Discord will restrict your account next month unless you scan ID or face
https://9to5google.com/2026/02/09/discord-age-restrictions-default-face-id-scans/Open linkView original on lemmy.world863
Comments317https://9to5google.com/2026/02/09/discord-age-restrictions-default-face-id-scans/Open linkView original on lemmy.world
Let's protect the children by scanning everyone's face and ID and uploading them to a server that'll get hacked five years from now.
Five years? My, aren't we optimistic.
Within 5 years, I'd say.
Hell even 3 months ago.
https://discord.com/press-releases/update-on-security-incident-involving-third-party-customer-service
That sounds more like the Discord I know.
There's a disturbing amount of people thinking of the children
And said data will never be used for fake CSAM or a library for the powerful to handpick their next victims
I hear you, but what about: it actually will be used for those things?
Don't worry, it will only require us adults to give ID's.
They will only make porn of us, everything is fine then!
"Hacked" I'm convinced most of them are selling it, then claiming being hacked so they have plausible deniability when the alias/e-mail you ONLY used for discord starts getting spam+. Depending on if you linked your number, etc...
Disclaimer: I don't like Discord and stopped using it years ago. And this announcement is just another step on the road to enshittification. It's a shit corporation going public and becoming more shit in the process. Simply don't use their shit.
However, it seems a bit rage-baity to claim that Discord will require age verification for all users. That simply doesn't seem to be true. Age verification will be required for users who don't feel the basic features are enough. Were I still dumb enough to use Discord, I don't think I'd feel the need to go for the age verified account.
Just a few months ago they had a data leak which proved that they were indeed /not/ deleting documents and ID's like they had been claiming.
Granted in that case it was mostly countries that force keeping that data but, I'm sick of companies lying and saying "lol yea we defo delete the data after"
I won't even give hard drives when recycling a computer, I pull and smash myself. Last set of old drives I cut in half with bolt cutters.
That's overkill, a couple of passes with dd and it's irrecoverable.
A couple of passed with dd takes way longer than bolt cutters and it’s much less satisfying
I think they meant you could wipe with dd and then they are
recyclablereusable.EDIT: s/recycleable/reusable
They're recyclable snipped.
More like they become reusable. A lot of places that refurbish donated computers for people who need them are perpetually short on drives since so much of the hardware they get have the drives pulled.
SSDs are cheap enough, no sense in using a 10 year old mechanical drive to save $30.
Yeah lmao. Wipe one drive at a time with a USB connector. No thanks. I don't have bulk drive operation equipment and then it ties up a computer doing the work.
Wait, you don't just hang like 6 of them out of your desktop by their cables and wipe them while you sleep?
Mine, sure. I replaced 15 desktops that day, no fucking way.
Snip
saw a setup like that at work, until it was determined to be a fire hazard. which it was.
had to short the start pins of the MoBa with a paperclip to start the damn thing.
we called it "the scorpion", cause it would shock you if you touched it wrong, and it kinda looked like a scorpion with the cables hanging out all over the floor...
#tales-from-IT
I think bolt cutters are faster though
And significantly more power efficient
But more wasteful
They're 500gb mechanical hard drives with financial data on them. Snip and done. No time wasted, not reusing them.
What's dd?
A tool, primarily within Linux, that can overwrite disks. I've never seen it recommended for data deletion, but I guess it makes sense.
It stands for "disk to disk" and is usually used for things like writing ISOs.
However,
shredis the usual approach.I thought it stood for DiskDump
A wise coworker of mine once told me that, when it comes to what Unix commands stand for, you kind of make it up as you go.
In this case, though, looks like we were both wrong.
Darn
This is not truly foolproof. Data can still be recovered from the spinning metal platter since it can theoretically be removed and put into a recovery device, even in a broken state.
Im addition to that, hard drives/ssd's sometimes have small flash memory chips, from which data can sometimes be recovered.
If you want it to actually be unrecoverable then you have to actually ensure all parts thay store data are truly deleted/wiped, which is more than just the core platter. Or just use encryption and throw away the key, since all data going through the tiny OS on these devices will be encrypted. Or just store them forever in a vault.
Bud, if you put that platter back together after I snipped it, you deserve every bit of data you get off it, 1000%
It's not that hard though. There are companies that offer data recovery as a service. If the value of the data on those drives exceeds the cost of those services then it becomes worth it to fish one of the drives out of the dumpster and take it there.
This is a very specialized job, your avg joe is not going to do it. Also, in the many years I've been in IT, I've never even seen a video of a platter reconstructed and get data off it.
Microwave it idk
I think I've never disposed of one for this reason haha
We delete your data after we hand it off to our partners. Who definitely do not delete it.
