"Content filtering" is just corporate jargon for subjective censorship, dynamically and discriminately restricting access to knowledge. I abhor all censorship.
this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
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I refuse to verify my age with a face scan or government ID for an online account/profile.. It's too easy to imagine how fucked up that will go.
The more I delete profiles to platforms with ~~unwanted~~ disturbing features the more recluse I become. It must look to acquaintances that I don't care to speak but what can I say? I cannot imagine convincing computer-literate friends to switch to something as they will have the same problem.
Do I need to retire my gaming server before I'm locked out of controlling it?
I hope that discourages open source projects and similar communities from using discord as forum / user support.
Yep, hate when I want to follow some project and they link you to X, Reddit and Discord lol
Need support? Contract us on @SupportThatNeverReplies on Shitter (the nazi-everything app)!
I can say as a member of the PCSX2 project that I understand why we and other FOSS emulators use it as official support – but nevertheless wish that we didn't. We've discussed practicalities before, and the project doesn't stay there just from inertia or because of personal preference; there are major practical reasons to prefer it over a forum (which we have), a wiki (which we have), or Matrix.
I'd be willing to endure the pain points and to scale back support in order to be off of that shithole, but I also get that's a fringe minority sentiment shared by only a couple others. All of us would be tech-literate enough to use a client like Signal or Element for intra-project discussion, but very few people would come to Matrix for support (nor would we probably want them to due to the much greater moderation burden per end user), and the chatroom model – to most of us – is much easier for support than a forum. The only reason I'm still begrudgingly on Discord is for PCSX2.
I share your hope, but I seriously doubt this will come even close to dislodging us. Smaller projects, perhaps.
Damn it. I did not come here for a reasonable and valid explanation.
ಠ_ಠ
Begrudgingly puts away pitchfork
There are layers to this.
Persistent chat rooms are here to stay.
As a user? I dislike this. I am sure you do too.
As a developer who gives a shit about the users? The number of times I have had to spend sometimes upwards of a dozen back and forth emails trying to explain to someone that I am not lying to them and the answer they found on the forums are for a bug that was fixed 5 years ago... Let alone having to, politely, tell a greybeard to shut the fuck up because they keep telling people to search instead of ask for help...
Whereas a more ephemeral approach that actually encourages people to ask questions? Yes, it does cause long term issues when someone is trying to debug a project that has been on life support for years. But, by and large, just checking the current FAQ and then asking in a chatroom results in a better experience for the users, the devs, and the community managers trying to bridge the gap. And... you should really try to avoid being dependent on said EOL software. Not always possible but... yeah.
And that isn't going to change. So they'll either stick with discord or use something MUCH less stable... like Matrix.
This is bad.
that's a great excuse to finally delete my discord account
Yeah, same.
It's about the only megacorp thing I actively use (beside Steam, tho purely for downloading games), but I won't help normalise & support such bs (ofc I never bought Nitro bcs I'm not supporting bs monetisation).
Sadly prob none of the small communities I chat with every day will migrate to Revolt/Stout, so I'll just lose this part of my life/daily memes.
Didn't they just get busted for leaking their verification data that they totally weren't keeping?
EXTREMELY INVASIVE SURVEILLANCE OPERATIONS ARE NOW PUT IN PLACE FOR you to have a better sense of community and meaningful communication <3
Discord genuinely thinks they got the users by the balls... Thing is, people move platforms extremely easily. It happened to MSN Messenger, it happened to Skype, and it'll happen to Discord too.
For those who are looking for something very similar, look at Stoat (formerly known as Revolt). Their URL is https://stoat.chat/.
One problem will be that there are way too goddamn many software projects that use Discord as a shitty replacement for a blog and documentation, and they’re gonna be a pain to move to proper content platforms.
Sometimes the only way thru is shitty. And those devs might have to learn the hard way not to overcentralize- or to not use a damn chat software for what is way more suited to forums.
I’ve been complaining about this for years. Hope we’re finally starting to see the end of it.
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Mass migration like that occurs (from my memory at least) when the newer alternative has much better functionality, performance, and ease of use compared to the status quo service and has a low barrier to entry (sign up is quick and straightforward). Do any of the decentralized Discord alternatives fit these criteria (honest question, not rhetorical)?
