Discord Users Threaten Exodus Over Age Verification Face Scan Controversy
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.
https://www.newsweek.com/discord-age-verification-face-scan-controversy-11494375Open linkView original on lemmy.nz928
Comments257
Discord age restrictions prevent an underage user from viewing - but not sending - nude pictures.
This isn't to protect kids. It's to enforce increasingly authoritarian control over the web.
Any source for this ?
The official announcement is quite vague and since the feature isn't out it's hard to know how it will work exactly.
Also, I assume the biggest risk isn't for teens to send nudes "unprompted" but to let adults contact them and ask for them.
This for example is very vague :
So if a teen can only interact with other teens on dedicated spaces it should make it harder for perverts to ask for stuff.
And if an adult tries to pretend to be a teen he will only see blurred content ?
I'm sure many will think I'm trying to defend Discord on this but I'm not. Again we dont really know how this update will work. I'm just trying to make sure we dont spread misinformation.
There will be plenty of time to criticize Discord when they push this update.
What I'm sure of is that discord was definitely a platform of choice for many bad people to hunt and groom teens.
Personally, it's the fact that discord says they will delete my verification data :
In most cases ? Really ? Is that supposed to look trustworthy ?
There is no age verification to prove you're a teen. The age verification is to prove that you're an adult.
Please read the end of my message.
If you are a teen "by default" you will have all the restrictions of a teen until you prove you are an adult.
So an adult with ill intentions should either be :
Again it's what the very vague statement of Discord says. We also have no clue how their "inference model for age classification" works either...
So an adult could just create two accounts, one to access teen spaces, where they don't verify their age l and one for accessing adult spaces, where the age gets verified?
Please read the Discord official post.
That account will be tagged as a teen account until proven otherwise. Therefore any message or DM he will receive will go to a special inbox with most likely warnings to consult it.
Please, again, I understand that the pitchforks are out for discord, I'm just asking you to take the time to read the official discord post from top to bottom.
There will still be unknowns until they release the update but your question is already answered by their official post.
Basically, as long as an account hasn't done an age verification it's assumed to be a teen. And that means all the limitations attached to that. So you can create 10 accounts if you want either :
You have proven you are an adult on that account you remove the limitations to what you can do but your messages towards teen accounts will most likely go to that special inbox they mention. No clue exactly how hidden and how much warning are attached to that inbox.
You have no proven your age and your account is limited like any other teens account. You won't be able to see "sensitive media" whatever Discord means by that I dont know.
What I really wonder is what they will allow in term of interactions between the two groups in details. They are very vague on many aspects of it.
But multiplying your accounts on discord doesn't look like a valid workaround to their system.
The point I am making is about protecting teens from adults. So teen-per-default means that adults can freely talk to teens, which should be prevented. Either allow no teens on your platform, or teens have to proof that they are teens first.
Adults (and teens for that matter) are pretty good at obfuscating grooming.
That's not my understanding.
I get your point but by default if Discord thinks you are a teen it also implies all the limitations associated with that status. Which means some media will be blurred and some commands cannot be done.
An adult can keep his "teen default status" but he also keeps all the limitations associated with it. Which I suppose doesn't mean they can "freely" talk to other accounts as you state.
Notably the DM that a groomer would send will end up in a special inbox for all teens or for that matter "default teen".
The age restrictions for Discord were implemented already in my country a few months ago, that's why I know it works that way
For what it's worth, I'm a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and online grooming, and IMO this policy does not make vulnerable kids any safer at all. As a kid, growing up, I was desperate for any validation and even kindness because of my neglectful/abusive home situation and that need was exploited by adults who provided me the emotional connection I needed/wanted, which was then twisted into a romantic/sexual relationship. That's the risk, and all it needs is a basic chat functionality - once it has started, the groomer can very easily "help" the young person bypass any and all "protections" through any number of methods, including just switching to another platform.
The reality is that most kids are far more at danger from abusive adults in their lives - their parents, family, friends, teachers, etc. - than they are at danger from the Internet. The reason I was vulnerable to abuse online is because I was already abused IRL. If you (or anyone) has concerns about their kids safety online, by far the best thing you can do is just to be there for them, be a trustworthy, kind and loving adult in their lives. That way, when creeps online talk to them, they won't be needy for the attention, they won't be vulnerable, and if something makes them uncomfortable, they'll come and talk to you about it.
Anyways, went off on kind of a tangent, but I hope it's helpful/informative anyways.
It might not mean much, but thank you for sharing that!
Discord probably did the math and are willing to take a hit to the user counts (much like reddit did when they closed the apis), as the vast majority will stay and keep "threatening" to leave. There's at least the hope that the ones who quit now will establish communities elsewhere, on a (hopefully) better server platform.
Enshittification is not single step. It's more a "boiling a frog"-kinda process.
Discord itself was a big step of enshittification from the very start when communities moved from individual platforms to Discord servers.