My friend is an exec there. After reading this thread bugged him to buy my software that would protect this vulnerability. They confirmed data/file never leaves the user's device. Sounds pretty safe.
You do know that it's bullshit? Unless they're incredibly incompetent they're lying to you. If the data never leaves the client then all the checks are client-side, which means it's relatively easy (compared to a server side check) to bypass those checks.
For a while (maybe even still, I haven't kept up with it) you could unlock paid features with a modded client, so they absolutely have a history of using client-side verification.
Afaik the files exfiltrated were photos that the on device detection could not identify and were uploaded to verify server side. That would mean not all pictures are sent to the backend, and that corroborates why "only" 70k photos were stolen when discord has millions of users verified.
Of course you have to put your trust in a closed source system so best not to upload, but if true it's still a far cry from openly lying about it. It's probably explicitly stated in their ToS that they may upload the file if the verification fails client side.
Source: Trust me bro.
Yeah, I've known him and worked with him over 10 years and he knows I'm a user. I trust him. You don't need to trust me.
Well, looks like I'm leaving discord.
Maybe this bullshit will be the spark needed to move us all off Discord. It's fine for voice-chat in games, don't get me wrong, but I HATE how its replaced forums/wikis for so many games/mods/etc. Searching disparate Discord servers is like looking for a nonferrous straw-colored needle in a haystack.
Worse, it also makes it seem like developer support that is provided through Discord needs to be always on/always available since you can be pinged on Discord 24 hours a day. Why would you do that yourself, I don't know. At least with forums you can choose to respond on your own time frame and people have less recourse to act like you should be around and available. It's just asking for higher demand from the userbase since you're chatting with them in real-time, they begin to expect real-time fast responses.
People are already looking to migrate to checks notes apps exactly like discord.
What's wrong with good old fashioned data base backed message forums? There are so many implementations available, I'm sure many are FOSS, and I'm sure there's managed solutions as well. It's a mature, tested, rock solid reliable technology that has existed pretty much since the inception of the internet, and can be easily incorporated into other tools and workflows - because there is 40+ years of development work with the concept.
Seriously, why?
Forums are great for being forums. Real-time instant messaging, voice chat, video chat, and screen sharing are all a very different use-case. They’re two entirely separate products, and comparing them is apples and oranges. People are looking to replace Discord with Discord-like services, because forums don’t fucking do what Discord does.
The big problem (and the reason everyone seems to compare the two) is that Discord started eating forums, as companies realized it was easier to create a Discord server instead of creating (and hosting, and maintaining) a support forum. And that’s a perfectly valid complaint. But that doesn’t mean forums are a valid replacement for Discord.
He is talking about forums because the main issue with discord is that it's cut from the rest of the internet so nothing is indexed and a lot of platforms and services use discord like a forum (it isn't).
No one wants our conversations indexed, and discord shouldn't be a forum.
Exactly my point - And public help forums should be indexed, and should not be on Discord.
It is not comparing apples to oranges, there are many companies that use Discord as a direct replacement for help forums or product wikis.
Read the rest of my comment.
I've already read your whole comment. It's not comparing apples to oranges.
I mean, I share the complaint of Discord having tons of unindexable knowledge locked away in it, but forums are not good replacement for my friend group. So yeah we kinda want a Discord alternative specifically.
Wire exists.
Obviously the problem isn't you and your friends, the problems is services that use discord like it's a forum, dispatcharr for example "oh do you want support? Join our discord". Fine, I'll figure it out myself.
My group of friends, like yours, we have a discord server with 9 channels, more than half aren't used, and one of the channels is to share links.
Matrix is great for this. Fluffy chat is a client that even uses jitsi for video chats
For others who are interested:
https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/
Does it work on Linux?
I found it on linux
[cries]
Agreed. As if every company just having a subreddit wasn’t bad enough.
I have just been using signal. Works fine.
Sure.
But what are you replacing it with ?
I tried Mumble and Teamspeak in the past and it's pretty far from the same level of comfort.
Don't take that the wrong way though, I'm all for supporting open alternatives, I'm just saying you have to think about the features of the alternatives too.
I just saw something about Stoat.chat which seems like a good open source software for that application but a lot of people will have to bear the cost of self hosting these servers.
I know I will think carefully before slamming the door on discord.
Stoat looks promising, open source
https://stoat.chat/download
They won't even send a verification email to my gmail account so I can sign up.
Same :)
They were suffering with email issues due to the "hug of death" effect, try again now maybe it'll work
Were you trying Teamspeak 6? The UI is different, but the functionality is on par I believe. Not open source, but at least you can self-host.
