Discord announced on Monday that it’s rolling out age verification on its platform globally starting next month, when it will automatically set all users’ accounts to a “teen-appropriate” experience unless they demonstrate that they’re adults.

Users who aren’t verified as adults will not be able to access age-restricted servers and channels, won’t be able to speak in Discord’s livestream-like “stage” channels, and will see content filters for any content Discord detects as graphic or sensitive. They will also get warning prompts for friend requests from potentially unfamiliar users, and DMs from unfamiliar users will be automatically filtered into a separate inbox.

Direct messages and servers that are not age-restricted will continue to function normally, but users won’t be able to send messages or view content in an age-restricted server until they complete the age check process, even if it’s a server they were part of before age verification rolled out. Savannah Badalich, Discord’s global head of product policy, said in an interview with The Verge that those servers will be “obfuscated” with a black screen until the user verifies they’re an adult. Users also won’t be able to join any new age-restricted servers without verifying their age.

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[–] 132 points 9 months ago (18 children)

The day an app/service (be it Discord or anything else) asks me to upload my ID, is the day my account gets deleted.

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  • [–] 36 points 9 months ago* (16 children)

    Time for me to review Revolt Chat again to see what has updated.

    Wow, apparently they change their name entirely. I am way behind

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  • [–] 40 points 9 months ago (11 children)

    It's Stoat now! https://stoat.chat/

    I recently joined! It's very close to Discord.

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  • [–] 16 points 9 months ago (7 children)

    No VOIP? That's the only reason I ever use discord, when my friends force me to so I can talk while we play games. Guess teamspeak is still king

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  • [–] 7 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    They have voice chat channels in Stoat, or are you wanting p2p calls?

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago* (2 children)

    No just voice channels, I'm glad they have them but it was completely missing from their marketing on the website. Just says "text channels done right" and there isn't a single line about voice support

    Edit, found a reddit post from about a month ago which is copied below. So it looks like it barely supports voice so far.

    "Apparently The voice chat feature has been brought back in stoat

    It only works in the desktop version though. Mobile devices you're going to have to wait a bit longer though.

    Otherwise the quality of it is really really good but you will experience a massive delay in your voice being sent through the voice medium. It's about 800 millisecond delay even with the fastest speeds. But at least it's something. "

    GitHub issue on the topic

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  • [–] 11 points 9 months ago

    No video call or screen share either from what I can tell, which is uhhh pretty major to day the least. That said, it's not like I need only use one platform at a time. I'll probably get on that and start using it and hope that they add those things in the future. But yeah, I'm not sure if I would call it close to Discord right now.

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Anyone else not receiving the verification email? Doesn't seem to work for me.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago

    I think it took a long time for me the first time. They seem way smaller than Discord, so I imagine they don't have the fastest infrastructure. Also, I signed up with a non-gmail account and their verification email did make it through eventually.

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  • [–] 9 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Reposting my reply from another thread, just to keep people informed:

    Keep in mind everyone that Stoat still doesn't currently protect it's users information and is centralized. It doesn't use encryption but it is very seamless. You can host your own Stoat instance but it doesn't communicate with the main one. The devs have said they plan to add more security features in the future yet still don't make it a priority. The host of Stoat should be able to see everyone's messages, including in DM's, due to the lack of E2E encryption. Once they add more security features I imagine they will be much more popular in general.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    Do you have any sources to share regarding their security posture? https://openalternative.co/stoat says it's "privacy oriented", GDPR compliant, "secure and confidential", etc.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    It's dead. The development has been as fraught as Tox and it has no feature parity. Not sure it's worth forking.

    Right now your best options are jitsi for video or good old mumble for voice and simplex or matrix for text chat.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    Thank you for your account deletion request. For your safety, we have to confirm you are the owner of the account you are trying to delete. Please upload your government ID below.

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  • [–] 113 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Discord leaked my email. How do I know it was Discord? Because that email address was specifically for Discord. Anyways, now that email is full of spam. Anyways anyways, no way I am letting them leak my face

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  • [+] 111 points 9 months ago (19 children)
  • [–] 43 points 9 months ago (11 children)

    Discord and github are the two platforms barely anyone dares to speak about. The Foss community barely mentions the usage of such platforms, despite nearly all of projects use discord as the support line.

    It is really such a shame, since those projects make a significant contribution to open source software in one area. but just shits itself in the other.

