Discord is making a huge change that will enact age restrictions for all accounts until users verify their age with ID or face scans.
  • Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    65·
    2 days ago

    If the pushback on social media doesn’t get Discord to drop these plans, then I’ll just have to delete the app.

    Not caving to another app asking for Personally Identifiable Information (PII) only for this same data to be leaked months to years later.

    Society will do everything to protect children aside from making better parents.

    • WraithGear@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      already making plans with my battle group t move to team speak 6, which is only an option because they now have screen sharing

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          2 days ago

          Or just get bought out. Discord was supposed to be the answer to Twitch getting gobbled up. Then Microsoft gobbled Discord.

          Does anyone seriously believe there’s an indie third party social media site immune to a multi-million (possibly even billion) dollar buyout offer? One that won’t go the way of TikTok and be legislatively forced into sale?

          • thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            1·
            23 hours ago

            Does anyone seriously believe there’s an indie third party social media site immune to a multi-million (possibly even billion) dollar buyout offer? One that won’t go the way of TikTok and be legislatively forced into sale?

            federated platforms

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              22 hours ago

              Federation is easy. BlueSky is federated, ffs. You think Jack Dorsey would be shy about selling his Twitter knock-off a second time?

              • thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                1·
                22 hours ago

                Bluesky is poorly federated

                Lemmy is excellently federated:

                • Its users are split across many instances with no majority
                • Lemmy, PieFed, and other instance software exists, preventing anyone from seizing control of the network software
          • WraithGear@lemmy.worldEnglish
            4·
            2 days ago

            i mean… i will pay the license for it, AND i have to self host it, so they have a monetary scheme that will delay the need for enshitification. but it’s 5$ or something, and reportedly has better audio quality, faster transfer rates, and lower overhead then discord. and because i am hosting it, i will have complete control over it and its white list

  • Cris16228@lemmy.todayEnglish
    58·
    2 days ago

    Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t they got a massive leak for gov IDs last year? And they still pushing this bs?! Hello?

  • mickus@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    1 day ago

    I had just joined a discord run by the devsfor a nsfw game. I do wonder what they’ll do? They haven’t made any announcements as of yet but many in the chat are of course unwilling to hand over their id

  • Aielman15@lemmy.worldEnglish
    262·
    3 days ago

    Let’s protect the children by scanning everyone’s face and ID and uploading them to a server that’ll get hacked five years from now.

  • cheesybuddha@lemmy.worldEnglish
    115·
    3 days ago

    I’m actually pretty happy that Discord is killing itself. Far too many people use it as an official platform for stuff like help forums.

    Maybe lets go back to basic message boards that are actually searchable, etc.

    • nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.caEnglish
      14·
      3 days ago

      Self-hosted options like Mumble also exist.

      Self-hosted is a pain to get started with but as everything enshittifies if will only get more important.

      • dev_null@lemmy.mlEnglish
        14·
        3 days ago

        As someone who doesn’t use the voice chat feature of Discord, I am always confused when people suggest things like Mumble as an alternative.

    • I_Jedi@lemmy.todayEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      Well there is that one nsfw forum that is VERY active. Said forum also provides a list of file hosters that have escaped enshittification.

      Those guys pirate the shit out of Japanese games but official nsfw game developers sometimes go there to advertise.

  • excral@feddit.orgEnglish
    38·
    2 days ago

    My discord account is about 10 years old. Do they assume I created it as a 6 year old? Account age alone should be enough to verify I’m an adult with reasonable certainty.

    • ameancow@lemmy.worldEnglish
      14·
      2 days ago

      They will have some kind of nebulously described “thing” that will monitor your browsing and chatting habits on discord and use that to decide your “implicit age” and I wish any of that was a joke or rumor.

      They won’t just ask for your face and ID, they are also admitting that AI or something is going to be literally watching you at all times to “determine your age.”

      Tell me again how we’re protecting kids? Where them Epstein prosecutions at? We save any kids yet? How about now?

    • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      2 days ago

      Legally, they can’t be sure you didn’t sell the account, even if the email address is the same.

      Not defending the policy here, it’s bullshit. But I’m simply pointing out that they have excuses to beat any logic you throw at them. Logic has nothing to do with it, so it can’t be beaten by logic either.

      • Anas@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        2 days ago

        Selling accounts is against the TOS, surely they can’t be liable if that’s the case.

    • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
      7·
      2 days ago

      Naw, they assume they can tie all your conversations to some nexus realid and sell all your groups, likes, and dislikes for cash.

    • python@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      2 days ago

      Well no, what if you have a Benjamin Button situation going on and will be too young to use Discord in a year or two?They gotta cover all their bases.

  • Pika@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    195·
    3 days ago

    For ID scans, Discord says that documents “are deleted quickly.”

    Just a few months ago they had a data leak which proved that they were indeed /not/ deleting documents and ID’s like they had been claiming.

