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.
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.