Discord Begins Testing Facial Scans for Age Verification
Some countries have passed strict new laws dictating youth access to digital platforms.
The moment this becomes an obligation for each person, no matter what, I’ll just quit Discord. I’m tired of stuff like this.
If people want to do bad stuff, they will find a way no matter what anyway.
there's already real time AI aging filters, once they realise this doesn't work it's going to be IDs next, i'm so sick of this bullshit
if a kid wants to find porn, they're going to find porn, no amount of laws is going to stop them, but the more laws there are the more safe websites and online spaces to explore the new feelings will be inaccessible to them, leaving only the worst possible resources to be exposed to as they discover their sexuality. people writing those laws behave as if they've entirely forgotten how it was to be a teen, nor have met a teen in decades
For a brief moment, I had a a FB/Instagram account for testing purposes. After about a week, Meta started asking to see my face on camera. Needless to say, that experiment hit a brick wall.
I was just following and liking stuff here and there. Didn’t even post anything, but apparently that was suspicious enough for Meta.
Same, I still use it at around 15% of my own peak usage, if this gets beyond the testing phase, i'm out as well. Never trusted discords ownership and bussinessmodel, and observing their behaviour the last 4-5 years really cemented that as accurate. Bye, I won't miss ya.
Future headline: “Discord users begin testing Discord alternatives”
Already started. Revolt seems like it could be a near 1 to 1 replacement soon.
Maybe we can all go back to AIM
It's proprietary and centralized. No practical difference. IRC and XMPP are the way.
Controversially, I cheer on the quickening of the inshitification of Discord. The sooner more folks are convinced to move away from that place, the better. I hope for a return to indexable and searchable old school forums (or their modern equivalents—Discourse is so nice).
Problem is folks won't move, they're too entrenched. Look at twitter, it's still going ok despite having been a cesspit for years now. Or reddit, where some moved, but they moved to yet another enshittified platform: Discord. The amount of crap people ( especially the ones on discord ) will put up with is immense before they even consider switching.
I think when enough live streaming influencers switch to Revolt or whatever else, many people will follow.
Sad but true. A guy can dream.
Discord was shit from the beginning. Enshitification is useless here.
Sadly parts of my social group are currently migrating to discord.
You're probably right, sadly.
I am not all computer, but isn't it possible to make something like discord that is searchable like forums?
Anything is possible. But I'm also a grump who doesn't like the fast pace of chat anyway, so I'm personally more interested in the forums approach.
Reminder that we have a european alternative called Revolt we can always switch to!
Another alternative is Element for chatting and Teamspeak for Calls/Screenshare!
Element/Matrix does calls and screen share also by the way!
(Teamspeak can do screen share? That’s news to me!)
Element really needs to get push to talk. It's an incredibly basic feature to be missing, and for me personally and I'm sure others the lack of it is a deal breaker.
insane
Cool. I'm out then.
I've always hated Discord since the very beginning. At least now I have yet another really good reason.
Never used it, never will. Ventrilo for lyfe.
For me it's Mumble. Open sourced and completely free with encryption, and temporary chat logs.
Ventrilo looks someone's bad first open source project, but it's proprietary. The audio quality must be orgasmic for people to use it.
Audio quality
WIth current hardware and cheap hosting, setting Opus Voice to max quality is best.
Need alternatives to have built-in, easy to use screenshare with audio. And of course great noise filtering on voice chats.
oh sweet discord phrenology
Its going to be so fucking racist isn't it.
Beginning of the end for discord probably.
I wish. I think it's the beginning of the end to anonymous online presenses. It's becoming more and more common for things like this to be required by corporate social media.
Byeeeeee
The downfall of discord
Element is a good alternative, OpenSource and federated
facebook does the same thing, except also requires a photo ID too. it seems alot right wingers have migrated to these 2 platforms so they can control narratives better, better off staying away from these platforms.
How am I going to rip on them until they have aneurysms if I'm not on there too?
Great. Now I have to wear aging makeup because of my baby face.
On one hand this is obviously absurd but on the other hand I don't actually know how one could solve the sheer scale of pedophilia happening on their platform without some dystopian shit. It seems like there is a maximum size for something like discord because at the scale it is now I'm not sure how you could possibly moderate it. I'll probably stop using it if they implement this but I can definitely understand why they feel like it's a good idea.
And just like that I uninstalled the app, never to login again. It wasn't that important for me anyway.
A lot of games and mods use Discord almost exclusively for their discussions, but I always found Discord groups hard to follow. So much random talk among a few bits of good information.
Steam community boards are underrated.
consider requesting a GDPR data request, and when that's completed a GDPR data deletion. the former mostly to have a backup for you, you can skip it if you don't find it important
I have a privacy news channel on my discord server because I'm desperately trying to get my folks to switch to Matrix, it hasn't happened yet but maybe it will now.
I just made a post on discord about this, and I link to alternatives such as a matrix group, signal chat, my YouTube channel, etc. if I am locked out, then I hope my followers can follow me to the new place, whatever that is.
Please give me a federated, self-hosted Discord alternative! I'm tired of these bullshit platforms.
Not federated, but Revolt can be self-hosted and is very similar to Discord in the look and feel from what I have seen (I have it installed, but haven't tried getting friends to install it and am not hosting). So it could be worth looking into for folks that are used to Discord.
It's not federated, the developer is specifically against federation. He didn't even support self-hosting properly and officially, until the community made pullrequests in this regard themselves. Revolt is mainly made to be hosted by the developer himself. Probably just another Discord. Open-sourcing the code doesn't do anything.
No.
I quit discord a year ago for Matrix or XMPP. never looked back.
I cant even get in my discord because I never get the verification email. Each time I have to contact customer support. F that platform.
The app will ask users to scan their face through a computer or smartphone webcam; alternatively, they can scan a driver’s license or other form of ID.
comes in response to laws passed in those countries that place guardrails on youth access to online platforms.
Personally this sounds pretty reasonable. I don't want young children on there. Any expectation of anonymity on Discord, a social network, is not warranted. Ask any number of users who've been prosecuted based on evidence turned over by Discord. It's also US-based
I mean. . . It should be up to the parents to protect and educate their children. It is very easy to set up protections on a computer to either not let them use discord or to not allow them to install it.
I feel like we need a less invasive form of age verification or we need actual data privacy laws in the US with some teeth. As it is right now it's basically a guarantee that your ID and facial data will be in a breach eventually. Seems like every site will require this once it starts.
I feel like we need a less invasive form of age verification
Yep. Probably a billion dollar idea if you can execute it properly. These laws are spurring competition
I think most peoples' facial data is already for sale and breachable/leakable
Why shouldn't young children be able to use Discord? I have kids and want them to be able to use it to chat while they play games with friends and with me.
I'll try to keep them to only chatting with people they know until I think they're mature enough.
I have kids too. I'm not singling out Discord here, just pointing out they're trying to follow the law.
Young kids and social media are inherently a bad mix. Primarily because it promotes antisocial behaviors and they cannot effectively comprehend and consent to the privacy polices and TOS. Hence why adults need to be involved in account creation.
the creators of the laws requiring said guardrails should be held personally accountable for every piece of information that gets leaked as a result of their bs "think of the children" arguments.
