Discord will restrict your account next month unless you scan ID or face
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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.
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Teamspeak and Vent, now is your time to shine.
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Nice. Now when someone tries to make me use discord, I'll have a better excuse than "I hate it"
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Matrix can literally do everything you just mentioned. It’s clunky, but it works.
Thats why i said "and it does it all well".
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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.
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The only way to get around this would be to verify your age, which Discord says can be accomplished in one of two ways. The first is to “submit a form of identification” to Discord vendors (i.e. scan your physical ID), or to use “facial age estimation.” Discord says that the latter process happens fully on-device, as “video selfies for facial age estimation never leave a user’s device.” For ID scans, Discord says that documents “are deleted quickly.”
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 joint 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.
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.”
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For ID scans, Discord says that documents “are deleted quickly.”
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.
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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.
And said data will never be used for fake CSAM or a library for the powerful to handpick their next victims
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Hope this will mass exodus into Matrix, like it happened with Twitter / X.
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.
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Well, looks like I'm leaving discord.
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.
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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.
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That sounds more like the Discord I know.
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Whelp. US based tech is going to shit. Bail now before your data becomes state property.
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The restrictions don't seem very limiting. Why would I ever do this?
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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 joint possible.
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.
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.
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Back to teamspeak or ventrilo
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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.
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Doesn't look like this will affect everyone. From the release:
- Content Filters: Discord users will need to be age-assured as adults in order to unblur sensitive content or turn off the setting.
- Age-gated Spaces – Only users who are age-assured as adults will be able to access age-restricted channels, servers, and app commands.
- Message Request Inbox: Direct messages from people a user may not know are routed to a separate inbox by default, and access to modify this setting is limited to age-assured adult users.
- Friend Request Alerts: People will receive warning prompts for friend requests from users they may not know.
- Stage Restrictions: Only age-assured adults may speak on stage in servers.
I don't use any of those.
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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.
The thing is do you even need to replace it?
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Doesn't look like this will affect everyone. From the release:
- Content Filters: Discord users will need to be age-assured as adults in order to unblur sensitive content or turn off the setting.
- Age-gated Spaces – Only users who are age-assured as adults will be able to access age-restricted channels, servers, and app commands.
- Message Request Inbox: Direct messages from people a user may not know are routed to a separate inbox by default, and access to modify this setting is limited to age-assured adult users.
- Friend Request Alerts: People will receive warning prompts for friend requests from users they may not know.
- Stage Restrictions: Only age-assured adults may speak on stage in servers.
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.