Have they finally released screen sharing in ts6? I gotta say that the development of that project is pretty comical. Radio silence with the only communication being the community manager shitting on discord every other day while giving no updates on their own product.
Weird vibes.
I haven't followed the development communication much, but yes, screen sharing works now. It wasn't working on wayland like 8mo ago, but I tried again a month ago and it's now working.
No. Recently I played a bit using a friends mumble server. And it's a friend that is already privacy conscious. But these friends are not the norm. They are the exception.
Interesting to see Teamspeak evolved but still you have to pay to host a server so that's a huge difference.
I haven't tried mumble yet.
You pay for the hosting resources yes, but you can host it anywhere. I've been playing around with it using a docker instance in my homelab.
You can selfhost TS6 now? O:
Sure can
Well yes, I would say it's very much an integral part of my social life.
I spend a lot of time with my gamer friends and it revolves around our discord servers.
We even have a discord servers dedicated to our role play sessions.
IMHO Discord is a bit more than just a voice chat app. It's also rooms with persistant chats. It's the ability to share media etc.
Also their noise reduction tech is top notch.
I knew when I got in that it would be another "Gmail" for me. It's great but you have to give a bit of your soul to it and I knew it would enshitify eventually.
For context my country (France) is trying to pass a law that forbids the use of social networks to users younger than 15yo. So I suppose this move from Discord is partly due to that.
Now that being said I would hope the verification process will have much more scrutiny in Europe than it would in the US.
I would definitely not be happy about it but if they are not allowed to keep any of the verification data afterwards it could be "acceptable". But if I have the feeling they keep any data I will actively look into building a Stoat instance and try the even harder task of convincing my friends to switch over.
I see luck with "combos"
XMPP + Mumble is a common one. The room is on XMPP, some users are in a mumble server with info in the topic.
Matrix is buggy and doesn't scale imo, it isn't a sustainable alternative. Stoat looks like a great option and there are lots of open instances.
I don't know what problems you found, but the biggest bugs I encountered in past years seem to be fixed now, at least on recent clients. (Element X is recent, and I've seen praise for FluffyChat.)
Matrix for text and Mumble for voice works well for me.
Yes, many of my childhood best friends live a 9 hour flight away.
I did start a projects aiming to be a more decentralized/federated discord more akin to how IRC was back in the day. Time to revisit it, it seems.
A federation based discord would be amazing !
But still that's a big challenge as voice chat will be costly to host.
Also out of curiosity do you aim for something that would connect through the fediverse ?
Voice chat isn't inherently costly to host, usually the server acts as a broker and then people connect P2P. Do you remember jitsi? It was used as an alternative to zoom during covid, it was a webpage like Google meet where you opened a room, and people joined with the link. Actually under the good the first one that joined the room acted as a host so all voice communications never reached jitsi's servers.
Jitsi still exists btw, although I understand that a more integrated solution like matrix is preferable. Matrix IS the federated discord-like solution, although last time I read about it it had some issues with scalability and the typical foss Dev drama.
Didn't have much of an aim beyond trying to cook it up from scratch as a personal research project. That includes the protocol, since I'm handling priv/pub keypairs in a creative way to facilitate both encryption and user identity verification.
I'll swap to a shared calendar and any other voice chat software. Sure I can't post on those but that's why we also have a group chat for the different gaming groups I'm in.
@Oni_eyes @criss_cross
Yeah its kinda terrible
I'm actually pretty happy that Discord is killing itself. Far too many people use it as an official platform for stuff like help forums.
Maybe lets go back to basic message boards that are actually searchable, etc.
Self-hosted options like Mumble also exist.
Self-hosted is a pain to get started with but as everything enshittifies if will only get more important.
As someone who doesn't use the voice chat feature of Discord, I am always confused when people suggest things like Mumble as an alternative.
Self hosting also just isn’t possible for a fair number of people
I am of the opinion that any project that uses Discord for support, I just immediately ignore.
So mad at retro tink for this...
I'm still salty about The Cutting Room Floor requiring you to log into their Discord to create an account for their website.
Well there is that one nsfw forum that is VERY active. Said forum also provides a list of file hosters that have escaped enshittification.
Those guys pirate the shit out of Japanese games but official nsfw game developers sometimes go there to advertise.
I would barely be okay with a bank or government website asking for this information, I sure as shit would not give it to a fucking chat app.
If the pushback on social media doesn't get Discord to drop these plans, then I'll just have to delete the app.
Not caving to another app asking for Personally Identifiable Information (PII) only for this same data to be leaked months to years later.
