Discord Alternatives
- Stoat;
- Matrix;
- Rocket.Chat;
- Zulip;
- Discourse.
Beginning with a phased global rollout to new and existing users in early March, users may be required to engage in an age-verification process to change certain settings or access sensitive content. This includes age-restricted channels, servers, or commands and select message requests.
You must log in or # to comment.
It seems like the restriction should be lifted for accounts without verification after 5 years. After all, you’re not even allowed to sign up if you’re under 13, so by 5 years you have to be at least 18.
Has Discord itself already proven that it is >18?
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.
You know what doesn’t require full face scan? irc
I love IRC, just need some user friendly client recommendations if we want wider adoption by less tech savvy folks. Though I get the impression there are a good few IRC users who prefer how that filters out the “normies”
I hate to sound gatekeepy, but a flood of new users into an IRC network would be pretty unpleasant for the existing users. There isn’t generally any form of support, so that burden falls to the other users.
irc
now there’s some letters I haven’t seen in quite some time.
I love how photo-based age verification scanning is the worst of both worlds - it destroys your anonymity, but not in a way that makes it easier to run a community where you can ban a person by their digital ID since they can just make a new one with the same face since facial recognition is too crude for that.
Thanks for the reminder to delete my account!
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.
“Look, Discord requires me to upload a pic of my face or ID, to which i can’t legally agree to. Please provide another channel or i can’t contribute.”
That’ll work for individual users, but getting all that chat history out will be a problem for the owners once the users dry up.
And I’m sure Discord will do their best to make it impossible.
Serves them right for picking chat software in the first place, let alone one they don’t control.
I’m in like a hundred of those. Honestly, they’re not that useful. Burn it all down and start over.
Thing is, people move platforms extremely easily.
LOL WTF are you talking about? The only reason these platforms are able to abuse the absolute shit out of their users is because they refuse to leave. If there’s anything we’ve learned in the last 3-4 years it’s that users absolutely do not leave platforms no matter what (at least not in any significant numbers). Not Reddit, not Xitter, not Facebook or IG or Threads, not Windows, and not Discord.
People left MSN Messenger and Skype before, my dude. There’s just so much the average user can take.
Remind me: how many million users did those platforms have?
Enough to matter.
Except it doesn’t. Twitter and Reddit etc. has done everything they can to drive users off their platforms and still they don’t leave.
Actually, they did. 90% of Twitter’s activity now is bots. The only people left are either artists who are completely delusional about their numbers (they have like 13k followers but barely get 200 likes), or mega nazis. Everyone else is no longer there and has moved to places like Bluesky or Mastodon. In fact, I myself never made it past 150 followers on my old twitter account and I had that one for 12 years. My current one has 82 followers and never climbed past that. Bluesky tho? I already have 170+ followers in less than two years of owning the account, and many other artists reached their Twitter follower count in a tiny fraction of the time.
A good portion of reddit threads are also riddled with bots, so it LOOKS like nobody left.
90% of Twitter’s activity now is bots
LOL is Joe Biden a bot? Clinton? Obama? Corey Doctorow? Molly White? Every politician and public figure in existence? Where’s your evidence for this?
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, so sign up emails might take a while to arrive.
Sign up is QUICK? It’s been more than a hour. I’ve tried through the app, through the web, it hasn’t sent me back NOTHING for verification. Still not signed up. What’s quick for you? 10 hours to sign up?
I literally fucking said they got hugged to death. Why are you mad at an app/website that literally had its email crash from everyone trying to sign up at once??
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.
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.
seconded. i’m so sick of it being the only live chat app people use like i tried matrix but the servers were kinda dead :/
Discord was always an overhyped crap.
I think a big thing that made it catch on was the ease of joining. Just send someone a link and boom, they’re in the intended server. No immediate registration process, no buttons or commands to use, just a single click and entering a username. For all that I dislike Discord about, they did that part really well
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.
Not to go all conspiracy-nut, but it feels like the net (at least the social spaces) is decaying, and it feels intentional / coordinated.
At this point, I don’t think it’s conspiracy-nut to say this. We have a group of tech oligarchs in the US who are openly collaborating with a fascist administration. It is a conspiracy and this kinda shit is the result.
it’s not a conspiracy basically every popular social site is astroturfed to absolute hell w/ hate bots and overmonetized and also most of them are US based :/
RIP Discord. Good riddance
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
unwanteddisturbing features the more recluse I become. It must look to acquaintances that I don’t care to speak (to them) but what can I do? I cannot imagine convincing even computer-literate friends to switch to something - as they will have the same problem.Do I need to retire my Discord gaming server before I’m locked out of controlling it?
Well, the day it asks me for ID/face scan is the day I delete my account. Their days are numbered.
You think they’ll let you access the account settings to delete the account without scanning your face first?
If they want to be spammed with gdpr takedown requests sure…
If they don’t they would open the door to people committing spam or abuse intentionally to receive a suspension as the next best thing. I know I’ll do it if they don’t let me delete my account.
They won’t let you send messages without finishing verification
Then I’ll email their support and be rude to them until they get fed up. I’m sure I can be nasty enough in some way to get them to suspend me no matter how bad they want me.
Unless they trade me a face scan of each Discord employee and member, I’m out. Enough is enough, nothing is free.
