It's kind of surprising that no-one has really come out with a proper privacy-preserving approach to this yet. It is clearly _possible_; there are reasonable-looking designs for this. But no-one's doing it; they're just collecting photos and IDs, and then leaking them all over the place.
Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
141–150 of 1001 posts
Re: Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
#142So where we all jumping to?
Time to spin up a mumble server again...
Re: Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
#143So where we all jumping to?
Someone bring back AOL instant messenger! >:( Jokes aside, I've played around with Campfire and it's very, very simple, but pretty nice to use and easy to set up: https://once.com/campfire
Seconding campfire. Straightforward, easy to host, easy to backup, no monetization strategy. Most self-hosted alternatives have complicated deployments to enable scaling to >1,000s of users which I will never, ever need.
Re: Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
#144Good riddance Discord. Any alternative for the masses? They’re not gonna use Slack or phpBB.
Why would Slack not be affected by the same stupid laws?
Re: Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
#145What realistic open source alternatives to Discord are there? I'm currently considering moving to one of these with my friend group: - Matrix - Stoat, previously revolt ( https://stoat.chat/ ) - IRC + Mumble - Signal
Revolt's rename to stoat is probably worse than any rebranding MSFT done ever.
"[beaver emoji] Revolt is Stoat now"
Argh. If there's no stoat emoji, petition the Unicode Consortium for one, don't just use a beaver. It's not even the right family; the badger emoji would be closer.
Re: Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
#146The sad thing is that I think many people will en masse pony up their ID or snapshot without a second thought. I'm not sure if enough people will refuse to actually force Discord to back off this decision (unless their idea is to grab as much data as possible at once with the understanding that they are going to back off either way).
Especially if it's presented as a pop-up upon launching the app that suggests the user won't be able to talk to their friends/servers without showing ID. Carefully worded language would could spur some % of users to panic at losing years of history and immediately show ID. Folks with less privacy discernment hear "jump" and reply "how high".
> panic at losing years of history
I used to be like that. It was unsustainable and ultimately mentally unhealthy.
Re: Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
#147To add context to the discussion, it is important to recall that Discord was reported to have recently filed paperwork with the SEC for an IPO [1]. Thus it seems likely that the real reason for the age verification (i.e., user identification) policy is to boost its perceived earnings potential among Wall Street investors. According to this theory, Discord is the new Facebook.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/07/discords-ipo-could-happen-...
Re: Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
#148Another company jumping on the bandwagon to data-farm in the pretext of safeguarding children. I really wonder if there's an actual method to actually safeguard children while also not holding on to data. Because, genuinely, you can't question this.. Companies would just say "we are trying to protect kids" and that'd be the end of the argument.
I really wonder if when this is fully implemented if they will have any safe guards against selling "adult verified" accounts. With AI being a possible work around for those who don't want to share an ID, selling accounts would be another big issue unless they check for IP addresses and block based on locations and logins. EDIT: I see in another comment that its against TOS to sell accounts, I doubt that has stopped anyone before though.
Re: Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
#149You’re out of your mind if you think I’m gonna upload ID to use a “shitposting about video games with friends” service.
Yeah, I've been warning everyone about the consequences but nobody wanted to hear it. So do people still want a general social media ban for teens?
Everybody hates teenagers, so yes.
It's not really about protecting them; people that claim this is the case are generally doing so to launder that hatred.
Re: Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
#150Good riddance Discord. Any alternative for the masses? They’re not gonna use Slack or phpBB.
Why would Slack not be affected by the same stupid laws?
If you're a Slack user, I don't think they need your ID to tell that you're an adult
More seriously, it will become a problem on there is a significant user migration to there and a repeat of the mass hysteria. Due to being more niche, these smaller platforms are probably not in danger right now.