Sometimes I like to remember when Nitro was like 5 bucks and gave a bunch of stuff, and now it is 10 bucks gives less AND they still try to sell me fucking cosmetics...
I dropped my Nitro when they announced a possible buyout/IPO
It probably also says something of the ones that stay: they can keep getting further exploited. And these are the ones they want.
Same tactic used by scammers sending "bad" messages - it's at least partially in purpose to single out the good marks.
Yep. It's why trumpers are such a lucrative scam target. It's a self selected group of easily deceived victims.
I agree, but, I see some parallels, a Reddit competitor that solved some of those issues, was hardly functional when they killed APIs. There was no competition. Look at us now baby! Still not competition, but, at least there’s an alternative.
I hope I can say the same about discord in a bit. There’s really nowhere for anyone to go, without losing a lot of features. Well, hopefully, talented people are going to migrate to these platforms to bring an alternative to discord.
I very much doubt whoever thought about doing the math did so, and if they did, that said math made it out of their department. This kind of decision is much more likely to have been a C-suite darling that no one dared speak against or the equivalent thereof.
I’m saying thoughtful organizational decisions are less common than we’d like.
Are there any viable alternatives? Last I looked they all kinda sucked
I wanna start by saying I'm not a power user, I only use discord as a glorified chat manager for my immediate friends. That said, Stoat is everything I like about discord with a nicer ui and a public server seach function. I made an account when discord started ads and I honestly feel like it's a little further than Lemmy was when I came here from reddit.
Right now sign up is slow because of the huge influx of users. That said, the team is handling it well and being very transparent about it which is refreshing.
I love Stoat's UI but video streaming is an absolute must for My use case and last I checked they said it wasn't a priority
Ahh that's fair.
I've been hearing good things about https://spacebar.chat/. Stoat (formerly Revolt) is out there as well. Matrix is another possibility, but it's more for individual channels rather than whole servers, so doesn't fit some use cases.
Does it have video streaming yet?
Sounds like it's experimental at the moment:
https://docs.spacebar.chat/faq/
So might not be ready for primetime. Voice is pretty critical to how I often use Discord. Video less so, but still important.
Sad times. I'll be all in when a competitor gets all the essential features replicated.
The problem is, even if I am willing to deal with some inconveniences, many others aren't. How am I going to move a server with >100 active users and multiple thousand inactive ones? And what about the six others I have that fit that description? There's quite a few servers I could go without, but around a dozen that I'd much prefer not to lose.
I've already been trying, but people don't like Revolt, Nerimity, Matrix, hell I tried Mattermost. Some people are fine with some of these platforms, but there is never any remote consensus.
At least some have cancelled their nitro subscription, making them a net loss for Discord in the future.
Discord has, despite everything, been my primary chat/social app and to switch to something else one has to uproot absolutely everything. That's sadly not feasible.
It's absolutely feasible; it's just not painless. The network effect is real. This is something most of us here on the fediverse should be well familiar with: I'd wager we've all left a big proprietary centralized platform for a smaller one with less content that doesn't exactly fit our needs. Yes, it can suck; yes, you'll miss out on content and discussions that you would have seen before; yes, you'll be fine in a year anyway.
That said, it sounds like Discord is doing some backpedaling at the moment, and that the vast majority of people won't have to do this. If that's so, there's some time before it enshittifies further. I'm going to use that to check out alternatives. My first step will be spinning up Matrix and a Discord bridge to see if that meets my needs. Then some of the other platforms, probably Stoat and Spacebar. I'm going to treat them as beta tests and give lots of feedback to the dev teams, which I hope will help incentivize development. I might even throw a few bucks at promising projects.
The ultimate end of centralized platforms is decay. It's time to get serious about Discord replacements, at least for me.
Leaving reddit for Lemmy is a solo thing. It's a personal choice, it doesn't effect the others around you at fucking all.
Leaving discord for other services effects everyone around you a FUCKING LOT.
That's the problem. You HAVE to bring your friends or not only are you giving up possibly the only way to communicate with them effectively but also fucking them over by basically threatening them with the loss of your friendship if they don't inconvenience themselves to try some stupid new app over a problem they don't see as remotely worth even giving a fuck about.
This is the problem most of us have right now. I have 3 servers with a total over nearly 2000 users combined. All 3 are talking about moving but the bare BARE minimum requirements in features and platform support doesn't exist anywhere.
Discord works on every OS with all its features basically. Not a single other platform can say that. Someone somewhere gets fucked because this or that is isn't fully supported. Or some key feature doesn't work right.
I think they're already too big to fail. They captured the entire market. There's no real competitor with any kind of noticeable fraction of the market share.
The closest thing to a competitor are business products similar to slack or teams. None of those have anything close to feature parity like high quality streaming at no cost.
I would gladly host something myself, but I can't do it all. IMO this needs a lemmy equivalent with decentralized hosting or something.