Society will do everything to protect children aside from making better parents.
Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't they got a massive leak for gov IDs last year? And they still pushing this bs?! Hello?
You are not wrong.
This surely is different, right? I'm sure they learned from last time
Unless they offer discord $2
If they force me to verify, I'm done
Hello!
Hey! Are you okay?
Dude xFire was my jam.
I remember leaving xFire handles in my forum signatures with a random anime picture. Those were the days…
Xfire was all we ever needed.
I'll gladly scan a face. I just happen to look exactly like Gale Dekarios
Dan Bongino!
My discord account is about 10 years old. Do they assume I created it as a 6 year old? Account age alone should be enough to verify I'm an adult with reasonable certainty.
Legally, they can't be sure you didn't sell the account, even if the email address is the same.
Not defending the policy here, it's bullshit. But I'm simply pointing out that they have excuses to beat any logic you throw at them. Logic has nothing to do with it, so it can't be beaten by logic either.
Selling accounts is against the TOS, surely they can’t be liable if that’s the case.
Well no, what if you have a Benjamin Button situation going on and will be too young to use Discord in a year or two?They gotta cover all their bases.
Naw, they assume they can tie all your conversations to some nexus realid and sell all your groups, likes, and dislikes for cash.
from the official release.
Sounds like creepy spyware
it only sounds like that, because it is. :/
I wonder if it'll function like Twitch where you can get tons of people banned all at once by getting them to say they're under 13.
That happened to me a long while ago. before all this.
I hope there is a mass exodus from discord!
Where should we go? So many game dev communities are only on discord :(
already making plans with my battle group t move to team speak 6, which is only an option because they now have screen sharing
Have you considered self hosting Matrix?
Good that there are alternatives but I bet that won't last for long. More and more apps will copy this.
Or just get bought out. Discord was supposed to be the answer to Twitch getting gobbled up. Then Microsoft gobbled Discord.
Does anyone seriously believe there's an indie third party social media site immune to a multi-million (possibly even billion) dollar buyout offer? One that won't go the way of TikTok and be legislatively forced into sale?
Yeah, no. Companies don't get to scan my face or ID. You know they are selling your data.
Yep, straight to Palantir.
In 10 years, when MAGA has everything locked down, and you complain about something online, they'll put out a BOLO, and instantly, the entire network will start checking every camera for your face, and within a few minutes they will have a timeline on your movements for as far back as they want, including every time you enter or leave your house. If you aren't in your house, they'll find you out there somewhere, and immediately dispatch ICE Apes to find you, detain you, and send you to the nearest work camp, where you will be leased out as a slave to some corporation.
That's Black Mirror Season X
This is great news! Discord shooting itself in the foot is a net positive for the whole world.
Wow I guess I get to finally dump Discord as my last proprietary chat app.
There are lots of self hosted alternatives like Mattermost, Mumble, and Matrix (decentralized).
There's also the new Freenet River demo: https://freenet.org/quickstart/
Maybe I'll make my own discord clone lol.
Before you start your own, contribute to
RevoltStoatchat.I'll scan my ass.
They'll have a "retina" scan of a brown-eyed cyclops.
Ol Toothless, that's his name
ben afflek's lost sibling
The general comment and title is simply untrue. They will require verification in cases of known adult or censored content, and in NSFW channels and servers. "Regular" content and spaces are untouched.
That said, I give it 6-10 months before it's required for all users regardless of content access.
Wouldn't that significantly destroy their user base? Most servers I have seen it talked about the feeling seems to be not a fucking chance but we don't use this for porn anyway.
I would love to see a popular alternative appear from this.
Queer people are pornographic according to the authors of these laws
A popular alternative only arises if you migrate to it before it's popular. There are multiple platforms already available that resemble discord already
Yes but if I want to talk about the game Isonzo, they have a discord but not IRC.
You're blatantly ignoring how these laws are actually implemented and assessing them instead by taking the lies of their authors at face value.
Note my final comment. I understand the reality.
This includes a lot of harm reduction servers (especially drug related ones like the TripSit one, who help a lot of people every day and probably even save some lives), and having you need to send in your face or ID to access potentially life saving harm reduction info on illegal things is just the opposite of how harm reduction should work.
Sure, there’s still websites with these features, but discord was originally meant to be a safe space for everyone (including people who need help) and this just adds an extra barrier.
Yeah that's definitely an issue. Realistically the only solution there is just to migrate such a community to a new home (fedi serves this need well). But admittedly one of the great boons of discord was discoverability, and that will be lost elsewhere without intervention.
Hope this will mass exodus into Matrix, like it happened with Twitter / X.
