[HN Gopher] Discord will require a face scan or ID for full acce...
___________________________________________________________________
Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
https://discord.com/press-releases/discord-launches-teen-by-...
https://discord.com/safety/how-discord-is-building-safer-exp...
Author : x01
Score : 1977 points
Date : 2026-02-09 14:37 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| josefritzishere wrote:
| This is not OK.
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
| another one bites the dust.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| F** that, guess I'm leaving that platform too now...
| boca_honey wrote:
| I think this will be the kneejerk reaction of many, but then
| you'll have to face the consequences (de facto social
| isolation) and probably acquiesce. I had the same reaction when
| platforms started asking for my cellphone number... after some
| years I just started giving it to them. Now I don't even think
| about it.
| sneak wrote:
| I don't sign up for those accounts, and I change my mobile
| number every 90 days.
| titaniumtown wrote:
| Every 90 days? Wow. Can you elaborate on how that logically
| works? Like what about for doctors offices having your
| number on file and other similar situations.
| sneak wrote:
| My doctor's office has my email and knows to use it. Half
| of the time I'm not even in the country where that phone
| number works.
|
| I just buy 90 day prepaid SIM cards. At the end of the 90
| days I'm usually in another country.
|
| My Google Voice number is sufficient for authing to
| Signal, but I don't give it out to vendors/services or
| use it for phone calls.
|
| I never receive any voice calls to my SIM card itself.
| Anyone who would want to call me knows to reach me on
| Signal. Anyone else, I don't need to speak to them.
|
| Most of the time my voice conversations are in Google
| Meet calls, anyway. It's almost always for clients who
| don't like to type and would prefer to be synchronous
| instead of using their device's built in dictation
| software.
| jesse_dot_id wrote:
| Your solution is subservience.
| boca_honey wrote:
| Read again, I never said it was a solution. I said I don't
| care.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| Acquiescence is your solution whether you care or not.
| Your feelings are irrelevant to the matter. It's a binary
| decision in the end, you either play ball or walk out.
| boca_honey wrote:
| A solution implies a problem. I don't have a problem with
| this.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| Like I said your opinion doesn't matter in this, it's
| your actions which matter. Whether see the actual problem
| or not is immaterial.
| boca_honey wrote:
| You clearly don't understand how this works. Social
| problems are not objective, like math problems. A lack of
| family support, for example, is something that many
| people label as a problem... but a lot of people just
| build strong social networks outside of their family and
| really don't care when someone says "family first!".
|
| That's what I think about the cries around a lack of
| privacy.
|
| I know I somehow ended up in a forum full of IT people
| and that might my problem, but: People are not software.
| You don't get to flag something as "problematic" on other
| people.
|
| Deal with it and move on.
| lpcvoid wrote:
| Then you decided to cave in and forego your privacy. Don't
| assume others will falter in the same fashion.
| kyboren wrote:
| "I used to resist the boot, too. Then I was successfully
| conditioned by the environment that's been engineered around
| me. Now I just lick it subconsciously."
| boca_honey wrote:
| I also thought like you when I was in my 20's. However...
| the addolescent need to "rise up" is the first thing to go
| when you actually start a family and develop a well
| balanced social network. If you play your cards right, soon
| enough, you won't care about all this.
| ahhhhnoooo wrote:
| I'm 45. My friend, I still resist licking the boot. Stop
| believing that your experience is somehow more universal.
|
| I have a rich social network, I have a family, and now
| more than any time in my life do I think it's important
| to resist.
|
| Stop saying you'll get less radical as you age, it's just
| not the axiom you think it is.
| seanw444 wrote:
| I have a spouse and kids. I still stick to my guns. Both
| literally and figuratively. Speak for yourself.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| I sincerely hope you are merely goading folks on and
| don't actually believe the words you speak.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| If anything I'm more 'radical' pushing 50 than I was at
| 20. That "everyone gets more conservative as you age"
| adage is not universal.
|
| For me I was 'radicalized' by raising children to
| adulthood and seeing the broken world we're leaving to
| them. Living in the US, my eldest daughter has less
| rights than her mother did growing up. Capitulating to
| the demands of fascists is not the way to a better
| future. Complacency has a high cost, regardless of
| whether it affects you personally.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >but then you'll have to face the consequences (de facto
| social isolation) and probably acquiesce.
|
| Nah I'm used to being lonely. Leaving these platforms shows
| how few truly deep friendships you have.
|
| You get used to it.
|
| >I had the same reaction when platforms started asking for my
| cellphone number... after some years I just started giving it
| to them.
|
| Even when I gave Facebook my number, that wasn't enough. I
| drew a line at some point. If everyone else wants to
| sacrifice privacy for the sake of pseudo-community, so be it.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| Then you and I are not the same. If a platform asks for more
| than I'm willing to give it, it's time to leave. I've done
| this enough times that it's simply routine. If it means I
| suffer "defacto social isolation", whatever that is, so beit.
| I'm old and I've cultivated a group of close nit friends that
| live nearby most of the year, we'll manage just fine without
| discord.
| boca_honey wrote:
| I don't socialize on Discord, I use it for work. That's why
| I don't care. I said that from the perspective of the
| people that are crying about Discord's move.
|
| The weird thing is that you give your personal info,
| including your biometrics, to your government and your
| bank. You probably weren't thrilled when they asked you for
| your finger prints but eventually you gave them anyway
| because the alternative was not having a bank account.
| Everybody folds in the end.
|
| What makes you think "corporations bad" but it's OK if
| governments and bankers do it? They're just as malicious
| and incompetent.
|
| This is like being afraid to fly when you drive every day
| which is 200 times more dangerous.
| barrenko wrote:
| Happily deleted it, just as I would for most % of the online
| rot I am a part of.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| In case anyone else can't read it: https://archive.is/PvpAx
| deanc wrote:
| On all my devices and all my connections (residential and
| mobile) here in the EU I end up in a captcha loop for this site
| nowadays. Is it just me?
|
| EDIT: seems like I'm not the only one [1]
|
| [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1q0ewh1/do_you...
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| Bleh. I still get through for now. I'll be sorry when I need
| to go find an alternative, because I don't know of another
| that works as reliably as archive[.ph|.is|.today] for me
| currently
| Rooster61 wrote:
| The 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).
| accrual wrote:
| 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".
| joquarky wrote:
| > panic at losing years of history
|
| I used to be like that. It was unsustainable and ultimately
| mentally unhealthy.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yeah. You male new friends and find new experiences. Or
| maybe you don't. That's the cost of freedom, I suppose.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| I have done that for stripchat which was also requiring it. Not
| happy with it but I'd rather use a selfie than a whole ID
| document which includes an image anyway.
|
| The thing is, what other option do I have?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I'll continue using Discord in teen mode, I guess. I'd rather
| not lose the current connections & servers I have on there,
| and I'm not optimistic about people migrating away,
| especially non-tech people.
| superxpro12 wrote:
| I get the draconian side of things, but I am also tired of
| thousands of russian, indian, domestic-funded etc. bots
| flooding the zone with divisive propaganda.
|
| In theory, this seems like it would at least be a step in the
| direction of combating disinformation.
|
| I'm curious if there are any better ways to suppress these
| propaganda machines?
| joks wrote:
| I don't see how disallowing viewing "age-restricted" content
| through Discord without giving them your ID would have any
| impact on the spread of disinformation, outside of like,
| disinfo in the form or pornographic or gory images.
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| How do I know that this message isn't divisive propaganda
| posted by a bot?
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Because it's not posted by a Russian/Indian account, duh!
| ntoskrnl_exe wrote:
| I don't imagine this was a 100% their decision, it's more like
| a response to the epidemic of all the world's governments
| suddenly coming up with adult verification schemes. Discord has
| already required it in some countries, and it's definitely
| easier to get everybody to verify themselves than require it on
| a per-jurisdiction basis. The personal data they get is a
| cherry on top.
|
| Also, this is just the beginning, more social networks will
| require the same soon.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| They don't have to comply in advance.
| StrLght wrote:
| I wouldn't call it a response, but rather another thing that
| normalises ID verification online. Now all these governments
| can use Discord as a reference that (1) this is possible at
| scale and (2) companies are willing to do this.
| bux93 wrote:
| Seems like an unforced error to implement this before being
| forced to.
| bsimpson wrote:
| Sounds like when Netflix reneged on family accounts.
|
| I cancelled my account in protest, but their financials say
| they made money on the change (and thus all the execs are happy
| with it).
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| If it helps, it really seems like Netflix is only "making
| money" these days off of cutting programming and workers.
| It's not a sustainable way to grow and it will hit a wall
| soon.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Netflix supposedly added 24M, or 8%, subscribers in 2025.
|
| https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/netflix-q4-2025-financial-
| e...
| gentleman11 wrote:
| They also cancelled 25M good shows and played 800% more
| ads in the same time
| boca_honey wrote:
| I was planning to do that. My work chat is on Discord. I am an
| adult. Google and Netflix have my legal name and credit card
| number. I don't see how Discord having my ID is any worse.
| PoisedProto wrote:
| The issue is that it's yet _another_ platform that could leak
| your data? Why would you ever want to increase that chance?
|
| Also, I'm not sure you would need to give discord your ID
| unless you're sending porn in your work chat or something.
| boca_honey wrote:
| In 30 years using the internet not once have my ID has been
| leaked (or my CC stolen, etc). Even if it happens now, and
| then 2 more times during my lifetime... the benefits of the
| modern internet exceed the risk of that happening.
|
| It's weird how everyone here have been giving their credit
| card at restaurants and show their ID at events, but
| DISCORD is where they draw the line, somehow.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| I'd give my ID to Discord if it was guaranteed that the
| leadership of Discord goes to prison in case of a data
| breach.
| boca_honey wrote:
| Why would the leadership should go to jail when a data
| breach is IT's fault? If your card gets cloned, the CEO
| of the bank should not go to jail. I agree with paying
| (HUGE) fines, but you suggestion is juvenile, at best.
| tim333 wrote:
| I had the same thing with Reddit and let it see my face. It
| didn't bother me much - I don't really do anything more
| exciting there than this sort of hn comment. If I wanted to
| post controversial / illegal stuff I'd make a separate account.
| Simulacra wrote:
| No thanks. Discord, it has been fun, but I decline.
| verdverm wrote:
| How many people are doing age restricted stuff on Discord
| (besides the specifically there for adult content and gooning
| crowd)
|
| All of my use is primarily professional and gaming and has no age
| concerns
| sigio wrote:
| Gaming certainly has age-concerns, many games are rated
| 13/15/16+ or 18+
|
| But yeah, leaving discord... they are not getting my ID/Photo
| verdverm wrote:
| At least Google is pushing on zero-knowledge solutions
|
| Maybe they can force everyone's hand like they did for https
|
| https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/safety-
| secu...
| reorder9695 wrote:
| Ratings aren't legally binding though are they? I bought
| games older rated than I was, and it's totally up to people's
| parents what they're allowed to play. Are you suggesting a 15
| year old should be allowed to play the 16 rated game but not
| discuss it?
| verdverm wrote:
| Can their parents also approve their discord usage?
|
| Are you saying they need parents to buy the game, but
| shouldn't to join chats about the same game?
| efreak wrote:
| > The first option uses AI to analyze a user's video selfie,
| which Discord says never leaves the user's device.
|
| I'm wondering if this will work with a YouTube video...
| stuffn wrote:
| Does it matter? The problem is that everyone uses discord for
| everything. It's not an isolated platform, it's THE platform if
| you want to have friends.
| verdverm wrote:
| If you don't access adult stuff, you don't need to verify
| age. I'm not giving them my ID, I'm not expecting anything to
| change about my Discord experience.
|
| What's the issue?
| foobarian wrote:
| Looks like it might be opt-in by server.
| nananana9 wrote:
| Honestly they're probably big enough to get away with it.
|
| If it was only friend groups it would kill them for sure, we've
| seen that many times, but given the absurd amount many large
| online communities on Discord, I'd wager they can force it down
| and be relatively unscathed.
|
| They played the long game - they provided a good service for 10
| years, and got REALLY big before they started the
| enshittification process.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Any age verification process that does not consider the age of
| the account as a verification option is a data trap, plain and
| simple.
| RupertSalt wrote:
| How does anyone know whether a family is engaging in that time-
| honored tradition of passing down accounts from grandfather, to
| father, to son, to child, and their posterity, in perpetuity?
|
| Seriously though, unless you have positively identified the
| person who created the account in the first place, you have 0%
| chance of knowing whether it is the same person using it today.
|
| Gamers sell their high-level accounts all the time. It would be
| a simple matter of economics that the Discord users with the
| oldest accounts sell them to 12-year-olds. Likewise, accounts
| are shared willy-nilly, whether or not that violates the rules.
| And accounts can be stolen or compromised, if you're really
| hard up.
| Quillbert182 wrote:
| But under that argument, you would have to prove your age on
| a regular basis, the plan right now appears to be that each
| account would only need to do so once.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Just remember that the Terms of Service you agreed to are
| about as firm as explosive diarrhea.
| RupertSalt wrote:
| _You agree not to license, sell, lend, or transfer your
| account, Discord username, vanity URL, or other unique
| identifier without our prior written approval. We also
| reserve the right to delete, change, or reclaim your
| username, URL, or other identifier._
|
| If transfer of accounts is a policy violation, then Discord
| has legal cover to confidently assert that, once ID is
| verified, the ID'd person is the owner and controller of
| the account thereafter.
|
| Account selling, stealing, and sharing will certainly still
| happen, but that's grounds for banning, and not Discord's
| legal liability anymore.
| Quillbert182 wrote:
| Then why could they not also legally get away with using
| account age as a proxy?
| RegnisGnaw wrote:
| No law or regulation is ever 100% effective in real life.
| Income tax is not collected 100% effectively. Should we not
| do it? Criminals are not caught 100% of the time, should we
| not do it?
|
| Of course this won't be 100% effective, maybe 80-90%
| effective. That's all they need and expect from this system.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| HN is constantly obsessed with _is it perfectly effective?_
|
| No law, none, is perfectly effective. Speed limits
| certainly aren't self enforcing, but remove your
| neighborhood's speed limits first if you truly believe laws
| must be demonstrated perfect.
| smrq wrote:
| How often do you suppose they will be re-checking your ID?
| Once every... never?
| AJ007 wrote:
| They need to have an always-on camera looking at the person
| using the device. No camera, no discord.
| RupertSalt wrote:
| This may seem like hyperbole, but this is the reality for
| students and test-takers every day in virtual
| environments now.
|
| I assisted as TA in a virtual learning environment. While
| we didn't make it strictly mandatory to keep the camera
| on, our learners were encouraged to do it, and we kept
| tabs on who was "engaged" and present, because at the
| very least, we needed to tabulate an attendance roll for
| every day.
|
| If you're taking a standardized test, whether you're at
| home or in a controlled lab, the camera will always be
| on. Multiple ones. Not optional.
|
| There is a large storm of controversy on college campuses
| about adapting young students early to surveillance
| cultures. I attended a community college about 7 years
| ago, and I felt I'd be a second-class citizen without a
| smartphone and an SMS'able mobile.
|
| We weren't surveilled through smartphones at the time.
| But there was an app to receive campus alerts about
| public safety and other crisis events. And our virtual
| class sessions had various ways of ensuring we were
| human, and awake.
|
| Taking finals and certification exams, I was often sat in
| a special-purpose testing center, and Step One was
| showing ID; Step Two was surrendering my watch, my phone,
| my wallet to place in a locker outside. So, students
| simply become accustomed to showing ID and being on-
| camera, and it becomes a fact of life before you
| graduate.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Just ban that in TOS. As we know TOS is inviolable. As such
| it is not possible to sell, gift or otherwise transfer an
| account. At least this should be considered how it works for
| age verification. If account transfer is found out account
| can be terminated thus closing the loop hole.
| ncr100 wrote:
| So then it's REASONABLY not the corporation's fault if that
| user sees explicit content.
| sigio wrote:
| Yeah, my youtube/google account is almost as old as youtube
| itself is, but will constantly ask me to verify my age when
| clicking on something as marked 'not for kids'. Can we just get
| the leisure-suit-larry age-verification system ;)
| mistrial9 wrote:
| Apple deleted many legacy mac-dot-com accounts without qualms,
| not long ago. It was the phone accounts, in so many ways,
| driving it .. IMHO
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Has discord even been around for 18 years?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| It's been around for 11. However, you can reasonably assume
| that kids aren't registering accounts below the age at which
| kids are generally literate; if we spitball an age of five
| this means old accounts cannot be younger than 16.
| mmlkrx wrote:
| They are planning on doing something similar:
|
| Discord is also rolling out an age inference model that
| analyzes metadata like the types of games a user plays, their
| activity on Discord, and behavioral signals like signs of
| working hours or the amount of time they spend on Discord.
|
| "If we have a high confidence that they are an adult, they will
| not have to go through the other age verification flows,"
| varjolintu wrote:
| I'm curious to know what this "model" actually means. A real-
| time AI monitoring for conversations?
| wormpilled wrote:
| This infrastructure is already implemented
|
| https://support.discord.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/12926016807575...
| jszymborski wrote:
| So my friend group has been looking for alternatives for a while
| now that feel like discord, works on mobile and desktop, and has
| voice chat.
|
| I use Signal but the UI is very different from Discord.
|
| I've had very mixed experiences with Element + Matrix, Element
| keeps crashing on mobile, and while voice chat kinda exists in
| Element it's not been great imho.
|
| I looked into hosting Rocket.chat, Zullip, and Mattermost but
| from what I recall voice + mobile were either missing or
| paywalled at a per-user price.
|
| Any recommendations?
| tmtvl wrote:
| I seem to recall Jitsi working pretty well.
| jszymborski wrote:
| Jitsi is great but the element integration felt clunky. Maybe
| I'll have to revisit it.
| trashb wrote:
| have you looked at mumble or teamspeak, seems they where the
| default for a bit before discord. Atleast for gaming.
| kmnc wrote:
| "We will find ways to bring people back" yeah because that
| usually works. I imagine this gets rolled back or siloed to only
| adult specific channels.
| haritha-j wrote:
| > and will see content filters for any content Discord detects as
| graphic or sensitive.
|
| I didn't even realise discord scans all the images that i send
| and recieve.
| jsheard wrote:
| Pretty much every non-E2EE platform is scanning every uploaded
| image for CSAM at least, that's a baseline ass-covering
| measure.
| mapt wrote:
| And E2EE platforms like Mega are now being censored on some
| platforms specifically because they're E2EE, and so the name
| itself must be treated as CSAM.
|
| As people who want to talk about words like "megabytes" or
| "megapixels" or "megaphones" or "Megaman" or "Megan" on
| Facebook are finding out.
| RegnisGnaw wrote:
| They have to at least for CSAM.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Really I've come to the conclusion that anything I send out of
| my LAN is probably kept on a server forever and ingested by
| LLMs, and indexed to be used against me in perpetuity at this
| point, regardless of what any terms or conditions of the site
| I'm using actually says.
| palata wrote:
| To be fair, the terms and conditions probably say that they
| can do whatever they want with that data :-).
| Gud wrote:
| Don't forget all the government creeps snooping on the wires.
| xnx wrote:
| Until the current administration, I was much more bothered
| by private misuse/abuse of date than the government. Now I
| worry about both.
| Gud wrote:
| Why? People who volunteer to work for these government
| drag nets must be total psychos.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Volunteer? I mean they do get paid.
|
| The thing is it's a mix of both.
|
| You have the fervent that love recording everything "for
| the good of the people". But then you'll just have piles
| of people with separation of duties that do things with
| very little understanding of where they fit in the
| process and very little care to.
| joquarky wrote:
| We gave those brogrammers the keys to the machine when we
| made programming more accessible.
| kmijyiyxfbklao wrote:
| Good. Being OK with authoritarianism because they are on
| your side is never good.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| That was always the wrong threat model hierarchy. I have
| always been more concerned what the federal, my state and
| my local government can do when given more
| power/informstion than the federal government
| kmfrk wrote:
| Speaking of hosting, Discord used to be one of the biggest
| (inadvertent) image hosts, so they might have set up the
| system to reduce legal exposure than to monitor conversations
| per se.[1]
|
| A lot of the internet broke the day they flipped that switch
| off.
|
| Weren't external Tumblr hotlinks also a thing back in the
| day?
|
| [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/16uy0an/not
| _sur...
| palata wrote:
| Everything that is not end-to-end encrypted understandably has
| to do it.
| lpcvoid wrote:
| Well it's not E2EE, so what did you expect? Nothing you do on
| Discord is private, everything is screened, categorized and
| readable by third parties.
| palata wrote:
| > Users who aren't verified as adults will not be able to access
| age-restricted servers and channels
|
| I genuinely wonder which proportion of the users want access to
| age-restricted servers and channels...
|
| Feels like it should be just fine not to verify the age.
| pteraspidomorph wrote:
| Here's how Discord works. A third or so of its features, such
| as forum channels (EDIT: I think this specific example was
| wrong; stage and announcement channels, but not forum channels)
| or role self-assignment, are locked behind Community Mode.
| After enabling Community Mode, server owners are NOT ALLOWED to
| turn off content filtering anymore, meaning that by default,
| content in every channel may be filtered out by systems you
| cannot configure.
|
| The only way _for the server owner_ to circumvent the filter is
| to mark a channel as "NSFW", which doesn't necessarily mean
| the channel actually contains any NSFW content.
|
| This change will not actually require ID for content confirmed
| to be NSFW. It will require ID for each and every "NSFW mode"
| (unfiltered) channel. The end result is that you have three
| choices:
|
| - Ditch Discord features implemented in recent years (or at
| least this is currently possible) - this prevents a server from
| being listed as public;
|
| - Require ID checks from all your users (per channel);
|
| - Have everything scanned from all your users (per channel).
| palata wrote:
| Are you saying that you can "mark" the channel as "NSFW", and
| Discord will stop scanning your content, possibly allowing
| you to share very illegal content through their servers?
|
| Sounds weird to me. Pretty sure that they legally have to
| make sure that they don't host illegal content. Or does
| "NSFW" enable some kind of end-to-end encryption?
| pteraspidomorph wrote:
| That has always been the case, yes, though I'm not sure
| what you mean by "illegal" content. There is only a small
| overlap between NSFW and illegal content, and the NSFW
| filter has never been concerned with, uh, violating
| photograph copyright or something.
|
| You don't have to take my word for it, just check it
| yourself, although it seems that this week, they renamed
| the NSFW setting to "Age-Restricted Channel" (in
| preparation for this change, no doubt). The verification-
| related portion of the behavior I described was implemented
| for the UK months ago.
|
| The description still contains: "Age-restricted channels
| are exempt from the explicit content filter."
|
| EDIT: IANAL (or american) but if Discord was policing
| content for legality rather than age-appropriateness,
| wouldn't they lose DMCA Safe Harbor protections?
| palata wrote:
| > The description still contains: "Age-restricted
| channels are exempt from the explicit content filter."
|
| Wait! This does not mean they do not scan it. What I
| understand from that statement is that they _filter
| explicit content_ , as in they prevent it from appearing
| on the user's screen.
|
| When you enable the "NSFW" mode, you tell Discord "it's
| okay, don't filter out anything". But Discord _probably_
| still scans everything.
|
| So that makes sense to me: if you don't validate your
| age, then Discord will not allow you to join channels
| that disable the "adult" filtering. I can personally live
| without adult content on Discord...
| pteraspidomorph wrote:
| OK, but you're not the one making that decision and you
| don't know/can't control how that decision is being made.
| palata wrote:
| Well you're not using Discord in the hope that they are
| censorship-resistant, are you? :-)
|
| They can read everything that you send already, if your
| problem is that they may filter something that they
| consider NSFW and you don't... well I am not sure how big
| of a problem that is.
| mjr00 wrote:
| > I genuinely wonder which proportion of the users want access
| to age-restricted servers and channels...
|
| _Way_ more than you think. There are _tons_ of Discord servers
| that only exist to share pornography.
| bramhaag wrote:
| What 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
| Schlagbohrer wrote:
| I have found Element and Matrix to be totally unusable in iOS
| rsynnott wrote:
| Element's awful, but I've found FluffyChat, another matrix
| client, to be a lot better, albeit with a very silly name.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| Does matrix have decent 1:N client desktop broadcasting with
| low latency (and high fps) yet? I use discord for "watch
| parties", video and tabletop gaming...
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| MiroTalk can be made into a widget on Element, is open
| source, and is P2P after the initial connection.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Revolt's rename to stoat is probably worse than any rebranding
| MSFT done ever.
| rickstanley wrote:
| It's because of the trademark:
| https://stoat.chat/updates/long-live-stoat
|
| Nevertheless, I don't like the new name either, oh well...
|
| I like this comment though:
|
| _Imagine you make a free software project and it runs into
| trademark issues because people have more money than you to
| register in more classes than your project.
|
| And then even though your project existed first, they still
| come after you anyway.
|
| And from that an even more expensive rebranding from this as
| well._
|
| from: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45626225, not sure
| how accurate it is, but it makes me want to _revolt_ .