Reddits stock performance since that decision isn't likely anything that anyone would want to emulate.
Here's hoping this gets more software off the discord support teat. No, you do not need real time chat, you need searchable, permanent presence. Discord support is such a red flag I immediately move on even if it's OSS. If you can't do real doco and you can't stand up a forum (Discourse is nice I hear) then what chance do you have of being competent.
Also, IPO incoming, expect it to get worse.
Is it? Ah, well that would explain it.
I will go onto discord servers looking for answers that a searchable forum or wiki is better suited for. First thing I do is use discord's shitty search tool, and if it works I type my question and the found answer again in the relevant chat for future searchers and get the fuck out of there.
why not both? Discourse is really nice but it's a forum, not IRC or Matrix
Account deleted. Fuck em. Was already pissed with their restrictions with nitro.
Why do adults have to suffer because parents don’t know how to control their kids?
Because it's not actually about the kids, the kids are just the excuse. That's all they ever are.
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
Exactly what I was thinking
Wait, what are people using it for? I use discord for shooting the shit with people about video games and politics.
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.
anything communication wise its versatile.
If its an age-restricted project, sure.
Good! locking away potentially helpful Q&A, discussions, and guides on Discord is fucking stupid.
I hope this means people will slowly start going back to forums. Highly doubt it though.
Discord really is a plague for the open internet yep
I just want to be able to web search shit from forums like I used to be able to 10+ years ago.
So sad to see things literally get worse for no good reason. Same with search engines.
"No good reason" homie you ever use a forum?
Discord is so much better for real time conversations. The biggest problem is to the point of this thread, discoverability is non-existent, you have to join the discord to be able to search for what you need.
Yeah but real time communication is not what this comment was about. The issues is that its being used as a social hub that replaces forums entirely. So when people ask questions about a topic they will do so in some shitty discord channel and the information (both question and answer) will be lost in the un-searchable, un-taggable, un-indexable discord black hole.
Discord should be used for shitposting and hanging out with your gamer buddies, because thats what its designed for. Not as a fucking database of valuable information that will be lost forever.
It actually is, you're just not connecting the dots.
The people use discord already to game and talk with buddies, developers of various apps/services then use it for similar and answering questions or troubleshooting issues in real-time.
Forums are archaic and difficult by comparison, don't get me wrong, I don't like the situation either, but I understand how and why we got to this place, and what would solve the problem is if that data was indexed in a way that search engines could use them, but because you have to have a discord account and join the server and have access to that particular section because of how discord is designed it is not really possible.
I actually freaurntly find helpful information in discord servers using search, but again, agree that it is not designed well for what its been forced into by network effect and convenience.
Edit: I'll also point out forums aren't permanent either lol, like 99% of forums I used to frequent are completely gone.
Discord is only good for live conversation. Forums are good for information consolidation and general long term discussions about anything.
Actively troubleshooting an issue in discord is easier then making a forum post and going back and forth that way, which is why it has moved to discord organically.
Worried about the children while protecting thousands of paedophiles that raped children. (The governments, not discord)
Regardless, fuck discord and instead of "threatening" an exodus, why doesn't everybody register with xmpp or mumble and figure it out from there. Crazy staying on discord from here on.
The problem is finding a good alternative immediately. I don't mind to hop and check out multiple services, but some of my friends wants to just install one thing and be done.
My checklist is not too much either, but for some reason video calling is not something included with the lot of them.
We really gotta get started on building that
We really should have been already but now's good too
Yeah, but if accounts are made on mumble for example, the migration will happen there quicker. Then if that doesn't suit many, others are an option. I'm guessing whichever platform benefits from this will happily make any changes that are currently missing.
Or just use Steam - which the average Discord user has already installed. Supports Chats, Groups, Voice Chat, Streaming, Discussion Boards that are discoverable, solid 2FA authentication... only thing missing is Video Calls, which they could implement easily when looking at what is already there.
My game plan here is that I'm moving everyone I can to Stoat. It's not likely to go the corpo route any time soon. From there I plan on figuring out a matrix server and streamlining the process for my less dedicated friends the same way I did jellyfin.
I don't think that Valve has that game plan, as they have proven again and again for about 20 years now. Having no shareholders really keeps them grounded. But you're right, a completely FOSS solution that is easy to use would be preferable - but in the short term Steam communities might get an upswing.
Yeah, i DO like valve, because they are as good as it can get for a company in the tech sector. But my comment was more from a "we need a replacement now"-perspective, where Steam is a top contender for sure (and the content there is actually discoverable which gives an out).
Hopefully the scare and the issue of getting out content of discord makes sure that there is a solution ready for the next time the shit hits the fan.
... Steam is basically a family owned business it's literally the exact example of what a perfectly acceptable large business is.