Matrix will sadly never be a thing, much like XMPP never really became a thing (well, it was a thing until google pulled a play from the 90-00s era Microsoft of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish). And each of those tried to replace IRC which still works and is perfectly fine.
How well does Matrix / Element work for screen sharing games?
As a matrix user and a former discord user (4 years ago), i can say that matrix just sucks compared to amount of features even 4 year old discord had.
Unless there will be an alternative social networks which do all the basic discord features like: large communities, channels, voice/video chats, roles, bots; and it does it all well, than nobody will move off discord.
People would rather tolerate significant anti-features if software has lots of features, than tolerate lack of features despite not having anti-features.
Matrix can literally do everything you just mentioned. It’s clunky, but it works.
Thats why i said "and it does it all well".
It does it well, it’s just clunky. It works perfectly fine, and I recommend it over discord ang day of the week. Except Tuesdays. Tuesdays I recommend IRC.
If it's clunky, then it does not do it well for most users. All features might even work well individually, but the user experience is very important too for less tech-savvy people.
It is no more clunky than discord was a couple years ago. Setting up a server is very clunky, but the average Joe doesn’t have to do it.
Careful: Discord misuses the word "server" to mean community, so a lot of Discord users here might misunderstand and think you just said the average Joe doesn't need to set up a community. (Of course, I'm sure you actually mean the average Joe doesn't need to set up his own homeserver instance, which is true.)
How do you do voice calls/voice group calls in Matrix?
In element there’s a button on top of the chat. I press that and it’s calling.
It's way too complicated for tech illiterate people.
It really is no different than discord. You create an account, download the client, log in and that’s that. You don’t have to self host it or use any instance that isn’t the main instance. Just go to matrix.org and sign up.
doubt it. better off just setting up channels in libera chat on IRC and doin voice via teamspeak/mumble like we used to do it back in the day.
shit, someone needs to bring back ICQ.
IRC protocol is audio capable.
welp there ya go! problem solved.
Matrix doesn't have any of the same features discord has for voice and video.
Discord was always an overhyped crap.
Not really. At the beginning it was amazing. It took 0 resources to run while gaming and the call quality was miles ahead, nevermind the flexibility around servers and what you could do with them.
Then, as all things, it turned to shit once ot gained market share.
This is one of the real root causes of enshittification, particularly around privacy.
Once a product is profitable, the profit needs to be protected. That's not really a slight against it, just a reality of capitalism. Those developers expect their jobs to persist. Middle management probably wants to keep those developers on staff. C-suite needs number-go-up to keep their jobs (fuck them, but if number-go-down then other people lose their jobs too). Adhering to regulations limits the risk of the government suing the company to oblivion.
Discord has been big enough for a while that it needs to be aware of the legal and political landscape in order to survive. This is just them limiting their risk. It will cost them customers -- sort of: I'm gone, and have been since September when they updated their TOS, but I've also never given them any money and I've never seen an ad other than theirs. I've been nothing but a cost, so maybe good riddance?
Discord is not the enemy here. The enemy is congress/parliament and the power grabs they keep enacting. Big Tech has captured our governments and wants our data. The 'for the children' angle is such a trope that everyone who isn't a potato can see through it, and we need to tell our leaders that this isn't acceptable.
I agree with everything you said, but Discord is also an asshole itself. It could not sell out, but it did. There are plenty of projects who kept their integrity against selling out even though they could've generated millions
One of the most predictable outcomes of anyone or anything downfall is all the idiots coming out of the woodwork to loudly proclaim that they never liked it to begin with and actually saw this coming the whole time because they are so very super smart
I mean yea... But whatever man, people can say whatever. It's not like they're attacking each other.
It was an embedded browser embedded website crap since i know it (since 6 years), like m$ crap
Well yes, it was, but it worked, and it was still better than everything else. I've been on discord for 9 years.
Embedded browsers aren't necessarily bad design. They're super fast to develop, and if done well, can work super efficiently. A browser can have a billion tabs open and work just fine. The same can go with an electron app given that the devs give 2 shits about optimization.
Though if the Discord team doesn't care about optimizing the electron app, they wouldn't give a shit about optimizing a desktop app either.
I had to run a server for work. It was right after they put in boosts. At the time, I had to buy my own fucking boosts one at a time.
The whole platform only exists because they made the api easy enough that people could build on it.
You run a Discord server for work? I thought my company using Google was crazy.
When your job has communities that spring up around it, you either get there first, where you can work with the users and help steer, or just sheepishly join in the community efforts.
we fall back to IRC :)
Using it for more than text gets to be a bit arduous. I was going to make us a matrix instance, but honestly, we kinda love it when slack explodes and we go back tot he dark ages
Whatever you do - don't use telegram.
