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.
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”
Threaten? Bro as soon as the 2 people I care about get on Root I’m out.
Root? What’s that from what I’ve heard a lot of people are moving to stoat.
I made a Root account and run it on NixOS through their appimage. I’m waiting on my friend to get it so I can test the voicechat and screen share but so far it’s functional and has 2 awesome features that Discord doesn’t have. Reply to more than 1 comment with only 1 of your messages. Tabs on the top similar to a browser, it’s just more natural for me than the sidebar shit.
In the mean time I’m still probably gonna host a Matrix server with a VPS incase Root ever decides to pull a Discord.
Plus I just don’t like the name “Stoat.” xD “Get on Stoat bro” Sounds weird.
Good
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.
Yeah I think people will just strive to keep their servers sfw
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
I am just not going to participate in that verification shit, and, for now, I will just not see that stuff anymore.
Maybe people will finally realize discord isn’t the place for your projects documentation to exist
Wait, what are people using it for? I use discord for shooting the shit with people about video games and politics.
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”
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.
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.
I miss the days of forums and hate having tobfo to discord for support on stuff
Exactly what I was thinking
Do it, pussies. I remember when sites would actually topple when they made poor decisions.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
Delete.it now
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.
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:
- If you can create a space / room might depend on the Matrix server you are on and what capabilities the server admin gives you.
- There is always the option to completely self-host your Matrix instance - like Lemmy, Mastodon, etc. Depends on how tech savvy you are and if self-hosting is worth it to you ( can mean a ton of work).
- I am not claiming Matrix is a full on Discord replacement. Discord has it’s advantages, but so does Matrix if autonomy, privacy, security are important to you. Matrix does have also neat features and bot-ability… but it’s clearly not as easy as Discord. Good enough for many FOSS projects / communities though.
- IMO one key concept (besides decentralization / federation) that can be hard to grasp for new users is the concept of the recovery key that you get in addition to your username / password. Also does not help that there is “legacy” Element and Element X which add some confusion as they differ a bit in functionality.
- Personally I really like Matrix. Cinny might be an alternative client that might appeal more to you than Element. If you are into self-hosting tuwunel might be worth a look (or matrix synapse if you want to go with the OG server implementation)
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).
A workaround for your community might be to not enable encryption in your community rooms
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
- overview tab shows at top the server software and its version. synapse is official but very resource heavy for the operator, tuwunel is more efficient
- well-known tab can indicate element call support by having defined org.matrix.msc4143.rtc_foci with livekit. I can’t believe there is no easier way to check this!
- single signon is supported when the element client’s login page for this server allows signing in with external accounts, like github, google, tchncs.de account, etc.
and you can find a list of public servers to check here: https://servers.joinmatrix.org/
