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.
Discord probably did the math and are willing to take a hit to the user counts (much like reddit did when they closed the apis), as the vast majority will stay and keep “threatening” to leave. There’s at least the hope that the ones who quit now will establish communities elsewhere, on a (hopefully) better server platform.
Enshittification is not single step. It’s more a “boiling a frog”-kinda process.
It probably also says something of the ones that stay: they can keep getting further exploited. And these are the ones they want.
Yep. It’s why trumpers are such a lucrative scam target. It’s a self selected group of easily deceived victims.
I agree, but, I see some parallels, a Reddit competitor that solved some of those issues, was hardly functional when they killed APIs. There was no competition. Look at us now baby! Still not competition, but, at least there’s an alternative.
I hope I can say the same about discord in a bit. There’s really nowhere for anyone to go, without losing a lot of features. Well, hopefully, talented people are going to migrate to these platforms to bring an alternative to discord.
Discord probably did the math and are willing to take a hit to the user counts
I very much doubt whoever thought about doing the math did so, and if they did, that said math made it out of their department. This kind of decision is much more likely to have been a C-suite darling that no one dared speak against or the equivalent thereof.
I’m saying thoughtful organizational decisions are less common than we’d like.
Account deleted. Fuck em. Was already pissed with their restrictions with nitro.
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
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.
So happy. Discord sucks.
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.
I agree, convenience wins in this case, this is why twitter is still “bulletproof”.
Don’t threat
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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.
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?
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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.
Do it, pussies. I remember when sites would actually topple when they made poor decisions.
Someone on Reddit claims reddit will do the same soon. I wonder if it’s govt pressure.
I assume it’s UK/EU’s expanding social media laws that are driving this, in addition to Discord’s imminent Initial Public Offering coming in March. They’re trying to clean house to show how profitable they can be, the same way Reddit created their walled garden by restricting third-party connections prior to their IPO.
It’s bog-standard enshittification to please the shareholders.
Lots of governments want it. But its no excuse doing it in a stupid way. For example EU IDs should have a function that just verifies someone is over 18 without any other info being send. At least the German one does. But its not being used.
potentially. it’s going to become more of the norm as more nations enforce stuff like this to “protect the kids” coughget your id and know what you’re doing onlinecough
Also keep in mind Discord is just about to launch their IPO in March so the timing lines up.
I agree, except that it’s the data broker corporations that are really behind this.
The EU is going to pass a law to enforce this, discord is just getting ahead of the imposition. That’s why France and Spain have been on the news regarding social network regulation for under 16.
So when you have to setup a system for 27 countries plus some members of the eurosphere you just do it for everyone and be done with it.
sure they’re leaving but…where? what’s a viable alternative?
I mean if I had it my way everyone would just go back to IRC, I still use IRC. it’s great, nothings changed, it’s perfect. combine that with like mumble or teamspeak and you’re good to go.
I checked out Stoat lastnight and it’s very slow. took well over an hour to get a verification email (I assume because many others were signing up) and the current server offerings are minimal. Also a good majority of the themes listed simply don’t work. it’s growing and I’d say it’s the best alternative right now but it’s not there yet and I worry it or the various instances of it could hold up if there was a massive Discord exodus.
Matrix is a no and xmpp ain’t much better.
Last time I tried to play around with Stoat, I never even got a verification email, so taking an hour sounds like progress I guess? I’ll have to try again.
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.)
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.
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.
Exodus to another discord-clone. Great.
We need more than a discord clone. We need something that is structurally capable of avoiding these kind of top-down attacks. We need something decentralized. I think something using the matrix protocol would be a good fit
Matrix is good but not as simple as discord. Lots of users aren’t going to like it.
Yeah. In my experience it’s more complicated than Discord but not as complicated as the fediverse. But either way, even if we can use this as an opportunity to boost its popularity among techy people then that would be a win in my books. Hopefully one day someone will come along and make a front end for Mstrix thats as frictionless to use as Discord
why is nobody talking about teamspeak 6? Is it bad?
Already looking into alternatives. My friends and I are going to switch asap. They aren’t that tech savvy, so it’s pretty much up to me to find a good alternative and teach them how to use it. I don’t mind tho lol
Please, try Stoat.
That’s the one I’m leaning towards
Fluxer is good tol.
Does Stoat have voice chat?
It does, though screen share and web cameras are labeled as “coming soon” for now