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I wish there was more info. Who sent the C&D? Did that
| entity seem likely to have enough money to actually sue,
| and did they seem immune to the negative press if they did
| sue? Is that company in an unrelated-enough industry that
| they could just call it "Revoltchat" or something and be
| safe? Did they at least show it to a lawyer? Why didn't
| they publish the C&D?
|
| I'm not a lawyer, but this kind of thing happens enough
| that I've asked GPT to explain it to me, and I think most
| people roll over at the first legal demand, no matter how
| outrageous.
|
| Calling it "stoat" seems like a form of self-destructive
| protest.
| kibwen wrote:
| It's open source, I'm tempted to fork it and do nothing other
| than change the branding.
| rsynnott wrote:
| "[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.
| x01 wrote:
| For me, the closest alternative to Discord is Stoat. Matrix
| with Element (or other clients) would be great, but it feels so
| slow on both desktop and mobile.
| rickstanley wrote:
| I wonder how Stoat will fare, and how it is currently
| maintained, in terms of "making money"; my fear is that it
| would steer into the direction of Discord itself.
| OuterVale wrote:
| Currently financed on user donations. The future plan is to
| intoduce further features which are costly to provide behind
| a paywall to remain sustainable.
| arkh wrote:
| One thing most of those lack is an easy way to share screen.
|
| Now if anyone wants to differentiate their Discord alternative,
| they want to have most of discord functionalities and add the
| possibility to be in multiple voice chats (maybe with rights
| and a channel hierarchy + different push-to-talk binds). It's a
| missed feature when doing huge operations in games and using
| the Canary client is not always enough.
| joks wrote:
| Stoat has screen sharing / video calling in the pipeline at
| least: https://github.com/stoatchat/stoatchat/issues/313
| ghosty141 wrote:
| According to the last comment in the issue it is already
| available for self hosted clients.
| foresto wrote:
| Matrix screen sharing is a feature of Element Call /
| MatrixRTC (in development).
|
| For now, I think they do it through their Jitsi integration.
| I don't know how easy it is, as I haven't tried it.
|
| https://docs.element.io/latest/element-cloud-
| documentation/i...
| catgirlinspace wrote:
| I've been self hosting Element Call and use it to call my
| girlfriend (and also used it with another friend a few
| nights ago). I've had a few problems where when starting
| the call it seems to not connect but just trying again
| works, and that's really the only issue i've had that I can
| think of since setting up a TURN server (before that it
| would completely fail sometimes, but that's not Element
| Call's fault)
| foresto wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. I think the design of MatrixRTC
| (especially the scaling via hierarchical SFUs) looks
| promising. It's nice to see someone actually using it at
| this early stage, even if only for 1:1 calls.
| Zhyl wrote:
| Jitsi does that well
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| I use MiroTalk for it. Within Element you can set up widgets
| (basically PWAs) and so you can call via Element's built in
| Jitsi widget (or a more reliable dedicated Jitsi link) and
| then use MiroTalk to share screens. It is a LOT better,
| especially for streaming video.
|
| In terms of ease of use, it's like three clicks. Technically
| more than Discord, but it's p2p streaming so it's far nicer
| quality.
| ozlikethewizard wrote:
| Last I checked Signal was not fully open source, which is iffy,
| believe their encryption protocol is still closed. That said
| its the best of a bad bunch for E2EE messaging. If you're on
| android I'd recommend doing what I do, which is installing from
| the APK on the site, manually verifying the sig locally (you
| can use termux for this), and then lagging ever so slightly
| behind on updates to avoid potential supply chain or hostile
| takeover attacks. This is probably over cautious for most
| threat profiles, but better safe than sorry imo. Also their
| server side stuff is close sourced, technically this isnt an
| issue though as long as the E2EE holds up to scrutiny though.
|
| Edit: My information may be out of date, I cannot find any
| sources saying any part of the app is closed source these days,
| do your own research ofc but comfortable saying its the most
| accessible secure platform.
| encom wrote:
| IRC was here before Discord, and it will still be here after.
|
| I've never heard of Stoat. Looks like IRC but it's Electron.
| Total waste of time.
| joks wrote:
| IRC does not support group voice & video calls, which is one
| of the primary features of Discord (and previously Skype,
| from which everyone migrated to Discord in the first place)
| joquarky wrote:
| Kids these days...
| ramon156 wrote:
| Should be blame the majority of the users, or should we
| accept times change?
| ibejoeb wrote:
| It's a viable system for the many open source software
| projects that collaborate over chat. Expo, Typescript, and
| Effect are relatively large examples. I'll participate
| there if available and I get locked out. Otherwise, I'll
| just use the stuff without contributing, no problem.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| IRC exposes your IP and you can't even access history
| unless you're willing to self-host your own bouncer,
| which costs time, money, and risk even if you already
| know how to do it, which most people don't. Being IRC
| only will exclude a lot of people who want to contribute
| to your project while also adding a lot of friction to
| the mere act of sharing screenshots, which is problematic
| if you have any software which renders to something not
| text.
|
| I grew up on IRC and still use it, I have my own bouncer
| set up, etc. But the devs on Discord and not IRC probably
| aren't the devs with the skillset and resources to host
| their own server and bouncer. IRC just isn't in the
| running to fill the Discord shaped hole.
| dijit wrote:
| I haven't used an IRC server implementation in 20 years
| that doesn't do host masking. (IE; cloaking of client IP
| addresses).
|
| That said, I'm biased as I have been running an IRC
| community for 22 years or so... but I _prefer_ to have
| video /voice in it's own system. (mumble/jitsi)
| encom wrote:
| >IRC exposes your IP
|
| That hasn't been true for decades, and even if it was, it
| sounds like Hollywood's idea of a problem.
|
| >IRC only will exclude a lot of people
|
| If they can't figure out how to point a client to an IRC
| server, their contribution is worthless. It's the most
| trivial barrier to entry possible.
|
| >sharing screenshots
|
| Print screen > paste to image host > share link. Not
| hard.
|
| I get that the Discord experience is slick, if you're
| willing to give up any sort of privacy or
| confidentiality. IRC is lightweight and simple, and its
| shortcomings can be worked around without too much
| effort. Discord is bloated, malicious, evil - I will
| gladly suffer some inconveniences of IRC.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| Keep in mind that I am an IRC user, and I am not
| advocating for staying on Discord. I'm just stating that
| IRC is not - and probably never will be - a contender for
| "Discord alternatives", even among developers.
|
| I can still see other peoples IPs on IRC _today_. When
| writing this comment, I can see people on major IRC
| servers with IP addresses that appear to correspond to
| consumer ISPs.
|
| Another benefit of not being on IRC is that they don't
| have to interact with people who will disregard their
| contributions as "worthless". That's so dismissive of
| other people that I can't really take your comment
| seriously on the topic of interpersonal collaboration and
| communication.
|
| And yes, even sharing screenshots becomes difficult. What
| host would you use that works in every country the IRC
| server operates in, works with people using any given
| VPN, and has a ToS and PP that is at least not _worse_
| than Discord 's? Keep in mind this excludes Imgur and
| Catbox.
|
| IRC is not simple and its many problems are not trivial.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| For most Discord users IRC simply does not have the feature
| set that people need. Basics like simple drag and drop media
| sharing, threaded conversations, emoji reactions and voice
| comms, up to more complicated stuff like screen sharing and
| video calling.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| Or even persistent chat history
| somat wrote:
| The real sin is that if they went with electron, they
| probably could have gone with a web app, and while web apps
| have downsides, they make fellow user buy in trivial, instead
| of "download this client" it's "go to this web page"
|
| I am especially bitter because electron advertises as being
| "cross platform" by which they mean that it also runs on
| linux and as a openbsd driver I get to go "cross platform my
| ass" and then weep because of how close I am, if it were a
| web app it would probably be trivial for me to to run. What I
| really want is a method to unelectronify electron apps.
| joquarky wrote:
| Which of these has been around for over three decades?
|
| That would be my answer.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Same, depends on what you expect in terms of features and so
| on, but for chat, IRC works perfectly.
| MYEUHD wrote:
| Snikket (https://snikket.org ) with Monal as the iOS client
| subscribed wrote:
| Requires hosting of the private server (security/privacy
| implications) or renting it from the third party.
| zaik wrote:
| Any XMPP provider will give you a chat address that is
| compatible with Snikket: https://providers.xmpp.net
| vagrantstreet wrote:
| Zulip?
| andreashaerter wrote:
| I keep wondering why Zulip is so often left out of reviews
| and tooling comparisons. For me it ticks a lot of important
| boxes, yet it barely gets mentioned. Is there a downside I'm
| missing, or is it just under the radar?
|
| The concept that every message belongs to a topic and the
| async communication focus makes so much sense to me. I read
| conversations, not timelines.
| tabbott wrote:
| Sadly Zulip does not have a big marketing budget, and many
| reviews/tooling comparisons are paid for in some way,
| directly or otherwise, or are SEO spam that starts with
| reading other similar SEO spam.
|
| It is highly ranked on some platforms that do validated
| reviews, like Capterra.
|
| (I lead the Zulip project).
| andreashaerter wrote:
| Hey, cool :-). I've used Zulip for a bit and really
| enjoyed it.
|
| We're planning to roll it out at our company (foundata)
| in Q4, so you'll get at least a few bucks from us. I'll
| also happily recommend it to our customers. As an OSS
| company and service provider, I can very much relate to
| the lack of marketing budget and the constant SEO spam.
| vagrantstreet wrote:
| I feel like the average person isn't looking for
| something professional grade, sadly it's hard to get
| people to go away from Discord at the moment. Hard to
| suggest alternatives if people aren't seeking them yet.
|
| If I had to say it would have to be something
| customizable, letting a user to delete their data even
| after getting kicked from a server, very fast and
| seamless joining process ,great gif/sticker support
| without any premium features etc. But really that's just
| some fantasy app lol. Discord is doing just fine
| destroying itself however
|
| By the way, I didn't know there was an instant online
| test app because when I searched for Zulip I was in the
| download page and it doesn't say anything about trying it
| online. Seems like a strange suggestion UX wise but
| that's how I feel about it (wonder how many people missed
| out on this?), same thing after you enter the app. It
| should have a test area for the new user to chat around
| by himself with a bot or something with locally/session
| stored messages.
| cyberrock wrote:
| Oh please, fix your self-deployment story first. Search
| "zulip docker" or "zulip self host". It seems like you
| guys just deleted your compose file right when folks are
| looking for alternatives. Even before this refactor I
| gave it a good try for an hour before just moving on to
| RocketChat/Mattermost. It seems like you just don't try
| the product as if you're a customer.
| Cyphase wrote:
| Not sure which compose file you mean; here's Zulip's
| official container image repo:
|
| https://github.com/zulip/docker-zulip
|
| https://github.com/zulip/docker-
| zulip/blob/main/compose.yaml
| cyberrock wrote:
| It doesn't have an installer or even a starter compose.yml
| now. Even the much-ridiculed NextCloud has had a turnkey
| AIO installer for 5 years now. When no one is coming into
| the shop, maybe check if anyone unlocked the entrance.
| ilikepi wrote:
| This seems like a nice breakdown of some options:
|
| https://taggart-tech.com/discord-alternatives/
|
| (Not affiliated)
| 3acctforcom wrote:
| Honestly, this is HN and founders should pay attention to
| this. People don't want to host their own shit, they want a
| one-click easy switch. All of these alternatives have
| baggage.
|
| This is your chance to start Bluesky for discord. A
| competently built, VC backed competitor to exploit a misstep
| only caused by government overreach due to their colossal
| market share. 26 million daily active users is a nice
| guaranteed market to start whittling away at, with an
| effective marketing campaign to drive a wedge between "little
| gamers, and big corporate enshittification."
| skulk wrote:
| > government overreach
|
| How would you avoid the same problem that discord ran into
| that made them require ID verification? I doubt they're
| doing this for fun. Incorporate in the Bahamas?
| Morromist wrote:
| the largest block of discord users are from the US which
| hasn't got id verification laws regarding age for social
| media. The 2nd largest is brazil, which does, and the 3rd
| is India, which doesn't.
|
| So they are forcing users from countries that haven't
| passed these laws to abide by them. They don't have to do
| this, they could just require brazilians use face-id.
| lanyard-textile wrote:
| I've been tempted for a long time.
|
| I don't think I would need VC to get off the ground.
|
| I keep coming back to the gigantic headache of content
| moderation, and it gives me pause not to do it. There are
| some truly terrible people who will try to tear the
| platform apart.
| hx8 wrote:
| I think automatic moderation is one of those golden use
| cases for LLMs. You can use cheaper inference models, and
| maybe some clever sampling techniques to limit the token
| expense.
|
| Thinking out loud, I'd be surprised if this isn't a
| startup already.
| lanyard-textile wrote:
| I wonder if you break TOS by sending unlawful content
| that way... :) Would have to be local model I'd imagine.
| sylens wrote:
| Any option that is not self hosted will eventually suffer
| the same fate. Decentralization is the way forward
| hx8 wrote:
| What successful mass market service is self hosted[0]?
| We're in an endless cycle of cool new service suffers
| enshittification and abandoned. I'd love to break the
| cycle, but self hosted hasn't had a lot of success.
|
| [0] Self answer: Maybe crypto and email would be the best
| examples, and neither of them are fantastic examples.
| kennywinker wrote:
| Discourse?
| bsder wrote:
| > Honestly, this is HN and founders should pay attention to
| this. People don't want to host their own shit, they want a
| one-click easy switch. All of these alternatives have
| baggage.
|
| I mean, come on, this is, what, a couple hours of vibe
| coding, max?
|
| Let's go AI bros on HN. Chop. Chop. ... Wait, why am I
| hearing crickets?
|
| For those who don't get it, yes, I'm being sarcastic. It
| isn't that easy to code this, but the problem isn't coding
| or even deploying.
|
| The problem is your manual service. Logins are a pain in
| the ass and chew up _sooooo_ much of your customer service
| time. Then there are the griefers. Then there are the
| spammers. Then there is law enforcement compliance (in
| spite of what HN says, you _DO_ have to comply with local
| laws). etc.
|
| All that costs time which equates to money.
|
| I was once talking to someone who made a point that Discord
| specifically tries to hide IPs so that people playing a
| game can't DDoS their opponents. o_O! At that moment, I
| realized that I simply can't imagine all the malevolent
| behavior that Discord withstands.
| buovjaga wrote:
| For the latest in IRC tech, you can read my blog posts:
| https://www.ilmarilauhakangas.fi/irc_technology_news_from_th...
|
| I wrote the summaries with my own two hands, no LLMs involved.
| txtsd wrote:
| Thank you! I've bookmarked your website!
| jiffygist wrote:
| Discord's voice rooms with screen sharing is a very cool
| feature i depend on daily. I haven't seen opensource messenger
| that implemented this yet.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Jitsi handles this very well.
|
| I personally would advocate the combination of Zulip for text
| chat plus Jitsi for calls and screen sharing.
| piyuv wrote:
| Jitsi has audio rooms like discord?
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Jitsi supports audio, video, or both, in addition to
| screen sharing.
|
| One use case Jitsi _doesn 't_ support that Discord does
| is "push to talk"; that's something I haven't seen a good
| alternative for, other than Mumble, which seems much less
| usable for other purposes. But for other purposes, Jitsi
| works very well; I've had thousands of hours of calls on
| it at this point.
|
| In an ideal world, I'd love to see a web standard for a
| web app to request access to a single (user-determined)
| key, to allow web apps to do push-to-talk while staying
| in their sandbox.
| veyh wrote:
| Well, even if Jitsi doesn't have Push-to-Talk, you can
| still easily get it by using a hotkey to mute/unmute the
| mic system-wide.
|
| For exampple, if you're on PC, MicMute [1] can be used
| for free, or if you want more customization, I would
| humbly present my side project, AutoPTT [2].
|
| [1] https://github.com/SaifAqqad/AHK_MicMute/
|
| [2] https://autoptt.com/
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I think Matrix is the closest equivalent that's reasonably
| popular, at least for text messaging. There are both web and
| mobile clients and they interoperate seamlessly. It's also at
| the point where it somewhat reasonably works for the average
| user, rather than being the usual UX nightmare that teaches
| people that anything open source or anything pushed by their
| nerdy friend should be avoided.
| somat wrote:
| Hard to say, I don't really use discord so I think of it as
| voice chat as a service, and for pure voice chat it is hard to
| do better than mumble. However from the way people talk about
| discord, it is also a text chat screen sharing file server. and
| it is hard to find one product that does all that well.
|
| For video, both video chat and screen sharing I have had a lot
| of success with Galene, it offers text chat and file sharing,
| but they are sort of anemic and bare bones, which could be good
| or bad based on the needs of your users. https://galene.org/
|
| What I usually do is start with a fossil server, this is
| trivial and gives you files, a wiki and a forum (none of them
| super good but like I said trivial to set up) then if I want
| voice, mumble is my normal route, but galene is growing on me
| more and more, the web interface makes buy in from the end
| users trivial and despite it being nice you almost never need
| the cool room stuff you can do with mumble.
|
| But I am a sys-admin, I like running servers, hell, I find I
| enjoy running the servers more than I like playing the games.
| Plus, statistically, I have zero-friends, it is fine to say a
| server is great when only one other person has used it. That is
| to say, my results may not be typical.
| jchook wrote:
| https://zulip.com/
| kristjank wrote:
| Matrix has been trivial enough for me to implement with some of
| my non-technical friends. YMMV
| accrual wrote:
| Here's the October 2025 Discord data breach mentioned at the end
| of the article:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8jmzd972leo
|
| > Discord, a messaging platform popular with gamers, says
| official ID photos of around 70,000 users have potentially been
| leaked after a cyber-attack.
|
| However, their senior director states in this Verge article:
|
| > The ID is immediately deleted. We do not keep any information
| around like your name, the city that you live in, if you used a
| birth certificate or something else, any of that information.
|
| Why they didn't do that the first time?
| wolvoleo wrote:
| And do they really actually delete it this time?
| fruitworks wrote:
| I have it on good authority that they really truly delete it
| this time, super duper pinky promise
| ekianjo wrote:
| Once it's out there the only assumption that holds is no
| trust, and therefore all bets are off.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| >Why they didn't do that the first time?
|
| The company they hired to do the support tickets archived them,
| including attachments, rather than deleting them.
| malfist wrote:
| Ah, so it was the "staffer" excuse.
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| rogue engineer
| joquarky wrote:
| How convenient.
| engineeringwoke wrote:
| Ah sorry our contractor did all that highly illegal stuff.
| Too bad we can't pierce the corporate veil anymore... shucks.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _The ID is immediately deleted. We do not keep any
| information around like your name, the city that you live in,
| if you used a birth certificate or something else, any of that
| information._
|
| This is also contradicted by what Discord actually says:
|
| > _Quick deletion: Identity documents submitted to our vendor
| partners are deleted quickly-- in most cases, immediately after
| age confirmation._
|
| What are the non-most cases?
| rsynnott wrote:
| Also, _Discord_ deleting them is really only half the battle;
| random vendors deleting them remains an issue.
| rockskon wrote:
| Not to mention collecting them at all means those servers
| are a primo location for state actors to stage themselves
| to make copies of data before being deleted.
|
| To say nothing of insider threats of which likely exist
| across every major social media platform in service to
| foreign govs.
| nativeit wrote:
| It was this deep into the thread when I decided I don't
| think I need internet service this bad, let alone
| Discord. I think I'm out. Let us know how it goes!
| roysting wrote:
| All of these types of developments, of the trap door
| starting to close, really do totally depend on the
| addiction, the dependency that was created to make sure
| the people would be unable to withdraw themselves. We now
| have some generations of people who have only been online
| and in a fantasy world of games and "TV". It seems the
| system has calculated that we have crossed the threshold
| after which the system is self-reinforcing and there is
| very little chance of effective resistance, let alone
| reversal.
| alienbaby wrote:
| I think you may be attributing far too much malice of
| forethought to any them that may be conspiring to design
| the 'system'
| littlecorner wrote:
| Everyone thought that we were designing the system, but
| it's really been the system designing us.
|
| (Only half joking; the medium is the message, and changes
| us as much as we change it)
| singleshot_ wrote:
| malice aforethought
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Not to mention collecting them at all means those
| servers are a primo location for state actors to stage
| themselves to make copies of data before being deleted._
|
| Not to nitpick, but in this case they'd be collecting
| data they already own.
| Libcat99 wrote:
| The feds don't own state IDs in the US, at least.
| diydsp wrote:
| 1. Foreign state actors
|
| 2. Inter-hostile agencies within the u.s.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| In addition to the sibling comments, even if they do own
| the ID itself, they do not own the association with
| Discord users, and the ID might also be faked.
| rockskon wrote:
| For state actors - they frequently have issues
| "connecting the dots". Or heck - maybe connecting the
| dots is easy but it's a manual process that introduces
| too much friction for them to do casually. Maybe some of
| the data they connect it with is not trustworthy.
|
| If the dots already come pre-connected, it makes the job
| easier.
|
| Not to mention its value as blackmail material shoots up
| because it comes pre-associated with your government ID
| and/or a scan of your face because fewer sources/methods
| need to be risked.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| Weird that I have to get a list of all the cookie vendors
| that know I visit a website to show me an ad about
| something I already bought but the guys with my ID don't
| need to be listed.
| Zanfa wrote:
| Under GDPR they need to be listed.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| GDPR isn't a cookie law -- it's a PII law. They need to
| tell you all parties that get your ID picture, or they're
| in breach.
| nemoniac wrote:
| GDPR is not a PII law. The term is not mentioned once in
| GDPR. GDPR speaks of "personal data", which as Wikipedia
| puts it "is significantly broader".
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Doesn't PII, mean personal information which is is
| another term for personal data?
| master-lincoln wrote:
| Personally Identifiable Information is about data that
| can identify you personally. Personal data might be
| something you don't want to share but is not necessarily
| identifying you
| blitzar wrote:
| "We delete them immediately after we have sold them to our
| 579 parters"
| jorvi wrote:
| Vendors like that would be in deep GDPR shit if they claim
| to not store highly sensitive data and then do in fact
| store highly sensitive data.
|
| Generally the GDPR is not rigorously enforced, but when it
| comes to sensitive data like face scans, IDs, medical data
| etc. the hammer comes down a lot swifter and harder.
| miohtama wrote:
| GDPR does not stop a breach.
|
| Discord already lost user IDs. Will GDPR delete them from
| the darknet?
| throw20251220 wrote:
| Since when the city one lives in is mentioned in the birth
| certificate?
| smcin wrote:
| It was only one example they gave, and they accept multiple
| different types of ID; a driver's license or national ID
| card being other likely ones, and DLs do say where you
| live.
| kvdveer wrote:
| None of those documents reliably state my city of
| residence. At best they document where I once lived, but
| not even that is guaranteed.
| malfist wrote:
| You are legally required to update those within 10 days
| of moving.
| xnyan wrote:
| Not updating your DL after changing your address is a
| crime* in all US states. I'm not as familiar with law
| elsewhere, but would be surprised if that's not true most
| other places.
|
| *There are exceptions for active duty military personal
| and other limited exceptions.
| tosti wrote:
| That's pathetic. It would mean you can't live anywhere
| without a street address, such as a camp site or a ship.
| You also can't be a nomad.
|
| So much for "land of the free".
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Unless you're wild camping, campsites have addresses. So
| do marinas where a ship would need to be docked more or
| less regularly to establish residency.
|
| As for being a nomad, you don't need a driver's license
| or any kind of ID to wander if you're willing to sleep
| rough. If you want to drive on public roadways though,
| you better have a primary address where the courts can
| send someone if you kill someone in a traffic accident
| and bail.
| tosti wrote:
| Docking is expensive, so no. It's also only needed once
| per 5 years or so for maintenance.
|
| Government fining you a ticket doesn't mean your address
| has to be on the drivers license. They could register the
| number plate to an SSN for instance.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Did you skip my last sentence? A traffic ticket is not
| the worst thing you can do in an automobile. And not
| everyone eligible for a drivers license will have an SSN.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| In some places in the U.S. it is (or at least was until
| recently) illegal to be healthy and unemployed.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| For most situations where you don't have a permanent
| address, your address is either the place where you
| receive mail or the courthouse.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| And if you don't have a place to receive mail?
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Receiving mail is a requirement for participating in the
| legal system, which is a requirement for citizens.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Laws of the government can't override laws of physics. If
| you don't have a place where you can receive mail, do
| they just arrest you or what? Do they assign a PO box to
| you?
| direwolf20 wrote:
| America is one of the least free countries -- they think
| they're free because the guns=free principle is drilled
| into them since birth, but it's a lie.
| VohuMana wrote:
| It is a law but rarely enforced, also some places like
| Washington are primarily digital meaning you update your
| DL address online but they don't print a new ID unless
| you request it or your DL is expired
| comboy wrote:
| Well since you have these IDs, for national security (AML,
| criminals and whatnot), we will need you to keep them if our
| endpoint says so, here's the endpoint
| https://.gov/print?text=true
| vee-kay wrote:
| >"Identity documents submitted to our vendor partners"..
|
| Yeah, say goodbye to those the privacy and safety of those
| documents.
| catify wrote:
| How can we even confirm that they are actually deleting them.
| Trust me bro vibe
| menaerus wrote:
| Imagine the neural network you could train over such a
| large dataset of ID's so when you pay your bills or do the
| flight check-in you avoid the hassle of manually inputting
| the data yourself? Ah, yes, we have that already.
| varispeed wrote:
| > The ID is immediately deleted.
|
| I call it bollocks. Likely they have to keep it for audit and
| other purposes.
| smaudet wrote:
| "delete" doesn't mean delete anymore, like you say, there are
| always audit logs, and there is "soft" deleting.
|
| Expect any claims that things are being deleted to be a bold
| faced lie.
| BikiniPrince wrote:
| We deleted it from someplace. It's not our fault we have
| more places!
| subscribed wrote:
| They wouldn't _have to_, audit checks if you stick to law,
| your own policies and such, but I think they will.
| varispeed wrote:
| So how do they prove they actually checked someone's age?
| lII1lIlI11ll wrote:
| How does shop clerk proves they checked someone's age
| before selling them alcohol?
| Gigachad wrote:
| They don't need to prove that. The government or whatever
| would have to prove that they aren't checking ages, by
| going to the site and seeing a lack of age verification.
| observationist wrote:
| They're a nonsense company, and trusting them with any
| information is foolish. They'll store everything and anything,
| because data is valuable, and won't delete anything unless
| legally compelled to and held accountable by third party
| independent verification. This is the default.
|
| The purpose of things is what they do. They're an adtech user
| data collection company, they're not a user information
| securing company.
| debo_ wrote:
| I believe the original finding was that they were not deleting
| IDs that were involved in disputes.
| Aurornis wrote:
| They explained it in their announcement at
| https://discord.com/press-releases/update-on-security-incide...
|
| TL;DR: The IDs were used in age-related appeals. If someone's
| account was banned for being too young they have to submit an
| ID as part of the appeal. Appeals take time to process and
| review.
|
| Discord has 200,000,000 users and age verification happens a
| lot due to the number of young users and different countries.
| plorg wrote:
| Why should we suspect the age verification and age-related
| appeals would involve different teams or processes?
| elpasi wrote:
| Age verification is done by an iframe to k-id.com.
|
| Appeals are done in the actual Discord ticketing system.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Appeals are like escalations. They bypass automations and
| move to manual review.
| reactordev wrote:
| This is corporate cover speak for "we keep all data"
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Yeaaah, nope.
|
| GDPR is no joke and storing people's actual ID card photos
| is a gigantic liability. Companies treat that stuff like
| it's toxic waste, they want to get rid of it as fast as
| possible and permanently.
| reactordev wrote:
| We're talking about Discord. The same people who put
| everyone's "server" as a chat room on WebRTC.
|
| They don't share your same sense of toxicity.
| trinix912 wrote:
| How come they didn't do that the first time? There's
| really no guarantee this time will be different or that
| the 3rd party is any better.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| Maybe that's generally true but you're saying that about
| a company that has leaked 70,000 IDs that were supposed
| to not exist just last October.
| chickensong wrote:
| And yet...
