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.

  • TerdFerguson@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    4 months ago

    Ok. Well I will delete my account then.

    This kind of enshittification is intolerable. The reason this exists is solely to tie your online behaviour to your real life identity.

    “They” want to control people’s conversations in the digital third spaces. And to find ways to punish you for the thoughts they disapprove of. Discord is happy to sell that data to whomever is buying it.

    Oh well. More fediverse, please!

  • CumbrianCucumber@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    4 months ago

    Direct messages and servers that are not age-restricted will continue to function normally

    So in other words, if you only use Discord as a messaging app and for small servers between friends, this won’t affect you?

    I honestly have no idea why Discord started trying to push itself as some normal social media like Facebook, and why people started treating it as such. Discord was a glorified telephone line with gifs and web links. I don’t need some manufactured sense of “community” among thousands of people who happen to watch the same YouTuber as me.

  • GutterRat42@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    4 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

  • 58008@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    4 months ago

    They’re banking on severe vendor lock-in preventing people from moving on. So many communities are solely on Discord now, it’s insane.

    Would something like Stoat (previously known as Revolt) eventually have the same requirements?

  • Mark with a Z@suppo.fiEnglish
    1·
    4 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
      1·
      4 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.

  • uniquethrowagay@feddit.orgEnglish
    1·
    4 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.

  • wuffah@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    Discord is not needed. Quit. Kill it. Watch them BEG to get us back, then say no.

    • Kamikaze Rusher@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      I’m all for jumping ship on the grounds of this being an overreach. However there just aren’t any good alternatives to Discord which would entice the general public from following suit.

      Discord has the advantage of being a very frictionless user experience. You make one account and can join whatever servers you want thanks to its centralized design. It has file sharing, gif and video support, voice channels, screen sharing, API support with websocket events, and a hefty amount of bots to ease management.

      There are other solutions but they don’t cover the same amount of features. Some focus on voice, some focus on chat, and some try to do as much but the experience isn’t quite robust. It’ll be like Reddit users and the API fiasco that people thought would be its downfall: the activists will leave but the general community won’t care enough, or aren’t tech-savvy enough, to be bothered.

      • Batman@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        I’m currently deploying matrix on my home server. would definitely recommend everyone able to, look into deploying it. it seems doable if you go the kubernetes helm chart route.

        I got it working with docker but video always seemed a little hokey as I didn’t understand turn servers and the various protocols.

        Each server hosts about 100 people from the docs and it handles federation with all of the features you mentioned. Honestly it seems better than discord if you put some time in.

        some steps I took to make it easier on myself:

        • used pangolin on vps machine
        • ran their cart in my cluster
        • can expose matrix endpoints via a UI
  • Baaron87@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    4 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

    • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 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
        0·
        4 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.

    • innermachine@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 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.

      • xXemokidforeverXx@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        4 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.

  • baitu@jlai.luEnglish
    01·
    4 months ago

    Each day that pass we get closer from Chinese internet