Stoat it is lol (https://stoat.chat/)
This project looks interesting, i might try it. As i undesrtand, its designed around all of the basic discord features, and nothing else that nobody asked for.
The cool thing about being foss project, is if the developers for some reason become too greedy (lets be real, its true for foss), the next exact second there will be a new fork created, a new team formed, a new server hosted, and all of the users will move to it instantly.
I deleted my account after reading the article they officially released...Chat apps won't get my phone number or ID, they get hacked and compromised too frequently for me to trust it. It's total bullshit that they are pushing this shit on the world after trialing it in the UK and Australia. Discord can get fucked, it will suck that I can't follow the development of games that rely on Discord instead of forums or proper fucking documentation sites. Hopefully, more indies will stop relying on Discord (it's a rotten crutch) and go back to utilizing Forums in general!
For those looking for an alternative, try stoat.chat or matrix
Already happened in Australia. I can't access NSFW channels, unless I do a face scan (no thanks).
But the rest of the server you can access?
So far yeah. Only really use it to look for coop groups in game, so still doing its job for me right now.
Okay thanks for your reply.
Oh no. Anyway.
Discord said I'm certified teen full rizz all drip fr what's up 67ers?
That's cap.
frfr on god
Is this Belter speak?
I will use AI image generation, such as "Thispersondoesnotexist". They can have an imaginary face for their data brokers.
Cool. I'm getting off it so that they don't think doing shit like this is okay
It sucks that many projects that I am interested in, such as Touhoumon Puppet Dance Encore and assorted hentai projects that are on the platform. For now, I put up with it - but I am very much hoping alternatives are adopted by creators.
I'm worried about the one open source porn game that's been slowly getting revived over the years. This will probably kill it as the only dev activity was in the discord.
Setting up an unofficial mirror is an option
And the garbage takes itself out, marvelous.
They got scared when a full revolution started in discord channels.
Anyone have a FOSS with screen share / group service?
Keep in mind the Charlottesville protest was organized in part on discord. Not saying that's a good reason to give up privacy, but its not just good faith actors using it. Also telling parents to do better doesn't exactly stop grooming and abuse of minors overnight.
Are you talking about Iran? That happened over Discord? Is it possible Discord is being forced to do this by Don the Demented's admin? Might be banking on complying and then seuing for damages down the road.
Nepal or something wasn't it?
Oooh, right. Yeah.
Interested as well.
I need to move some D&D games to another platform.
I would also like to know if stoat offers screen sharing or if it’s just calls and video calls
Nice. Now when someone tries to make me use discord, I'll have a better excuse than "I hate it"
Remember to review bomb it immediately once this drops
I guess I'm going to be a teenager again! If only it meant I could not go to work and spend 8 hours a day playing games.
Would the best alternative still be something like Matrix/Element or is there something new/better out there?
The problem with these things is that it's really hard to convince others to move to a better platform.
Tom from MySpace needs to have a second coming.
SpaceHey exists, but just like the old internet moderation is a problem in that site (lots of harassing)
He'd need to come up with something new. MySpace was sold some years ago.
Back in the day before Discord, people used Teamspeak, not sure if it is still around, tho.
Teamspeak is still out there and I use it regularly. Since I've never cared about the posting aspect of discord they offer the exact same services.
I'm on discord for piracy and modding. Sure over the years i joined a few other channels. But most foss adjacent channels have matrix bridges. idgaf. If servers required my phone number i always just left the server. Discord wont get shit.
discord. the platform that has a huge pedophile problem? the platform that's sympathetic towards conservative shitheads?
that discord?
this is making my ttrpg group actually consider letting me host stuff for them and I'm unironically thrilled... so like, matrix is the way, right? Or should I be looking at mumble or something?
Good Ole team speak
https://teamspeak.com/
I'm very interested in this question too. I tried Mumble but it looks like it does not support screen streaming which honestly is pretty good. 99% of my discord use since I stopped playing wow is just hanging around with 3 friends of mine and speaking about crap. We like to play or watch movies together and it's nice to be able to share stuff.
Same, screen sharing in a group chat is a must. Been looking at Matrix/Element but it looks like hell to set up and maintain and I'm the only one with the setup to run it.
it depends, what features do your group need? only voicechat? mumble will do
Ideally text chat with shitposting capabilities as well
My TTRPG groups use Matrix for text and Mumble for voice. This arrangement works pretty well.