And fuck I ain't here cause I know something wrong. The fuck you get that idea from. I'm here because reddit doesn't have a good app that's literally it. I would happily go back to reddit if i could have my old app back.
Lemmy has fuck all for communities, basically no users, and the majority of it is just regurgitated from reddit anyways. I could give less of a rats ass about the whole open source thing. It's neat and all from a novelty perspective.
But frankly the hard on for open source this self hosted that is a massive nothing burger. Closed or open sources. What ever is the easier and more convenient option wins full stop.
Lemmy won cause the apps were more convenient.
The problem with steam is that it will eventually go the same way.
At the moment the internet is being used by big tech similar to a sheepdog rounding up sheep. Hopefully most will refuse this and move platform, that platform will eventually attempted to be broken down and register a few more users etc. If you have younger siblings or kids, they're fucked. Unless you educate them about their privacy and how important it is.
Well, Valve hasn't done so for about 20 years now, how long do people have to give a company that has proven again and again that they are not in the game for extracting maximum value out of their client base? I'd love for a FOSS solution to pick up the slack, but none are currently in a state where they can pick up millions of non-technical minded users in a heartbeat. Valve has those users already, so they are able to provide a solution NOW, not in a few years.
Should Valve eventually start enshittifying, which would require going public first, maybe there will be a readily usable FOSS solution. For now, it's one of the easiest routes out of Discord (and the content on the Steam Forums is scrapeable over the web, so it's pretty easy to transfer out, not like discord)
Gabe's son is set to inherit the family company. Remember steam is for all purposes a family business.
Assuming Gabe retires in the next decade then his son works for 20-30 years we have another 30-40 years before steam goes to shit.
Unless an out side force actively fucks with valve and Gabe's family to force things to become worse. It's unlikely it will get worse.
So happy. Discord sucks.
Yeah, I agree. I hope Discord both fails as a company and as a concept.
Information siloed inside a non-easily searchable interface? No thank you.
TIL people actually pay for nitro lol.
I've probably paid around 100€/$ in total (been occasionally using and gifting Nitro since 2019 and regularly for about a year). I'll definitely stop it and using Discord if they follow through with this.
People always ask why even paying users exist - simple, I am a paying user myself, and by that I hold the power to actually cut their revenue rather than just leave the platform.
I pay for nitro because I love discord and love supporting it. I will cancel if they go through with this nonsense.
This thread just reminded me to cancel mine. Good riddance IMHO. I should’ve done it back when they started spamming me with “quests” (aka ads) for Amazon and random fucking gatcha games. Between the privacy stuff and the pressure to monetize, there’s next to no way it’s gonna get better.
That's too late.
Once they do it, they won't reverse their path. They have to know they're losing people now, before they commit. You can always start again after they change their mind.
Sadly, but another good platform has rotten.
Discord thinks that it is important. Good news that it isn't. And even if there is no good substitute, then it is possible to abandon Discord by just quitting and not looking for any alternatives. Like if your local market stopped having aubergines then you can just stop even wanting them. Not a big deal.
Not a big deal to you
There are other people in the world that live different lives than you. Some of us use it as a primary messaging platform. It's how I talk to most friends and family
Seriously, I love aubergines. If my super market stops carrying it I will just get it elsewhere.
hmm it's more like if the supermarket closed... you still need food (social interaction). so where do you get it now. like you ate out sometimes before, you let others cook for you every so often. but for many, discord is their primary means of keeping in touch. you need to find something to replace it. so we're all debating if we grow our own food or drive 4 hours to the next closest which already has going out of business signs up.
not wanting to use a platform that someone prefers is the easiest way to lose touch with someone these days. like i struggle to socialize with tiktok people these days just because i don't get their references and they can't send me their memes. if they're also an imessage diehard we probably just haven't talked in a while.
it is really not. not without significantly crippling your life.
luckily, there are alternatives, so we will just see if people are willing to put money where their mouth is.
Well Discord has become more than just Vent server alternative, people use it for more than just game chat. There’s a lot of local communities that have discord servers and use them to organize events and chat, and so you end up knowing a bunch of people through discord. Alternatives can be difficult in that circumstance. Like sure you can get their phone numbers or whatever if you know them well enough, maybe start a group text, but it doesn’t necessarily equate. If you run a server I can see it being wildly difficult to move a whole community off of Discord and getting people to use an alternative platform. Personally I’m all for moving to Matrix if I can convince my D&D group, but those local communities, the only option is to basically to drop out of them and lose connections.
That’s true. And the reason is most people - still, in 2026 - can’t figure out how computers work. Not that they try to. It’s a low-level social madness that causes catastrophic global changes.
if you are some asocial hermit living in a basement, who cares about neither real life nor digital connections, that may be true for you.
most people live in a society and engage in some communities, these have some means of communication and since it's 21st century, they are usually digital. and these communities are not centered around you and few dozens/hundreds/thousands people are not going to leave the tool they all know and switch to another tool just because you told them to.
if i lose access to my school's discord, my ability to communicate with my classmates and ask for a help or information on anything school related is going to be significantly crippled, to the point where i am not going to do that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect
yeah, i am not so important that few thousand people would change their habits to accommodate me. when you outgrow kindergarten, you will find out that neither are you.
