Age verification for all.

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.

  • Mark with a Z@suppo.fiEnglish
    330·
    2 months ago

    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

    • Prove_your_argument@piefed.socialEnglish
      184·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • criss_cross@lemmy.worldEnglish
        18·
        2 months ago

        And for advertising so that they can bucket you accordingly.

        Gotta juice the B2B spigot for the upcoming IPO

        • Prove_your_argument@piefed.socialEnglish
          10·
          2 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.

      • Lucelu2@lemmy.zipEnglish
        9·
        2 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

    • TheLadyAugust@lemmy.worldEnglish
      56·
      2 months ago

      If this was true, then they would have no problem with agreeing to paying us $50 mil each in the event of a data breach, since it could never happen, right?

    • TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      6·
      2 months ago

      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

      • MrKoyun@lemmy.worldEnglish
        26·
        2 months ago

        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.

        • KeenFlame@feddit.nuEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago

          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

          • Trainguyrom@reddthat.comEnglish
            1·
            2 months ago

            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

            • KeenFlame@feddit.nuEnglish
              1·
              2 months ago

              Yeah, its on the web, but very insanely badly ux. Xbox something something… but we are playing five people on the same ip with no issue

              • Trainguyrom@reddthat.comEnglish
                1·
                2 months ago

                Oh yeah I’m sure if I struggled through I’d eventually find the value to toggle, it’s just a royal pain and I don’t wanna!

      • timestatic@feddit.orgEnglish
        15·
        2 months ago

        Vintage Story, soon Hytale bit for bit. Also there are just mods for Minecraft to circumvent chat blocks

    • Virtvirt588@lemmy.worldEnglish
      46·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • jacksilver@lemmy.worldEnglish
        42·
        2 months ago

        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.

            • KeenFlame@feddit.nuEnglish
              2·
              2 months ago

              No, GDPR laws allows me to download all data and also enforcing its deletion without using the app ever again

              • SparroHawc@lemmy.zipEnglish
                1·
                2 months ago

                GDPR laws allow you to download the contents of a Discord server that you have never been on? I thought it only required access to your own data.

          • jacksilver@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            2 months ago

            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.

            • KeenFlame@feddit.nuEnglish
              1·
              2 months ago

              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

              • jacksilver@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                2 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.

      • Digit@lemmy.wtfEnglish
        6·
        2 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.

      • xorollo@leminal.spaceEnglish
        2·
        2 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!

    • innermachine@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • VinnyDaCat@lemmy.worldEnglish
        19·
        2 months ago

        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.

        • innermachine@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          2 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…

      • TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        2 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.

      • xXemokidforeverXx@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        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.

        • innermachine@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          That is pretty unfortunate! Crazy how discord managed to corner the internet like that in a few years.

  • GutterRat42@lemmy.worldEnglish
    113·
    2 months ago

    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

    • ReluctantMuskrat@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      2 months ago

      Same… unique email for each service and the Discord leak a few weeks ago was the most abused one I believe I’ve experienced. So many emails for a huge number of sites claiming I opened support tickets and what-not.

  • Gork@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    111·
    2 months ago

    Time to use generative AI to make a fake picture… Might as well pollute their database if they make these demands.

  • uniquethrowagay@feddit.orgEnglish
    94·
    2 months ago

    The German passport ID card (and I’m sure many others) has a NFC chip in it and you can use it with an open source app to securely prove your identity online. In cases like this, the only information pulled from your ID would be “over 18” or “not over 18”.

    It’s one of the few things my government did right in the digital space. And yet almost nobody in the private sector uses this. I’m tired of being asked to upload a photo of my ID for age verification.

    • ramble81@lemmy.zipEnglish
      41·
      2 months ago

      I really hope they do. When a support forum says “join us on discord” I immediately nope the fuck out. I have never used discord and I don’t plan on it.