We don't use video, so I can't vouch for that. The Matrix client called Element currently does it using Jitsi, and there's a new approach in development that will eventually be supported by more Matrix clients: https://call.element.io/
It's always been IRC with extra censorship.
Does anyone know any good tools/methods for archiving entire servers/all your DMs?
I used this one before, worked great. https://github.com/Tyrrrz/DiscordChatExporter
Big brother, is that you?
Rest in peace then
Bye, bitch! Discord has sucked for a while anyway...
Oh. Okay, stupids. Bye.
In us too? I'm not giving my license
Whelp. US based tech is going to shit. Bail now before your data becomes state property.
The restrictions don't seem very limiting. Why would I ever do this?
Do you have any suggestions for a better/open-source alternative?
A few mentioned here, with them recommending mumble
https://alternativeto.net/software/discord-app/?origin=eu
Teamspeak and Vent, now is your time to shine.
Already deleted!
Back to mumble, sigh
I never had a need for discord and never will. Good riddance.
I only use the platform to manage my dodgy IPTV subscription. Presumably they'll be ditching Discord as well once they realise that they need to provide ID.
Wait really? Wtfff
This is not good.... not sure if I will continue to use Discord.
I had just joined a discord run by the devsfor a nsfw game. I do wonder what they'll do? They haven't made any announcements as of yet but many in the chat are of course unwilling to hand over their id
Good I'm still on Teamspeak 2
Any active Matrix spaces anyone can recommend to me? I joined a few from the public directory but they all seem dead.
I'm fine with that. I don't need porn on Discord.
Then they will decide that links to some news stories aret appropriate for kids. No more pesky videos of ICE executing people in the street.
When do social media companies actually do anything to protect kids??
It also includes other functions that is not NSFW. Nothing that I personally care about but might be a deal breaker for bigger communities.
What are "stage in servers"?
My client apparently no longer allows editing or deleting, but please disregard this comment.
😂
Are you one of those pornographic people? Large swathes of the population are considered intrinsically pornographic by the authors of these laws. Queer people are walking talking pornography simply for existing. Also most politics and any news dealing with violent events is pornographic.
Have you ever shared a story about police brutality? You are a pornographer.
I'm fine with not talking about police brutality on discord. I used it when I was contributing to some open source projects and no one talked about gender or politics there. People with different needs should probably switch.
you don't need to talk about gender to be porno for them, you just need to exist as a queer
How will they know I'm queer?
they are data brokers that's easy for them
So you're saying that they have a list of emails that belong to queer people and if a person with one of those emails registers and joins a server the entire server will automatically require age verification? No idea if that's true. I guess we'll find out.
Sorry. Open source offends corporate interests and is therefore pornographic. You're a pornographer.
Doesn't look like this will affect everyone. From the release:
I don't use any of those.
If the DM filters treat people with mutual, large, public servers as people you may know and does not filter those chats, most users will probably be like you and be largely unimpacted. If it treats people with those types of mutual servers as people you may not know and does filter those DMs, Discord is shooting themselves in the foot. 99% of my Discord usage is finding people to squad with in online games, and no one like staying in voice channels in the official game servers.
It wont affect anyone lurking on programming discords because those dont have NSFW content.. So basically same thing as YT? I dont know whats the big deal. Dont scan your face, dont give your id, continue using as usual
According to this article they just blocking access to adult channels and content. You may still use discord but not be able to view adult chat groups, pictures and other content if you haven't scanned your face or uploaded ID.
Seems fair to be honest. Children on Discord been exposed to adult content some which adults would be disgusted by. Not to count pedophilia en masse and seems to be uncontrollable. Discord was not supposed to be a tool for sharing porn anyway. Maybe it would bring some good into the situation.
Except "for the children" as argument to give up privacy never actually works.
Kids will find porn elsewhere, on shadier sites with even less moderators looking out for them. This has been true since the first dirty magazine in the woods has been found. The solution isn't banning them, it's educating them to treat it in a proper way. But that ofc takes effort and doesn't let policy makers villify people.
Meanwhile the adults have to give up their privacy for no real effect. Or the porn makers just move to a platform without PII and we can repeat this dance again in a couple of years.
By your logic, we might also remove "Are you 18+?" questions from mainstream porn sites, cause children might not lie and go to a shadier site where it will not ask for their age.
Man. I am not even sure if Discord is better than some shady porn sites. Cause unless you are from another galaxy, you probably heard not so "child friendly" stories about what children been exposed on some lesser known discord channels. Some of the times the content is something you'd struggle to find in open web.
In any case, children would find explicit content anywhere else if they want to. So there is no particular reason to be afraid of ID verification since it doesn't necessary change that fact.
