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.
Yeah… No how about we just stop using Discord and move to something more decentralized like Matrix
Why would you pick matrix over https://stoat.chat/ ?
Because its federated, is also a really nice messaging replacement and is E2EE. If I only want a discord replacement without anything else I’d consider stoat, but really I feel like Matrix just checks so many more boxes. I’ve used Matrix for a long time now. Also since its FOSS anyone can build a client for it and you can make it yours
Isn’t Stoat FOSS too?
Yeah ofc Stoat is too, I’m just saying what I like about Matrix. I just personally don’t know of any third party Stoat clients but I also haven’t looked into it since I’m accustomed to Matrix. I checked their page but its pretty bare bones on information
Right that’s why I’m curious, both seem like viable options. Thanks mate.
If they make the onboarding suck less, sure
I hear this. What could be better? You make an account and if its federated your done. Login, boom.
Probably the uncertainty of choosing a server and have it either vanish unexpectedly or it’s admins ban your account without prior warning or transparency, which is also pretty common here in the fediverse.
I always help onboard people choosing one or two longstanding servers they might like. The last time I told someone to just use the matrix.org server to begin (years ago) it had closed registrations two hours earlier. Never again. 😅
Wait but isn’t matrix.org available to anyone now?
It probably is. They just close registrations from time to time. But other smaller servers are usually a better choice.
There’s a couple of server lists I like to check.
I agree that smaller communities might care more about the users, but they often heavily depend on single individuals which is a heavy risk factor long term imo
It is. We witness it almost every month here in the fediverse. But for the time being, unless more decentralized options like Briar, Simplex and Session become more accessible and reliable, a few federated options are the best we have available even if their server/node/instance admins carry too much power and responsibility over them.
Download one of these 8 apps that’s only available through a website or F-Droid, 2 haven’t updated in 2 years, no we won’t tell you which.
no they’re not servers, it just is where your account info lives, and nothing else
there’s no “Explore” mode, there’s 20 websites that list servers, 5 of them are outdated, another 5 only work on a Tuesday, 10 of them only list 100/20,000 public servers
Oh. They’re all quiet as fuck. All of them. What’s the point?
Just use the Element client on desktop and Element X on mobile. Use the Matrix.org homeserver by the matrix foundation if you don’t know any other/better choice for you personally. Bam and you’re in. I actually really value the choice in clients tho. With the decentralized way of Matrix there’s lots of options but just pick the mainstream once for starters
Doesn’t solve the last two points
Well its not discord so ofc there’s not as much traffic. And the decentralized listing is just part of the decentralized nature of it. Lemmy also doesn’t have as much traffic as reddit yet here we are
Lemmy at least has built-in discoverabilty, you can search the entire federation, with ease, all from the search UI
Also the sign-up process is much much clearer and faster.
I can search users and spaces across any federated matrix server