    Granted in that case it was mostly countries that force keeping that data but, I’m sick of companies lying and saying “lol yea we defo delete the data after”

    • thermal_shock@lemmy.worldEnglish
      50·
      3 days ago

      I won’t even give hard drives when recycling a computer, I pull and smash myself. Last set of old drives I cut in half with bolt cutters.

      • moonpiedumplings@programming.devEnglish
        7·
        3 days ago

        This is not truly foolproof. Data can still be recovered from the spinning metal platter since it can theoretically be removed and put into a recovery device, even in a broken state.

        Im addition to that, hard drives/ssd’s sometimes have small flash memory chips, from which data can sometimes be recovered.

        If you want it to actually be unrecoverable then you have to actually ensure all parts thay store data are truly deleted/wiped, which is more than just the core platter. Or just use encryption and throw away the key, since all data going through the tiny OS on these devices will be encrypted. Or just store them forever in a vault.

        • thermal_shock@lemmy.worldEnglish
          13·
          3 days ago

          Bud, if you put that platter back together after I snipped it, you deserve every bit of data you get off it, 1000%

          • moonpiedumplings@programming.devEnglish
            4·
            2 days ago

            It’s not that hard though. There are companies that offer data recovery as a service. If the value of the data on those drives exceeds the cost of those services then it becomes worth it to fish one of the drives out of the dumpster and take it there.

            • thermal_shock@lemmy.worldEnglish
              4·
              2 days ago

              This is a very specialized job, your avg joe is not going to do it. Also, in the many years I’ve been in IT, I’ve never even seen a video of a platter reconstructed and get data off it.

    • blazeknave@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      My friend is an exec there. After reading this thread bugged him to buy my software that would protect this vulnerability. They confirmed data/file never leaves the user’s device. Sounds pretty safe.

      • Goodeye8@piefed.socialEnglish
        14·
        3 days ago

        You do know that it’s bullshit? Unless they’re incredibly incompetent they’re lying to you. If the data never leaves the client then all the checks are client-side, which means it’s relatively easy (compared to a server side check) to bypass those checks.

        • vithigar@lemmy.caEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          For a while (maybe even still, I haven’t kept up with it) you could unlock paid features with a modded client, so they absolutely have a history of using client-side verification.

        • Orygin@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          Afaik the files exfiltrated were photos that the on device detection could not identify and were uploaded to verify server side. That would mean not all pictures are sent to the backend, and that corroborates why “only” 70k photos were stolen when discord has millions of users verified.
          Of course you have to put your trust in a closed source system so best not to upload, but if true it’s still a far cry from openly lying about it. It’s probably explicitly stated in their ToS that they may upload the file if the verification fails client side.

    • Agrivar@lemmy.worldEnglish
      151·
      3 days ago

      Maybe this bullshit will be the spark needed to move us all off Discord. It’s fine for voice-chat in games, don’t get me wrong, but I HATE how its replaced forums/wikis for so many games/mods/etc. Searching disparate Discord servers is like looking for a nonferrous straw-colored needle in a haystack.

      • Snot FlickermanEnglish
        43·
        3 days ago

        Worse, it also makes it seem like developer support that is provided through Discord needs to be always on/always available since you can be pinged on Discord 24 hours a day. Why would you do that yourself, I don’t know. At least with forums you can choose to respond on your own time frame and people have less recourse to act like you should be around and available. It’s just asking for higher demand from the userbase since you’re chatting with them in real-time, they begin to expect real-time fast responses.

        • cheesybuddha@lemmy.worldEnglish
          7·
          3 days ago

          What’s wrong with good old fashioned data base backed message forums? There are so many implementations available, I’m sure many are FOSS, and I’m sure there’s managed solutions as well. It’s a mature, tested, rock solid reliable technology that has existed pretty much since the inception of the internet, and can be easily incorporated into other tools and workflows - because there is 40+ years of development work with the concept.

          Seriously, why?

          • Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.comEnglish
            11·
            2 days ago

            Forums are great for being forums. Real-time instant messaging, voice chat, video chat, and screen sharing are all a very different use-case. They’re two entirely separate products, and comparing them is apples and oranges. People are looking to replace Discord with Discord-like services, because forums don’t fucking do what Discord does.

            The big problem (and the reason everyone seems to compare the two) is that Discord started eating forums, as companies realized it was easier to create a Discord server instead of creating (and hosting, and maintaining) a support forum. And that’s a perfectly valid complaint. But that doesn’t mean forums are a valid replacement for Discord.

            • Spaniard@lemmy.worldEnglish
              5·
              2 days ago

              He is talking about forums because the main issue with discord is that it’s cut from the rest of the internet so nothing is indexed and a lot of platforms and services use discord like a forum (it isn’t).

              No one wants our conversations indexed, and discord shouldn’t be a forum.

            • cheesybuddha@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              2 days ago

              It is not comparing apples to oranges, there are many companies that use Discord as a direct replacement for help forums or product wikis.

        • iamthetot@piefed.caEnglish
          6·
          3 days ago

          I mean, I share the complaint of Discord having tons of unindexable knowledge locked away in it, but forums are not good replacement for my friend group. So yeah we kinda want a Discord alternative specifically.