I'm fine with the 18+ question because it atleast explicitly requires people to know they're entering that site. You can't argue kids are exposed by accident if they click "Enter".
As for ID verification, I'm against it for my own privacy, if nothing else changes for kids, then what is the argument to have it for adults? (Besides authoritarian control)
Age verification is not mandatory. Unless you want to browse NSFW content. You can ignore age verification and keep browsing adult content somewhere else.
I believe many would not verify themselves, groups that do adult content would lose majority of user base. So they would move somewhere else where I assume their user base would follow.
you are really naive if you think nsfw/adult content is just porn
As 4chan showed in the past, user bases go to platforms that allow NSFW content, and take their SFW activity with them.
But that didn't answer my question. What problem does age verification genuinely solve by taking away my (adult) privacy?
PS: Expect a lot of LGBT+ content to also get flagged, as it's considered inappropriate in certain authoritarian countries with money. Having to send in personal ID to join a minority community is just one step away from wearing pink triangles.
Yep. This is how it starts.
Between the features that are limiting being almost entirely things I don't want anyway (random friend invites are literally just fucking scams and ads to begin with), and the entire process being completed on-device... What is this, some slow news day? Everyone is losing their minds about this being some insane overstep like Discord is asking for a blood sample, or even a photo of your driver's license.
Don't get me wrong, fuck this age verification nonsense, but it's pretty clear this is some very specific government regulatory appeasement where Discord is attempting to avoid culpability for holding data at basically every juncture possible. They already have the useful, farmable data, like geolocation, age/gender demographics and interests. They don't want our government ID. They only want a "yes" or "no" from their app.
Must be a slow news day. Everyone's blowing this up in headlines for cheap clicks.
That's 100% what it is. It also sincerely makes me not want to use Discord, because even if this is what governments want, it's extremely bad for users.
I'm waiting for some government to outlaw collecting the information in general outside of official government agencies. I would love to see big tech squirm as they try to figure out a valid way to harvest the data in one country, but prevent it in another.
Honestly it sounds like an amazing way to rack of fine money due to violation notices.
That's fine if that's your personal response. This still feels like a misdirected and ultimately useless response though.
This is a government-created problem. Are we expecting widespread boycotts of Discord to change the government's mind? Of course not.
If it's extremely bad for users, then users need to change their government. Yeah, yeah, I know the excuses for not doing that, they don't listen, we are all powerless, it is the way it is, yadda yadda. It's a lie. We are powerful, they want us feeling powerless so we can't challenge them. Fuck that, challenge them. Government exists to represent us, it can exist in perpetuity only with our active and ongoing consent and participation. If people in totalitarian countries can overthrow their governments, so can we, we don't have to do it overnight, we don't have to do it over this one single isolated issue, but we can at least start working against them, eroding the structures that support them. Fuck governments like these, figure out ways to twist their arm, make things more difficult for them, and eventually, if we keep at it, we'll get what we want. We hold the power here, not them. We decide what kind of society we want to live in. We need to stop abdicating our responsibilities as citizens and actively fight against this shit.
By all means, challenge your government, but I'm not going to upload my ID to a database to use Discord. I can self host a thing that will accomplish the same goals without doing something that stupid.
That's fine, and I hate Discord's general situation too, and I can't wait for a properly federated self-hostable open source alternative to take off. But it just seems a bit knee-jerk or straw that broke the camel's back to throw Discord under the bus specifically for this. To be clear, you don't actually need to provide ID, you can either continue using a limited account (it's barely limited at all in any serious way unless you're using Discord for NSFW stuff) or you can attempt to validate your face with a camera instead, which supposedly happens completely on-device. Either one is a totally reasonable alternative.
If you believe that photo validation lives entirely on your device, you might be surprised by how many times the tech industry straight up lies about this kind of stuff, but I don't trust that for a minute.
I might consider the facial verification thing if someone fulfills a security audit that both verifies the photo is never sent, encrypted or not, and it does not stay on the device’s drive.
But yeah, part of me hopes some number of privacy focused companies will just abandon business in these locations and claim “It’s only a matter of time before they reverse course for security failures, we will just wait until then.”
I don't wanna react to this, read this article, or change my habits. Plz send help.
Don't expect me to read your reply tho. I dont wanna
Half of Lemmy, for some reason: grr we hate kids!!! Ban them from social media!!!!
Lemmy users when platforms start doing as they asked: 😮
Almost like social sites arent monolithic, and different people can be outraged by different things!
Are you surprised that the blunt instrument of boomer legislation is operating without the nuance you'd like?
Did you hit your head? Do we need to call someone for you?
No to both. Why, what's wrong?