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  • [–] 42 points 9 months ago (7 children)

    At least public githubs aren't difficult to access and/or crawl. The big issue with Discord is that there is a wealth of information locked behind a proprietary system.

    Unlike forums or even reddit, there is not way to get to most of the information posted on discord.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (6 children)

    I don't understand, of course we can access it?

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (2 children)

    A lot of discord content is private, and those that aren't require you to have discord to search. On top of that, I'm pretty sure you need to join a server before you can search it's contents.

    Since I don't use discord, there is no real way for me to access content hosted on it. Compared to Reddit or a Forum, I don't need to be a member of the community to access information shared there.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    But the data is accessible and a migration can be done by those who posted it? Depends on local laws I guess.. their eula states everything you send in discord now belongs to then, but that is not allowed in the eu and many other countries

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    Sounds like we are talking about different kinds of "access". My original post was just lamenting that to the general web, discord is like a black hole. Things go there and never come out as you can only access the content through its app.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

    You can only access it if you install Discord.

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  • [–] 7 points 9 months ago

    Free software contributors I hang out with do mention the likes of irc, matrix, codeberg, and activitypub'ising git a lot.

    No time to waste mentioning inferior software that's abusive.

    Let alone use it.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    It would mean a lot to me if open source projects used op n source coms for discussions. I tried discord recently and couldnt even get prast email verification. I went into a server, asked questions and couldn't check to see if they were answered. Sorry people I ghosted!

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (6 children)

    What discussions happen on discord? I'm late 20s and play video games regularly and I have never used it. Thought it was where people streamed themselves playing video games or selling bathwater or whatever. Back in the day my home boys and I used to chat on teamspeak while gaming, but who has time for that shit anymore? My gaming is almost all single player or with the wifey 3 feet to my left lol.

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  • [–] 17 points 9 months ago* (1 child)

    What discussions happen on discord?

    You ever have an issue with anything and you find the answer on some random reddit discussion that ends up in your search results when you're looking around?

    Discord isn't really like the older methods of chatting, where people used platforms to chat for the sake of chatting. Entire communities from forums decided to just upend everything and move into discord. Niche software and other files are often shared among discord communities, or assistance for said files and programs is offered only through specific discord communities.

    The platform is still better than anything we had back in the day, it's just that for some reason people have decided that everything needs to be stored in there.

    Anyway, I don't see much changing. People will probably attempt to take this culture onto whatever new platform they move onto.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago

    Man I miss when we had real forums. I used to go on nasioc for Subaru info now everybody is on FB pages. I have not yet found a need for downloading discord but I'm sure I'm bound to run into it eventually...

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    The cybersecurity certification companies use discord for support exclusively, and no you can't use a different company because they are the ones the market recognizes. Offsec, Altered Security, for example.

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    A ton of game companies (especially indies) have moved bug reports and patch notes over to discord. Suggesting something on the steam forums often gets you redirected to their discord server. And it's not just gaming companies. I've got several pieces of software that the easiest way to find out about betas and updates are to use their discord server. It feels fairly unavoidable if you want to stay informed.

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  • [–] 184 points 9 months ago (31 children)

    None of the companies pulling this shit are offering a good enough product to be worth it.

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  • [+] -6 points 9 months ago (8 children)

    Minecraft, though....

    And no, VoxelLibre is not a good replacement. They need to fix their UI first so it doesn't look like a 2004 app

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  • [–] 25 points 9 months ago* (4 children)

    Minecraft Java is (now) a source available (I dont know if thats the right term, but new java edition versions are now completely deobfuscated.) game where anyone can either play offline or spin up their own server to play multiplayer, even with no connection to mojang's servers. I dont think its a big concern. There's already a mod for Java to just remove the age verification.

    Also, there isnt really an alternative for a game. There are only other similiar in genre games.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    I just bought keys for my tiny kids and hosted a world for us. It was no problem except for the Microsoft part I Hated that part but once set up now it's no problem

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (2 children)

    I've had some difficulty with the parental controls preventing my kid from joining my server on the same network. Microsoft's parental controls are so overly granular yet incredibly unclear in the specifics, there isn't feature parity between the mobile app and the web interface forcing one to download their shitty app to toggle certain settings, and it seems like even their documentation authors and support are unclear on how to set it up exactly

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    U can pirate Minecraft in this case just easy I think it justifies

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  • [+] -57 points 9 months ago (21 children)

    People love sharing porn in discord tho. That’s why this is happening.

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  • [–] 122 points 9 months ago (14 children)

    No. That's the excuse for why it's happening.