      • kboy101222@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        16·
        2 months ago

        Even as a discord user, support forums, wikis, and QAs should not be done in discord. Their search feature is utter ass, and without tabs navigating forums is utter hell

        • Leon@pawb.socialEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          Even their forum-esque feature really sucks. You can’t easily navigate within it, and it’s an endlessly scrolling feed rather than a paginated one, so good luck if you need access to a specific portion of a particularly long thread.

          I’ve been waiting for Discord to die for years now.

        • Spaniard@lemmy.worldEnglish
          8·
          2 months ago

          And it’s obscure, why use a chat like a forum? Why keep knowledge there? It’s not even encrypted so it’s insecure and blinded from the regular internet.

        • Soulg@ani.socialEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago

          Sorry but this is like saying the Internet is too complicated because different forums have different rules

    • MyRobotShitsBolts@lemmy.worldEnglish
      36·
      2 months ago

      More like they are being forced to by Governments who are pushing kid safety as a way to achieve their final goal which is a drivers license to use the Internet.

          • pleaseletmein@lemmy.zipEnglish
            5·
            2 months ago

            Dunno why this is worldwide, then. Why should I have to comply with what some states in the US want when I’m not even in the same country, and my country has none of these age verification laws? Whole world shouldn’t have to give up their privacy just because Tennessee said so.

            • nomy@lemmy.zipEnglish
              11·
              2 months ago

              Because Discord wants your data, any excuse they give is just a rationalization to get it.

            • DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              2·
              2 months ago

              The Heritage Foundation and New World Order want to make sure there is a real life identity tied to discord since it is being looked at as a probable collaboration source for resistance. Every other social platform like Meta already does this and I can see Reddit requiring this next.

              It’s to track the future dissidents once the winter of discontent arrives. It’s why China requires a real life ID sign in for every single site and every single file hosting site there

        • MyRobotShitsBolts@lemmy.worldEnglish
          9·
          2 months ago

          UK, AUS to name a few, but many others are doing this, and its only a matter of time before the US gets in on the action.

          • Telorand@reddthat.comEnglish
            8·
            2 months ago

            The US is busy violating people’s rights and executing civil dissidents. They’ll get to it when they grow bored of terrorizing everyone.

      • redsand@infosec.pubEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        You’re gonna need jitsi too. Simple is more secure but the client is heavier than matrix. You can run a server but shouldnt need to

  • Baaron87@lemmy.worldEnglish
    59·
    2 months ago

    To quote general Grevious:

    “Time to abandon ship”

    There’s plenty of other options out there. Discord has been enshitifying for a while now, so I don’t mind dropping it

      • Nighed@feddit.ukEnglish
        21·
        2 months ago

        I’m going to try self hosting https://stoat.chat/ not sure it has screen sharing yet, but apparently they just re-wrote all their voice/video stuff, so it should be available soon.

          • Nighed@feddit.ukEnglish
            3·
            2 months ago

            I’m in the UK though, so they imply they may (already or in teh future) need to verify my age anyway.

            They don’t seem to have a great out of box experience currently, will require some more poking around.

        • timestatic@feddit.orgEnglish
          5·
          2 months ago

          I like element honestly, it has everything I need. Element call as a recent implementation is nice for that sort of thing. It also supports screen sharing

      • Baaron87@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        For a potential 1:1 Discord alternative? The one that has stood out to me is Guilded. I started looking at alternatives last year when talk about this was starting to float around and forgot about it.

        Here’s a recent article with alternatives that I found in a quick search. Don’t agree with all of them personally, but I’m not the target audience for some of them.

      • Vespair@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        Honestly, what was wrong with Ventrillo for voice and literally any forum software for everything else?

    • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.worldEnglish
      18·
      2 months ago

      The problem is there isn’t plenty of other options.

      Discord is one of those services independent web folk have been after a replacement for for years.

      • Baaron87@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        For an exact 1:1 replacement? Yeah, I do agree about that. If anyone looking for options doesn’t mind making some compromises it opens the doors quite a bit.

        I shared in another reply a link to some alternatives. Guilded seems to be the closest to a 1:1 replacement for now.