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| So Discord only just survived financially because of
| heavy fines imposed from their earlier breach of trust?
| All their C-suite were fined commensurate with their
| remunerations+wealth?
| superkuh wrote:
| Uh... _EVERYONE_ with a Discord account has to go through
| age-related appeals now. That 's what the announcement is.
| _ink_ wrote:
| Compliance
| reactordev wrote:
| Liars...
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| > The ID is immediately deleted. We do not keep any information
| around like your name, the city that you live in, if you used a
| birth certificate or something else, any of that information.
|
| Everyone says this, including the TSA. But they never say they
| don't keep a hash, or an eigenvector of your biometric. Which
| is equally as important.
| hinata08 wrote:
| They also never say it goes through datacenters in room 641A
| or though Utah before it's "deleted", because it's a US
| company and they can't refuse that.
| eks391 wrote:
| In case someone is unaware, 641A and Utah and both
| references to the US mass surveillance systems in this
| context. Specifically interceptors that a company wouldn't
| be able to prevent from saving your data for the few
| seconds they need to process and delete it
| miki123211 wrote:
| I might be misremembering, but AFAIK, that kind of
| surveillance mostly worked because many companies didn't
| bother encrypting datacenter-to-datacenter traffic,
| thinking that those networks are trusted. That mistake
| has since been rectified though.
|
| With almost everything going over TLS these days and
| HTTPS being the norm, even for server-to-server APIs,
| it's much harder to snoop on traffic without the
| collaboration of one of the endpoints, and the more
| companies you ask for that kind of collaboration, the
| higher your risk of an unhappy employee becoming a
| whistleblower.
| hinata08 wrote:
| That's also about US companies that can't refuse or can't
| bother to challenge that a dragnet is set up in their
| process.
|
| ISPs themselves didn't save any data. However, they gave
| interception rooms to the NSA (which is indeed
| technically not them).
|
| Nowadays ISPs aren't the right scale to do it for the
| reasons you mentioned. But the USA lowkey moved the
| dragnet to the main datacenters with prism, then made it
| mandatory for all with the CLOUD act.
|
| And if the threat is not coming from the USA, but some
| other country starts to ask Discord to BCC them the IDs
| of their citizens, we can do the odds on whether Discord
| will challenge it or not.
|
| Now I want to ask Discord who is their third party
| provider ? Why don't they process IDs themselves ?
| cluckindan wrote:
| > it's much harder to snoop on traffic
|
| Unless you have a master key which decrypts all traffic.
| ronsor wrote:
| That is not possible with modern TLS 1.3, which mandates
| perfect forward secrecy.
| Groxx wrote:
| Unless you use Cloudflare (or roughly any other DDOS
| protection system), in which case you're letting those
| companies MITM all requests on purpose. Protected between
| you and Cloudflare by PFS and any other acronym you like.
|
| I think the odds that Cloudflare _hasn 't_ been forced
| into data snooping by the government are approximately
| zero. It's the by far the biggest, juiciest target.
| bilekas wrote:
| Until we have some kind of "One Time ID Verification" service
| that would work, the ID will never be deleted. Or a hash of the
| info or some kind of identifiable info.
| phatfish wrote:
| Humm yeah, like a government digital ID of some sort. Except
| people go mental about that, so sending scanned copies of my
| personal ID documents to every bank/solicitor/estate
| agent/mortgage broker/random internet service it is then...
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Or if they don't need your ID.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Sigh, I guess it's time to move platforms again or get your
| identity stolen. The more a company makes a fuss about trusting
| users, the more likely they store all of their shit in
| plaintext with vibe coded server security.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > We do not keep any information around like your name
|
| But they might be sending a copy to the NSA, similarly to how
| Alphabet, Yahoo, Apple, Meta etc. have been doing (PRISM
| program, part of the Snowden revelation [1]). The US has the
| legal mechanisms of requiring this to happen, secretly, such as
| NSLs [2].
|
| [1] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
|
| [2] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I bet the NSA does not even require their cooperation. They
| are probably already inside their systems.
| funkyfiddler369 wrote:
| Deleted from some location or purged from _their_ entire
| system?
|
| > We do not keep any information around
|
| ... "around"
| seneca wrote:
| Hard no. Reality is that this push is everywhere. Authoritarian
| governments are cracking down hard on dissent, they're not going
| to leave huge platforms for communication untouched. We'll need
| open source decentralized alternatives.
| accrual wrote:
| Indeed, the article basically says as much in more pacifying
| terms:
|
| > driven by an international legal push for age checks and
| stronger child safety measures
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I'm always amazed that despite decades of evidence... there
| are people that not only don't know that you can do anything
| if you say "it's for the children" but they'll actively
| support it.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| HN: Social media is terrible and ruining kids' mental health.
|
| Also HN: Any attempt to limit access to verified adults is an
| "authoritarian crackdown" and totally unacceptable.
| z0r wrote:
| Children generally have these things called "parents" who are
| supposedly responsible for their well being. Oh hey, suddenly
| there isn't a contradiction.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Right, helicopter parenting. Gets a lot of praise here, I
| forgot.
| hiccup_socks wrote:
| you may be surprised to learn that you can be a parent
| and have rules without being a "helicopter parent".
|
| given your other bad faith comments in this thread,
| though, im sure you know that and are just trying to be
| contrarian for... fun? is it fun?
| iso1631 wrote:
| Empower parents. Parental controls are a minefield -
| especially with competing companies (ea, microsoft,
| steam, nintendo, apple) all doing their best to get you
| to turn them off so they can push lootboxes and other
| junk more easily.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| HN commenters are many. Not 1. And 1 person can believe 2
| things are bad.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Haven't cared about Discord in a long time. In fact I'm glad
| they're continuing to shoot themselves in the foot.
|
| During the pandemic, I was on a Discord server for folks to
| socialize and blow off steam about the whole situation. Yes,
| there were some anti-vaxx wackos, but overall the place was civil
| and balanced, and I met some interesting people through it. We
| cracked jokes and it was a little bit of fun in a tough time.
|
| One day I came to discover that Discord had banned the server for
| allegedly violating... _something_. I wish I had written down
| everyone 's emails because I permanently lost contact with a
| bunch of friends in an instant.
|
| I never signed in to Discord again, in spite of times where some
| other social group wanted to use it. I vowed never to use Discord
| again. Fuck those guys and the Teslas they rode in on. I hope
| this ID verification thing is another big step towards their
| irrelevancy.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Discord has 150 million monthly active users.
|
| They'll be fine. To them, this is just another internet
| boycott, with all that entails. Reddit survived a worse one and
| grew afterward.
| ravenstine wrote:
| The difference with Reddit is it has way more persistent
| value. Everything on Discord is throwaway, but valuable posts
| on Reddit from years past are easily retrievable. The two
| aren't so comparable.
|
| One of the unspoken reasons many people have for using
| Discord is they don't want what they say to easily be
| associated with them in perpetuity. Requiring ID really chips
| away at that, in spite of what Discord has to say about
| privacy around ID.
|
| By no means am I saying that Discord will go extinct. I just
| haven't observed anything about it that's irreplaceable.
| Reddit, on the other hand, has a wealth of discussion dating
| back to the mid-to-late 00's.
| encom wrote:
| >valuable posts on Reddit
|
| [removed]
|
| [removed]
|
| [removed]
|
| [removed]
|
| [removed]
| ravenstine wrote:
| There's this thing called the Wayback Machine, but I
| lol'd at your response. It's not untrue. xD
| Terr_ wrote:
| > valuable posts on Reddit from years past are easily
| retrievable.
|
| Rant: Several years ago, everything I'd ever written for
| _over a decade_ on Reddit vanished one morning for no
| discernible reason, including all nested replies from other
| people. I appealed, my appeal was "granted", and nothing
| changed, except the appeals page refused to work because it
| said my account was already in good standing.
|
| I dug up an ancient account I had used for resume feedback,
| asked around in the help subreddits, and it too was killed
| the same way.
| palata wrote:
| I wonder if Discord is legally forced to do that, or if they
| would rather do it themselves (and collect the data $$$) rather
| than wait to be imposed a solution they don't own.
|
| I feel like age verification will come, there is no way around it
| (unlike ChatControl and the likes, age verification seems
| reasonably feasible and has a lot of political traction right
| now).
|
| But I would rather have a privacy-preserving solution for that,
| e.g. from the government (which already knows my age).
| anonymousab wrote:
| There are probably enough regions where it is required or will
| be required soon, that it makes sense to just get it over with.
|
| The Internet is more or less becoming a locked down, controlled
| and fully observed thing for end users and citizens, so
| adapting to that world sooner and working within it is just
| sensible future-proofing.
|
| This also lets them more safely target older users with ads,
| purchase requests, etc. and new integrations for gambling and
| other high ROI systems.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| GeoIP this nonsense. Legal liability is solved as a "good-
| faith effort" and those living in jurisdictions where this
| doesn't apply (or use a VPN) don't need to be stripped of
| privacy.
| plagiarist wrote:
| Privacy preserving between you and the third party, but the
| implication is that the government now sees what you are using.
| palata wrote:
| > but the implication is that the government now sees what
| you are using.
|
| No. The whole point of privacy preserving technology is that
| they don't.
|
| The idea is that the government checks your identity (they
| know _who you are_ ) and give you an anonymous cryptographic
| proof that you are above, say, 18. They don't know what you
| do with it.
|
| You give this cryptographic proof to Discord, and they know
| that if you have access to that proof, then you have access
| to someone who is above 18. They don't know who you are.
|
| Sure, you could ask an adult to give you a token. But you can
| also ask an adult to buy you alcohol or to do the age
| verification scan for you.
| plagiarist wrote:
| You cannot automate adults buying alcohol from a single ID
| for all the children in the nation.
|
| If age tokens are truly anonymous, what's the solution for
| preventing a single person from generating and selling them
| to whatever child wants one?
| palata wrote:
| The thing is that we go from "we don't check the age at
| all" to "children now need to work around an age
| verification" system. Seems like it will be harder for
| children, which is the goal.
|
| Then make it illegal to sell them. Some people will still
| do it, but children can already order cannabis over the
| internet.
|
| It's always a trade-off, it will never be perfect. But
| the status quo is not perfect either. The question is: is
| it better than the status quo? I think that age
| verification is not completely unreasonable (as long as
| it is made in a privacy-preserving manner). As a
| comparison, I think that ChatControl _is completely
| unreasonable_.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Discord is just the next biggest canary in the coal mine of
| increasing regulatory pressure in the EU, UK (which has had
| this Discord verification for months now due to laws there),
| and various US states.
|
| I do wish that the lawmakers had worked more hand-in-hand with
| technical exports on more privacy-preserving solutions ahead of
| enforcing these laws. But Discord is doing this because
| enforcement _has_ already started.
| elephanlemon wrote:
| Great news, there's finally going to be sufficient motivation for
| people to both build out and use open source alternatives.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Alternative: run your own self-hosted messaging server for you,
| your family and friends. No company should ever get such
| sensitive data as private conversations.
|
| Use Discord with a throw-away account. Create a character in GTA
| 5 on your laptop and show its face (in "selfie" mode) to the web-
| camera on another computer with Discord open. All face scan
| checks so far gladly accept it. Instagram has been requiring
| occasional face checks for ages already.
| brushfoot wrote:
| > Content Filters: Discord users will need to be age-assured as
| adults in order to unblur sensitive content or turn off the
| setting. [1]
|
| That presumably includes selfies?
|
| That means that to exchange racy photos on Discord, each person
| must first record a facial age estimation video or upload
| identification documents.
|
| That seems dystopian.
|
| 1: https://discord.com/press-releases/discord-launches-teen-
| by-...
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| How do you know one party isn't 15 when the other is 25?
|
| You're never going to convince a parent or a lawmaker or even
| me that this is dystopian. Seems like a perfectly reasonable
| safeguard.
| brushfoot wrote:
| > How do you know one party isn't 15 when the other is 25?
|
| You don't. That's why parents need to be involved in their
| children's lives.
|
| CSAM is the easy excuse, anyway. That's the one lawmakers
| use, and most people are against CSAM, myself included, so
| the excuse goes down easy. But the impetus they don't talk
| about is monitoring and control.
|
| The answer isn't to destroy privacy for everyone. The
| government and these corporations don't need to know what
| you're doing every second of the day.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > That's why parents need to be involved in their
| children's lives.
|
| Can't, aren't, look at iPad kids, won't. This is about as
| logical as saying people should just drive safely, so we
| don't need guardrails and seat belts. Or saying parents
| should always watch their children, so we don't need age
| verification at the alcohol store. Besides, it's not like
| the school library or the friends of friends don't have
| devices themselves you as a parent can't see.
|
| Parents should not need to be tech experts or helicopters
| to feel their kids are safe online. That's fundamentally
| unreasonable. In which case, privacy and child safety need
| to come to an unhappy compromise, just like any other
| conflicting interest.
|
| For that matter, I'm surprised that HN automatically always
| accepts the "slippery slope" fallacy while lambasting it
| everywhere else.
| tavavex wrote:
| > This is about as logical as saying people should just
| drive safely, so we don't need guardrails and seat belts.
|
| This is a terrible analogy. Regulations related to
| driving only apply to drivers, if you're a pedestrian
| then you're not subject to basically any regulations that
| licensed drivers have to abide by. On the other hand,
| internet regulation like this punishes _absolutely
| everyone_ to safeguard a small group, that being parents.
| It 's like legally forcing pedestrians to wrap themselves
| in bubble wrap while outside so the careless drivers who
| couldn't behave don't dent their cars and get hurt when a
| pedestrian flies in their windshield, when they
| inevitably collide with one of them. Why is any of this
| their responsibility?
|
| The fact that there is absolutely zero effort in pursuing
| any non-punitive options (like forcing ISPs to put
| networks of clients with kids in child-friendly mode,
| where the adult has to enter a password to temporarily
| view the unrestricted internet on their network, which
| should cover 90%+ of cases; or doing any of the proposed
| non-identifying proofs of age, like a generic "I'm an
| adult" card you can buy at the convenience store) should
| tell you that this has very little to do with actual
| concern for children. They went out of their way to enact
| the least private, most invasive, most disruptive option,
| which will not even work better than any privacy-friendly
| options, unless you expect literally every website on the
| internet to be compliant. Teens are smart, they'll be
| able to find any holes in that system, just like the
| generations before them.
|
| > For that matter, I'm surprised that HN automatically
| always accepts the "slippery slope" fallacy while
| lambasting it everywhere else.
|
| Slippery slope arguments are not automatically a fallacy.
| They can be if the causative relationship is weak or if
| the slope is massively exaggerated. But if neither of
| these things are true, "slippery slopes" is just looking
| at the trends and expecting them to continue. You can't
| look at a linear graph and say "well, I think there's no
| most likely option from now on, it could go any way
| really" without an argument for why the trend would
| suddenly deviate. The internet had been tightening up and
| the walls have been closing in for a long time, why would
| that change?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > safeguard a small group, that being parents
|
| 69% of US Adults have children. That's not a typo. There
| is _no group_ that benefits from this larger than
| parents.
| tavavex wrote:
| In 2020, about 63 million Americans were parents to
| children under 18 [1]. That's about one in four adults.
| It's a small minority. Maybe 69% of all people have
| children _in general_ , but most of those children are
| above the age of 18.
|
| Not that it matters anyway. You picked out a single word
| out of my multi-paragraph comment with many arguments and
| ignored the rest. Even if parents of young children were
| the minority, does that mean they should dictate what the
| rest do for the sake of their safety? Like 85% of
| Americans are drivers, should the non-driving pedestrians
| start stocking up on bubble wrap? It's for the common
| good, after all.
|
| [1] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-
| releases/2020/estimate...
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| They'll now have kompromat associated with a name, address,
| and id number (be it social security, BSN, or whatever your
| country calls it)
| eur0pa wrote:
| No thank you, get fucked
| rdudek wrote:
| Genuine question, what is stopping users from using AI to
| generate a fake face or ID to bypass this restriction?
| anonymousab wrote:
| There is a bit of an arms race between id verification systems
| and users bypassing them when AI gen. Which is really just ai
| generated images vs. AI generated image detection.
|
| In practice, nothing will stop it, the tooling will gradually
| get better at detecting prior fakes and banning those users
| while the newer fakes will go undetected for longer.
|
| Putting up the requirement satisfies their CYA requirements
| here. The race between AI fraud vs. detection is something they
| can just ignore and let happen on its own.
| akersten wrote:
| > prior fakes
|
| But they assured me my biometrics are deleted after
| uploading!
| hiprob wrote:
| Are they going to leak IDs of minors again like they did last
| time? Who does this protect exactly?
| malfist wrote:
| It protects the investors so they can IPO
| Insanity wrote:
| To be honest it kinda sounds like a benefit for my use-case. I
| don't engage with adult content on there and use it for one
| server with friends.
|
| And this will reduce spam from random accounts. Will see if it
| remains usable without uploading my Id.
| uf00lme wrote:
| I think having kids asking if they can scan the face of their
| parents/older sibling will probably give rise to some good
| conversations.
| ethin wrote:
| You have got to be kidding me. What is it with these lawmakers
| and websites demanding people do all of this stuff using services
| that nobody has ever heard of? I myself (as someone who is blind)
| have never been able to do the face scanning thing because the
| information they provide (for, you know, getting my face focused)
| is just massively insufficient. And a lot of the ones I've seen
| also require me to (as an alternative) do some weird ID scanning
| with my camera instead of, you know, just allowing me to upload
| my ID or something? (Then again, I really wouldn't want to give
| my ID to some service nobody has ever heard of either, so there.)
| I also am concerned when tfa says "a photo of an identity
| document" what does this mean? If I have to scan my ID with my
| camera, that's not exactly going to be simple for me to pull off.
| I get that we need to protect kids, but this is not the way. Not
| when it is discrimination by another name for individuals with
| disabilities (as just one example).
| sheikhnbake wrote:
| I foresee Discord receiving a lot of identification documents
| from the likes of Ben Dover
| ncr100 wrote:
| Dingle Dongle
|
| Hot Ta Tas
| BoredPositron wrote:
| Can't wait to send my id to the cheapest identification provider
| they could find.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Source: https://discord.com/press-releases/discord-launches-teen-
| by-...
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| I talk to three people on Discord. If I have to choose between A)
| giving Discord my ID, B) giving Discord a fraudulent ID, or C)
| just chatting with them on some other program, I'll just go with
| C. If I cared about Discord more I guess I'd figure out B. May
| get started with C ahead of time anyway.
| rozab wrote:
| What am I missing? According to this, the only difference is
| you get a warning popup when someone new DMs you, right? And
| they can't send you images flagged as porn?
|
| How does this impact you in any way?
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| I'm generally opposed to services unnecessarily wanting IDs,
| content filtering for direct messages from my contacts,
| unwanted popups (it's already annoying when my friends send
| me a link to a site I haven't visited from discord before and
| it "warns" me and you cannot disable this entirely useless
| popups), and things generally becoming worse.
|
| A lot of these things are normalized already, but requiring
| IDs is not and I don't want to see it become normalized.
|
| Ultimately, they are free to do what they like (or perhaps
| being unnecessarily pressured by various govts) and I am free
| to leave the service.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| They're saying there's a very good chance that, in your use
| case, you still won't be asked to provide ID.
| dave7 wrote:
| This is correct. I'm a UK Discord user, so I've been
| subject to these requirements for ~6 months now. It's
| basically nothing - I'm in near 50 "servers", of them all
| I only really can think of one channel in one of them
| that is flagged "nsfw" and thus blocked to me as I never
| ID'd myself.
|
| If you don't use Discord as a source of "nsfw" content
| you can comfortably ignore these requirements. I do
| realize there are some communities that may fare a lot
| worse than my gaming / software dev interests, and may be
| falsely claimed "nsfw" just for their existence. Which
| yeah, that absolutely sucks.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| Whether I have to provide ID myself or not, I prefer to
| live in a world where when a company even announces that
| they plan to do facial scanning, they lose most of their
| customers. Hard to keep track of everything every company
| is doing of course, but I will try to migrate off of
| Discord ASAP.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| I don't disagree with that, personally.
| edm0nd wrote:
| If all you use Discord for is chatting with 3 people, these
| changes will have zero impact on you and your daily usage. You
| wont ever see an ID prompt.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| It will impact me since I've decided to go with plan C ahead
| of time. Hard to keep track of everything every company does,
| but I'd rather not use a service that is unnecessarily
| aggregating facial scans + IDs of its users.
| __loam wrote:
| You don't have to make excuses for corporate decisions that
| damage user privacy.
| sipjca wrote:
| this is hilarious, person who barely uses service says he will
| leave the service, what a concept
| superkuh wrote:
| It's a relief to finally read that Discord is indirectly shutting
| down and getting rid of it's users. It was inevitable but dragged
| out far too long with all the VC money to burn. Hopefully
| everyone can figure out how to use XMPP and/or get back on IRC.
| It is a genuine shame how much culture and information will be
| lost inside their walled garden though.
| ROllerozxa wrote:
| I'm afraid the thing that would be replacing Discord will be
| even worse
| joks wrote:
| XMPP and IRC are great and all but a massive part of what
| people use Discord for is group voice calls with screen-
| sharing. I'm not sure what the alternative is for that.
| TeamSpeak is the closest I can think of but it's not a 1:1
| replacement for a number of reasons.
| crtasm wrote:
| We use Jitsi for voice/video calls + screen sharing (but I
| realise you may be talking about all-in-one alternatives)
| em-bee wrote:
| it's possible to integrate jitsi in such a way that the
| chat has a function that will open a jitsi room and share
| the link to that. on irc this could be a bot. for people
| used to irc that's seamless enough. for something more
| convenient you'd want to integrate that feature into the
| chat client interface such that it can track who is in
| which jitsi room, etc...
|
| of course this has yet to be built.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| I think it is more likely that the next best platform will end
| up gaining three principled civil libertarians and about seven
| zillion witches.
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| IRC is a much more impoverished chat experience than
| Discord/Slack in a bunch of ways. Suggesting that people "get
| back on IRC" is not a serious proposal for making it possible
| for groups of people to chat online without being subject to
| identity verification or censorship.
| malfist wrote:
| This is just the latest in a long trend of increasing spying on
| users. Why bother having to guess who your user is, or
| fingerprint a browser if you can just force them to show you
| their national ID?
|
| This is transparently about spying on people, not "protecting
| children". The real world doesn't require you to show your ID to
| every business you frequent, or every advertiser you walk by.
| Someone can yell a swear word on the sidewalk, and not everyone
| within ear shot has to show ID.
| 0x_rs wrote:
| I predict out-of-the-box deepfake live-camera software will get a
| bump in popularity, there's already plenty solutions available
| that need minimal tinkering. It should be trivial to set up for
| the purpose of verification and I don't see those identity
| verification providers being able to do anything about it. Of
| course, that'll only mean stricter verification through ID only
| later on, much to the present-and-future surveillance state's
| benefit.
|
| https://github.com/hacksider/Deep-Live-Cam
| ahhhhnoooo wrote:
| So where we all jumping to?
| q3k wrote:
| Running phpBB on some crappy shared hosting. Well, these days
| on some crappy VPS.
| mbirth wrote:
| At least this would make FAQs and other important bits of
| information available to non-users and search engines.
| sekh60 wrote:
| I'm being completely serious, but what is the current fav
| open source forum software these days? I'd love to host a
| forum for a small community I'm involved in. Not a stranger
| to hosting other things across a variety of stacks, so I'm
| not particular about technology used.
| tingling168 wrote:
| You could take a look at https://nodebb.org/
| sekh60 wrote:
| Thanks, I'll check it out :)
| __jonas wrote:
| Every single forum I see now is using this:
|
| https://github.com/discourse/discourse
|
| Seems to work okay in general. I'm not a big fan of the
| gamified notification system it seems to have - whenever I
| sign up for an instance, it'll send me things like "Super
| reader achievement unlocked! You read 10 threads." or
| whatever. I suppose it can be turned off since it's OSS.
| q3k wrote:
| I hate the scrollbar hijacking and lazy loading on larger
| threads.
|
| I just want pagination and to use my stock browser
| features...
| sekh60 wrote:
| Thanks, I'll have to look into it too, though the
| gamification sounds annoying AF.
| mjrbrennan wrote:
| I responded to the other comment, but I work at
| Discourse. As a site admin you can disable badges (which
| is our gamification system) entirely, or you can get rid
| of individual badges.
|
| If you're interested in trying Discourse, our lowest
| hosting plan is $20/month, or if you want to self-host
| there have been a bunch of improvements in the setup
| process recently, see https://meta.discourse.org/t/self-
| hosting-discourse-just-got...
| mjrbrennan wrote:
| I work at Discourse. As a regular user, if you want to
| prevent these new user badges (and notifications), head
| to /u/yourusername/preferences/interface and check "Skip
| new user onboarding tips and badges".
|
| It is in our plans to eventually rework how this new user
| education and notification system works, and I suppose
| eventually with https://id.discourse.com/ the intent
| would be that your preferences follow you to every
| Discourse site you sign up for, so you could just set it
| once.
|
| As an admin, badges can be disabled entirely, or
| individually.
| reddalo wrote:
| I just wish that the whole badges thing was off by
| default. It's a forced gamification that's just annoying
| and doesn't really teach anything.
|
| Except for that, I love Discourse.
| wormpilled wrote:
| It's their way of attempting to fight user churn. Forums
| need all the help they can get in that regard given the
| attention economy of today and the giants they're
| attempting to fight against. Anything novel is a win.
|
| You are just being extremely nitpicky.
| sevenseacat wrote:
| Discourse is awful software, from a user standpoint.
|
| But its better than all the other forum software I've
| seen...
| ramesh31 wrote:
| TeamSpeak and Ventrillo still work great. It was a monumental
| mistake to switch to these 3rd party services that are bugged
| by every intelligence apparatus on earth.
| superkuh wrote:
| I gave up running my TS3 servers (after nearly a decade)
| because they added a trialware system that required getting
| approval/serial code from the company every month to continue
| operating. They were squeezing everyone on TS3 trying to
| force them to TS4/5/etc. Have they stopped this or walked it
| back?
|
| And to be clear, Teamspeak from version 5 on is not
| teamspeak. It's matrix with a skin. Not that that's terrible,
| but it's not great for running it on low power/cost VPS like
| actual teamspeak was.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Could use mumble instead?
| ahhhhnoooo wrote:
| Those are voice chat, yeah? Discord has chat too, which is
| used more than voice in many of my communities.
| agoodusername63 wrote:
| That would be great if your community only exists in a voip
| channel
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| I had a look at Teamspeak but you need to email somebody for
| permission to have more than 32 users on your server.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| 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
| accrual wrote:
| > Someone bring back AOL instant messenger! >:(
|
| There's an actively developed open source server that allows
| the clients to connect!
|
| https://github.com/mk6i/open-oscar-server
|
| I wish Smarter Child was still around so we could see how
| LLMs interact with it.
| mk6i wrote:
| I got you: https://github.com/mk6i/smarter-smarter-child
| hamdingers wrote:
| 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.
| beatothewitch wrote:
| People talking about moving to Revolt. It's the most similar
| joks wrote:
| Yeah Stoat is the closest, but no video calling still. But
| that's in the pipeline at least
| yownie wrote:
| our groups are discussing [stoat](https://stoat.chat/).
|
| I don't know it well yet.
|
| .......yet.
| strokirk wrote:
| IRC never died.
| tym0 wrote:
| Time to spin up a mumble server again...