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  • [+] -7 points 9 months ago (13 children)

    Ok, let’s say it is. They just want to invade our privacy. Now set that aside.

    On a separate topic: What’s an alternative solution for the “there’s porn on the playground” problem that discord has? They are participants in it, they are facilitators. They shouldn’t be immune. Giving platforms a pass on things like this is pernicious. Giving platforms a pass is why Elon Musk thinks he can get away with CSAM generators.

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  • [–] [B] 33 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    I'm sorry are we putting aside biometric infomation being aggregated across multiple platforms and assigned to browsing habits so that governments know exactly where you're browsing at any single moment?

    Are we just putting that aside?????

    If discord can't handle it don't blame me. I mean what even is this point???

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 child)

    I’m not putting it aside to dismiss the idea that it’s bad. I was doing so just for the sake of conversation. You’re really overreacting to conversation.

    This age verification stuff is an invasion of privacy, and we should have a better answer to the claims that it is the only way to put in protection on the platform side. “Parents” is not the answer to the platform’s responsibility here as a facilitator who profits from facilitating.

    Age verification systems are invasive and harm privacy AND it’s weird that we think platforms should be all ages with no serious/effective barriers. It’s weird that we just act like there is no solution, and bemoan parents.

    I was quite clear about switching the topic focus.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    Are platforms responsible for the content their users post? No. Rules for unusual situations (CSAM, terrorism, copyright, etc) have been established for probably decades by this point.

    An online chat/message board is not comparable to an image generator because the company is not creating potentially harmful content.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago*

    I think it has become increasingly clear that letting platforms off the hook has been really bad for society across the world across many dimensions. We need something in the middle of zero responsibility and full responsibility.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (2 children)

    These are actually separate issues. TPB isn't legally responsible for theft if someone leaks an unreleased song. But, the publishing company can sue them for damages related to lost income based on TPB's distribution of content.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    But, the publishing company can sue them for damages related to lost income based on TPB’s distribution of content.

    Wasn't the argument supposed to be that because they only link to torrents but don't host the content that the torrents link to themselves they're not a disributor just a link aggregator?

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  • [+] 2 points 9 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    Any kind of required age verification has significant privacy and security implications. Honestly I think the best approach is the pinky promise we've generally had until now, where by default the platform will not display explicit content until the user actively consents and asserts that they are of legal age.

    Why exactly do we need to be verifying age? Any kind of legal/government documents and agreements are already covered by purjory laws, physical deliveries and purchases are already handled by photo ID checks, and porn is of course harmful to teens/preteens but they've always been finding ways to access porn even before the home computer era (and honestly this would be better handled through education by schools and parents than forceful legislation)

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  • [–] 15 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    Why doesn't twitter have to do this?

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  • [–] 34 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (4 children)

    Because Elon Musk loves mixing kids and porn.

    Edit: it’s so fucking stupid and contradictory that this comment has upvotes and my other comments in this thread don’t.

    They all say the same thing. Mixing kids and porn is weird. Discord mixes kids and porn too. Elon just enjoys it.

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  • [–] 321 points 9 months ago (9 children)

    Badalich also says after the October data breach, Discord “immediately stopped doing any sort of age verification flows with that vendor” and is now using a different third-party vendor.

    Oh thanks, it's fixed

    The ID is immediately deleted. We do not keep any information around like your name, the city that you live in, if you used a birth certificate or something else, any of that information.

    Suure

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  • [–] 183 points 9 months ago (7 children)

    Oh yeah it’s totally deleted from that one server! Of course all information is kept for “quality and training purposes” and to hand over to palantir and whoever is willing to pay.

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  • [–] 76 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Now what sort of unethical corporate greed machine would do that?

    . . . All of them?

    Oh. Oh dear.

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  • [–] 17 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    And for advertising so that they can bucket you accordingly.

    Gotta juice the B2B spigot for the upcoming IPO

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  • [–] 10 points 9 months ago

    Of course, but they also derive demographic information from all the texts, links, communities you interact with.

    Now they'll have verifiable racial characteristics to target you with customized ads that look like you. It's definitely more effective.

    It's a horrible company that preys on youth.

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  • [–] 9 points 9 months ago*

    Well, you need to understand, Palantir needs a library for their facial recognition software. What if those young people refused to take advantage of the smartphone biometrics? Don't they know it is for their security??? /s

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  • [–] 65 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Fuck discord. Hope some people leave over this.

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