        My personal concern is having to repeat this again if the next proprietary platform becomes too big. My friend group has gone through google hangouts (it was a different time lol), the curse client, which became a Twitch product eventually and then Discord.

        I’m at the point where I’m considering going back to web forums and things like teamspeak/ventrillo.

    • dev_null@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      Yeah, except it’s not like you get to choose. If you are on the Discord server for rock climbing in your country, you can leave the community, but you don’t have “other options”.

      It’s not like the question is “what platform do I want to use for X?”. The question is “The X community uses Discord, do I want to be in it or not?” And of course you can choose to not join, but you don’t have an option to choose another app.

      • Baaron87@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        I definitely get what you’re saying on that. Leaving behind communities that you’re a part of, potentially for years or longer, is not appealing.

        The sad reality is that is where each individual person will have to weigh their options and beliefs.

        For me personally, I’m already down to just a few personal communities on Discord and for the one that I run, I will be migrating to either something like Stoat, Matrix or even a good old fashioned web forum. This all stems from not trusting Discord with my personal information, which works for me. Obviously not a one size fits all situation.

        It would be nice to see Discord realize that they’re making a huge mistake and backtrack the decision, but I don’t see that happening.

        Perhaps this will lead to communities migrating to web forums down the road? Only time will tell.

  • nikki@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    57·
    2 months ago

    ill take my leave asap then, 10 years has been a pretty good sample of what capitalism does to a platform

      • stressballs@lemmy.zipEnglish
        15·
        2 months ago

        I’ve been trying so hard to work with Matrix. Then once you get it going everything is dead.

          • stressballs@lemmy.zipEnglish
            1·
            2 months ago

            I know. I totally agree. But holy shit onboarding is terrible with Matrix. If people struggle wrapping their head around Mastodon, this is much worse.

            I found Lemmy to be the easiest onboarding of all the federated networks.

            • wewbull@feddit.ukEnglish
              2·
              2 months ago

              I think I found Discord much more confusing than matrix, personally.

              That said. Discord no longer exists for me. Account deleted today. Nothing of value was lost.

              • stressballs@lemmy.zipEnglish
                1·
                2 months ago

                Literally nothing to miss! All the communities I liked all fell apart and/or swung to the fascist right long ago.

          • I Cast Fist@programming.devEnglish
            1·
            2 months ago

            Wish DeltaChat would work better.

            Or that Jami would properly look for new messages after a user configurable amount of time - sometimes it’ll only do that if you restart the app

      • zarkanian@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        4·
        2 months ago

        Stoat seems pretty good, but it’s still a bit buggy. It kept disconnecting and reconnecting, but I logged out and then back in again and that fixed it.

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    40·
    2 months ago

    Ok, rare to see such an explicit kind of Great Filter / Idiot Test play out at scale, but here we go!

    Anybody who is still using Discord after it requires you to personally directly link your drivers liscense or w/e to it, well, they’re fine with every government apparatus of any kind knowing everything they say and do on Discord.

    Good luck to those glorious morons, truly, good luck.

    You are going to need it.

    Super, duper hope you’re not queer or trans or neurodivergent.

    … you… think the 23 concentration camps currently being built by ICE / FEMA are … only for migrants?

    Brown people?

    Well you trust the current fascist regime a lot more than I do.

      • ATS1312@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        10·
        2 months ago

        First they actually came for the trans people, but the poem author didn’t care to notice because he was a Catholic Priest.

        But ya know. Its like that again.

    • dev_null@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      Here in the UK Discord has been requiring this for a while already. I never did the verification, because I don’t access any NSFW Discord servers anyway. Unless you use Discord for porn (or speak on “stages”, whatever they are), there is no reason to do the verification.

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        Well theres also the near certainty that they’re reading everyones messages with some kind of LLM agent that is their ‘system that runs in the background’ that attempts to auto-determine if you are a kid or not.

        Thats regardless of whether or not you also give them your ID or face.

