In short, a kid made a Discord account at age 12, lied about her age and said she was 18. The kid at age 13 clicked a scam link claiming to be Discord support and lost access to her account. Scammer asked for parents bank account details which is how the dad became aware. Dad tried to report the issue to Discord, but had to go through an AI support bot that kept closing the ticket. Dad spoke with someone named “Molly” that was possibly a human and explained that his daughter’s account had a lot of underage friends tied to the account that could be at risk. “Molly” said they’d have to open a ticket from within the app, which they no longer had access to because his daughter never set up 2FA.

Discord didn’t actually do anything about this until Ars stepped in. After regaining access to the account the daughter found 2 friends fell for the scam. Discord later banned the account for violating the TOS when lying about her age and stated they would only restore the account if they shared a photo of the kid along with a copy of her birth certificate or passport. The father gave in and complied so she didn’t lose access to her friends.

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[–] [S] 280 points 7 months ago (15 children)

Asked for comment, a Discord spokesperson told Ars that the platform “takes situations like this seriously, especially when they involve teens and account security.”

More like Discord only takes these things seriously when an article drags them. Probably only banned the kids account because she dropped this on them and they handled it badly.

Crazy how far this company has fallen, but that’s expected I guess when $$$ are on the line.

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  • [–] 79 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    The company has fallen? From where? Discord was bottom of the barrel for as long as I can remember.

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  • [–] 59 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    For the first few years, when it had no profit motive, no way to earn money, and was just willingly bleeding cash to gain market share, it was great! That is the first stage of enshittification and they are now on to stage 2: making the platform good for the real target audience, advertisers.

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  • [–] 12 points 7 months ago

    Few years? Nah man. Maybe the first few months but they were already laying the foundation 10 years ago by hosting the largest emote servers and running the Discord subreddit secretly themselves. They were always really shitty.

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  • [+] -50 points 7 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (8 children)
  • [–] 44 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Never trust a tech worker, they decided long ago to sell out the species and the planet.

    As a tech worker, I resent that comment.

    As someone who volunteered time over 20 years to maintain a well-used open-source project, I think your comment is a cheap generalization that shows remarkably low forethought.

    As someone who knows what a comma splice is, though, I guess it's all good.

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  • [–] 66 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    "Never trust a tech worker" they said, using a device designed by a tech worker, running software designed by a tech worker, accessing servers maintained by a tech worker, on a hosting service implemented and managed by tech workers, through an internet service provider employing tech workers galore.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Dumbest comment today.

    Want to blame someone? Blame a farmer. We were doing fine until we invented agriculture.

    But just like the tech worker, farmers today are not to blame for the problems introduced in the past.

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  • [+] -3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 child)
  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago

    So you don't understand why agriculture is the root of all our problems?

    What exactly is "honest work"? Commenting bullshit on Lemmy like you? Using, I don't know, technology that someone made, so you support that kind of work?

    I missed a good old troll in the wild. Thanks.

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