    • Tetsuo@jlai.luEnglish
      16·
      3 days ago

      Sure.

      But what are you replacing it with ?

      I tried Mumble and Teamspeak in the past and it’s pretty far from the same level of comfort.

      Don’t take that the wrong way though, I’m all for supporting open alternatives, I’m just saying you have to think about the features of the alternatives too.

      I just saw something about Stoat.chat which seems like a good open source software for that application but a lot of people will have to bear the cost of self hosting these servers.

      I know I will think carefully before slamming the door on discord.

      • teawrecks@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        4·
        3 days ago

        Were you trying Teamspeak 6? The UI is different, but the functionality is on par I believe. Not open source, but at least you can self-host.

        • Fushuan [he/him]English
          3·
          3 days ago

          Have they finally released screen sharing in ts6? I gotta say that the development of that project is pretty comical. Radio silence with the only communication being the community manager shitting on discord every other day while giving no updates on their own product.

          Weird vibes.

          • teawrecks@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            1·
            3 days ago

            I haven’t followed the development communication much, but yes, screen sharing works now. It wasn’t working on wayland like 8mo ago, but I tried again a month ago and it’s now working.

        • Tetsuo@jlai.luEnglish
          3·
          3 days ago

          No. Recently I played a bit using a friends mumble server. And it’s a friend that is already privacy conscious. But these friends are not the norm. They are the exception.

          Interesting to see Teamspeak evolved but still you have to pay to host a server so that’s a huge difference.

          • teawrecks@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            1·
            3 days ago

            I haven’t tried mumble yet.

            You pay for the hosting resources yes, but you can host it anywhere. I’ve been playing around with it using a docker instance in my homelab.

        • Tetsuo@jlai.luEnglish
          16·
          3 days ago

          Well yes, I would say it’s very much an integral part of my social life.

          I spend a lot of time with my gamer friends and it revolves around our discord servers.

          We even have a discord servers dedicated to our role play sessions.

          IMHO Discord is a bit more than just a voice chat app. It’s also rooms with persistant chats. It’s the ability to share media etc.

          Also their noise reduction tech is top notch.

          I knew when I got in that it would be another “Gmail” for me. It’s great but you have to give a bit of your soul to it and I knew it would enshitify eventually.

            • Tetsuo@jlai.luEnglish
              4·
              3 days ago

              For context my country (France) is trying to pass a law that forbids the use of social networks to users younger than 15yo. So I suppose this move from Discord is partly due to that.

              Now that being said I would hope the verification process will have much more scrutiny in Europe than it would in the US.

              I would definitely not be happy about it but if they are not allowed to keep any of the verification data afterwards it could be “acceptable”. But if I have the feeling they keep any data I will actively look into building a Stoat instance and try the even harder task of convincing my friends to switch over.

          • Willoughby@piefed.worldEnglish
            2·
            3 days ago

            I see luck with “combos”

            XMPP + Mumble is a common one. The room is on XMPP, some users are in a mumble server with info in the topic.

            Matrix is buggy and doesn’t scale imo, it isn’t a sustainable alternative. Stoat looks like a great option and there are lots of open instances.

            • who@feddit.orgEnglish
              1·
              22 hours ago

              Matrix is buggy and doesn’t scale imo,

              I don’t know what problems you found, but the biggest bugs I encountered in past years seem to be fixed now, at least on recent clients. (Element X is recent, and I’ve seen praise for FluffyChat.)

              Matrix for text and Mumble for voice works well for me.

      • neidu3@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        3 days ago

        I did start a projects aiming to be a more decentralized/federated discord more akin to how IRC was back in the day. Time to revisit it, it seems.

        • Tetsuo@jlai.luEnglish
          2·
          3 days ago

          A federation based discord would be amazing !

          But still that’s a big challenge as voice chat will be costly to host.

          Also out of curiosity do you aim for something that would connect through the fediverse ?

          • Fushuan [he/him]English
            4·
            3 days ago

            Voice chat isn’t inherently costly to host, usually the server acts as a broker and then people connect P2P. Do you remember jitsi? It was used as an alternative to zoom during covid, it was a webpage like Google meet where you opened a room, and people joined with the link. Actually under the good the first one that joined the room acted as a host so all voice communications never reached jitsi’s servers.

            Jitsi still exists btw, although I understand that a more integrated solution like matrix is preferable. Matrix IS the federated discord-like solution, although last time I read about it it had some issues with scalability and the typical foss Dev drama.

          • neidu3@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            2·
            3 days ago

            Didn’t have much of an aim beyond trying to cook it up from scratch as a personal research project. That includes the protocol, since I’m handling priv/pub keypairs in a creative way to facilitate both encryption and user identity verification.

      • Oni_eyes@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        3 days ago

        I’ll swap to a shared calendar and any other voice chat software. Sure I can’t post on those but that’s why we also have a group chat for the different gaming groups I’m in.