someone as they can and to comply with the growing trend of places that require age verification.
So, what if they provide an offline model for age verification? download the model, phone in airplane mode. verify yourself, get a digitally signed certificate, expunge the app so shove that verifiable signature as proof that you’re an adult.
From the corporate standpoint, It’s no different than signing into their account and giving them your face. we keep our privacy, they can fuck off about it.
How about hell fucking no you idiot
Obvious
How is this not worse?
Rather than a hypothetical advertising ID assigned at the browser. We now have a physical government ID tied to every single device Serial ID accessible by anyone who claims they need age verification (read: everyone).
Hey I have a better idea
How about they fuck off and talk to internet router hardware companies to make decent software UIs, with defaults that make sheep masses actually use them to ‘protect the children’ client side where it actually works
Oh because its not actually about that and the powers that be don’t actually give a rats about protecting children and this whole protect the children conversation is a red herring to allow them to push their real goals which include but are not limited to mass censorship of people who disagree with and resist their opinions, actions, and agendas
The real trick is we need the governments to back down and just make sure we have the power to allow/deny our kids access.
I mean uploading your government ID or having to share your biometric data via video is also just as terrible. There is no guarantee that these companies will not fuck it up sell your data get hacked etc. Instead of an ID number linked to you and they now have a copy of your identity.
Right and attaching it to your phone just means you click. “Send Daved Video” instead of “Record”.
They are still going to have it for their own records
What he wants are just OS level parental controls. If enabled the OS tells apps that the user is underage. Like the only info is:
underage: true/false
Yea. Basically this.
Don’t we already have this?
Google Family Link, Apple Screen Time
I have personally set it up. Works great for Google and Apple. The Amazon equivalent is shite - literally had to generate e-waste to get better control.
Threaten? Bro as soon as the 2 people I care about get on Root I’m out.
Root? What’s that from what I’ve heard a lot of people are moving to stoat.
I made a Root account and run it on NixOS through their appimage. I’m waiting on my friend to get it so I can test the voicechat and screen share but so far it’s functional and has 2 awesome features that Discord doesn’t have. Reply to more than 1 comment with only 1 of your messages. Tabs on the top similar to a browser, it’s just more natural for me than the sidebar shit.
In the mean time I’m still probably gonna host a Matrix server with a VPS incase Root ever decides to pull a Discord.
Plus I just don’t like the name “Stoat.” xD “Get on Stoat bro” Sounds weird.
Plus I just don’t like the name “Stoat.” xD “Get on Stoat bro” Sounds weird.
This is actually the main reason I believe most of these discord alternatives have zero chance at becoming mainstream. Name is 75% of the success. Just think about it.
Real question, what stops Root from having the same problems as Discord?
For now they’re really incentivized to not be douchebags to grow their company, at least for the a year or two imo. Which is plenty of time for people like us to figure out how to host our own shit so we don’t have to decide whether we want convenience or privacy/security.
But I’m still hopeful for Root just like I’m hopeful for a company like Steam continues to stay decent.
Maybe people will finally realize discord isn’t the place for your projects documentation to exist
I miss the days of forums and hate having tobfo to discord for support on stuff
If its an age-restricted project, sure.
Wait, what are people using it for? I use discord for shooting the shit with people about video games and politics.
anything communication wise its versatile.
That’s fine. Unfortunately people are using it to coordinate open source software development. I don’t know how people do it. You have to use the search box and scroll through hundreds of chat messages to find some code you need. It doesn’t show up on google. It’s just horrible.
That is mind blowing to me. I wouldn’t even think of it for anything meaningful.
I’ve seen so many IT projects, associations, communities of minorities using discord in lieu of wikis, forums, documentation, etc. I personally know a marginalized community with a dire need of visibility, information and stuff that has everything locked behind their discord server and everything is about to be lost. It’s both extremely sad and a huge “told you so years ago”
Pretty much anything 3d printing-related has a discord. Want to build a specific type of printer? Latest info is always on the discord, and if you don’t check it you’ll find yourself with pieces that don’t fit together.
Exactly what I was thinking
Im currently at the point where I have such a presence on Matrix that I could genuinely delete my discord account
Sadly I think the end result of this won’t be people leaving discord, but people giving up liberties because it’s easier than fighting it
And they’re banking on that, it’s part of why they intentionally gave zero warning…1 month is nothing.
With more time a dedicated set of people could pull the alternatives up into solid real options
Or kick up such a huge ruckus that discord back down and undo it.
This was a very intentional and malicious choice to go “oh, yeah we’re doing this next month, kthnxbye”
Anyone with sense saw this coming when they did the same thing in Australia and the UK but I otherwise agree with your point. I think this is a very calculated move.
When the deadline gets here in a month, 80% of the group that would’ve migrated out of disgust won’t be affected because they just use Discord for group voice chats anyway, and the competition isn’t ready. The rest have been trained to put their personal info out there to anyone who asks for it. And, when (not if) they eventually roll out “IDs for Everyone”, the outrage won’t be nearly as detrimental to their bottom line because it’s already happened before.
I agree, convenience wins in this case, this is why twitter is still “bulletproof”.
Fundamentally the problem with leaving discord is no other platform has fucking remotely any kind of quality of life close to discord. Matrix is a flaming pile of shit that basically is an insult the very concept of user friendlyness. It also is missing about 70% of the features your avg gamer/internet deweller actually wants.
Teamspeak 6 is a barely functional trash heap that still doesn’t have a bunch of quality of life your avg normie expects. There’s been open feature requests for years that are unlikely to ever manifest.
Stoat is a half finished poorly managed train wreck that would be good if the devs actually had anything resembling a decent pace of development. Feels like Wayland moves faster then them for basic functions they should have had two years ago.
Discord is basically 5 apps in one and you can’t convert people to go from 1 universal app back to like 5. It just won’t happen.
You need actual cross platform support for voice chat on desktop ios and android, text chat, screen and window sharing, gifs, emojis, dms, group chats and THEY HAVE TO BE SIMPLE AND UNDERSTANDABLE to computer illiterate normies.
And that’s just the basics. People expect customization and personalization. You need to be able to jump around, colab, hop in and out of calls and basically have digital mobility. Which while it sucks from the outside. Inside discords walled gardens it’s a VERY open space.
Matrix gets close but it’s just so user unfriendly and 90% of clients have one or the other half of the feature set people expect.
It’s just a mess.
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