This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
This is the part, young-but-becoming-wise friends, where the company doesn't give a shit about you and starts to prey on children, who, for a while, become very lucrative.
The chances of discord pushing ahead anyway, even with this very public outcry, is still 50/50.
I figure losing half their users while making money on their new surveillance scheme might be more profitable. Than have 100% of their user continue to use the app as is.
And after they lose 5% of their addicted users, all they have to do is continue to grow 5%. Oh no!
Im currently at the point where I have such a presence on Matrix that I could genuinely delete my discord account
I tried to get into it but with it being presented as IRC but "fun" on their website, I couldn't really understand why so many nearly empty projects sites keep telling me to try their server for more (or any, really) information... Then I did try to accept an invite, but why the fuck to I need to create an account to know if I want to create an account to begin with? So now, anything promoting Discord as the main method of getting information simply set off my scam alert.
you need to create an account for everything so that complaint rings hollow. Discord doesnt even have a high barrier as an account can be created in a few seconds and you can use it in the web.
I didn't have to in order to figure out if Lemmy was something I wanted to use. Neither for IRC. That makes Discord vastly inferior to both.
your internet usage must be very limited.
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"
I agree, convenience wins in this case, this is why twitter is still "bulletproof".
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.
The obvious solution here is for DEVICE manufacturers to add verification steps in the OS for parents to configure.
How about hell fucking no you idiot
Obvious
How is this not worse?
Rather than a hypothetical advertising ID assigned at the browser. We now have a physical government ID tied to every single device Serial ID accessible by anyone who claims they need age verification (read: everyone).
What he wants are just OS level parental controls. If enabled the OS tells apps that the user is underage. Like the only info is:
underage: true/false
Yea. Basically this.
Don't we already have this?
Google Family Link, Apple Screen Time
I have personally set it up. Works great for Google and Apple. The Amazon equivalent is shite - literally had to generate e-waste to get better control.
Hey I have a better idea
How about they fuck off and talk to internet router hardware companies to make decent software UIs, with defaults that make sheep masses actually use them to 'protect the children' client side where it actually works
Oh because its not actually about that and the powers that be don't actually give a rats about protecting children and this whole protect the children conversation is a red herring to allow them to push their real goals which include but are not limited to mass censorship of people who disagree with and resist their opinions, actions, and agendas
The real trick is we need the governments to back down and just make sure we have the power to allow/deny our kids access.
I mean uploading your government ID or having to share your biometric data via video is also just as terrible. There is no guarantee that these companies will not fuck it up sell your data get hacked etc. Instead of an ID number linked to you and they now have a copy of your identity.
Right and attaching it to your phone just means you click. "Send Daved Video" instead of "Record".
They are still going to have it for their own records
Ok, honestly with some caveats, this might have legs.
What most of us want: to use our services anonymously and privately
What some of us want: to keep youtube/discord/roblox from enabling pedofarms. yes i get the obligatory people should just raise their kids
What companies say they want: to keep kids safe
What companies really want: to appease some users and farm as much data about someone as they can and to comply with the growing trend of places that require age verification.
So, what if they provide an offline model for age verification? download the model, phone in airplane mode. verify yourself, get a digitally signed certificate, expunge the app so shove that verifiable signature as proof that you're an adult.
From the corporate standpoint, It's no different than signing into their account and giving them your face. we keep our privacy, they can fuck off about it.
How would that work on PCs?
Bios.
I could just be me being a doomer, but I doubt any significant exodus will happen. People really about to drop discord? Right…
There's no way in hell I'd upload my ID. Especially since discord recently had a data breach.
Though, threatening to delete (and maybe actually doing so) might make them reconsider.
Yeah I think these articles are trying to push people to leave discord and not actually reporting a real trend. Even on lemmy where people are far more likely to be halfway out the door or wanting to leave discord its still a low amount saying they left.
Across the 20 servers im in i've seen 0 movement. People arent even talking about it.
I mentioned dropping discord in my gaming group chat. Five non political normies and myself. Literally nobody is fighting to stay on discord. We'll try a few alternatives and even if I've gotta fork over a few bucks a month, I will. Any site that requires id is dead to me.
I'm with you.
Considering that age verification will only be mandatory to browse NSFW content, and that without it you can still join servers and keep calling during gameplay as per usual, my bet is that exodus won't happen. There is going to be part of people who will verify, and the unverified half either gonna leave or keep using discord just without NSFW.
Reddit exodus, unfortunately, barely had any impact. Bluesky had a good influx of new users, but it didnt kill xitter. Doubt that there anything going to happen with discord.
That's like when people say that this time we won't pre-order games anymore, and the new call of duty is the steam bestseller a month before release.
Maybe people will finally realize discord isn't the place for your projects documentation to exist
If its an age-restricted project, sure.
Threaten? Bro as soon as the 2 people I care about get on Root I'm out.
Root? What's that from what I've heard a lot of people are moving to stoat.
I made a Root account and run it on NixOS through their appimage. I'm waiting on my friend to get it so I can test the voicechat and screen share but so far it's functional and has 2 awesome features that Discord doesn't have. Reply to more than 1 comment with only 1 of your messages. Tabs on the top similar to a browser, it's just more natural for me than the sidebar shit.
In the mean time I'm still probably gonna host a Matrix server with a VPS incase Root ever decides to pull a Discord.
Plus I just don't like the name "Stoat." xD "Get on Stoat bro" Sounds weird.
Real question, what stops Root from having the same problems as Discord?
For now they're really incentivized to not be douchebags to grow their company, at least for the a year or two imo. Which is plenty of time for people like us to figure out how to host our own shit so we don't have to decide whether we want convenience or privacy/security.
But I'm still hopeful for Root just like I'm hopeful for a company like Steam continues to stay decent.
Plus I just don't like the name "Stoat." xD "Get on Stoat bro" Sounds weird.
This is actually the main reason I believe most of these discord alternatives have zero chance at becoming mainstream. Name is 75% of the success. Just think about it.