        And, if you have connected Discord to any other apps? Other apps that you maybe pay for things with? Or you pay for Nitro?

        They know who you are.

        • dev_null@lemmy.mlEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago

          Yeah absolutely, Discord is terrible for privacy either way. What I’m saying is that the verification “requirement” is not actually required for what I would presume the majority of people use Discord for.

          • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            1·
            2 months ago

            I have not used Discord in years, but I guess it would depend on what exactly consitutes NSFW chat or content.

            Like… how much just current modern news around Esptein can be discussed on a non NSFW rated discord community?

            I genuienly don’t know.

  • timestatic@feddit.orgEnglish
    37·
    2 months ago

    Yeah… No how about we just stop using Discord and move to something more decentralized like Matrix

      • quips@slrpnk.netEnglish
        4·
        2 months ago

        I hear this. What could be better? You make an account and if its federated your done. Login, boom.

        • D06M4@lemmy.zipEnglish
          5·
          2 months ago

          Probably the uncertainty of choosing a server and have it either vanish unexpectedly or it’s admins ban your account without prior warning or transparency, which is also pretty common here in the fediverse.

          I always help onboard people choosing one or two longstanding servers they might like. The last time I told someone to just use the matrix.org server to begin (years ago) it had closed registrations two hours earlier. Never again. 😅

              • timestatic@feddit.orgEnglish
                2·
                2 months ago

                I agree that smaller communities might care more about the users, but they often heavily depend on single individuals which is a heavy risk factor long term imo

                • D06M4@lemmy.zipEnglish
                  2·
                  2 months ago

                  It is. We witness it almost every month here in the fediverse. But for the time being, unless more decentralized options like Briar, Simplex and Session become more accessible and reliable, a few federated options are the best we have available even if their server/node/instance admins carry too much power and responsibility over them.

        • gwl [he/him]@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago
          • Oh you want to get on Matrix?

          Download one of these 8 apps that’s only available through a website or F-Droid, 2 haven’t updated in 2 years, no we won’t tell you which.

          • Then go to one of the 20 million homeservers

          no they’re not servers, it just is where your account info lives, and nothing else

          • Then you have to find servers on your own

          there’s no “Explore” mode, there’s 20 websites that list servers, 5 of them are outdated, another 5 only work on a Tuesday, 10 of them only list 100/20,000 public servers

          • okay I’m finally in some servers

          Oh. They’re all quiet as fuck. All of them. What’s the point?

          • timestatic@feddit.orgEnglish
            2·
            2 months ago

            Just use the Element client on desktop and Element X on mobile. Use the Matrix.org homeserver by the matrix foundation if you don’t know any other/better choice for you personally. Bam and you’re in. I actually really value the choice in clients tho. With the decentralized way of Matrix there’s lots of options but just pick the mainstream once for starters

              • timestatic@feddit.orgEnglish
                3·
                2 months ago

                Well its not discord so ofc there’s not as much traffic. And the decentralized listing is just part of the decentralized nature of it. Lemmy also doesn’t have as much traffic as reddit yet here we are

                • gwl [he/him]@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
                  1·
                  2 months ago

                  Lemmy at least has built-in discoverabilty, you can search the entire federation, with ease, all from the search UI

                  Also the sign-up process is much much clearer and faster.

      • timestatic@feddit.orgEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        Because its federated, is also a really nice messaging replacement and is E2EE. If I only want a discord replacement without anything else I’d consider stoat, but really I feel like Matrix just checks so many more boxes. I’ve used Matrix for a long time now. Also since its FOSS anyone can build a client for it and you can make it yours

          • timestatic@feddit.orgEnglish
            1·
            2 months ago

            Yeah ofc Stoat is too, I’m just saying what I like about Matrix. I just personally don’t know of any third party Stoat clients but I also haven’t looked into it since I’m accustomed to Matrix. I checked their page but its pretty bare bones on information

            • scala@lemmy.mlEnglish
              2·
              2 months ago

              Right that’s why I’m curious, both seem like viable options. Thanks mate.