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
    2411·
    20 days 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
      121·
      20 days 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.

      • Optional@lemmy.worldEnglish
        471·
        20 days ago

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

        . . . All of them?

        Oh. Oh dear.

      • criss_cross@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        20 days 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
          4·
          20 days 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
        2·
        20 days 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
      38·
      20 days 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
      44·
      20 days 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

      • timestatic@feddit.orgEnglish
        8·
        20 days ago

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

      • MrKoyun@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        20 days 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.

        • paraphrand@lemmy.worldEnglish
          57·
          20 days ago

          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.

          • spring_cedar_dust@reddthat.comEnglish
            15·
            20 days ago

            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???

          • Bakkoda@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            20 days ago

            Boycott the platform. No one’s gonna rescue the end user anymore. There’s no more oversight. Remove yourself from the ecosystem and encourage healthier alternatives.

      • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zipEnglish
        341·
        20 days ago

        Parents should try parenting for once instead of relying on the government to (use them as a thinly veiled excuse to) implement draconian monitoring on their populace.

        • Spaniard@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          20 days ago

          Why do that when government and corporations can do it for them? It’s going to be their kids / property anyway.

        • paraphrand@lemmy.worldEnglish
          68·
          20 days ago

          Right, it’s weird that parents let kids play on platforms that have porn on them. Something needs to be done, maybe we should go after the parents instead.

          Or is the answer just saying parents should do something and then do nothing? We need a clever solution that does not involve sharing proof of identity… any ideas? Banning adult content completely would work too.

  • Gork@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    88·
    20 days ago

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

    • Th3D3k0y@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      20 days ago

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

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

        • hurn@lemmy.zipEnglish
          4·
          20 days ago

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

          • paequ2@lemmy.todayEnglish
            4·
            20 days 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.

        • Zetta@mander.xyzEnglish
          4·
          20 days ago

          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

            • Zetta@mander.xyzEnglish
              4·
              20 days ago

              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

              • Th3D3k0y@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                20 days ago

                Ah, I could see that being confusing.

                I will say compared to discord the voice channels sound rough and I’m not sure I remember that many options to customize the experience

          • mfed1122@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            2·
            20 days 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.

        • MrKoyun@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          20 days ago

          Wow! I had checked these guys out a long while ago. It seems they’ve gotten a fresh coat of paint. I should revisit it. Maybe convince my friends to switch…

  • melfie@lemy.lolEnglish
    65·
    20 days ago

    Tired of so many discussions being locked away in Discord, so hopefully they ramp this up and require identification to do anything so everyone will move to a more open platform.

    • Virtvirt588@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      20 days 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
        6·
        20 days 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.

      • Digit@lemmy.wtfEnglish
        1·
        20 days 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.

    • innermachine@lemmy.worldEnglish
      41·
      20 days 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
        101·
        20 days 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.

    • MyRobotShitsBolts@lemmy.worldEnglish
      301·
      20 days 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
            21·
            20 days 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
              2·
              20 days ago

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

          • Telorand@reddthat.comEnglish
            6·
            20 days 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.

    • ramble81@lemmy.zipEnglish
      26·
      20 days 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.

        • Spaniard@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          20 days 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.

      • kboy101222@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        61·
        20 days 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

  • Baaron87@lemmy.worldEnglish
    49·
    20 days 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
        14·
        20 days 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
            2·
            20 days 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
          2·
          20 days 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
        2·
        20 days 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.

    • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.worldEnglish
      14·
      20 days 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
        1·
        20 days 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
      1·
      18 days 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.

  • nikki@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    45·
    20 days ago

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

    • Spaniard@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      20 days ago

      This is coming from socialdemocrat countries like Spain, State interventionism at its finest.

    • Auth@lemmy.worldEnglish
      111·
      20 days ago

      how is a government requirement for age verification forcing a company to implement a non profitable change the fault of capitalism? I guess the 10 years have been a good sample of what capitalism does to a platform. Discord saw a problem and used VC capital to build one of the most well engineered platforms on the market with hundreds of millions of free users and many happy to pay to support it.

      • Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        5·
        20 days ago

        If you don’t think this is all a pretense to collect more data and sell it… All the way up to the govt enforcing these rules lmao

        • Auth@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          20 days ago

          wow this is just what they need to know who you are… the final piece of the puzzle. You dont think discord can accurately identify most of its users already. They have email, IP, device, port scans of the network, all the people they interact with, contact list scans, social media and online account linking. This only affects a small subset of users and doesnt even go to discord as its done through a 3rd party service.

          • Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            2·
            20 days ago

            “They already have your data bro, it’s fine just let them scan your face too bro, it’s all a third party really bro trust them.”

      • nikki@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        4·
        20 days ago

        the ID isn’t a direct cause. i just mention capitalism because most of the rest of the cause for me leaving is the enshittification. this is just the straw that broke the camels back like how reddit killing the app api is what pushed me off that platform

        • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          20 days ago

          It absolutely is a direct cause.

          These ID verification companies have been lobbying governments to mandate this so they can earn $$$$

          • Auth@lemmy.worldEnglish
            11·
            20 days ago

            Thats true but ID companies are not lobbying or making changes on a scale that matters. This change isnt going through because an id company lobbied the government. Its actually a popular position with the constituents of the democracy. Its supported by many different interest groups for various reasons good and bad. To simplify it down to “id companies lobbying the government to earn money” is in my opinion intentionally misleading.

      • jaybone@lemmy.zipEnglish
        3·
        20 days ago

        You could argue that in a general sense government regulation goes against unfettered capitalism. Though in this age where personal information is a commodity, some might say this is being used as a pretense.

        • Auth@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          20 days ago

          I think the argument that this is done to collect more personal info is stupid.

      • Red_October@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        20 days ago

        Did you miss the part where the change is global? It also applies where the government hasn’t required it.

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    32·
    20 days 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.

  • Xirup@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    261·
    20 days ago

    Some friends invited me to play Minecraft and talk through this shit app called Discord, in the first time I don’t like it, but now is definitely not an option. Which others apps do you recommend for this?

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      20 days ago

      SonoBus for voice chat.

      It’s peer to peer, just works on everything, sounds better than Discord, and most importantly, is 100X less annoying because latency is so low.

      I think it was designed for remote music collaboration, hence it feels like you’re talking to your friend in the room. No compression if you don’t want it, no awkward interruption of pauses from the audio delay.

      Oh, and it’s free, and has no chat or emojis or anything.

    • AArun@programming.devEnglish
      8·
      20 days ago

      I’ve been using https://meet.jit.si/ for dnd with friends. It’s been great. At least one person has to hand over some identity info if using the public server but it is self hostable so you can bypass that entirely if wanted.

    • yeehaw@lemmy.caEnglish
      95·
      20 days ago

      Teamspeak, steam chat, done other app like telegram. You can use so many different apps these days

      • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        42·
        20 days ago

        Definitely not Telegram. Please stop suggesting people use this fucking disgrace of an application.

        Like, even with face scanning, I’d still probably suggest Discord over Telegram.

        The owners of Discord are untrustworthy but the owners of Telegram are whole ten levels below untrustworthy.

        • Vitaly@feddit.ukEnglish
          3·
          20 days ago

          I agree, do not trust russian based software because they definitely install backdoors.

          • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            8·
            20 days ago

            I mean, so do US companies, but it’s moreso that kind of misdirection about E2EE that Telegram uses. Unlike something like Matrix/Element which goes out of it’s way to explain E2EE, make sure it’s default on in every conversation, including group conversations, Telegram isn’t clear that it’s E2EE is opt-in and isn’t available in groups. Also, their encryption is home-rolled and to my knowledge has never been audited. Plus the generally skeevy credentials of the owner/creator make it untrustworthy.

            Also, it seems to be a haven for scammers, which also puts it in the “don’t suggest this to people” basket.

  • timestatic@feddit.orgEnglish
    24·
    20 days ago

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

  • Suavevillain@lemmy.worldEnglish
    18·
    20 days ago

    I trust the scammers who call me daily with my ID more than a Discord third party vendor. They just wanted a google play card. Discord wants personal info. This age of censorship is terrible. If it was about about protecting kids just get parents to use modern parental block controls.