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.
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.
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”.
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.
Do it, pussies. I remember when sites would actually topple when they made poor decisions.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
do it cowards. leave now.
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.
yeah until their IPO goes live and then they will just force ads into the whole thing…
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?
i used to be quite proficient at using selenium.
though IIRC they require phone numbers for the sign up process now?
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!
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…
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/
Delete.it now
Yet again XMPP is ignored in the comments🥲
Stay strong partner
Im currently at the point where I have such a presence on Matrix that I could genuinely delete my discord account
I am just not going to participate in that verification shit, and, for now, I will just not see that stuff anymore.
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.