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| The only viable option, of course: https://escargot.chat/
| hexagonwin wrote:
| Is this open source? Would be cool to self host this..
| jedberg wrote:
| Oh yay, the company that told me to "just use your wife's phone"
| when I couldn't verify my own phone number, instead of even
| trying to fix the problem, now wants a copy of my face?
|
| Pardon me if I don't have a lot of trust in their ability to keep
| it safe.
| soared wrote:
| > After completing a chosen method, users will receive
| confirmation via a direct message from Discord's official
| account.
|
| Why isn't this delivered via some sort of notification, menu,
| pop-up, etc? DMs seem prime for phishing
| Daedren wrote:
| > Facial age estimation
|
| This clearly doesn't work and they're surely aware of it. Perhaps
| it's even intentional as a choice to give kids a way out, just
| trying to cover their own asses in regards to regulation.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| When you try to use the law (or the threat of legal action) to
| force people to "do something" about anonymous, unsupervised
| kids on the public internet using their free platform, this is
| the type of solution you're going to get: the cheapest, most
| scalable one they can get away with.
|
| Previously that was a checkbox or a line in their ToS saying
| "I'm over 18". Now that lawmakers are pushing to make that no
| longer sufficient, "AI face scanning" is the next step up.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Which goes to show that lawmakers probably should be working
| more hand-in-hand with technical experts before making such
| laws. A regulation that provides a good technical solution
| would be more useful, especially if lawmakers could have
| helped work on ways to prove a person's age cohort estimation
| without say checking an entire physical ID (and all of the
| identity theft that can enable), or yes relying on "AI
| detection" that is quite game-able (literally so as reports
| are Death Stranding's Photo Mode is a reliable workaround for
| Discord's primary AI scanning vendor k-ID).
| seneca wrote:
| We're going to need decentralized open source alternatives with
| E2EE for any major communication services, unfortunately. It's
| just too temping of a target for Governments. They're never going
| to give up trying to destroy anonymity online.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| They already exists except that most people don't know about it
| and also it is extremely hard to move over all the existing
| users from Whatsapp to something less popular and less user
| friendly.
|
| Until that changes, then the governments around the world are
| going to keep pushing to get access to all our messages in
| order to "protect the children" TM and ask you to prove that
| "you are not a child" TM
| anon_anon12 wrote:
| Another 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.
| itsmorgantime wrote:
| 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.
| throwatdem12311 wrote:
| You're out of your mind if you think I'm gonna upload ID to use a
| "shitposting about video games with friends" service.
| canada_dry wrote:
| To protect my privacy, I have a photoshopped drivers license
| with a photo of my dog that I've successfully used for
| verification (e.g. AirBnB) in the past.
|
| Though, with AI being used I suspect it wouldn't pass any
| longer.
| chimpanzee2 wrote:
| wdym, how did your dog driver license even pass before AI ?!
| zdragnar wrote:
| The tech used some variant of OCR, presumably
| canada_dry wrote:
| He's a handsome boy.
|
| Guessing they probably just ran some rudimentary OCR on the
| image to compare the name and DOB. I modified the actual
| license# as well as the picture.
| HaZeust wrote:
| Well then what was the point? If you gave them an ID that
| matches your name and DOB, they still got an identity
| vector that can conclusively match to your physical,
| government-acknowledged identity.
|
| Not having a correct photo or license number didn't
| really mean anything to them if their OCR didn't have any
| half-decent verification that would look at the fields
| where that information was expected to be, anyway.
| goodpoint wrote:
| well, any dog can pass the driving exam in US
| layer8 wrote:
| It used to be that on the internet, nobody knows you're a
| dog. ;)
| chickensong wrote:
| The perfect reply. Hats off to you, good sir.
| egorfine wrote:
| * on fidonet
| viccis wrote:
| Youtube flagged one of my accounts as a teenager because I
| watched a few pop videos (lol) and I was not able to trick it
| with fake IDs, though I didn't try all that hard.
| everdrive wrote:
| I've been grabbing music from youtube for years. I don't
| mean commercial music. I mean talented enthusiast who does
| not sell their music anywhere. Rest assured, it will
| absolutely be gone one day, and they way things are going,
| it feels like it will be sooner rather than later.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| The Distributed YouTube Archive project is, sadly, on
| Discord.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Just use Ai to make a non existent human face, might as well
| dawnerd wrote:
| There was a story a bit ago about people using video of
| someone turning their head from side to side to trick these
| systems. And of course naturally people will easily get
| past it.
| krick wrote:
| Huh. Can you do that? I wonder what is legal status of this.
| I used to make all sorts of fake IDs (pretty good ones!) when
| I was a teen (you know, for purposes such as going to clubs,
| buying alcohol), but of course this is literally a crime, and
| not even a "minor" one. Apparently, back then it didn't
| bother me much, but with age I became more cowardly, I must
| admit. So now I use my passport data more often than not,
| even though I am not really a fan of the idea of giving a
| scan of your documents to some random guy on AirBnB
| (although, with some obvious caption photoshopped on top, to
| make the scan less re-usable). I mean, it's just a matter of
| fact that everyone requires them, and it also has that weird
| status of "semi-secret thing" that you are somehow aren't
| supposed to give to anyone, and I still have close to zero
| understanding of how that works.
|
| So, I suppose you shouldn't give your fake id (digital or
| physical) to a government officials. It also seems "obvious"
| that it's similarly unwise to give it to a bank. But you can
| do that to a random guy on AirBnB? A hotel? To a delivery
| service (Uber/Wolt/whatever)? Dicsord? Where is the line
| between a bank (a private commercial corporation) and Discord
| (a private commercial corporation)?
| gambiting wrote:
| >>But you can do that to a random guy on AirBnB? A hotel?
| To a delivery service (Uber/Wolt/whatever)?
|
| The "legal" line is usually around fraud - trying to obtain
| some financial gain by providing false information. There
| is nothing to gain by giving a fake ID to discord - but it
| probably violates some rules around unathorized access to
| computer systems.
| bagels wrote:
| It's definitely fraud, the consideration is access to
| their service.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| It's still fraud
| milofeynman wrote:
| It's likely against the ToS rather than illegal. But if
| they're deleting IDs correctly after verifying I guess you
| just have to get past 30 days
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The mere possession of a fake ID is illegal on its face,
| using it is fraud.
| kennywinker wrote:
| But is a photoshopped image of an ID a fake id? Do you
| possess it? A photo of an id isn't an id, it's a photo.
| Ceci n'est pas une pipe
| shmeeed wrote:
| I suppose that's tongue-in-cheek? Otherwise I can only
| wish you good look in court with that defense. ;)
|
| In my jurisdiction, it's clear- cut: yes, that would
| constitute a forgery.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| But how does Discord sue you? On face might be a crime,
| but in reality it is expensive for Discord to sue someone
| just because of an ID.
|
| Of course I agree this doesn't worth it. If they force an
| ID I would just abandon the platform.
| shmeeed wrote:
| I was referring to the concept of "ceci n'est pas une
| pipe", and that even just digital forgery of an ID can
| constitute a crime that can be prosecuted independently
| from anybody suing.
|
| Of course I highly doubt they'd sue. They either just
| don't let you in or you abandon them. I'm with the
| latter.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Yeah I agree. There is always some risk about government
| ID. Long gone the day that ppl could forge one relatively
| easily, when ID was just a piece of well made paper.
| kennywinker wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer, but i'd guess that possessing a jpg of
| a fake id is treated differently under the law than a
| physical forged id. Once you use it to defraud someone,
| that's probably treated the same, but just owning the
| jpg?
| kennywinker wrote:
| I guess I assumed it's illegal in that you are using an
| image to tell a lie in a transaction... like any other
| kind of forgery - but what i'm actually unsure of is
| posessing a jpg of an altered drivers license illegal?
| Seems different than a physical license.
| shmeeed wrote:
| At least where I'm from, the forgery or the possession of a
| forged ID is a criminal offense in itself, not matter the
| intent or whether it's actually used.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| I'm not sure that photoshopping a dog in place of the
| portrait would qualify to though. It's immediately
| obvious that it is neither you nor a valid government
| issued document so doesn't that preclude it qualifying as
| forgery?
| shmeeed wrote:
| Good question, IANAL.
|
| Obviously you can go further: What if you just draw up
| the whole thing with a pencil? What if it's an ID
| identifying you as a citizen of Nowhereistan? Where does
| freedom of artistic expression end and a forgery start?
|
| Again, IANAL, but I suppose it would qualify at least as
| fraud once you try to use even an obvious fake as "proof
| of identity" in place of a requested government issued
| document. In that case, there's an intent to deceive
| that's hard to deny, even if it's just about age
| verification for access to a digital platform.
|
| I could imagine in court it might come down to details,
| like whether it's sufficiently similar to a real ID at a
| glance, or whether tamper-proof marks of an official ID
| were copied as well.
|
| In any case I wouldn't want to risk up to a year of jail
| time over a joke.
| lexlambda wrote:
| Yes, it is indeed not always clear what constitutes
| forgery (Germany).
|
| > A document in the classic sense requires an embodied
| declaration of intent that identifies an issuer and is
| suitable for providing proof in legal transactions. In
| the case of a lawyer's letter, the signature is an
| essential part of the standard repertoire of
| authenticity.
|
| https://www.heise.de/en/news/Document-fraud-via-email-
| Why-th...
|
| So removing some parts to make it _could_ make it safe,
| to Not create a "risk of confusion":
|
| > Even if computer processing creates the appearance of a
| genuine document, the typical characteristics of the
| original must be present to establish a serious risk of
| confusion. Likewise, the BayObLG did not consider the
| offense of forging evidential data according to Section
| 269 of the German Criminal Code (StGB) to be fulfilled.
| biztos wrote:
| Off topic, but I love how every country has its weird
| abbreviations that seem obvious but really aren't, like
| BayObLG for Bayerisches Oberlandesgericht (Bavarian State
| Superior Court) or something close to that. Or how every
| British cop show assumes its audience knows exactly what
| a DCI is, as in "This is DCI Foxwaddle and I'm DCI Rugby-
| Botherington, may we have a word?"
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| I found a picture of someone my age, gender, and background
| and used that in the past for some things.
|
| But not even worth that effort for this. Not a subscriber,
| but probably won't ever use it again, either.
| ikiris wrote:
| You do realize this is wire fraud right?
| bink wrote:
| Wire fraud is more than just lying to someone over the
| Internet. It requires a financial gain.
| leroy-is-here wrote:
| I tried to do this when LinkedIn forced me to upload an ID.
| It didn't work unfortunately. I see the good in this but I
| know it will be abused. I want to run away but I don't
| foresee any way that the powers-that-be will let the common
| person use the Internet without an approved ID in the future.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| This gives me some idea: just use AI to generate an ID.
| sunaookami wrote:
| 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?
| qball wrote:
| 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.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This is the kind of thing I would have posted while in High
| School.
| eimrine wrote:
| Brilliant observation! I would like to make the statement
| more precise: not hate/hatred but jealousy.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| They're not _hated_ , they're just treated as non-entities
| that aren't assumed to have or need any agency.
|
| People under 18 are the largest disenfranchised block of
| citizens.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I mean, yes. Because we don't give kids all their rights
| yet. That's fair in many regards (not all. Having schools
| able to silence dissent legally feels all sorts of
| wrong). It also add protections, like not letting a 12 yo
| work in a coal mine or be sent to war.
|
| More importantly, it's a powerful political spin used to
| justify often heinous actions. People want to protect
| kids.
| Gud wrote:
| Absolutely. Social media and its consequences has been a
| disaster for the human race. Ban it for everyone.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| The loss of all anonymity and privacy on the internet is
| much worse than this generation's version of the "won't
| someone think of the children" scare. It's wild how many
| people are eating this up.
| spockz wrote:
| The one (teenage verification for specific services such
| as social media) does not require the other (require
| uploading ids to every site on the internet). For one,
| the scope is limited and secondly, there must be
| different schemes possible.
| Gud wrote:
| I'm not suggesting "upload an id". I'm suggesting ban all
| these brain slugs outright.
|
| Make META a criminal organization. Put Zuckerberg behind
| bars.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Yes we should give the government more power and put up
| "The Great American Firewall" so Americans can't use any
| foreign Facebook like companies.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| I didn't respond to the suggestion of absolute
| prohibition because it's too ridiculous a concept to take
| seriously.
| vjekm wrote:
| It's the only reasonable thing to do; the status quo is
| what's ridiculous.
| ikety wrote:
| What if there is simply nothing that can be done? I don't
| mean to sound defeatist, but what if there are some
| things that truly are like pandora's box. We can't put
| the lid back on. All we can do is educated people on how
| to use the tools correctly
| jplusequalt wrote:
| >All we can do is educated people on how to use the tools
| correctly
|
| This lives in opposition to the people who own the
| websites/apps goals. So it won't happen.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I'd love to arrest billionaires, but can we at least
| suggest some specific and resonable goals forst? Baby
| steps.
|
| Eat the rich is a good mantra and banner, but not an
| action plan. Here in America we have at most 3 years of
| this left and at median 1 year (with a huge nebulous
| cloud based on the reaction to trying to seize power).
| There's a lot we can do to build up to the ultimate
| mantra.
| pluralmonad wrote:
| While we're architecting the lives of millions of
| strangers what other reasonable things would you
| personally like to disallow?
| donkeybeer wrote:
| Your personal blog fucktrump.com is social media. I
| tipped the government about it so it can be correctly
| blocked and you punished with jail.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| So you chose to respond to something they didn't say
| instead? Weird tack.
| donkeybeer wrote:
| Do you disagree with the first amendment? That's fine,
| just get it repealed first.
| vagrantstreet wrote:
| Louis Rossmann had a vid about this and it's much more
| than jut anonimity, it's about protecting yourself from
| being exploited by algorithms. Can go as far as
| influencing your political voting, or who knows what
| else.
|
| Does tiktok have good intentions keeping your hooked all
| day on end?
| jmye wrote:
| > "won't someone think of the children" scare
|
| Pretending that's what the anti-social media stance is,
| is hilariously dishonest.
|
| Anyone pretending there is any anonymity and privacy to
| protect on the internet, right now, has their head in the
| sand, especially if they use social media.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Who cares? What exactly is lost. Personally I'm not going
| to give them my ID, I'm just going to stop using those
| parts of the internet.
| oompydoompy74 wrote:
| Hilariously, the website hosting the post you are currently
| commenting on is Social Media by almost any definition.
| Autocracy and autocratic thinking are never the solution.
| You don't know what's best for everyone.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Not really. By a broad definition, yes. But here there is
| no algorithmic filtering of what you see based on data
| about you that is tracked and data about you purchased
| from data brokers. Nor is there a team of psychologists
| constantly working on ways to hit your dopamine triggers
| and keep you engaged.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| But that isn't the main issue with Discord, either,
| despite their attempts to add features like the ICYMI
| tab. The problem of Discord is more in the social than
| the media.
| 9rx wrote:
| Social media has none of that. Sometimes it is conflated
| with that as Facebook was social media for the first five
| minutes of its life, until they realized you can't make
| money with social media and quickly pivoted.
| vjekm wrote:
| This place should burn too.
| tokai wrote:
| And every video game is a RPG because you play a role.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I agree that social media is a plague. Unfortunately, the
| legal definition of "social media" is likely to be so broad
| that it will include things like Hacker News or even old-
| school forums. The real plague is the infinite scroll,
| engagement-farming social media like Twitter, post-newsfeed
| Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. I'm skeptical that laws
| addressing social media will target the right problem given
| how rich/powerful a company like Meta is vs. some guy
| running an Anime forum.
| replooda wrote:
| > some guy running an Anime forum.
|
| I expected all of them to have become Discord channels at
| this point.
| Zambyte wrote:
| I've flown across the US to meet what will likely be
| lifelong friends[0], and just went out to dinner and an
| escape room with some others, all of which I connected with
| through Bluesky. The worst of social media is terrible, but
| I would hate to lose the best of it by banning it outright.
| The really negative parts come are
|
| - Underage people who do not have the emotional maturity to
| deal with digital public spaces
|
| - Emotional manipulation through "algorithmic" timelines
| (chronological or bust)
|
| - Waves of unwanted interactions
|
| Social media seems like it _can_ be a positive tool to me.
| I would love to be able to continue to use it as I am. I do
| think there is a conflict of interest issue between the
| mental health of the people that use social media, and for-
| profit corporations that provide social media services.
| Regulating social media in a sane way has become difficult
| due to how much financial sway social media companies have
| on legislation, but it 's an important fight to fight.
|
| [0] I have a thread on my bsky account with a bunch of
| group photos, if you're interested it shouldn't be hard to
| find. I'm not linking it because I'm not interested in
| people engaging in it from here.
| Gud wrote:
| Blue sky is a social network, not social media.
|
| A subtle but important distinction
| runako wrote:
| I am super curious about this distinction! Could you say
| more?
| Gud wrote:
| On a network, people interact with each other.
|
| In ~media~, you have a few specialized ~creators~, and
| doom scrollers.
|
| Compare Lunarstorm anno 2000 and instagram 2026.
| Izkata wrote:
| The "media" in "social media" doesn't refer to
| image/video/audio, it refers to "the medium being used".
| Twitter/Blue Sky/etc are all social media. Read it like
| "a medium being used for social interaction".
| Gud wrote:
| It was renamed from social network to social media by
| business executives, who hijacked the social networks
| built by us
| npunt wrote:
| OPs is closer to the truth; the shift from network ->
| media shows a useful distinction between what the focal
| point of activity is.
|
| Note that "social" (as in social interaction with people
| you know) in "social networking" is a requirement, while
| it is not in "social media". You may as well call it
| "parasocial media" since that is the way most people use
| it most of the time.
|
| Thus 'social media' is primarily based on content, while
| 'social networking' is primarily based on social
| connection and interaction.
| Izkata wrote:
| If anything the terminology shift was the other way, we
| called forums and MySpace social media back then even
| though MySpace is called social networking now.
| "Networking" back then was pretty restricted to business
| / self-promotion oriented stuff like LinkedIn.
| Gud wrote:
| We didn't call forums back then "social media", we called
| them discussion forums...
|
| I was there, just go to the official phpBB forums and
| search my name..
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| I was also there. We (ie the people I interacted with)
| called myspace social media and considered discussion
| forums to be a specialized subset of social media.
|
| We also considered myspace to be a social network (due to
| the friend graph) while forums were not.
|
| The chans were a weird almost edge case. I think they
| qualify as social media but the lack of persistent
| identities significantly changes the dynamics
| (obviously).
| Gud wrote:
| Nobody called a phpBB forum "social media" 20-25 years
| ago.
|
| Nobody.
| Izkata wrote:
| Not only did we do it back then, scroll around this
| thread - it's still a thing today, people are calling HN
| "social media".
| trashb wrote:
| As far as I know chans are always considered "image
| boards" and they are usually distinct by the fact that
| the information is "pushed off" the board after a time or
| amount posted afterwards.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Image boards, which are a subset of forums, which are a
| subset of social media.
| npunt wrote:
| This is based on changes in trends and is somewhat of a
| moving target so I'll give some dates.
|
| In the 2000s, 'forums' were forums, and 'social network'
| was the dominant term for products like FB and Myspace. A
| movie even came out with that name. Both were also
| 'communities'. These are verifiable on Google trends.
|
| In the 2010s, 'social media' became the preferred term,
| mainly because it contrasted with 'the media' as the
| other major source of information available, but also
| because it was just an easier to use and more generic
| term than 'social network'. 'Forums' were still largely
| forums, tho like all activity online, on occasion it got
| lumped into 'social media'.
|
| Sometime in the 2010s we started to delineate 'social
| network' from 'social media' as distinct eras of social
| products and properties of how the products work. This
| became extremely clear once the era of video took over in
| ~2020, as video is historically 'media' in a way that
| exchanging text never was.
|
| The term 'networking' is/was its own thing and mostly
| unrelated to 'social networks'.
|
| FWIW I did market analysis for Yahoo's online communities
| division in 06 and worked on two FB app startups, one
| which was a college social network, and interfaced a lot
| with FB in 08-12. All of these words and fine
| delineations were essential to my work and part of the
| research I was doing at the time. I looked over my notes
| to confirm.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| This delineation does not match the common usage of the
| terms as I understand them. If you want to talk about
| parasocial media then just use that term.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| By that logic, Discord would be a network. There's no
| default feed for Discord, you need to actively seek out
| friends and community.
|
| Meanwhile, HN would be closer to media. It technically
| has a few personalities, and one default feed to doom
| scroll.
| runako wrote:
| > "specialized ~creators~"
|
| I can understand what this means in the context of visual
| platforms like Instagram and TikTok. (Slight quibble on
| TT in that a number of very large creators there record
| from their cars, kitchens, or otherwise do not employ
| specialized production.)
|
| In any case, what does "specialized creators" mean in the
| context of (primarily) text-based platforms like Twitter,
| LinkedIn, and Facebook? Does that mean they are not
| social media?
|
| > On a network, people interact with each other.
|
| On any platform that would be considered social media by
| any definition, popular posts serve as a place for people
| to interact with each other. They are more ephemeral than
| a subreddit, but they serve the same function.
|
| I am honestly not trying to troll, I just don't
| understand the distinction.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook have the same patterns.
| There's no requirement for them to be in video form.
|
| Most successful Twitter and Facebook posts are visual
| anyway.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| This is a distinction that no existing or proposed law
| has made and is based solely on your feels.
|
| A social network exists between people, it does not
| require a platform or technology. Social media is a
| medium where people correspond.
| Gud wrote:
| https://www.techtarget.com/searchunifiedcommunications/an
| swe...