So called "social" media exists to isolate you. The illusion if your life being "crippled" only affects you if you choose to let that happen
cool soundbite for your edgelords' meeting.
in real life, most people live in a society and engage in some communities, these have some means of communication and since it’s 21st century, they are usually digital. and these communities are not centered around you and few dozens/hundreds/thousands people are not going to leave the tool they all know and switch to another tool just because you told them to.
if i lose access to my school’s discord, my ability to communicate with my schoolmates and ask for a help or information on anything school related is going to be significantly crippled, to the point where i am not going to do that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect
It's funny how you keep trying to justify your discord addiction.
it is not that funny how you can't read.
I can read you justifying your addiction just fine.
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.
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.
I agree, convenience wins in this case, this is why twitter is still "bulletproof".
Don't threat
Speaking as someone who is currently planning to move a community away from Discord to something self-hosted, it's not as easily said as done.
Apart from the need to run your own infrastructure, competing software is typically finicky and comes with caveats. Plus you have to worry about discoverability if you want to attract new users.
It's doable, sure, but it requires a lot of planning and work. Honestly, it's probably going to take us months to get our own service fully up and running.
Setting up Matrix/Synapse was extremely easy and done in a day. The self hosting part is not that hard and I would say migrating users would be the majority of your time. Plenty of VPSs online make obtaining infrastructure very easy.
It's never easy but believe me it's rewarding. Planning to switching to a self-hosted solution even more so (though it's harder). However, starting it is the halfway through. I just wish your community members as understanding as you.
Good luck!
They won't. They never leave, at least not enough to make a difference. I've long since given up hoping in people to do the right thing.
I run several communities on discord with hundreds of people in them. I can't just leave.
I want to leave. but I can't force people to move to a new app just for one community.
its a complicated issue for those that use it for communities. we are working on trying to move off.
Who could have seen this coming?
Thats the problem. You can go through all the pain to move to an alternative, but eventually it enshitifys too. You could go open source, but those solutions rarely have the polish to get the large quantity of users needed for niche communities. And most users won't understand why they are better anyway. So it's just a horrible cycle.
Since the 90s every few years you have had to move. You get over it eventually. There will be stragglers that will always hold on to the old one, they will be the last to the new platform. It's happened before and it will happen again.
My community just setup a Matrix instance and we're migrating everyone over. Several already cancelled their subscription.
I actually ran into a colleague in a random room, who is also leaving Discord.
It's pretty nuts, there's a big exodus going on.
Any guides? Been looking at Element but that set up is intimidating.
Are you self hosting? I just set up an instance today and it was extremely easy following the instructions for the ESS Community edition on github.
I was going to run it on an old gaming PC i been using for piHole. I was thinking a VM as I couldn't find a premade container and don't want public stuff running on the machine directly. I was still trying to work my way though reading the docs but got hung up on understanding Kubernetes before starting the setup. I also got sick of fighting Virtual Machine Manager pool location permissions last night.
If you plan on federating, it can end up being pretty resource heavy, so consider either not federating or planning ahead.
What's the federation like? Haven't decided on it yet. Realistically I may convince 10ish people to join so I'm not sure it be worth the hassle.
I'm not trying to say that you can't/shouldn't federate with others. You don't need to federate everything, all channels, etc, nor should you IMO. I found out really quickly that the small server I had set aside for it was not up to the task when I decided to sync up the matrix.org main channels. You need lots of ram, FAST storage, and a good internet connection at bare minimum.
Don't even have to go that far. Just stop paying for Nitro. They'll get the picture when their revenue stream dries up.
At which point, the only option left is to leave or enjoy rapid enshittification.
Nah. Just quit.
I sure did fucking sucks and they didn't make it easy. First had to delete all servers first then delete my account. Fuck Discord.
Anyone want to script through the signup process and feed the damn thing a bunch of AI generated faces?
Typically when a signup page is difficult to automate, you can use a library meant for automated testing within a browser—like Selenium. Also, disposable emails services come in handy—like mailsac. If they block all the disposable email services, you can also use your iCloud+ custom email domain (if you have it) with the Allow All Incoming Messages setting turned on—then you use randomly generated user handles for each signup. A better way would be Gmail accounts so that they blend in more, but I’m not sure how to script through Gmail signup when they often require a phone number verification step.
Not sure about the easiest way to recycle your IP, in case they monitor signups that way too. I’m sure there’s a way to overcome that too via VPN.
If 2% of Discord users did this 50 times, that would make half of Discords user profiles and face recognition data completely fake.
They plan on using an AI to read all your conversations as well. You wabt that?