Well, Stoat has the same features as Discord, including many premium ones for free, the ability to write HTML/CSS for your own server, with the only thing missing being video feed. Otherwise, it functions the same while being much faster.
Also sign up is very quick, but right now they're getting hugged to death.
They absolutely have their users by the balls and I guarantee most people will continue to use the app after this, unfortunately.
Yeah, my group of friends will be very resistant to moving away from discord. They're all aware of the issues with it, but It's too convenient of a platform. Personally, I will give up most of the comforts to not be under the thumb of a corporation, but I'm an outlier in my friend group with that perspective.
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Guess I’m not using discord anymore lol
Well FU Discord. Over my dead body
Seriously, like, actually seriously, I want to believe that this time everyone will leave Discord, and not just a small group of weirdos like us who “care about privacy” and ended up on Lemmy.
I just deleted my account. So there's one less.
The reality is, is that we're going to be the only ones who care.
Everyone didn't go from GMail to Proton or others. Everyone didn't go from Reddit to Lemmy. Everyone didn't go from Telegram to Signal. Everyone didn't go from Twitter to Mastodon (Bluesky I guess works?)
This is going to be no different.
From my experience, the average joe will just do whatever is asked of them to continue using a service.
You know what doesn't require full face scan? irc
/poke
irc
now there's some letters I haven't seen in quite some time.
🖕
RIP Discord. Good riddance
Can you save all chat logs on Discord?
GDPR should give you the right, but I'm not sure if they have a button you can click or if you need to email them about it
Yeah that’s a hard no from me. Want me to prove my ID? I want you to prove that you’re not gonna store it. History suggests otherwise.
Not that I want to use your platform anyway.
I'm just gonna do all the tricks the kids did last time we heard about this. I'm gonna use some 3d model game character and just scan that bozo in if I can
I set up a mumble server on my cloud computer, it isnt bad!
hardest part is going to be convincing people to switch over. it was so difficult to migrate people from Xbox and ps parties to discord, but it is what it is lol
Age assurance is the foundation of this new experience and is designed to respect Discord users’ privacy and choice. Discord users can choose to use facial age estimation or submit a form of identification to its vendor partners, with more options coming in the future. Additionally, Discord will implement its age inference model, a new system that runs in the background to help determine whether an account belongs to an adult, without always requiring users to verify their age. Some users may be asked to use multiple methods if more information is needed to assign an age group.
Key privacy protections of Discord’s age-assurance approach include:
- On-device processing: Video selfies for facial age estimation never leave a user’s device.
- Quick deletion: Identity documents submitted to our vendor partners are deleted quickly— in most cases, immediately after age confirmation.
- Straightforward verification: In most cases, users complete the process once and their Discord experience adapts to their verified age group. Users may be asked to use multiple methods only when more information is needed to assign an age group.
- Private status: A user’s age verification status cannot be seen by other users.
After completing a chosen method, users will receive confirmation via a direct message from Discord’s official account. A user’s assigned age group can also be viewed at any time in “My Account” settings. Users can always go to “My Account” settings to appeal their assigned age group by retrying the process. Discord prompts users to age-assure only within Discord and currently does not send emails or text messages about its age assurance process or results.
Not happy with the face-scanning either way. Gonna have a chat with some of my personal groups about how we might move forward.
Let me know what you come up with. I have a server of about 600 that I’m about to just shut down if this process is invasive or privacy disrespectful.
We have a small group of 5-10 adults, so going back to Slack could be an option for us. Thing is some of the Discord integration with our server has helped solve issues in the past, so we might be putting ourselves at somewhat of a disadvantage by switching. It’s still early days, but it’s worth having the open discussion with your team and explore your alternatives.
Thanks for the reminder to delete my account!
My group has been tinkering with matrix but the ecosystem is such a mess that I think we'll be going to xmpp-based solutions, and once the kinks are ironed out, migrating it to i2p
Not to go all conspiracy-nut, but it feels like the net (at least the social spaces) is decaying, and it feels intentional / coordinated.
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