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| All the explainers in the world don't matter if people
| don't actually use the terminology that way.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| And yet here we are, using the terminology that way.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Not uniformly, no. The local comment subtree is plenty
| evidence of that.
| AuthAuth wrote:
| Blueskys only difference is that it hasnt been
| enshitified yet.
| Zambyte wrote:
| And when (if) that happens, everyone will just continue
| to use the same network through a better app. Blacksky is
| a notable example of this already happening.
| pibaker wrote:
| Sorry but you sound exactly like that comic. "Our blessed
| homeland, their barbarous waters"
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/our-blessed-homeland-
| their-ba...
|
| More seriously, I have seen similar exchanges many times
| on this social media where one party tries to exempt what
| is clearly a social media from his anti-social media
| agenda because he finds it personally more palatable.
| Usually he tries to exempt Reddit or HN but in this case
| it is Bluesky, which has the same features as Twitter ten
| years ago and is notorious for being always politically
| charged. It makes me think whatever criticisms he may
| have against social media are actually less about social
| media but about people he does not like being on social
| media. Like a driver complaining about all the other cars
| causing a congestion while he sits in his own car.
|
| But fear not, because our blessed regulators (totally
| different from their tyrannical censors) will save us
| from the Big Bad. Never mind when Nepal blocked WhatsApp
| in its social media ban or when UK came after Wikipedia!
| npunt wrote:
| Disagree, that's reductive and beside the point.
|
| It's useful to have words that distinguish major classes
| of activity online, even if several types are combined on
| a given platform. "Messaging", "Chat Rooms", "Streaming",
| "Forums", "Social Networking", and "Social Media" are all
| different things. You can quibble about what constitutes
| the edges of the definitions but they all have different
| key activities they enable.
|
| If you lump everything together, you fail to understand
| the necessary nuances to identify the problems let alone
| solve them.
|
| The key to understanding any given social platform is to
| understand the proportion of which activity that platform
| enables. This tells you things like the incentives,
| constraints, externalities, etc of the platform.
| Different designs have different effects.
| pibaker wrote:
| I don't disagree in general. I wouldn't call 4chan a
| social media, for example.
|
| What I find hilariously objectionable is pretending that
| bluesky is somehow better than all the social medias out
| there. It's not. It was founded by jack dorsey and copied
| the UI and features of old Twitter. Its main selling
| point is "twitter but no Elon musk" and is, from my
| perspective, almost exclusively inhabited by politically
| antagonized people seeking a refuge which then resulted
| in US politics sucking the air out of everything else on
| that platform.
|
| Can people forge constructive relationships on bluesky? I
| am sure they do, but they can also do it on X, Reddit,
| Facebook or whatever "bad" social media out there.
| danparsonson wrote:
| > What I find hilariously objectionable is pretending
| that bluesky is somehow better than all the social medias
| out there. etc.
|
| Whether or not it's "better" is orthogonal to the point
| at hand.
| npunt wrote:
| I agree it has roughly the same inherent design biases as
| X with a few nuances, though it now has drastically
| different creator incentives both explicitly and
| implicitly.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Can we still call 4chan antisocial media?
| Zambyte wrote:
| Block lists, starter packs, and quote detaching did not
| exist on Twitter ten years ago. Person-scale moderation
| is simply more effective on Bluesky, and that leads to a
| better experience.
| Gud wrote:
| I don't understand your point.
|
| I don't use any of these platforms, except HN. But the
| distinction between social media and social networks is
| pretty clear.
|
| https://www.techtarget.com/searchunifiedcommunications/an
| swe...
| everdrive wrote:
| This right here is why we keep having this problem. The
| benefits (or in more cases) the addictions are too
| enticing. So we take the good with the bad, except the
| problem is that the bad far, far outweighs the good.
| Zambyte wrote:
| The thing is that I literally just don't have the bad,
| that's why I listed those things. Bluesky is
| chronological by default, and that is what I use
| exclusively. There is a "Discover" feed, but I straight
| up removed it from my account. I have a few other user
| made feeds that I use very sparingly (basically just
| chronological keyword search feeds). There are powerful
| tools for blocking brigading (blocks detach quotes, or
| quotes can be detached without blocking). I am a mentally
| mature adult capable of dealing with public interactions.
|
| It's wise to limit use under different conditions from
| these, but these conditions are seriously positive. I've
| never had such a positive experience with social media
| before. The fedi came the closest, but my experience was
| limited to interacting with technically inclined people
| who weren't the most socially skilled. Bluesky is
| approachable enough that anyone who can figure out
| mainstream social media can figure it out, so there is a
| much more diverse set of people.
| LexiMax wrote:
| Hacker News is also social media - at least by most
| reasonable definitions of social media. Should it also be
| banned?
| Gigachad wrote:
| Having an account should probably be restricted to adults
| only. But it's such a low priority target compared to the
| other platforms.
| skeptic_ai wrote:
| I think we should ban all users until they provide 10
| photos of their face from different angles and lighting.
| Passport and birth certificates and a lawyer letter
| confirming it's really you trying to sign up under the
| username: LexiMax
|
| Then all this will be synced with govs so can read all
| your messages. And sell to ad companies to spam you
| later. (They can link your phone number, email etc to you
| as you provided real id on all those).
|
| And if you travel to some country that doesn't approve
| what you ever said, maybe you broke their law, so you
| deserve a few years in prison.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| No, because banning social media at large probably isn't
| the right answer. It's certain interaction patterns that
| cause harm. That can be pushed back against either
| technologically (ex chronological feeds) or culturally
| (ie via moderation).
|
| There's no perfect solution but some are significantly
| better than others.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| The banned interaction patterns are the ones that make
| social media social media.
| everdrive wrote:
| And oxygen is also a poison. I don't know what's wrong
| with HN, but the moment there's _any_ basis for
| comparison, so many people here are extremely confident
| that there's no difference between the two things. I'm
| sure it's an earnestly-held belief, but it's maddening
| and simply incorrect.
|
| Further, if in some contrived scenario we had to lose HN
| to get rid of all social media, I'd happily do it.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Social media doesn't mean communicating with people you
| know. Social media means optimized algorithmic feeds. You
| could have met the same friends over email.
| Morromist wrote:
| Sure, social media is bad for kids. Why can't their parents
| regulate them though? Isn't keeping kids away from
| dangerous things a basic requirement of being a parent?
|
| I propose passing laws that make parents who let their kids
| on social media pay fines and risk having social media
| sites blocked by their ISP rather than just making all
| adults have to get an "internet license".
| Gud wrote:
| It's bad for everyone, except for the advertisers, and
| arguably it's bad for them as a 2nd order effect.
| jplusequalt wrote:
| I think we just need to ban social media in general. It's
| done more harm to our societies than good.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Good bye, Hacker News. I knew ye uhh... Well, I knew ye.
| Gigachad wrote:
| HN would be improved if the comment section was removed
| and it was just high quality submissions. All the AI
| generated engagement bait articles would stop.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| define 'social media' .. were BBSs social media? usenet?
| email? aol instant messenger? physical community bulletin
| boards? classified ads? newspapers?
| donkeybeer wrote:
| What is social media?
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| What happens when the governments around the world decide
| to ban something that you care about? Will you be so eager
| to agree with them or will you cry that your rights and
| your freedom are being taken away?
|
| Don't like social media, fine, nobody is forcing you to use
| it.
| mywittyname wrote:
| ID verification for sites that where people speak the truth.
|
| Cesspit of AI-driven "validated" accounts for pushing
| propaganda.
|
| It's the worst of both worlds.
| everdrive wrote:
| Nope, I want the social media companies to be shut down, I
| want smart phones to go away permanently, and I don't want
| kids to be handed laptops or ipads in school.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Absolutely, who gives a shit about some platforms on the
| internet.
| xg15 wrote:
| Then use that server without age verification?
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| I'll vibe code that sh*t in a sitting
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| Seriously, and probably do a better job of it. Electron.
| Yuck.
|
| The problem isn't the platform, it's getting a critical mass
| of users. Until everyone is using it, nobody is.
| isatty wrote:
| You can say "shit" on the internet.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Only if you let them scan your face first, comrade.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| Please do and write about it, whether it goes well or not.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I have discord for gaming communities, but also for political
| communities. Pod Save America has a discord with thousands of
| users talking political things. While I don't mask my identity
| there, I sure don't want Discord preemptively linking my state
| ID to my person. Screw that.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| If you're worried about government retaliation they can
| already figure out who you are from what discord has,
| especially with a justice department that doesn't really even
| care about looking like they're following the law
| unethical_ban wrote:
| We shouldn't reward their data collection and AI
| surveillance bullshit with apathy, though.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| For sure, I'm just saying if you're in a political
| discord depending on what exactly is being discussed you
| should really be aware you already are certainly not
| anonymous to the gov if they don't want you to be
| mywittyname wrote:
| Government, sure.
|
| But it's the non-government entities you really need to be
| worried about. There are plenty of brokers buying up this
| data, making up assertions/predictions about the data, then
| selling it along downstream to secondary vendors who just
| blindly accept the data as true.
|
| These are how people online get doxxed. It's not the
| government or FBI, it's these brokers who mine/buy data
| from sites/credit bureaus/local governments, link them
| across various social media, then build out profiles of
| individuals that they then sell to anyone with a big enough
| check book.
|
| I've looked into these vendors before and their profiles on
| people are often wrong on several dimensions. So you don't
| want to do anything that's going to increase their ability
| to map you across the internet, because that's just going
| to improve their ability to identify you, while still
| selling lies about your personality.
| AstroBen wrote:
| Discord hasn't been video game only for a long time
| x0x0 wrote:
| I think Discord is trapped in an ugly place:
|
| 1 - Piles of parents too stupid or lazy to, well, parent the
| children they made;
|
| 2 - A very reasonable societal expectation that it shouldn't be
| easy for young kids to access, or even be exposed, to the worst
| dregs of the internet;
|
| 3 - Very different use cases (gaming, kids stuff,
| free/affordable slack for communities) all on the same
| platform;
|
| 4 - A pile of morons in legislatures who insist there's a magic
| highly private way to do all this, but (see Australia) refuse
| to lay out the actual method. It's a government-wide game of
| underwear gnomes.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| How reasonable is this expectation? All you do by intituting
| these draconian 'wont someone please think of the children'
| ID laws is make it marginally more difficult to access
| mainstream services where there's not much crazy bad stuff
| anyway. The rest of the internet is the wild west, and good
| luck controlling that.
|
| The whole thing is security theater designed to conceal the
| fact that child security is not the objective, it's the
| justification.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| That's not a reasonable societal expectation. That should be
| an expectation of the parents to follow through on.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > A pile of morons in legislatures who insist there's a magic
| highly private way to do all this, but (see Australia) refuse
| to lay out the actual method.
|
| This is a case where there's plenty of evidence that it's
| actual malice, not _just_ incompetence. Leaving aside that
| this shouldn 't be done at _all_ , there is no desire to do
| this in a privacy-preserving way, because _destroying
| anonymity and controlling online discourse is the point for
| governments, not the "unintentional" side effect to be
| avoided_. "Think of the children" is just the excuse to get
| people to unknowingly buy in, just as it has been for
| generations.
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/tupped.bsky.social/post/3lwgcmswmy2.
| ..
| ActorNightly wrote:
| All social media websites should require id tbh. This is the
| new public town square - everyone should have a voice, but
| nobody should escape the consequences of using that voice to
| peddle bullshit.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Feel free to go make a social media website that requires ID.
| What you are claiming is that websites that _don 't_ require
| ID should be destroyed. No.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I don't need a public ID to sit in my local park nor shop for
| most things on Main Street.
|
| >nobody should escape the consequences of using that voice to
| peddle bullshit.
|
| We can already do that without needing ID stored on servers.
| Blame lazy enforcement with an incentive to retain even bad
| customers.
| gambiting wrote:
| Except that is clearly not how it works. Spend 5 minutes on
| facebook, and you will quickly realize that people have
| absolutely no problem spewing the most disgusting racist,
| xenophobic shit you have ever seen in your life, while their
| full names and pictures of them hugging their granchildren
| are there for everyone to see.
|
| >> nobody should escape the consequences
|
| There are no consequences whatsoever for this.
| 7bit wrote:
| I've never been to a town square where I had to let some
| random person photograph my face or tell me to leave.
| j-krieger wrote:
| I'd never thought I'd see advocates against privacy on HN of
| all places but here we are.
| Mashimo wrote:
| You don't have to, you just can't access NSFW channels and
| servers.
| FreePalestine1 wrote:
| I believe what you said is correct and this headline is
| incredibly misleading. Most people should not need to upload
| any ID. If you are so addicted to NSFW content on Discord,
| then it is a different story.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| I'm in a small server that's marked NSFW, not because the
| purpose is to share porn, but because without the server
| owner checking that box, Discord with use content filters
| wherever it deems necessary.
|
| Lots of servers just hit the nsfw checkbox to avoid the
| discord nanny tsk tsking them all the time.
|
| I would have to verify my ID to talk to those friends.
| Mashimo wrote:
| > I would have to verify my ID to talk to those friends.
|
| Or they uncheck that box.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| I'm giving it exactly 2 weeks after implementation for most
| people to just suck it up and upload their IDs. I can't think
| of a single "this new thing will break the service, people will
| mass quit!" thing every working out. Sure, some users left. But
| super majority, who has already built communities and are
| depended on it just keep churning.
|
| Privacy and all that jazz aren't that important to an average
| person. Everyone's IDs are already circulating in a mix of
| Tinder, AirBnB, Twitter, <any random other app that just
| requires it>.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Eh, I dunno, there's a free chat app lifecycle that they all
| pretty predictably go through and Discord is getting a bit
| long in the tooth.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| But any prominent app will be pressured to have ID
| verification in the end, no? Also, Discord's roots are very
| heavy, people are too invested with historical data and
| etc. I don't even see an alternative to it right now.
| bee_rider wrote:
| WRT the verification, it is a symptom of the fact that
| Discord is entering the monetization phase. So, I don't
| think it will be _the thing_ that causes people to leave.
| It is just an interesting road mark along the way.
|
| WRT the stickiness, I just use Discord as a site to chat
| with my friends. Based on other comments, some folks use
| it as more like a social-media site. So, maybe I just
| don't see the roots. If it is more like a social media
| site, it might survive in that lingering state that sites
| like Facebook have.
| Mashimo wrote:
| > I'm giving it exactly 2 weeks after implementation for most
| people to just suck it up and upload their IDs.
|
| I don't most people will even notice, as they are not in age
| restricted servers or channels.
| sph wrote:
| Good riddance Discord. Any alternative for the masses?
|
| They're not gonna use Slack or phpBB.
| apopapo wrote:
| Why would Slack not be affected by the same stupid laws?
| tavavex wrote:
| 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.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| By Discord's own ToS you can't use Discord if you are under 13,
| so this change is just to make sure users that are 13, 14, 15,
| 16, and 17 years old are appropriately labelled.
|
| Why doesn't Discord require ALL users to upload their faces to
| prove that they are at least 13 years old and eligible to use the
| service?
| ForHackernews wrote:
| https://use-their-id.com/
| plingbang wrote:
| > Teen-by-default settings to roll out globally for all Discord
| users
|
| Does it mean that even people who reside outside jurisdictions
| touched by the age verification craze will have to deal with all
| this?
|
| > use facial age estimation
|
| Surely a kid won't be able to ask someone else to pass the check
| for them. But let's talk about false positives. If the estimator
| falsely declares someone an adult, is Discord legally liable?
|
| > submit a form of identification
|
| If you have a picture of an ID document, can you verify that it's
| real? You'd have to ask the government for that. And at least in
| one country there is no process for that.
|
| > On-device processing
|
| Oh, a client-side check. Must be secure.
| titaniumtown wrote:
| > Does it mean that even people who reside outside
| jurisdictions touched by the age verification craze will have
| to deal with all this?
|
| Yes, it's global
| kevinrineer wrote:
| > If the estimator falsely declares someone an adult, is
| Discord legally liable?
|
| Not until a court case on the topic gives us precedent.
| zb3 wrote:
| On-device doesn't have to mean on "your" device - they might
| refer to smartphones with remote attestation (like AVF pKVM)
| which of course are not really controlled by you..
| josefritzishere wrote:
| The CEO of Discord is Humam Sakhnini. He's from McKinsey. So that
| tracks.
| postsantum wrote:
| How else would you fight growing antisemitism on Discord?
| altairprime wrote:
| https://docs.k-id.com/concepts/verification-methods/
|
| The company that Discord uses lists the methods they accept
| above. Notably, they do _not_ accept any privacy-protecting
| digital identity standards from US or EU citizens; they only
| implement national ID verifications where they receive a full
| birthdate, with the sole exception of AU where they allow _banks_
| to attest to age-majority.
|
| Leveraging this press to highlight their clear desire-for /
| dependency-on being provided an explicit birthdate, rather than
| simply a bool backed by the government, would be an effective
| lever to pull through e.g. New York and California governmental
| privacy efforts -- especially if one somehow got them classified
| as a data broker in California and therefore bound to a much more
| expensive set of laws, due to their insistence on being provided
| PII when more privacy-protecting alternatives are available
| there.
|
| Yes, this isn't a scorched earth response. Every other thread of
| discussion here has that covered already and I have nothing new
| to add there. But for anyone looking to force privacy into the
| budding age checks verification market at an early stage _rather
| than_ trying to shut it down, here's your roadmap to effecting
| real change on the matter. Good luck.
| superkuh wrote:
| The endgame I see is that it will be illegal to communicate on
| the internet without having a proven bank account. At least in
| the USA where all ID verification is settling on banks (ie,
| Plaid). And the banks will tolerate 10,000 false positive denials
| of service to avoid a single false negative and be happy about
| it. Plaid even more so. Human beings will have no recourse as
| they are private companies. This really should be a service that
| the states of the federal government provide. It's a dark future
| we're speeding towards.
| bdangubic wrote:
| I do not understand this at all. How is ID verification
| settling on banks????! And which of these banks are private?
| superkuh wrote:
| Sorry if I was inexact in my wording. It's settling on the
| existence of your bank account proving who you are. The ID
| services require you to give them your bank login credentials
| (ie, Plaid). So there are two levels of denial, at Plaid (and
| related ID services) themselves and the banks deciding
| weather or not they want to allow it (work with Plaid, or
| Plaid with them, etc) and if they want to give you a bank
| account.
| phoenixy1 wrote:
| I work at Plaid. Plaid's KYC product doesn't ask for bank
| login credentials. (EDIT: I originally had a line in here
| saying "nor do any of our competitors' KYC products, that I
| know of." but then someone in this thread linked to Stripe
| documentation saying that Stripe does use this method of
| age verification in Australia, so TIL.)
| superkuh wrote:
| I almost swore here but I think that'd not get my message
| across. So I'll be calm. You're a liar (edit: or
| ignorant). I tried with Plaid. Plaid explicitly required
| my bank login credentials. I went in physically and
| talked face to face to my US bank's employee that handled
| Plaid.
| phoenixy1 wrote:
| Plaid does have products that do request bank
| credentials, but those products are not used for age
| verification. It's very common that a given customer-
| facing flow will use multiple Plaid products together to
| handle multiple different customer needs, so it's likely
| that the flow you were working with was using multiple
| Plaid products and requesting bank credentials, but for a
| different reason than to perform age verification (for
| example, KYC + bank account ownership verification or KYC
| + bank account validity verification).
| superkuh wrote:
| Right. This boils down to you saying you were wrong but
| trying to avoid saying it directly. Basically,
|
| >"Requiring a bank account credentials is common and yes,
| Plaid does it, despite what I said before, when the
| company buying Plaid services wants even more legal butt
| covering as is common in the wild."
| rsynnott wrote:
| 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.
| Etheryte wrote:
| No privacy is simpler and the simpler solution is cheaper. If
| there's no real incentive to go with another option, companies
| will go with the cheaper option.
| jeltz wrote:
| They do not want to solve the problem, they want to collect our
| IDs. If they would have wanted to actually solve it they would
| not have done this on legislations where it is not a
| requirement.
| AJ007 wrote:
| It is only a matter of time before ID verification means the
| camera is always on watching the face of the person looking at
| the screen.
| octoberfranklin wrote:
| That's why I put black tape over my front-facing camera.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Expect a visit feom ho.eland security 10 years from now
| squeegmeister wrote:
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/06/apple-expands-tools-t...
|
| What are your thoughts on Apple's approach? You still have to
| provide your birthdate to apple. But after that, it only only
| ever shares your age range with other companies that request
| it, not your birthdate.
| frumplestlatz wrote:
| This is great, but if and _only if_ it remains an opt-in
| choice that _enables_ parents.
|
| There is a stark difference between enabling choice or
| compelling it.
|
| Somehow in the last 15 years, we have completely lost sight
| of agency-based ethics as a founding and fundamental
| principle of western liberalism.
|
| This has been replaced with harm-based ethics. Harm has no
| fixed definition. There is no stopping rule -- when will we
| have eradicated enough harm? It's declared by fiat by whoever
| has the means to compel and coerce -- and harm inherent in
| that enforcement are ignored.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > It is clearly _possible_
|
| Is it?
|
| I don't think it is.
|
| I truly don't believe that there's any possible way to verify
| someone's age without collecting ID from them.
| 0x3f wrote:
| Well you could have government-run cryptographically signed
| tokens. They're already in the business of holding ID data
| (i.e. they don't need to collect it and this wouldn't
| increase the attack surface).
|
| But assuming it has to be a private solution, you could do
| the same thing but make it a non-profit. Then at least _new_
| services you wish to use don't need to collect your ID.
| rcxdude wrote:
| It's possible to (cryptpgraphically verifiably) split up the
| age verification and the knowledge of what the verification
| is for.
| davidczech wrote:
| It would seem like a naive solution would be some arrangement
| where Discord would ask for a proof-of-age from an official
| service ran by the State (which issues your ID)
| hiccup_socks wrote:
| many countries already have a working system mostly
| integrated, so yes, i would say it is possible.
|
| the government should issue physical tokens that are sold
| wherever you can buy booze or smokes. when you login to a
| service that needs age verification, you type in the code
| from your age token.
|
| its pretty cheap, its low-tech, we are already accepting of
| showing id to a store clerk privacy-wise, we generally trust
| the enforcement mechanisms around smoking/drinking already,
| it would be easy to expand existing laws to accommodate
| selling them/punishing misuse.
| orthogonal_cube wrote:
| As others have said, it's obvious that no real attempts have
| been made by anyone to create a privacy-focused solution
| because the end goal is to collect photo IDs.
|
| Occasionally in my free time I have been tinkering with a
| certificate-based solution that could fulfill this sort of need
| for age verification. It's not the most robust idea but it's
| simple enough using most of what we already have. Creating a
| minimal protocol which doesn't share actual identifying
| information nor metadata of the site you're accessing is
| trivial. If I can make an 80% solution in less than 100 hours
| of my free time then some groups with more money and
| intelligence could propose a dead-simple and easy-to-adopt
| solution just as easily.
| triceratops wrote:
| Here's my solution:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46447282
|
| The problem is privacy activists and free speech activists
| (though there's some overlap between the two they aren't the
| same) oppose age verification by any means since it has the
| potential to infringe on both ever so slightly. Meanwhile age
| verification gates are being demanded and thrown up all over
| the Internet at a frightening pace. So we get only the maximal
| data collection solutions implemented by people who don't give
| a shit about privacy _or_ free speech. And the mass
| surveillance cheerleaders egg them on.
|
| If privacy and free speech activists understood that a
| proactive, privacy-preserving approach to age verification is
| the best outcome we'd be better off.
| frumplestlatz wrote:
| > ever so slightly
|
| It's _not_ "slightly". They'll start with claiming to protect
| people under 18 from obviously problematic content -- porn,
| grooming, etc.
|
| It won't stop there. The scope creep will extend to
| expressing or reading "incorrect" or "dangerous" views.
|
| They'll probably call some of it "hate speech", but hate
| speech is whatever the people in power say it is; on X,
| "cisgender" is designated as a slur and gets your post
| censored.
|
| The slippery slope fallacy is only a fallacy if the slope
| isn't slippery -- "think of the children" is a wedge bad
| actors are once again trying to use to open the floodgates of
| censorship.
|
| They don't even need to target adults; if you control what
| children can see and express, you have enormous control over
| all future generations of voters.
| tavavex wrote:
| I agree, but the powers that be loathe the phrase "hate
| speech". I'm betting the next encroachment will be on
| "violence", "terrorism" or even Russian-style "promotion of
| nontraditional values".
| triceratops wrote:
| It's already happening. What's your alternative? Not VPNs
| because every jurisdiction and website will eventually have
| equivalent laws or terms of service.
| tavavex wrote:
| Nearly all big websites, probably, but there are enough
| tiny countries that I think at least one will opt to act
| as a safe haven for VPN servers and website hosting
| services, acting as the only remaining window to the free
| internet. It could be a lucrative practice, similar to
| how Panama and some other countries position themselves
| as places to register ships to avoid regulation.
| triceratops wrote:
| So VPN in from Panama to access shady sites no one else
| frequents? That's your solution?
| tavavex wrote:
| Who said anything about a solution? I'm not saying this
| is good, I just brought it up as a potential end point of
| what's currently happening to the internet. I don't think
| there is anything that people like us can do, we can only
| watch.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| You need to process that _other people disagree with that
| claim_ , and _do not believe we 'd be better off_.
|
| We should not accept the Overton window shifting here, and
| say "well, if we do it to ourselves, in a privacy-preserving
| way, that's _less_ bad ".
| triceratops wrote:
| > You need to process that other people disagree with that
| claim
|
| I think I already said that in my original post.
|
| > We should not accept the Overton window shifting here
|
| Great! Let's say you and I refuse to accept it. How do we
| keep Discord from demanding passports or selfies? How can
| we get France[1] or Finland[2] to roll back age
| restrictions on social media?
|
| You'll never convince a majority of voters in democracies
| that nothing online should be age-restricted. These are the
| people that the enemies of anonymity and free speech are
| counting on to advance their agenda.
|
| At the same time a majority of voters is currently quite
| content with the state of age verification for access to
| tobacco and alcohol. Both its strictness (or lack thereof)
| and privacy preservation (almost perfect).
|
| I'm not saying my proposal is the one that should be
| adopted. I honestly don't care which idea gets picked and I
| don't want anything from it. But it's a virtual guarantee
| that in the absence of a competing good-enough, privacy-
| preserving implementation, only the most privacy-invasive
| idea will be implemented.
|
| 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46776272
|
| 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46838417
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > How do we keep Discord from demanding passports or
| selfies?
|
| Build and promote alternatives that don't. Fight the
| political efforts trying to require it, and identify them
| as the attempts at control they are.
|
| > How can we get France[1] or Finland[2] to roll back age
| restrictions on social media?
|
| Host services elsewhere, and ignore claims that a
| country's laws extend beyond its borders. Support folks
| trying to fight such efforts politically, where possible.
| triceratops wrote:
| > Build and promote alternatives that don't.
|
| How well has that worked? Social media and messaging apps
| have network effects.
|
| > Host services elsewhere, ignore claims that a country's
| laws extend beyond its borders.
|
| That doesn't help the French or the Finns. Unless they
| use a VPN. And access the fragmented, lightly-used
| alternative services from the IPs of the fewer and fewer
| countries that don't pass such laws.
|
| Your vision leads to a world where the privacy-conscious
| 1% congregate in echo chambers on Mastodon instances
| hosted in international waters. Everyone else uploads
| their passport to FaceSnapTok.