Just quit. Why bother trying to stay?
Do it, pussies. I remember when sites would actually topple when they made poor decisions.
I could just be me being a doomer, but I doubt any significant exodus will happen. People really about to drop discord? Right…
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.
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.
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.
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.
Someone on Reddit claims reddit will do the same soon. I wonder if it's govt pressure.
I assume it's UK/EU's expanding social media laws that are driving this, in addition to Discord's imminent Initial Public Offering coming in March. They're trying to clean house to show how profitable they can be, the same way Reddit created their walled garden by restricting third-party connections prior to their IPO.
It's bog-standard enshittification to please the shareholders.
Lots of governments want it. But its no excuse doing it in a stupid way. For example EU IDs should have a function that just verifies someone is over 18 without any other info being send. At least the German one does. But its not being used.
It's not being used because the real goal is to make it impossible to use the internet without handing over your ID, so that governments can know exactly what you do online. It goes along with all the attempts to ban or backdoor encryption including VPNs. They want to read every message and know who sent it and to whom.
potentially. it's going to become more of the norm as more nations enforce stuff like this to "protect the kids" coughget your id and know what you're doing onlinecough
Also keep in mind Discord is just about to launch their IPO in March so the timing lines up.
I agree, except that it's the data broker corporations that are really behind this.
The EU is going to pass a law to enforce this, discord is just getting ahead of the imposition. That's why France and Spain have been on the news regarding social network regulation for under 16.
So when you have to setup a system for 27 countries plus some members of the eurosphere you just do it for everyone and be done with it.
I deleted my Discord account last night. Good riddance.
I'm not threatening, I'm gonna do it. We'll see how my game jams go after this. I doubt my entire community will follow me.
Edit: I downloaded Element X for Matrix, and it seems to only be capable of creating a single chat similar to WhatsApp. Tried to download Revolt, and I cant get that one to even send me a verification code to my email. Starting of strong here...
Matrix allows you to structure rooms pretty similar to Discord. It's called a "space" that can then have rooms. Also Sub-spaces with more rooms. You can then manage access by inheritance or really granular on a space / room level. E.g. hidden / public rooms and spaces.
A few notes though:
Thanks for the tips! I only just downloaded Matrix. (Element X) to my phone. I'll have to do some more research on it. I personally could probably set up my own instance if I had to, work it to me, probably not. I mostly use discord for game jam hosting these days, and DnD with my friends. So, if the level of effort is high, or the barrier to entry isn't low, I don't imagine ill get a lot of people switching over to the new space. I guess we'll see what happens.
To play around you can
either use Element X orgo to https://app.element.io/#/welcome and use the Element web version. ~~It's basically the same client. ~~ Then create your account with matrix.org - you should be able to create your own space + sub-spaces + rooms to play around with inviting users, get familiar with permissions, etc. There might be limits with video / voice calls - not sure about the public, free matrix.org server.If Matrix is a good fit you can then look through the offerings of some of the respected hosters listed here: https://matrix.org/ecosystem/hosting/ Then you don't have to do everything yourself. They will maintain the infrastructure and your base installation and you can focus on being just the super user / admin (with your own domain) and build your community.
IMO the only real "hurdle" compared to traditional apps is that in addition to your username / password you also get a "recovery key". That's the key for encryption and people are not used to having an additional key. If you lose that key you can still log in and see new conversions but you will not be able to read old conversations that were encrypted using the old key. A workaround for your community might be to not enable encryption in your community rooms (when creating a room you can decide if its contents are encrypted or not). IMO totally worth the little bit of extra effort, but yeah - not something users are familiar with.
Edit: as @[email protected] pointed out Element X does not yet support Space management. You can check out https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/ for more clients. I really like Cinny (another web client - just checked and it supports space management). On mobile you can maybe try FluffyChat (not sure about space management - but I think they do as spaces are listed as feature).
or another workaround is to tell them: if they don't want to deal with the recovery key, that's fine, but then they should treat it like signal where if you lose your devices, you lose your old messages. its fine to most people if they know the consequences of their choices beforehand, I think, and this way it won't feel like an obligation, like a needy app
in element x you can't yet manage spaces. It's silly but it's a relatively new app and and development goes slowly for some reason. you can create the space in element web though, probably element desktop too because they are the same thing.
about the difficulty of registration. you could recommend an instance to them, so they don't need to choose themselves if they don't want to. I recommend one that has set up single signon and element call, and is medium sized (so that it is somewhat prepared for spam waves). https://tchncs.de/en/matrix/ is like that.
what would be even better is if it was using tuwunel instead of synapse, because the former is the more efficient matrix server software, but the other is good enough too.
if you want to put in some more effort, you can have some insight into matrix servers with this tool: https://federationtester.mtrnord.blog/?serverName=tchncs.de
and you can find a list of public servers to check here: https://servers.joinmatrix.org/
Revolt is now stoat.chat. And I think they might be getting a little slammed with new users.
As someone who made an account a while ago, no issues so far.
Delete.it now
Yet again XMPP is ignored in the comments🥲
Stay strong partner
sure they're leaving but...where? what's a viable alternative?
I mean if I had it my way everyone would just go back to IRC, I still use IRC. it's great, nothings changed, it's perfect. combine that with like mumble or teamspeak and you're good to go.
I checked out Stoat lastnight and it's very slow. took well over an hour to get a verification email (I assume because many others were signing up) and the current server offerings are minimal. Also a good majority of the themes listed simply don't work. it's growing and I'd say it's the best alternative right now but it's not there yet and I worry it or the various instances of it could hold up if there was a massive Discord exodus.
Matrix is a no and xmpp ain't much better.
Can I ask why matrix is a 'no'?
Personally Matrix has been kind of annoying to set up. I tried it around last year and after a bunch of issues creating an account (email link wasn't working I think) I used it for a little, then all messages became "could not decrypt" and I gave up on it
Screen sharing is broken. Group chats barely function. DMS are more or less non-existent in a realistic manner. Cross-platform voice chats break constantly audio capture with a bunch of different devices. Just straight up. Don't work. It crashes if you try and do s*** with certain games are open on Windows.
And this is just what I've experienced using five or six of the most popular clients from matrix.
Matrix is a pile of crap. It has been a pile of crap. It is unlikely to ever not be a pile of crap. It is basically only acceptable for people who get a boner over security and encryption and have no friends who don't also have a boner for security and encryption.
It is The shining example of a application designed by engineers for engineers who have never talked to a normal person once in their entire life.
The moment you try and get something like a game guild together in it it breaks and falls apart and s**** the bed. It cannot handle flexible groups like that. It is too overly complicated in the worst ways while also being too simple to be able to handle complicated tasks. It is such a weird catch-22 in almost every way.
If you're trying to find a replacement for slack, maybe? But not discord.
I'm moving everyone to stoat. I'm not an expert, but from my perspective and use needs it's functionality the same or slightly better in every single department. Things are laggy currently but that's because they didn't expect a wave and they're being really transparent about their efforts to accommodate that. As for content, I've never used discord as a social media, I use it as an organized group text and team speak for gaming. I expect public servers will become more viable with the swell in users though.
Last time I tried to play around with Stoat, I never even got a verification email, so taking an hour sounds like progress I guess? I'll have to try again.
How hard is this type of service, as a self hosted docker app, to develop?
Wouldn’t most of the underlying codec and streaming technologies be more or less extendable into a platform?
I got the self hosted version up and it looks like it's a much older version than their current iteration which was a kick in the teeth. Nothing discouraging quite like "Well you can self host if you don't mind a worse version of the product". Like my dudes I'm trying to take some pressure off of your server...
Yeah, no voice chat is a bummer. I haven't tried, but my first instinct was, that's a VM right there.
https://github.com/stoatchat/self-hosted
Stoat doesn't have screen sharing. Teamspeak 6 does though
Teamspeak isn't open source... Use Mumble, MediaMTX or Matrix instead.
Go ahead
Mumble doesn't do screen sharing, matrix screen sharing barely works and flat out doesn't support Wayland and breaks with a number of games if your on windows. Basically making both not an option. No idea about mediamtx.
Please, im already erect. You don't have to keep selling it. Ts6 it is.
Stop! Youre gojng too fast! Your gonna have to learn how to make it last longer!
How hard is it to create discord?
A lot of the technical difficulty in that type of app usually centers around scale. If you only ever have 10 users in a channel it's not so hard. When you have 10,000 or 50,000 things start to get more tricky.
Still as per usually for small scale (and slightly larger too) there have been options for a long time. The main difficulty is in getting other people to use your proposed option.
Stoat is an open source Discord alternative. You should check it out.
There's also https://spacebar.chat/, which I've been hearing some buzz about, but not really here; not sure if that's because there are known problems with it or what.
Edit: it looks like voice and video are just experimental right now, so might not be a good replacement for many: https://docs.spacebar.chat/faq/
Don’t think much needs to be developed.
Matrix has been out for a while… but admittedly i have not checked it out myself yet.
I've been trying it out with a group of people. (On Linux and Android)
It's pretty bad still. The concept is solid but each client and server has their own way to go about things. Most are missing desired features like calling and screen sharing. Some even lack group chat...
Reactions and custom emojis are sent through an unencrypted side channel. Rich formatting such as code blocks are inconsistent across clients.
You're pretty much stuck using the mainline client element to get the best discord lite experience. But it's still pretty junk at hq screen sharing and group calls. It's missing audio capture and a decent audio filter essentially.
I abandoned WhatsApp for Discord after meta got its greedy hooks into it. Do they think people won't just make a new account elsewhere and move on? Millennials have done it every two years ever since MySpace imploded after Fox News' Rupert Murdoch bought it. We have been conditioned to let our accounts go.