|
| That's not a real solution. It's a cope. That's my
| opinion and I have no illusions I've changed your mind
| about anything. I already alluded to that in my original
| post. Privacy activists think age verification is not a
| problem that needs to be solved. By maintaining that
| belief they're ceding ground to bad actors who will
| "solve" it in a maximally privacy-invading fashion. This
| will leave the vast majority of internet users worse off.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > Privacy activists think age verification is not a
| problem that needs to be solved.
|
| Correct. But more importantly, privacy activists
| understand that the "problem" governments are trying to
| solve with "age" verification is _people having privacy_.
|
| This isn't something we can solve with purely
| technological solutions. It requires political action to
| defeat the attempted control, and pushing back on every
| instance of people trying to paint that attempted control
| as mere "age verification" and other "think of the
| children" takes.
| triceratops wrote:
| > privacy activists understand that the "problem"
| governments are trying to solve with "age" verification
| is people having privacy
|
| That is correct. But they refuse to go a level deeper and
| understand why governments are succeeding at this. Why
| people are seemingly ok giving up their privacy.
|
| > This isn't something we can solve with purely
| technological solutions
|
| The solution I proposed wasn't purely technological. It
| had a substantial legal component and public education
| component. It satisfies the "save the children" crowd
| while giving the spooks nothing.
|
| > It requires political action to defeat the attempted
| control
|
| I see no sign of this "political action", do you? I only
| see country after country banning minors from social
| media. This is like the encryption backdoor debate - they
| only have to win once, we have to win every time. Only in
| this case, it's possible to keep most kids off social
| media without screwing everyone else. This issue can go
| away.
|
| > mere "age verification" and other "think of the
| children" takes.
|
| Privacy activists have to accept that "think of the
| children" is a real issue for voters. Your views are
| valid, but it's equally valid to believe that children
| should not have unfettered access to the Internet. That
| social media is as addictive and harmful as tobacco. You
| may not like it but lots of people believe these things
| and they tell their lawmakers and vote.
| azernik wrote:
| > Host services elsewhere, and ignore claims that a
| country's laws extend beyond its borders
|
| The moment you want to collect money from people in a
| country, their laws extend to you. You do not get to
| export electronics to France and ignore their RF spectrum
| allocations, for example.
| potsandpans wrote:
| > How do we keep Discord from demanding passports or
| selfies?
|
| _we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!_
| ImPleadThe5th wrote:
| It really would be less bad though wouldn't it?
|
| The more we resist turning this into a state-sided solution
| which provides a service to private companies with a YES/NO
| age verification, the more likely your data is going to be
| given to botton-of-the-barrel third party private
| companies.
|
| I'm genuinely curious what the argument is against state-
| run privacy focused age verification is here. We already
| protect real life adult spaces with IDs. You hand your ID
| to a random store clerk who scans it with a random device
| when you want to buy alcohol or cigarettes.
|
| What makes these social media platforms special that they
| have entirely different rules?
|
| I will say, if they came for small privately-hosted
| communities, I can understand the cause for alarm. But so
| far it appears to be limited to massive misinformation
| machines.
| triceratops wrote:
| > You hand your ID to a random store clerk who scans it
| with a random device when you want to buy alcohol or
| cigarettes.
|
| Or, as has always been my experience, gives it a cursory
| glance without scanning or recording it.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| The issue with your solution still comes down to yet another
| centralizing middleman with no real incentive to be
| efficient. And all the incentive to lobby governments and
| extract more wealth from the people.
|
| This can of course be done government by government, but that
| isn't scalable for a global company.
| triceratops wrote:
| It doesn't have to be 1 middleman. Multiple companies can
| issue the cards, just like there are multiple beer and
| cigarette and lottery companies.
|
| I wish I could edit my post because a lot of people had the
| same misconception when I first wrote it.
| fruitworks wrote:
| the middlemen aren't intercompatible. it's like saying
| anyone can make paypal.
|
| If you try to start your own paypal, no vendors will sign
| up because you have no clients. No clients will sign up
| because you have no vendors.
|
| My university forced everyone to use duo mobile for
| years, with no other option for OTP. That's what this
| reminds me of. Sure, there is a sense in which the
| university can choose to use a different 2fa service, but
| there is nothing forcing them and the consequences are on
| the user side.
| triceratops wrote:
| There are multiple credit card companies. They try to
| attract customers and merchants with promotions and lower
| fees. Even Paypal has competition.
|
| Companies have cracked the problem of signing up clients
| and vendors simultaneously in other sectors of the
| internet economy. This is an annually recurring revenue
| stream that virtually every adult will spend money on.
| I'm not super concerned about competition, as long as
| anti-trust enforcement remains strong.
| pluralmonad wrote:
| Much like DRM, there is no good option. Its a fundamentally
| bad thing. If parents want to abdicate their parental
| responsibilities, their children should bare the cost of
| that, not millions of strangers.
| triceratops wrote:
| > If parents want to abdicate their parental
| responsibilities, their children should bare the cost of
| that, not millions of strangers.
|
| Oh but we all will. One way or another. There is a least
| bad option.
| pluralmonad wrote:
| I guess my point would be that it is impossible to
| simulate raising a child. Sometimes least worst == worst.
| Huge wide spread cost with vanishing little practical
| benefit.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| There is no 'half-pregnant' option. Compromise is synonymous
| with 'bring into danger' for a reason. They are right to be
| dogmatic about rights - believing that is like believing it
| will really be 'just the tip'.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| mDLs support selective disclosure of age.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| They dont want it to be private. They want to profile you and
| sell your data
| diogenes_atx wrote:
| To 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-...
| sbinnee wrote:
| Thanks for the context
| instagib wrote:
| Credit card verification not an option.
|
| Facial video estimates or submit an id card.
|
| Option 3: if we analyze all of your data we have and see you are
| not going to bed at 8pm for middle school, you get adult status.
| bovermyer wrote:
| Ignoring the implications of this for the moment, let me broach a
| related (and arguably more important) question: what do you do
| when you have multiple communities you interact with only on one
| platform, and suddenly that platform becomes intolerable for a
| subset of your community?
| noosphr wrote:
| Shake your head and move on.
|
| It's not like we haven't seen closed source applications become
| hostile to their users before. And it's not like we didn't warn
| people about it.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| It seems like the answer is pretty obvious. That subset of the
| community stops using it and uses something else, and the
| others either follow them or don't.
|
| You, if you're not in the first group, can continue to use both
| to communicate with everyone, but some of them lose the ability
| to communicate with each other.
|
| The _ideal_ outcome is for everyone to stop using the
| intolerable thing and switch to a tolerable thing. That 's even
| what often happens over time, but not always immediately.
| Probably do anything you can to make it happen faster.
| altruios wrote:
| We start a new app. Opensource Discord, Self-hosted, federated.
| Serving that subsection that cares about privacy and security.
|
| Discord is a good design, and should be replicated rapidly with
| mutations from competitors galore.
| debo_ wrote:
| Revolt/stoat has existed for quite a while:
| https://itsfoss.com/revolt/
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| https://stoat.chat/
| TechniKris wrote:
| > Opensource Discord, Self-hosted, federated
|
| Sounds like you want https://matrix.org/
|
| > Discord is a good design
|
| Then the main, reference client https://element.io/ or
| https://fluffy.chat would work great for you.
|
| ... With the only caveat being that general experience of
| using Matrix is awful.
|
| I second the other commenter's suggestion of using
| https://stoat.chat/ or as it used to be called: Revolt, which
| matches the "Opensource Discord" requirement perfectly.
| sneak wrote:
| Matrix is slow, buggy trash with bad clients.
|
| (Incidentally, this is also the incantation that will cause
| its primary maintainer to show up in the comment thread and
| tell me that I'm not using their seemingly annual complete
| new client rewrite that fixes all of the problems and makes
| it perfect now.)
| subscribed wrote:
| Bad clients issue stemming from the bad design.
|
| Soatok covered it very well here:
| https://soatok.blog/2024/08/14/security-issues-in-
| matrixs-ol...
|
| I'm quite sure most of these issues were fixed by now,
| but the fundamental issues remain, at least in this
| federation.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Pretty much why centralized billionaires will always win.
| It takes a lot of resources (in terms of hardware and
| engineering) to make things at scale and smooth. The rich
| abuse this, the not rich can't afford to be principled.
| GorbachevyChase wrote:
| Mumble already exists. IRC exists. Matrix exists. Discord is
| a surveillance tool by design. Jason Citron pulled the same
| hijinx with Aurora Feint, but I assume he has been betraying
| users to CIA-and-Friends from the start so he gets a pass for
| breaking the same laws.
|
| Nobody scales free, high-bandwidth services without some dark
| money support from feds or worse.
| devsda wrote:
| It is the same as what everyone did after the reddit fiasco
| i.e. protest, boycott, grudgingly use it while complaining and
| then finally accept the change.
|
| May be this discord episode will have better outcome for the
| masses.
| esseph wrote:
| That's not what happened with the X nonsense, a lot of people
| went to mastadon/bluesky.
| Telaneo wrote:
| Reddit dropped a lot in quality after that. I suspect a lot
| of people stopped posting, even if they did continue using it
| in some capacity.
| ZeWaka wrote:
| I uninstalled it from my phone entirely. Definitely helped
| curb my usage.
| kombookcha wrote:
| That was certainly my experience. I got rid of the app and
| only used reddit in browser mode to read without
| participating. The noticeable quality drop after the
| migration, as well as all the artificial hurdles they put
| up to force you back on the app eventually made me stop
| using it entirely.
| gbear605 wrote:
| For me, I just stopped using Reddit. Turns out that I'm
| happier without it.
| JoeBOFH wrote:
| Hah I did the same thing. I only ever interact with it now
| when it appears in search results.
| hx8 wrote:
| In the attention economy, you rarely become obsolete
| overnight. It's a more gradual shift of user focused being
| spent other places.
| iterance wrote:
| Platforms lose momentum when these events strike, and
| momentum loss is the death knell for social platforms.
| Reddit's missteps have put it on a downward spiral. They may
| hang on, even for an impressively long time, but recovery
| from this point is very difficult and usually involves
| transforming or re-forming the vision.
|
| It can be done. It takes the right leaders. Most are unfit
| for this particular challenge.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I moved to Lemmy and it reminds me of 2006 era Reddit
| kombookcha wrote:
| In a good 'niche forums and quirky local cultures' type of
| way, or in the annoying epic bacon kind of way?
| quotemstr wrote:
| One of the starkest social desirability biases in tech is
| between federated and centralized platforms. Most people, in
| public, _say_ they support distributed, federated systems, but
| when push comes to shove, they all use centralized platforms
| anyway.
| volf_ wrote:
| atproto is a really good attempt at solving this issue
| bakugo wrote:
| If this happened 15+ years ago, a huge chunk of the userbase
| likely would've migrated to alternatives, potentially resulting
| in Discord being replaced and falling into irrelevance.
|
| Today, though, no chance that happens. The current generation
| literally grew up with it, same for most of the other
| established social media apps. The concept of alternatives
| largely does not exist for them. And besides, they were
| probably already sending pictures of themselves and other
| personal data to each other through the app, so it's not like
| Discord doesn't already have all of that.
| ziml77 wrote:
| There's also people who have been through enough of these
| moves and community splits that they're incredibly tired of
| it all.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I'm always exhausted by a migration. But I don't move off
| because there's an easy alternative. There never is. I do
| it to maintain principles, even at the cost of my social
| circles.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| I remember back in the days of instant messaging, there
| were clients which let you chat with people in a manner
| agnostic to the underlying IM provider. I used this one:
|
| https://adium.im/
|
| Maybe we need similar omniclients for group chat platforms,
| with automated migration scripts etc. I think the ideal
| migration method would be to implement continuous
| archiving, so the platform can't block you from scraping
| your own chat archives.
| jackcviers3 wrote:
| I mean, I grew up with AOL AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and IRC...
| yet I switched every time a new tech came out with more of my
| friends on it. Why do we think discord will be any more
| sticky than Digg or Slashdot, or any of the above?
|
| People will migrate, some will stay, and it will just be yet
| another noise machine they have to check in the list of
| snapchat, instagram, tiktok, reddit, twitter, twitch,
| discord, group texts, marco polo, tinder, hinge, roblox,
| minecraft servers, email, whatsapp and telegram, and
| slack/teams for work.
|
| Absolutely exhausting to be honest.
| andrepd wrote:
| Kids today are alarmingly bad at technology. This is not a
| "kids these days" situation, this is absolutely true. They
| understand "tap on icon, open app, there's a feed and DMs".
|
| I mean it, the tech illiteracy of gen Z/alpha is out of
| this world, I did not expect a generation that grew up with
| technology to be so inept, but here we are. But they grew
| up with a 4x4 grid of app icons, not with a PC.
| subscribed wrote:
| Correct. From my personal experience (have kids and
| nieces/nephew this age), and all think an app is the
| thing that they scroll in, and any attempt to explain the
| very basics on internet connectivity, servers, databases,
| etc, ends up in them basically experiencing blue screen
| moment and backing away to the safety of the endless
| scroll.
|
| The most complex concept they can understand is mail/post
| attachment or capcut, but then this is it. 10 minutes
| later they will download phone flashlight app that
| requires Google services for app delivery.
|
| Shocking.
|
| I ended up with refusing to help with anything related to
| technology in any other way than pointing to
| help/manual/search engines and asking questions.
| nhhvhy wrote:
| I don't think people understand the true level of tech
| illiteracy of Gen Z. A couple years back I did an
| internship with the IT guy at my high school, and the
| vast majority of the problems students had with the
| Chromebooks we used were, in no specific order:
| - Not understanding that a dead battery means it won't
| turn on - Trying to use them without an internet
| connection - "The screen won't work" when trying to
| non-touchscreen models like a tablet - "I can't see
| my stuff" when using the guest mode rather than their
| login, or when they used a PC and they couldn't see the
| docs icon on their desktop
|
| That's not even to mention the abysmal typing skills of
| most students, so many 15WPM hunt-and-peck typers..
|
| There's a mountain of issues along those lines we ran
| into, and it was honestly frightening to watch.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yeah, I work with kids and it's admittedly a bit
| disheartening having conversations like
|
| > why don't you make a separate account for your sibling
|
| > I don't know how to make an email
|
| > but you needed an email for your account
|
| > yeah, I just use my school email
|
| By that time my age as a young teen I knew how to make
| new accounts and research what I didn't know. And I'm not
| sure of its my place to help them create an email without
| knowledge from their parents.
| tavavex wrote:
| I feel like asking someone working IT about the average
| technical literacy of the people they work with is
| similar to asking an EMT about the health of an average
| person. Not to discredit your experience, but you should
| account for the fact that a lot of the people you helped
| were the ones who were already filtered out by their
| inability to fix trivial problems.
|
| I'm not saying this issue doesn't exist. But I want to
| reframe it as the low bar for using tech dropping through
| the floor. Previously, you had to have at least somewhat
| of an idea for what you're doing, but nowadays most
| people who don't care about tech are reliant on using the
| "grandma school of thought" in memorizing basic patterns
| and relationships without having a bigger model of what's
| going on. This mostly affects newer generations and older
| people who only started using technology recently,
| because this strategy didn't fly in the past. But
| technical literacy is falling for everyone.
|
| But the absence of the low bar doesn't mean that
| everyone's chasing it. In high school, I was surrounded
| by peers who were interested in tech, sometimes being far
| better than me. The average level of understanding was
| pretty alright. In university, lots of people did just
| fine. I know countless people my age who are highly
| skilled in computer science. We're not in the majority,
| but there's plenty of us. I'm tired of it always being
| framed as an issue stemming from some kind of unique lack
| of personal responsibility and low intelligence related
| to age, used to apply stereotypes to hundreds of millions
| of people. _Every_ average user will optimize actually
| understanding anything out of their brain if given an
| opportunity, it 's just that that opportunity had only
| appeared fairly recently.
| andrepd wrote:
| People tried warning that moving all your discussion forums
| into a proprietary, closed, unsearchable platform was a bad
| idea. And it was. But nobody cared.
| pyrolistical wrote:
| So you want to go back to mailing list and run your own email
| server?
| frumplestlatz wrote:
| No, we'd like to go back to the culture that created
| protocols to solve our needs, such that people could create
| interoperable servers and clients to implement those
| protocols.
| andrepd wrote:
| Email is an open protocol, perfectly suited for delivering
| messages between people. Discord is a closed application,
| unsearchable, any server or account may be nuked at
| discord's discretion, thus it's entirely unsuited to
| replace e.g. a forum.
|
| You do understand the difference?
| Jblx2 wrote:
| Maybe time for a Usenet renaissance?
| reddalo wrote:
| In a way, Usenet was a kind of ancient fediverse.
| idatum wrote:
| I'm seeing Groups.io show up more for hobbies/interests I
| have. It seems email can be a way to slow down heated
| discussions. Perhaps at the expense of push-back on using
| more email?
|
| Anyone have any experiences to share with moving their
| discussion groups from Discord to Groups.io?
| daedrdev wrote:
| discord being a closed, unsearchable platform is one of its
| main features.
| 3acctforcom wrote:
| Remember when Tumbler banned porn? People migrated to other
| platforms like Reddit, and it died.
|
| Musk being a Nazi made twitter lose big enough chunks of their
| community to start Bluesky. Not big enough to do any real
| damage to the platform, but it still provided critical mass to
| a fledgling app.
|
| WhatsApp having a sketchy relationship with the US government
| boosted Signal.
|
| Sooooo, what is a good discord replacement?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Its hard to say. Reddit is still a shit show, but I still
| peer into niche communities you won't find anywhere else on
| the internet.
|
| Discord is even more niche than that. There's tons of IRC
| esque group chats of that's what you need. But a community:
| not so easy to replace.
| rurp wrote:
| Oh I think it definitely did damage, just not enough to kill
| such a massive platform overnight. Twitter has lost a
| significant amount of users while other social networks grew
| or held steady, and the cultural impact seems to have waned a
| lot.
|
| I've never been a regular user of Twitter, pre or post elon
| era, but a lot of people I follow in other ways used to be
| very active on there and discussions would often spill over
| into other venues. That still happens a bit, but much less
| than before.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Try to tell them it's a bad idea. And be ready to leave that
| community if nothing changes. That's pretty much the way of
| life for an internet vagrant. Maybe you hope the community
| migrates too. Maybe you try to remake the community. But those
| aren't in your control.
|
| I left Facebook, left Reddit (never really had a Twitter). This
| won't be different.
| alexashka wrote:
| Most everyone will go down the path of least resistance. A few
| outliers will try to resist, get old and/or tired. A few of the
| few will reach acceptance, comprehend the serenity prayer. A
| few of the few of the few will reach enlightenment.
|
| What _you_ do depends on where you 're at - statistically,
| you'll go down the path of least resistance which is totally,
| totally fine.
| alex1138 wrote:
| You can, of course, not do this (you meaning the company,
| Discord)
|
| You can choose to be respectful of people who have valid reasons
| for not providing ID
|
| But you want that sweet IPO money (as stated elsewhere in this
| thread). You don't actually care about the internet and how
| anonymity is a cool thing for certain vulnerable groups
|
| All these tech CEOs should face prison time and I'm not joking.
| They've displayed a complete laissez faire attitude to all of
| these concerns
| cbold wrote:
| When the openclaw/moltbook fad dies, those Mac mini's could be
| repurposed for a p2p forum network.
| stuffn wrote:
| Finally I feel validated complaining for the last decade about
| the move away from IRC/teamspeak to centralized services. I've
| been called all kinds of names.
|
| Now those same people are complaining they're gonna have to
| submit their faces to discord. Which will eventually be used to
| prosecute or commit fraud. I'm left wondering if "tech
| enthusiasts" are ever actually correct.
| anthk wrote:
| Heh, that happened with phony nostalgic gen-z kids trying to
| recreate 'old times' with Discord and turd themning for Windows
| AKA called 'Frutiger Aero' while bitching against XMPP calling
| it 'malware'.
|
| They wil learn by brute force. As we had to do.
| bitbytebane wrote:
| Discord has always been IRC with extra censorship and spying.
| Nothing really new, here. Just use IRC.
| vkou wrote:
| If you can't think of good reasons for why someone might use
| discord over IRC, you probably haven't thought about this
| enough.
| jusgu wrote:
| it's not that simple. many (if not most) people would rather be
| where everyone already is, even if there's less privacy
| AuthAuth wrote:
| IRC sucks tho. It doesnt have half the features that make
| discord enjoyable.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| If you have any hope of replacing Discord, you need to actually
| understand Discord. Among many other things, people use Discord
| because it has persistent history, integrated images and
| videos, video and audio calls, and screen sharing.
| keithnz wrote:
| lot of people complaining, but, seems like they rolled it out
| already in UK and Australia... no real complaints I know of, and
| I'm in NZ and are on NZ/Aussie discords. Also teen mode doesn't
| actually seem that restrictive. Seems an ok move to me. But for
| whatever reason people seem to froth at the mouth when it comes
| to discord on here.
| rwmj wrote:
| I have a discord account that I use very rarely, and just tried
| it (from the UK) and it didn't ask me for any ID or face scan.
| If they do start doing that, I'll simply stop using the
| service.
| trashb wrote:
| Uk, Effective from July 25, 2025, regulated platforms must use
| "highly effective" methods, such as facial age estimation,
| credit card checks, or ID verification to prevent children from
| accessing harmful material, with potential fines or bans for
| non-compliance. (extents to any platform with user uploaded
| content)
|
| Australia, as of 10 December 2025 Australia requires social
| media platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent users under
| 16 from accessing accounts.
|
| No wonder there where "no real complaints" those countries are
| already under heavy age verification law.
|
| > Also teen mode doesn't actually seem that restrictive.
|
| Doesn't mean it can't get more restrictive in a few months.
| Ease people into it would actually be the smart move since
| there will be less complaints.
|
| > But for whatever reason people seem to froth at the mouth
| when it comes to discord on here.
|
| Because Discord has not handled their data well in recent
| memory (actually ever).
|
| Also it is a global rollout not mandated by the countries law.
| This indicates that it is a business decisions and therefore
| probably they stand to gain from it financially.
| pibaker wrote:
| It is a great irony that the heavy handed push for "protect da
| kids" is all happening while we learn, day by day, that the
| richest and most powerful members of our society have no problem
| hanging out with a convicted child sex trafficker.
|
| Rules for thee, free love for me.
| nickpinkston wrote:
| I'm fine with the free love and debauchery, but just really
| keep it to adults and be safe.
| RIMR wrote:
| I'm just going to go ahead and say that "free love" is a
| terribly inappropriate way to refer to sex trafficking,
| regardless of the age of the victims, unless you're being
| facetious (e.g., The Onion's "Penis Goofin'" allegations
| against Epstein).
| cgriswald wrote:
| I'm going to suggest re-reading the top level comment and
| the GP's response. I don't see anyone suggesting non-
| facetiously that free love and sex trafficking are
| synonymous nor that sex trafficking of adults is
| acceptable. I think the top level poster is being
| facetious; such a view is how these creeps might think. I
| think the respondent is, intentionally or mistakenly,
| ignoring that context and using the term at face value.
| handedness wrote:
| 'I'm fine with extreme indulgence, but just really keep it
| restrained and be safe.'
|
| By definition, debauchery with durable constraints can't be
| normalized, as its appeal is the overstepping of norms.
|
| There's also an argument to be made that normalizing
| debauchery invites scope creep.
| volf_ wrote:
| do as we say, not as we do
| ActorNightly wrote:
| What do you mean day by day.
|
| We have known this to be the case, for quite some time, yet
| majority of the public still thought that a convicted felon was
| good enough to be president.
| dijit wrote:
| I think that's the exact irony that the parent is eluding to.
|
| It's all about the kids, unless, idk, you're rich enough?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Andrew Carnegie's The Gospel of Wealth[1] lies squarely in
| the center of the foundational belief that those who've
| acquired such means have done so because they reflect "the
| highest type of man, the best and most valuable of all that
| humanity has yet accomplished."
|
| It takes only a brief glimpse of the real world and its
| most wealthy to recognize that an abundance of virtue is
| not what's reflected in reality. In fact, the benevolence
| Carnegie describes, serves as a smoke screen for cruelty,
| degenerate acts, and the slaughterhouse of the soul. We've
| sold out every moral for a bait and switch and it's well
| past time to reneg on the social contract.
|
| 1. https://www.carnegie.org/about/our-
| history/gospelofwealth/
| rob74 wrote:
| I think you've got that quote backwards. In full it
| reads:
|
| > _Unequally or unjustly, perhaps, as these laws
| sometimes operate, and imperfect as they appear to the
| Idealist, they are, nevertheless, like the highest type
| of man, the best and most valuable of all that humanity
| has yet accomplished._
|
| Or (to shorten it a bit): "These laws (of capitalism)
| [...] are nevertheless [..] the best and most valuable of
| all that humanity has yet accomplished". So this is only
| an unlimited belief in the virtues of capitalism, not in
| the virtues of rich people.
|
| From the introduction:
|
| > _Carnegie believed in giving wealth away during one's
| lifetime, and this essay includes one of his most famous
| quotes, "The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced."
| Carnegie's message continues to resonate with and inspire
| leaders and philanthropists around the world._
|
| I really wonder what Carnegie would think about his
| successors dismantling USAID?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I believe the connection he was making was that the laws,
| results, and people profiting from the system all
| represent the best of humanity. That said, whether read
| forwards or backwards, the point still stands. I
| appreciate your attention to detail.
| brigandish wrote:
| I would say it's more like "this is the best we have, not
| necessarily good", hence the reference to idealism and
| justice, much like the sentiment in Churchill's famous
| quote, "democracy is the worst form of Government except
| for all those other forms that have been tried".