(Also text messaging, group chats, phone calls, and video calls are things that come standard on smartphones without need of an app. Texting stupid memes to everyone I know has never been easier. Maybe it's my age, but everyone I regularly talk to on discord is also in my phone. Oh noes, I'll have to "text" instead of "chat." The horror.)
I hate SMS and vastly prefer a real chat platform, in the US it's messenger/insta and in EU and much of Asia it's Whatsapp, line in Japan, kkaotalk in Korea, WeChat/weixin for China, and so on. Discord never crossed over to regular people in my experience for the most part (is the hot girl you met on it?).
I was in the military. Chat apps made it easy to keep up with friends and family even when we weren't all in the same country. (Poor international communications is definitely a downside of standard phone services). But all of us all are back stateside now and it's mostly been a gradual slide towards texting for my social group.
How did you use Discord in place of WhatsApp? I found Discord incredibly slow to start up, buggy as hell and a pain in the ass to even jump to specific chats quickly in the UI and that was before they made it worse with the new UI.
When we all switched in 2016-ish whatsapp and discord were pretty like-for-like for what my social group needed (and I agree, old discord had a much better UI). At the time Discord also had the added benefit of being easy to cross-platform with pc, which made online voice chat easier. (Vent had always been persnickety, and skype went from being great to trash almost overnight.) I don't/didn't have a problem with lag/bugs on discord but I tend to stay in smaller social circles, and actively avoid the unholy number of giant af chat groups that discord has spawned. Likely I simply benefit from not using all the app's "features." Doesn't surprise me tho that with all the nonsense they keep shoveling in that people are experiencing slow downs and other problems. Textbook enshittification. Even if this latest debacle doesn't do discord in, it's only a matter of time.
Discord is SLAMMED, I say!
Can't wait til they're blasted and shredded
Whoa, not slammed, but SLAMMED? Wow.
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!
Everyone pile into matrix and the element client. Got to make it more popular
Get back to me when it's remotely able to handle emojis, screen sharing cross platform, proper audio capture, reliable DMs and group chats.
Element even shits the bed 95% of the time when you try to use it like a discord alterative.
The fact people think matrix is remotely acceptable is just proof your avg user on lemmy has no fucking clue what your avg user wants or expects out of a chat/gamer platform.
Matrix barely makes the bar for a replacement for a enterprise chat app. Let alone something aimed at more flexible groups and communities.
I would unironically sooner become an actual hermit and never socialize again than give these cretins my ID or even trust that they'll delete an age verification photo. Knowing Discord? yeah, no, absolutely fucking not
This sucks. Fully leaving Discord will be hard for me. One server is functioning as a memorial to my Clan leader who died of cancer.
Maybe I need to research a method of archiving or migrating the data I have access to.
as soon as possible. you never know what could happen
Discrub might be an option depending on access. It seems to work fine, but depending on the amount of data it is pretty slow. I've had it running since early this morning, about 12 hours now. Not sure I'd trust the extension with highly sensitive data, but it might be worth taking a look.
Exodus to another discord-clone. Great.
Matrix is good but not as simple as discord. Lots of users aren't going to like it.
You're more likely to see Wayland suddenly stop having in fighting and all simultaneously. Agree on every protocol going forward. Matrix having a frictionless client that is feature parody with discord.
It's just not something that is likely ever going to happen. Matrix as a concept basically makes such a thing impossible.
why is nobody talking about teamspeak 6? Is it bad?
Team speak 6. Still is missing basic features and has had quality of life and basic features open as requests for ever at this point and it's unlikely it's ever going to happen.
Teamspeaks six's devs have also just pretty much made it clear they aren't really trying.
If it works for you as it currently is great, it's acceptable and it's fine. It's team speaker works. But just like back in the day with TeamSpeak 3. The devs are slow, they don't do anything and they don't want to do anything. It's been a problem with the app literally since day one.
I am just not going to participate in that verification shit, and, for now, I will just not see that stuff anymore.
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.
Im currently at the point where I have such a presence on Matrix that I could genuinely delete my discord account
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.
https://s3nd.chat/
Made by the same team that did s3nd.pics (the imgur alternative. Under heavy Dev at the moment but has promise.
Please do.
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.
Intro to Root that I watched
Root app's website
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.
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.
Don't threaten, do you wussies.
“Age verification.”
If only...
The obvious solution here is for DEVICE manufacturers to add verification steps in the OS for parents to configure.
How about hell fucking no you idiot
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).
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.
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
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 would that work on PCs?
Bios.
Facebook does this shit too. Tell me your account never got suspended and it asked you to give an ID to reactivate it again
Good
Can see this in the future after those dumb enough to share ID, Email from Discord Please pay X amount for screen sharing copyright content.
Don't forget to review bomb
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