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| Andrew Carnegie wrote and lived in an era without an
| income tax. In that era rich men were expected to be
| broadly philanthropic, to steward their wealth for the
| good of the common, to act with generosity and
| responsibility. Because the state did not provide a
| safety net, the wealthy faced immense social pressure to
| act as stewards of the public good.
|
| In today's era those expectations do not exist. The
| public-facing, gilded age palaces, which by their public
| nature tend to enforce good behavior by forcing them to
| physically interact with the society they profited from,
| have been replaced by private, gated bunkers behind tall
| hedges blurred out on Google Maps. The wealthy wear jeans
| and hoodies to "blend in" or appear common, when they are
| very much not. A rail tycoon in a 10X beaver tophat might
| offer a beggar something on the street. A tech mogul in a
| hoody might not even get solicited.
|
| Income tax - and broadly speaking many other changes to
| the social contract between upper and lower classes, like
| the bureaucratization of welfare - has not just allowed
| but incentivized the wealthy to shirk the
| responsibilities of old, and outsource their morality to
| a (corrupt, as many have pointed out) government. And
| it's not good. There is no honor in giving anymore.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| If we repeal the income tax, virtue will return to the
| wealthy.
|
| Is that something you believe?
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| Improbable. It's hard to un-ring a bell once rung. Was
| adding critical context to the Carnegie citation.
| coupdejarnac wrote:
| Are you really asking this? For real?
|
| You're shooting the messenger.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| They can do this because we crave the dollars they have.
| If we suddenly, collectively, decided Elon's dollars and
| Tesla stock were worthless, he'd have to come out and go
| to the food bank.
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| It's all about the kids when you need a certain segment of
| the population to vote a certain way.
| echelon wrote:
| It's never about kids. If they cared about kids, they would
| have school lunch and wouldn't starve.
|
| It's about control and monitoring of civilians. And
| creating a dragnet to ensnare any new politicians and
| business leaders.
|
| Freedom of speech is insufficient. We need freedom of
| privacy and from monitoring and tracking.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That is the uncharitable interpretation. I think it is at
| least as likely that voters consistently get to chose between
| a turd sandwich and a giant douche, so it will always be
| possible to accuse them of preferring a terrible candidate.
|
| Also, nitpick: it was neither a majority of the public, or a
| majority of the eligible voting population, or even a
| majority of the people who voted.
|
| I think a really good first step, at least in the US, towards
| making our candidate selection better would be to mandate
| open primaries.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I think your interpretation is uncharitable. One of the
| options is a fraud and a pedophile and the other wasn't.
| They absolutely were not equally bad.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| You're right, the other was Kamala Harris, who was far
| worse.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I think he's guilty, and even so I don't believe we
| actually have anything that proves him a pedophile any
| more than Bill Clinton, for example. Continuing to call
| him a pedo just looks like more partisan politics, which
| uninterested people (who still bother to vote) tune out.
|
| Dems need to figure out how to run more interesting
| candidates. In 2024 they thought everyone wanted status
| quo, and it turns out that as housing prices go up and
| up, along with wages staying flat, people want to blow
| things up. And Trump seems to be that guy for them.
| thrance wrote:
| We absolutely have proof that Trump is, in fact, a
| pedophile. Still doubting that is weirdly delusional,
| more probably plainly dishonest.
|
| > Continuing to call him a pedo just looks like more
| partisan politics, which uninterested people (who still
| bother to vote) tune out.
|
| Exactly the contrary is true. The Epstein stuff has
| caused an unprecedented dip in Trump's popularity. The
| more it's talked about the angrier the people get at him
| and his friends.
|
| > Dems need to figure out how to run more interesting
| candidates.
|
| Indeed, here's hoping for a true Democratic Tea Party,
| let progressives run the show. They've proved more than
| capable of motivating the masses, in New York and other
| places...
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| This is the most uncharitable take and common of the people
| who try to play the middle or wave away their decision to
| vote for Trump.
|
| The decision was quite literally between a known criminal
| and already even at the time known to be likely pedophile
| (and now it's basically a fact) and someone who is none of
| that.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| In my case it is a charitable take of someone who
| appreciates that painting his political opponents as evil
| incarnate is not going to bring about a political change.
| There is nuance in how people form their ideological
| priorities and how they end up making the final decision
| on who to vote for. Recognizing that is very important if
| we want to, you know, win any more elections. Trump would
| be approximately dead last for my vote if you gave me an
| arbitrarily long list of terrible candidates.
|
| The dems consistently push everyone even a little bit
| impure from their coalition, which is why they have had
| difficulties winning slam-dunk elections. And instead of
| calling everyone who voted from Trump evil or stupid,
| they refuse to look in the mirror and see if there is
| anything they could change about their own pitch that
| would make it more appealing.
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| Sorry but if you claim to be from the party of law and
| order and vote in a criminal, I have no issues calling
| those people stupid and evil.
|
| It wasn't like Trump just had some petty past crime on
| his hands and had turned a new leaf.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| >a turd sandwich and a giant douche
|
| Ah yes, the famous conservative talking point of "well
| yeah, my side is bad, but your side is just as bad".
|
| From a pure performance standard across economy and quality
| of life, its pretty clear that Democratic policies always
| end up as net positive, while conservative policies may
| seem good in the short term but allways end up bad long
| term. But to see this you have to understand politics, and
| understand the effects aren't always immediate. However,
| the situation this time around is way simpler.
|
| Basically in 2016, you could be excused for voting for
| Trump. Things were going well enough that mattered, Hilary
| was not the best candidate, and maybe a little mix up
| needed to happen. In 2020, if you voted for Trump, you are
| absolutely clueless about politics and have no idea what is
| actually good for the country, but at least its all
| political reasons.
|
| In 2024, it wasn't about politics - it was a choice between
| either allowing a convicted felon who tried to overthrow US
| government (with Supreme Courts saying he did nothing wrong
| mind you) back into a position of power, or not. As it
| turns out 7/10 people who either voted for trump or didn't
| vote are ok with the rich and elite getting away with what
| they want.
|
| So generally when people act surprised about anything that
| happens in regards to Einstein or any other things that
| Trump will do, like interfere with elections and possibly
| go for third term, just remember that those people don't
| actually care. This is what they want.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| > From a pure performance standard across economy and
| quality of life, its pretty clear that Democratic
| policies always end up as net positive,
|
| All one has to do is point at San Francisco as this us
| provably false. Dems have been in charge their for
| decades and it's arguably not working.
| ikiris wrote:
| It's not working so hard people pay millions just to live
| there.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| People do because of the economic activity, not the
| pristine management of the city.
| archagon wrote:
| Which part is not working? Do you live here? I've been
| living in the Mission since 2023 and despite some
| problems, the city, overall, works... pretty well.
| Really.
|
| "Super Bowl Visitors Find San Francisco Better Than Its
| Apocalyptic Image. Problems with homelessness and open-
| air drug use have been widely broadcast, but many
| visitors this week said they found the city surprisingly
| pleasant."
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/us/san-francisco-
| super-bo...
|
| Incidentally, reading some books on the history of SF
| illuminates that homelessness/poverty and drug use have
| plagued the city for almost a century, across all manner
| of governments. There is no easy solution here.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| I can cherry pick a worse republican run city easily,
| despite you picking pretty much the worst example of
| Democratic run city, that despite its problem is also is
| home to many tech companies with a strong economy.
|
| I dunno why you guys even try to argue against Dems at
| this point tbh. Even if I am wrong on that point, there
| are a thousand others that demonstrably show that
| Republican policies and politicians, especially during
| this administration, are many times worse.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > conservative talking point
|
| The problem with your accusation is that I am a long ways
| from conservative, and what I said is a pop culture
| reference straight from South Park.
|
| > In 2024, it wasn't about politics
|
| It wasn't? The dems took a candidate so weak in charisma
| [0] that she lost her first primary to another candidate
| also historically weak in charisma (Biden) who himself
| tried multiple times to run for president and only won in
| 2020 because he barely edged out the most historically
| unpopular president in memory. The cherry on top was that
| she didn't have to win a single primary to become the
| nominee, and her party had just spent months insisting
| that the guy at the helm, who promised to be a one term
| president, was losing his already unfortunately weak
| ability to speak clearly before realizing how badly he
| was going to lose to Trump and just gifting the
| nomination to his VP. What a shit show.
|
| As a long time democrat I remain astounded at how
| horridly incompetent the leadership is and the lengths to
| which rank-and-file supporters will go to make excuses
| for them. Followed closely by the insistence of
| democratic voters to focus on narrow cultural priorities
| that resonate with a small number of people and don't
| move the needle at all for like 80% of the population.
| What on God's green earth happened to being, you know,
| _progressive_? What about labor, or healthcare, or
| affordable groceries, housing, etc?
|
| [0] yes, charisma isn't the ideal requirement for a
| presidential candidate, but failure to recognize that
| this is basically how all presidents win election just
| means you are going to lose more often.
|
| Plus, we still have people insisting that Kamala lost
| because she was a woman. No, she won because she sucks as
| a political candidate. Hillary had precisely the same
| issue. There are strong women who communicate well who
| would perform much better, but they have thus far decided
| to avoid the circus.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| > that I am a long ways from conservative
|
| You are 100% conservative, because only a braindead
| conservative would be typing some paragraph about
| charisma, ignoring the fact that TRUMP LITERALLY TRIED TO
| OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT. You guys are so bad at hiding
| this that its embarrassing at this point, so stop trying.
|
| And before you start saying "no he didn't", please go and
| read the entire supreme court case where he said that
| yes, he did in fact present a fradulent set of electors,
| but he should be immune from prosecution because he was
| acting in official capacity, and Supreme Court agreed.
|
| To be super crystal clear, if instead of Kamala, the
| option was even "worse" in your eyes, like low level left
| wing politician from San Francisco that wanted to do
| something like UBI, and you still voted for Trump, you
| are a traitor to the country that honestly should be
| tried on charges of conspiring for treason and given
| appropriate capital punishment, and the argument of "oh i
| didn't know he tried to overthrow the government" should
| not fly.
|
| There are levels of bad, and what Trump did is pretty
| much one step short of using actual military forces to
| take over the congress and force people to sign the
| papers at gunpoint installing himself as a dictator. An
| example needs to be made of people who support this kind
| of person.
|
| But hey, like I said, this is what people wanted. Well
| see if everyone feels the same way when US economy tanks
| and bullets start flying as unemployed people looking to
| feed their families will have nothing to lose. Maybe well
| even have a Red Scare 2 except instead of communists,
| everyone will be paranoid of Maga people.
| notjtrig wrote:
| Only 22% of the public voted for Trump.
| otterley wrote:
| This is a completely useless statistic, and I'm not even
| close to being a Trump fan.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Way more people didn't vote, and not voting against Trump
| is just as bad as voting for him.
| tux3 wrote:
| I am not a native English speaker, I may be missing a cultural
| nuance, but I wouldn't call any of what they did love. That
| word enters nowhere in a sickening child abuse island.
| ambicapter wrote:
| it's just sarcasm.
| ingohelpinger wrote:
| and they keep protecting the pedos from prosecution. lol.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| This is no worse than Discord just banning NSFW content
| wholesale throughout the platform (which they would be entirely
| within their rights to do). It's a big fat nothingburger.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Except it is scarily easy to find servers which openly have
| minors selling NSFW content. Or BDSM servers targeted at
| "14-28 year olds".
| danaris wrote:
| It's not a nothingburger; it's a massive collection of
| personally identifying information.
| subscribed wrote:
| Especially by the company already involved in a leak of a
| massive trove of pictures, personal details (including
| IDs), etc: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8jmzd972leo
|
| What could possibly go wrong this time...
| Morromist wrote:
| It would be in their rights to do it.
|
| Its users who value their privacy will be in their rights to
| leave and we will.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| They have a right to ask for my passport and SSN. And I have
| a right to say "hell no" and delete my account in response.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| I'm sure the owners of Tumblr thought the same.
| Macha wrote:
| The owners of Tumblr thought being banned from the app
| store was certain death, but losing the nsfw content was
| only possible death.
| terribleperson wrote:
| In reality, losing the nsfw content was certain death,
| but losing the app would have just been a downsizing.
| Maybe not even a major one - platforms are sticky as
| hell. I think most people would happily use the browser.
|
| Now if you go out of your way to make your browser
| experience dogshit, like Patreon... Then yeah, losing the
| app store is very bad.
| jacobgkau wrote:
| That would make sense if apps like Twitter or Reddit were
| banned from the app store or had also decided to ban NSFW
| content, but they seem to be getting along fine with
| their verification-free "click here if you're an adult"
| systems. Why was Tumblr different?
|
| To be sure, this move by Discord seems like a reflection
| of the same kind of decision that Tumblr made. But
| blaming it on the app store in Tumblr's case doesn't seem
| to make sense. Discord seems to be doing it either to
| comply with increasingly fragmented laws, out of actual
| moral desire to fix a problem, or to avoid lawsuits-- not
| because of app store policies.
| oguz-ismail2 wrote:
| It's a question of scale. Neither crime is less serious but far
| more children are groomed and abused over Discord than flown in
| via some super rich sicko's private jet for a 'costume party'.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Making everyone "teens by default" fixes none of that,
| though. Roblox spaces aren't exactly 18+
| johndhi wrote:
| he was convicted of soliciting prostitution (not of minors),
| right?
|
| why do we assume that the people he was hanging out with knew
| the details of what he did wrong?
| anon84873628 wrote:
| This article was on the front page recently:
| https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9534
|
| So at least some lay people easily realized he wasn't worth
| getting involved with.
| johndhi wrote:
| good call! hadn't read that.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| He pled to Procuring Person under 18 for Prostitution.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| He was arrested for sex trafficking minors and convicted
| procuring a child for prostitution.
| Finnucane wrote:
| He ran a sex-trafficking ring that involved hundreds of girls
| and women. Possibly over a thousand. He wasn't keeping it all
| to himself.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > not of minors, right?
|
| https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-
| release/file/1180481...
|
| "The victims described herein were as young as 14 years old
| at the time they were abused by Jeffrey Epstein... Epstein
| intentionally sought out minors and knew that many of his
| victims were in fact under the age of 18, including because,
| in some instances, minor victims expressly told him their
| age."
|
| > why do we assume that the people he was hanging out with
| knew the details of what he did wrong?
|
| Some of them were emailing long, long after his conviction.
| johndhi wrote:
| that's a grand jury charge, not what he actually pled to,
| right?
| alexfromapex wrote:
| People don't realize that all of our problems lately are
| stemming from lack of truly representative government. Until we
| find a way to ensure political candidates aren't corrupt and
| bought off, there will always be corruption, double standards,
| and lack of accountability from them.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| That's a lot of work to do. It ultimately works off the issue
| that most voters are disengaged, while the most interested
| parties are very engaged.
|
| Corruption is happening out in the open and there's still so
| many people shrugging in response. One good push back from
| everyone all at once would fix a lot of things quickly. But
| that implies the people are united and not instead driven
| into manufactured conflict by said interested parties. It's
| basically enough that we're in a post truth era as of now. I
| don't know how we come back from that
|
| Anyways, repealing Citizens United would be a good first
| step.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| [warning/apology - this comment regards USpol specifically]
|
| Our media landscape has people focusing on basically
| everything except what we need to be. I am not sure that
| liberal democracy will survive the information age. So much
| effort goes into the process of argument, we aren't as a
| whole really thinking about how to solve our very real
| problems.
|
| China's technocratic rule, after some, shall we say,
| growing pains (hunger pains? Is it fair to say that when
| millions of people starved to death?), seems a lot better
| at creating a coherent strategy for economic growth and
| international soft power.
|
| One of my great fears is that democracy _was_ the right
| model in the past decades and centuries, but that it won 't
| keep up with the laser focused technocratic rule that a
| competent bureaucracy can potentially muster.
| thwarted wrote:
| > _China 's technocratic rule...seems a lot better at
| creating a coherent strategy for economic growth and
| international soft power._
|
| This requires that those in/with the power actually have
| altruistic, or at least not solely selfish, concerns. How
| rampant is government/bureaucratic corruption in China?
|
| I elided the population starving part in order to not
| distract from the possibility of truly selfless
| governance strategy. It may very well be the case that
| millions starving is considered "acceptable losses" ("the
| needs of the billions outweigh the needs of the
| millions") in executing on that strategy. Which, make no
| mistake, would be truly tragic and should be undesirable.
| But that not everyone sees it that way is really what
| we're fighting against.
|
| "I have a machine that feeds everyone, no one shall go
| hungry."
|
| "But mah profits!"
|
| "You only need profits so you yourself can eat, but
| that's now a solved problem"
|
| "But mah profits. How will we know who's winning?"
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Corruption definitely happens in China but even as a US
| person I can think of at least one major case where there
| were very real consequences for that. How many US govt
| officials have been executed for corruption?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Zaiyong
|
| Millions starving during the Great Leap forward was very
| much NOT part of the plan, it was the result of some very
| misguided agricultural practices.
|
| My point is that in the same period, China has gone from
| "oops we accidentally caused the 2nd largest mass
| starvation event in history" to "we have the largest high
| speed rail network and manufacturing base in the world
| and nobody is even close."
|
| While the US went from "what's a postwar superpower to
| do? How bout some megaprojects?" To "I'm drowning in
| entitlements and houses now cost the same as the average
| lifetime GDP per capita".
| Saline9515 wrote:
| China is so technocratic and efficient that it has been
| faking growth and population statistics for the last
| decade, hides youth unemployment numbers, and raids due
| diligences companies who may provide external investors
| more realistic data about the economy or local companies.
|
| Also, China has its own real estate bubble, so it is not
| immune to those issues. At least in the US people have
| some recourse at the individual level.
| vharuck wrote:
| Authoritarian governments are always more efficient than
| democracies. Their flaw is that citizens have no say in
| _what goal_ will be efficiently pursued. When a
| technocratic authoritarian is in power, things improve
| overall (but there are still many "inefficient" people
| left behind or crushed). But when a cruel or incompetent
| authoritarian takes control, things hit lows that sound
| democracies wouldn't allow. Lows that take generations to
| recover from.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| While I like your message here, I don't think
| authoritarianism is actually more efficient (efficient at
| what?) usually. Because often it goes hand in hand with
| economic and social extraction, which is inherently
| inefficient.
|
| But I take and am a bit heartened by your main point -
| while the best case authoritarian regime can plan and
| execute more quickly and with greater efficiency than
| representative government, the worst case authoritarian
| govt is much much worse than the worst case possible with
| a functional democracy.
| watwut wrote:
| They are not more effective. They basically always end up
| as highly currupt ineffective mess.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> It ultimately works off the issue that most voters are
| disengaged, while the most interested parties are very
| engaged._
|
| That, and the fact winning a senate seat costs on average
| $26.53 million [1]
|
| You can't self-fund, that's 152 years of your $174,000
| salary.
|
| Where do you suppose the money comes from, and what do you
| suppose motivates the donors?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_in_the_U
| nited...
| psychoslave wrote:
| You can't find that because any concentration of power means
| the corruption forces have only very limited surface to
| pressure, and all the more that surface is actually easy to
| swap with one molded for even more corruption convenience.
|
| People ever rule through direct decisions or are enslaved
| into alien agendas on which they have no agency.
| nicoburns wrote:
| In countries like the US and UK with FPTP voting systems,
| proportional representation would help a lot. As it would
| make it a lot more viable for candidates outside of the
| main two parties to stand (and actually have a chance of
| winning).
|
| (although in a UK context, it's looking highly likely that
| we'll have a "changing of the guard" in the next election
| with both Reform and Green party making significant inroads
| at the expense of the more established Conservative and
| Labour parties)
| kypro wrote:
| FPTP will just guarantee that nothing meaningful can be
| done. Too much compromise in decision making is bad.
|
| Personally I think ideal set up is a system which grants
| quite a of power to a small handful of people, but makes
| it very easy for those people to be removed. This is
| typically the model that works best in business and other
| cooperative pursuits anyway.
|
| Throwing more people in the room with different opinions
| will ensure significant decisions can almost never made.
| Any policy too far to the right or too far to left will
| be watered down. The result is that you'll be led by
| centrists who can't really change anything and anything
| they do change will be disliked by everyone.
| sally_glance wrote:
| Great idea, except that I don't think it's easy to make
| sure we don't grant too much power. Basically this idea
| is the core of representative democracy. Problem is, the
| people who have been granted a lot of power are very good
| at finding loopholes to avoid or remove the safeguards we
| put in place...
| kypro wrote:
| There is a trade-off here for sure... I don't agree so
| much that the goal is to limit power though, but to
| ensure any power given to leaders is conditional.
|
| I think ideally you want a CEO type leader of a country
| who has a lot of executive power, but that leader has a
| board who provides oversight, then ultimately the public
| are all shareholders who collectively hold the company
| and it's leaders to account.
|
| I'd argue generally speaking we want to grant more power
| to our leaders than we do today, but make them much
| easier to remove and have a well design constitution so
| certain things are legally impossible in the same way a
| CEO can't just decide they now have 100% voting rights
| and no longer need to listen to share holders.
|
| The solution to a bad CEO isn't to have 10 CEOs. The
| solution is for the shareholders to boot them for a
| better CEO.
| sally_glance wrote:
| Yeah, for companies this works because there are external
| (government) entities providing and enforcing a
| framework. For countries, there is nothing like that. The
| traditional solution is separation of powers inside of
| the country I guess, but this requires limiting
| individual power. Also it's quite complicated in practice
| and requires a complex legal framework which is sadly
| often weak to "workarounds" again.
| watwut wrote:
| > FPTP will just guarantee that nothing meaningful can be
| done.
|
| Because congress and senate in America are soooo active
| ...
| krupan wrote:
| Government is doing stuff that's awful and whenever
| people propose solutions to this someone always complains
| that government "won't be able to get anything done."
| That's the point! What are you worried about?
| 9dev wrote:
| Which is exactly why we need a strong federation, and broad
| participation in democratic process across the bank. Many
| people can't even be bothered to vote, much less
| participate in their local, municipal governments. That
| must change.
| psychoslave wrote:
| Voting is meaningless if it's not for a program with
| people charged to implement it being on revokable mandat
| if they go out of the rails of the planned destination.
|
| Instead general elections are theaters were all that is
| voted is which clown is going to have a blank check.
| drdaeman wrote:
| It's easy to solve concentration of power, just distribute
| it more. Nowadays we can have quite large distributed
| systems.
|
| It's nigh impossible to invent a system that truly
| formalizes collective will with the goal of optimizing for
| everyone's best long-term interests, minimizing
| unhappiness.
| rapind wrote:
| 100% agree, and I think that's sort of what was intended
| with a lot of democratic government setups. What we fail
| to realize though (or maybe just remember) is that these
| systems will ALWAYS be under attack by those who want
| more power always looking for attack surfaces. (We seem
| to be under attack by almost all, if not all, current
| billionaires!)
|
| For example in the US, the executive order is a massive
| problem. Citizens united as well. And for all democracies
| the natural appeal of strongman politics is a huge
| problem.
|
| Every attempt at government overreach really needs to be
| questioned. I don't say rejected, just questioned. How
| will it be used by future powers? Is the tradeoff worth
| it? Can it be temporary? Do we even have a way to claw it
| back if it turns out to be detrimental? Is it too subtle
| and nuanced that the majority will miss seeing it? etc.
| quantummagic wrote:
| Except it's very easy to "sell" government overreach.
| Whenever a plane flies into a tower, or flu season is
| extra scary, people will clamor for strict government
| authority. With every such event, the government gains
| capabilities and tendencies that always end up with a few
| people having outsized power over the masses.
| rapind wrote:
| Yes, but I don't think it's so straightforward. I think
| there are bad actors marketing this overreach. Like the
| surveillance industry for the Patriot Act (tech, defence,
| telcom, maybe compliance vendors?). I don't think their
| goal is to create a distopia, but we should always be
| looking at incentives for large government programs.
| quantummagic wrote:
| It is straightforward, and very predictable. Bad actors,
| aren't an anomaly.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| > these systems will ALWAYS be under attack by those who
| want more power
|
| I think this is an inherent human problem that prevents
| us from overcoming it... history has proven that the more
| equal everyone is, and the less individual ownership they
| have, the lazier and more bored they get.
|
| Look at the previous attempts at socialism... people stop
| caring when there's no goal to work towards, they can't
| all be doing the same thing and just be happy, because
| humans are naturally competitive. We desire things other
| people don't have, like possessions, money, or power.
| rapind wrote:
| Is there a way to accept but also limit greed that is
| reliable and durable?
|
| Like a pragmatic meritocracy. We accept that there will
| be cheaters, and we won't catch or stop them all, but we
| have some hard limits. Do we care if you stop working so
| hard once you hit $1b? Maybe we'd even prefer that you
| did stop working (against societies interest!)?
|
| This wouldn't even remotely resemble the communism
| bugaboo. It's basically saying, yes greed can be good,
| but at some point it gets ridiculous.
| psychoslave wrote:
| Well we can look at attempts at socialism and see that
| some failed, some were successful:
| https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/successful-
| sociali...
|
| But of course success is relative to some cultural
| values. We could just as well wonder about success and
| failure in implementation of any political system.
|
| The most remarkable trait of humans is cognitive
| plasticity, so determining any natural tendency that
| would be more inate than acquired is just a game of
| pretending there are hypothetical humans living out of
| any cultural influence that would still exhibit
| predominent behavioral traits.
|
| Competition is a social construct. There are people out
| there whose biggest concern is keeping focus on enjoying
| what they are, freeing their attention from the illusion
| of possession, avoiding any financial/material bounds
| they can and staying away of contingent hierarchical
| servitudes.
|
| They are also many people who holds desires for both of
| these perspectives, or any interpolation/extrapolation
| that they can suggest.
| drdaeman wrote:
| We aren't inherently competitive, we just want nice
| things. It takes a very special mindset to want others to
| have less, and society should actively discourage such
| lines of thought by countering them with examples of how
| things never end well.
|
| This said, I wasn't suggesting socialism or equality or
| anything like that - only minimizing long-term
| unhappiness. That's the only thing that I could not think
| an argument against - like why would anyone rational ever
| want others to be long-term unhappy?
| Ray20 wrote:
| > the lazier and more bored they get
|
| People don't become "lazy". They're lazy from the
| beginning. Laziness is something they overcome for
| personal gain. And if the system promises fewer personal
| gains for overcoming laziness, then why bother?
| ranger_danger wrote:
| There can be other valid perspectives than your own
| riddlemethat wrote:
| In capitalism, the rich get powerful; in socialism, the
| powerful get rich.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| In enlightenment, you realise rich and powerful are
| synonyms.
| WillAdams wrote:
| My solution for this is to rate-limit political contributions
| --- they may only be made in an amount equal to what a
| minimum-wage worker might reasonably be expected to donate
| from a week's wages (say 10% of hourly min. wage * 40), as a
| physically written out check or money order physically signed
| by hand (at least an "X" mark) and mailed in a first-class
| envelope with at least a similarly signed cover letter
| explaining the reason for the donation.
|
| If this causes the extinction of the political lobbyist, I'm
| fine with that.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| Bundling would get around that to some extent
| WillAdams wrote:
| 1 check would require 2 x marks and 1 envelope and 1
| stamp (or other indicia) --- just paying minimum-wage
| folks for stuffing envelopes and making "X"s would
| probably result in this being equivalent to a job
| creation program, and it would probably save the USPS.
| ashleyn wrote:
| This is the central problem with Citizens United. The
| supreme court tends to be unusually deferential with 1A
| cases and ruled that infinite money can go into formally
| unaffiliated PACs. Undoing this would require activist
| judges or a constitutional amendment.
| uncletscollie wrote:
| Activist judges?
|
| The supreme court is majority activist judges. Why cant
| new judges undo the old activist judges wrongly decided
| law? Why are the other new judges suddenly activists?
| parineum wrote:
| In the case of Citizens United, it's actually a pretty
| straightforward case. Without a constitutional amendment,
| it would take a very unorthodox reading of the first
| amendment.
|
| The "problem" with Citizens United is that it's a very
| clear case.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Corporations are amoral immortals who cannot be placed
| behind bars. Therefore they should never be given the
| rights of human beings.
| parineum wrote:
| They don't have the rights of human beings. Humans don't
| lose their rights because they are in a corporation, that
| is the outcome of Citizens United.
|
| "A corporation is people" is the singular of
| "corporations are people". Anyone saying anything
| different is lying or misinformed.
|
| Think about all the times someone who definitely knew
| better implied that it meant a corporation is a person
| and trust them less.
| jmcgough wrote:
| PACs and dark money have been a disaster for this country
| reddozen wrote:
| must be pretty upsetting that sitting president Trump has
| tens of billions in 2 dark money shitcoins and owns a
| majority stake in crypto company World Liberty Financial.
| Just 0.001% of the total sum Hunter Biden was allegedly
| corrupt over (no evidence).
|
| who could have seen this coming.. twice.
| Gigachad wrote:
| These days instead of paying out politicians you just buy
| social media bots or even the whole platform to push
| propaganda to the general public so they start agreeing
| with you.
| root_axis wrote:
| What's to prevent them from just ignoring those
| restrictions?
| malfist wrote:
| Most of the money in politics isn't direct contribution to
| candidates, it's PACs.
|
| PACs are just groups that do advocacy of some sort. Some do
| things like advise congress people on legislation they'd
| like passed, some run ads to campaign for positions or
| candidates, some advocate for movements.
|
| What they're not supposed to be doing is directly
| coordinating with a candidate, or running ads just for a
| candidate. But that's a line that has been continually
| fuzzed.
|
| An example of a good PAC might be something like the HRC
| (human rights commission) that campaigns for LGBTQ rights.
| Ray20 wrote:
| Private money in politics is one of the counterbalances to
| the emergence of a totalitarian state. The government gains
| a huge advantage over the opposition due to the fact that
| it is the government and receives free media coverage.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I think this is entirely the wrong way to think about this.
| While better elected representatives and officials would
| always be a nice thing, what we need is to ensure that we
| design systems around them that mitigate their corruption and
| double standards. We were even (collectively, across
| humanity) doing better and better at that until not that long
| ago.
| bsenftner wrote:
| We need _regulations on the politicians_ because, clearly,
| their "public good use" far exceeds their contribution
| back.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I didn't really mean "regulations" but more a political
| (and civic) system in which a given individual's
| corruption etc. gets caught quickly and/or there are too
| many disincentives for them to to do much based on it.
| netbioserror wrote:
| Colossally awful take. Corruption is an intractable problem
| in human history. Power is a magnet for the worst people, and
| every system we invent can be exploited in innumerable ways.
| The only variable is how long the people of any individual
| society can remain free and prosperous before their decline.
| Temporary recoveries have only happened by lopping off
| massive chunks of empire, implementing extreme monetary
| reforms, and/or a switch to full autocracy. Every other
| outcome is terminal decline.
| colechristensen wrote:
| You can't have truly representative government if the people
| voting don't understand or care that they're not being
| represented particularly well.
|
| It is apparently not much of a risk to your seat if you don't
| represent the interests of your people because the people
| have become tribal and it is only their tribe they vote for
| with very little effective criticism of the leaders in their
| tribe. (it's not that complaints are nonexistent, they just
| don't result in anything)
| dbspin wrote:
| Sortation.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Sortition?
| jimbokun wrote:
| Post Citizens United, that's going to require a
| Constitutional amendment.
|
| And the corrupt, bought politicians are the ones who would
| need to ratify it.
| asdff wrote:
| Let's not act like they weren't corrupt and bought before
| Citizens United
| parasubvert wrote:
| This is unhelpful fatalism and actively dissuades reform.
| Not all politicians are "corrupt and bought". And
| further, there is an enormous difference before and after
| this Supreme Court decision.
|
| It costs money to run for office. Before Citizens United,
| it was hard, limited, traceable donations, from
| individuals. No corporations, no soft money, no legal
| dark money. Now money has flooded in, with far less
| accountability.
| asdff wrote:
| >there will always be corruption, double standards, and lack
| of accountability from them
|
| The hard part is this has been true going all the way back to
| the stone age ever since we elevated the first person
| arbitrarily to chief. There has been no model of government
| developed since that is immune to this. I really don't know
| how to get around this and it depresses me that we will
| always be held back by the slimiest who abuse systems.
| tankenmate wrote:
| Isn't it just so much easier to make sure that wealth isn't
| concentrated in so few hands? Tax wealth, not work.
|
| And before everyone gets upset, tax serves two purposes; 1)
| control inflation (it in effect burns money that was issued
| when the govt previously paid for things), 2) disincentivises
| selected behaviours. and one side effect, when the govt runs
| a tax deficit it increases inflation, and of course the
| contrapositive is also true.
| fud3748 wrote:
| Sure, it's easy to tax "wealth". Except most wealth today
| is of the type where Alice owns 10 million Y and Bob
| decided to pay $1000 for one Y. Alice cannot possibly sell
| her Y for near that price, but now she will be taxed on
| "wealth" of $10 billion.
| antonyh wrote:
| Only in a system where the buyer sets the price.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Maybe we need a debt jubilee then.
| vintermann wrote:
| There's a very simple solution to that problem. Tax Alice
| in Y rather than in $.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| How would this work with real-estate? Probably the Y that
| should be taxed the most when we're talking about wealth.
| curtisf wrote:
| A lien on the property? Although almost all jurisdictions
| already have property taxes, so it hasn't been an
| insurmountable problem so far
| vintermann wrote:
| Rich people are very good at coming up with ways of
| financializing assets to their advantage. That creativity
| goes away when it comes to paying taxes, for some reason.
|
| Real estate mostly isn't subject to the "I sold one for a
| huge sum, but the price would tank if I sold them all"
| effect, unless you own immensely much real estate.
|
| But either way, just a lien on sale of the properties. We
| can still give the option of paying wealth tax according
| to valuation directly (in $) instead of in natura (in Y),
| then there's less to complain about - and as a bonus, we
| get revealed preferences on how inflated people think the
| prices of their assets are.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| you can tax stock without taxing inventory.
|
| Also the term "asset" exists and is used in accounting
| worik wrote:
| > you can tax stock without taxing inventory.
|
| How? What is the difference between "stock" and
| "inventory"?
| flir wrote:
| So it would fix false valuation shenanigans too? I see
| that as a win/win.
| AaronM wrote:
| If someone takes a loan out against an unrealized gain,
| that should immediately trigger a tax event.
|
| The real solution though is for the legislative branch to
| not be beholden to those same people and be able to
| quickly and effectively close tax loopholes as they are
| discovered.
| cluckindan wrote:
| That would instantly wipe out most leverage from the
| stock market, and from a casual bystander perspective, it
| would be a great thing.
| pembrook wrote:
| It wouldn't do that. But even if it did do that, this
| would not be a good thing.
|
| The majority of leverage (debt) in the stock market is
| not people making wild bets, its just basic functions
| from institutions.
|
| But even if we narrow the definition to the boogeyman
| image you have in your head about "leverage," if you
| remove it you've just made the market radically less
| responsive to information and arbitraging prices nearly
| impossible, and ultimately the economy less efficient in
| broad strokes.
|
| You'll say _" fine, who cares cause it'll stop [insert
| historical bubble example], and also I saw a reddit
| comment that said all economists are dumb!"_
|
| But most people have no idea how big a role leverage (aka
| debt) plays in just the basic functioning of the capital
| markets.
|
| Putting a brake on the market might also sound good to
| you in theory. But the stock market is how the most
| important capital flows through the private economy,
| slowing this down is defacto slowing down the economy.
| Most people don't understand what slower economic growth
| means for your quality of life over the long term. Just
| 1-2% slower growth than the average, and the US's entire
| system collapses in 15 years (France is currently dealing
| with this reality in slow motion, their debt is now rated
| worse than Greek debt).
|
| An easier example to understand: a pie that isn't growing
| is a zero sum pie. Ambition in a zero-sum world requires
| violence.
| njarboe wrote:
| Agreed. This would get rid of borrow against gains to
| spend tax free. But also just get rid of the income tax,
| it is the worst way to tax, and do a land value tax.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > If someone takes a loan out against an unrealized gain,
| that should immediately trigger a tax event.
|
| How does that work when a house is used as collateral on
| a loan? Or artwork?
|
| The loans are just a symptom, the problem is in the
| Estate Tax, and those loans are being used as a tool to
| wait out the clock and then dodge dynastic taxes
| entirely.
|
| Remove the final loophole, and they'll stop playing weird
| games to get there all on their own. Plus it'll be way
| less-disruptive to everyone involves in regular loans for
| regular reasons.
| charcircuit wrote:
| There is not a loophole. When you die your loans get paid
| off first. The money to pay off these loans would be
| taxed. It could delay paying taxes until you die, but you
| can't escape it.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > There is not a loophole. When you die your loans get
| paid off first. The money to pay off these loans would be
| taxed.
|
| You're missing the loophole, it's the the "step-up basis"
| rule, which dramatically affects the amount of tax on
| that liquidate-to-repay event.
|
| 1. Repaying 1 day _before_ the owner dies: Liquidate $X,
| of stock, which 90% of it are capital-gains, heavily
| taxed.
|
| 2. Repaying 1 day _after_ the owner dies: Liquidate $X of
| stock, which is now considered ZERO gains, almost no tax.
|
| This massive discontinuity also applies when it comes to
| the transfer of stock to inheritors, and any taxes _they_
| might pay for liquidating it. A day before, they get a
| stock that "has grown X% in Y years." A day later, they
| get a stock that "has grown 0% in 0 days."
|
| > It could delay paying taxes until you die, but you
| can't escape it.
|
| But they _did_ escape the taxes, or at least the "gains"
| portion of them! For decades, the unrealized gains in
| growing assets were "eventually" going to happen
| someday... Until, _poof_ , all gains have been forgotten.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| The taxable value is exactly how much you borrowed
| against it!
| Terr_ wrote:
| > The taxable value is exactly how much you borrowed
| against it!
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by that term, since we're not
| talking about property taxes. With respect to capital-
| gains tax, the amount you liquidate is _not_ the same as
| the gains being taxed.
|
| > is exactly how much you borrowed
|
| You're mistaken, the tax depends on the _history_ of the
| item being liquidated. Suppose you need to repay a loan,
| and you have two options:
|
| 1. Sell 1 share of Acme stock for $20, that you
| originally bought for $20. Your $0 gain leads to $0 tax.
| Net cash: $20.
|
| 2. Sell 1 share of Acme stock for $20, that you
| originally bought for $5. Your $15 gain leads to $3 tax.
| Net cash: $17.
|
| It's obvious you'd prefer the first one, right? Even
| though they're stocks from the _same_ company being sold
| on the _same_ day for the _same_ market-price to service
| the _same_ debt.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| When you borrow money against an illiquid asset, the
| value of that asset is at least the amount you borrowed
| because otherwise the lender wouldn't have approved it.
| So just use that amount.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > the value of that asset is at least the amount you
| borrowed
|
| That assumption just isn't true: Loans are made based on
| risk and the expected ability to repay. Collateral is an
| _optional_ and sometimes _partial_ of reducing the
| lenders ' risk, it bears no firm relationship to the
| amount being sought.
|
| To illustrate, imagine a Debtor borrows $5,000 and offers
| up one of their child's crayon drawings as collateral.
| For private reasons we cannot see, the Lender accepts
| this deal. Do you truly believe the crayon-drawing has
| been proven to be "worth at least $5,000"? Would you
| joyfully jump at the chance to buy that crayon-drawing
| for a mere $1,250, confident that you could resell it for
| an easy $3,750 profit?
|
| Probably not, and that's assuming everyone is acting
| ethically, we haven't even _started_ to talk about how
| the Debtor and Lender could _collude_ to game the system.
|
| > So just use that amount.
|
| At this point, you're probably thinking: "Very funny
| Terr_, but we both know the crayon-drawing obviously
| wasn't covering the _full_ $5,000 loan here. "
|
| Yeah, but _how_ did you reach that conclusion, what
| mathematical steps did you use?
|
| I'm pretty sure you applied an independent judgement of
| what a likely crayon-drawing "should" fetch in some
| hypothetical future. That's quite reasonable, but the
| fact that you had to do it shows that the loan-basics are
| _not_ sufficient to solve the problem.
| croes wrote:
| Who says you need to tax the whole wealth if it in form
| of Ys?
|
| We all know that 10 million Ys maybe not sold for $10
| billion dollars but it gives you enough leverage to buy a
| social network and name it Y
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Many countries have figured out a wealth tax, so this
| isn't an impossible problem.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| France had it for a very long time, it was very costly to
| recover, incentivized a lot of tax-evading behaviors, and
| mainly benefited tax specialists. Overall it was another
| useless, populist measure that did more harm than good.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Oh well. Maybe if Alice doesn't want that problem she
| shouldn't accumulate so much of one asset that she'd
| crash the price trying to pay the taxes on it.
| nine_k wrote:
| With wealth concentrated in so few hands, it's already not
| that easy to walk it back :-/
| redleader55 wrote:
| It would be so nice of that tax was actually
| "burned"(similar to proof of stake), instead of being used
| to fund even greater inflation. This comes in the form of a
| huge administration, which gets payed for providing, many
| times, negative value. Alternatively, it is used to pay
| social benefits for the sole purpose of keeping the current
| political party in power.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > Alternatively, it is used to pay social benefits for
| the sole purpose of keeping the current political party
| in power
|
| This sounds like a 2-party government problem, not a tax
| problem. Plenty of countries do just fine spending that
| money to provide healthcare, unemployment, etc to their
| citizenry. Only really seems to be the US that views this
| as a negative
| malfist wrote:
| Oh we spend that money, just on weapons or handouts to
| the welfare class known as the ultrawealthy.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Us does spend the money on healthcare, it is just very
| inefficient. US government spends much more per capita
| than any other country. 50% than the #2 country, Germany.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/283221/per-capita-
| health...
| malfist wrote:
| But that's mostly people/companies spending on health
| care, not as much the government (because that'd be
| socialism, apparently)
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| I'm just talking about government spending. If you add
| private spending it is even more unbalanced. Just per
| capita government spending alone:
|
| US $12k
|
| Germany $8k
|
| UK $6k
|
| Medicaid + Medicare is 22% of all US federal spending.
| Defense is 13%.
| malfist wrote:
| I don't know where you're getting your numbers but
| according to OECD, the per capita spending in the US is
| 13k. That's public and private spending. I don't think
| your 12k per capita number is just public spending.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Dude, I literally posted a link to the numbers. 12k
| public. 2.5k private, 14.8k total per person public plus
| private.
|
| Here is another link to the OECD numbers directly. Is is
| 12k public, 14.8k Public plus private.
|
| https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/health-at-a-
| glance-2025...
|
| Can we agree on the 12k and move on now?
| malfist wrote:
| I totally missed your link earlier. You are correct here
| and I am wrong.
| astrange wrote:
| The welfare classes that the government hands money to
| are elderly people and children.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| This can be a problem, especially for the elderly. In
| France the retired (pensions are publicly funded) save
| 25% of their income on average, and earn more than the
| workers. France is also the most taxed country in the
| OECD and most voters are either retired or will retire
| next decade. It's just another clientelism.
| worik wrote:
| I am amazed. What an incredible statement!
|
| The USA is very corrupt, true. But getting rid of the
| "huge administration" and burning tax receipts is not
| going to solve that. How could it?
|
| One of the roles of the state in a modern society should
| be to ensure no one is left behind to starve, wither and
| freeze amongst the incredible resources we (as a society)
| have accumulated.
|
| That takes administration. That takes resources. That is
| what your taxes should be used for.
|
| I agree that far too much is used to give aid to the
| powerful, but the solution to that should not be to
| condemn the weak.
|
| Burning taxes and de-funding the administration is
| exactly that: condemning the weak.
| flir wrote:
| I _think_ OP is talking about decoupling tax and
| government spending, Modern Monetary Theory-style.
|
| In this model government just prints all the money it
| needs in order to function. Taxation isn't used to fund
| government, it's used to give your currency value, and to
| stop inflation running out of control. Metaphorically,
| you might as well pile all that tax take up and burn it,
| because once you've collected it it's performed its
| function.
|
| This is a very simplistic take on MMR, and I don't think
| it would work in the real world, but spending _does_
| precede taxation.
| jlhawn wrote:
| > control inflation
|
| I think you are confusing cost inflation with an increase
| in the money supply. The way the US government funds
| deficit spending is not by increasing money supply (though
| it could) but by issuing debt in the form of US Treasury
| bonds. That is a transfer of money from bond investors to
| the government. No new money is made. This is distinct from
| the way that banks issue loans which _is_ by creating new
| money in the form of credit (but that credit money gets
| "burned" as loan principal is paid back). So federal taxes
| do not actually control inflation in the way you are
| describing. Since federal deficit spending is not financed
| by increasing the money supply, it can only cause price
| inflation if it increases aggregate demand over the current
| productive capacity of the economy. An example would be
| paying more for healthcare subsidies when there's a
| shortage of doctors. Or subsidizing demand for housing with
| more mortgage subsidies when there's a housing shortage.
| Taxes could also increase inflation if they have the effect
| of reducing supply of some goods or services (like tariffs
| do).
|
| Edit: I want to mention that the Federal Reserve can and
| does increase money supply by buying US Treasury Bonds from
| banks (converting the asset into cash reserves). There are
| various reasons why they do this but overall it's done with
| their dual mandate in mind: control inflation and minimize
| unemployment.
| adventured wrote:
| > I want to mention that the Federal Reserve can and does
| increase money supply by buying US Treasury Bonds from
| banks (converting the asset into cash reserves).
|
| Fun small print. As though that's not the exact mechanism
| of the brutal inflation the US has suffered the past 5-6
| years. The US money supply says it all. There are no
| other serious buyers for $20 trillion in new garbage
| paper debt every ten years. It's inflation by currency
| destruction plain and simple and there are no other
| paths. It's also why gold is $5,000 instead of $500.
| titzer wrote:
| > That is a transfer of money from bond investors to the
| government. No new money is made.
|
| All forms of debt are money creation. All loans are money
| creation. Fractional reserve banking is money creation.
| It doesn't have to be "oh now we are making dollar bills"
| to count.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Taxation reduces the money supply. Government spending
| increases the money supply.
| derf_ wrote:
| In particular, the central bank, charged with controlling
| inflation, cannot use taxation to reduce the money
| supply, because banks do not get to set tax policy. That
| leaves raising interest rates as its only policy tool.
|
| As the political arm of the government chooses to run
| deficits in excess of growth plus inflation, then (a)
| that causes more inflation, and (b) the central bank
| raises rates, increasing the cost of government
| borrowing, causing bigger deficits.
|
| This escalates as a result of the central bank trying to
| control the effects of high government spending by
| applying a mis-matched policy tool (interest rates) in
| place of the politicians who have abdicated their
| responsibility to use a matched policy tool (taxation).
| Either it spirals out of control, or more and more of the
| government budget is devoted to interest expense (direct
| government transfers of wealth paid exclusively to the
| debt holders) and less of it is spent on providing actual
| government services (that benefit all taxpayers).
|
| If the central bank does not raise rates, of course,
| things go even more badly.
| carshodev wrote:
| The debt cycle causes short term upward and downward
| inflation spirals, but overall the inflation is caused by
| total money supply multiplied by the ratio that the debt
| is allowed to be compounded to. the ratio is determined
| by both current regulations regarding loaning practices
| and the interest rate.
|
| Given that these were constant then then inflation is
| just a ratio of Productivity(how much things cost) to
| total money supply (money printing).
|
| So if the government just prints a similar amount of cash
| relative to the supply as the percentage productivity
| increase then we get a constant value of for the dollar.
|
| In practice though a small amount of inflation is good in
| a currency as it encourages spending, if you have
| deflation this can cause people to speculate on holding
| cash and not engage in commerce which lowers productivity
| and thus can cause even more inflation itself.
|
| The real problem is that wages are not growing at the
| same rate as inflation meaning wealth is being
| transferred from the working class to the owing class as
| their businesses get more efficient from the cheapened
| relative labor costs.
| state_less wrote:
| > The way the US government funds deficit spending is not
| by increasing money supply (though it could) but by
| issuing debt in the form of US Treasury bonds.
|
| Sure it does. That Treasury debt is often bought up by
| the FED in huge tranches by increasing the money supply,
| they call it things like "unlimited QE (quantative
| easing)". For example, the FED announced unlimited QE on
| March 23rd, 2020 causing the stock market and real estate
| market to bounce. Trillions of new dollars were created
| in these last 5-6 years, and that's why everything costs
| more. The USG continues to overspend, and too often on
| dumb shit too (e.g. tax breaks for the ultra wealthy).
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This is overly simplistic. Most economic activity is not
| related to the government at all. Taxation _can_ slow
| economic growth and inflation, but the government running
| at a deficit or surplus is neither a cause or a solution
| for inflation but rather a byproduct of multiple aspects of
| government policy.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > Isn't it just so much easier to make sure that wealth
| isn't concentrated in so few hands? Tax wealth, not work.
|
| 1. No, it's not "easier" because it's hard-if-not-
| impossible to accurately and objectively judge the present-
| value of many types of assets. Even the case most-familiar
| to working-class folks, property taxes, nobody really
| likes/trusts the outcome.
|
| 2. We don't tax work, we tax income, because actual
| transactions between people with "skin in the game" are
| harder to fake. The extent to which _wages_ are preferred
| as a subset of income is separate from the wealth-vs-income
| split.
| astrange wrote:
| > 2. We don't tax work, we tax income, because actual
| transactions between people with "skin in the game" are
| harder to fake.
|
| Also because taxing income (or other cash) is
| disinflationary. Taxing assets is inflationary because it
| forces sales.
| jhasse wrote:
| Shouldn't sales reduce inflation because they increase
| supply?
| astrange wrote:
| Selling things increases money velocity.
| usefulcat wrote:
| > Taxing assets is inflationary because it forces sales.
|
| I can see how taxing assets could result in more selling
| than would have occurred otherwise.
|
| But all else being equal, an increase in selling tends to
| put downward pressure on prices. So I don't see why an
| asset tax would be expected to cause inflation.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > No, it's not "easier" because it's hard-if-not-
| impossible to accurately and objectively judge the
| present-value of many types of assets. Even the case
| most-familiar to working-class folks, property taxes,
| nobody really likes/trusts the outcome.
|
| You can easily get within 10% of the "real" value on most
| assets. And, in particular, assets like stock have a
| built in ticker to tell you their exact current value.
|
| This sort of evaluation happens all the time privately.
| For example, car insurance companies have gotten
| extremely good at evaluating the value of a car to
| determine when to simply total it.
|
| The only thing that really makes it tricky is hidden
| assets or assets with no market value.
|
| The likes of the richest people, who I think most of the
| "tax wealth" people are thinking of, have the majority of
| their wealth in equity. It's easy to tax the majority of
| their wealth.
|
| This does not need to be a perfect system to be very
| effective at generating revenue and redistributing
| wealth.
| cj wrote:
| The main counterargument:
|
| You buy 1 BTC at $60k in 2024. In 2025 it's valued at
| $100k, so you pay taxes on $40k gain.
|
| Now it's 2026 and you finally decide to sell the BTC for
| the original price of $60k.
|
| Except you've paid taxes on $40k in paper gains that
| disappeared before you sold the asset.
|
| How do we solve that?
|
| (Replace "bitcoin" with "startup stock option" if you
| really want to illustrate the problem - imagine having to
| pay taxes on stock options you decide to never exercise)
| cogman10 wrote:
| That's capital gains, which we currently recognize on
| realization events (selling the asset or trading it).
| With current capital gains, if you sold in 2025 you'd pay
| the taxes on 40k at ~15% (depending) so 6k. If you
| repurchased it at $100k and then sold at $60k, you can
| claim the losses.
|
| People advocating for a wealth tax aren't pushing for a
| tax on gains and losses but rather the total asset value.
| I've seen 1% and 2% bandied about.
|
| So in 2024, you'd pay $1.2k in taxes (at 2%). In 2025,
| you'd pay $2k. And in 2026 you'd pay $1.2k
|
| Though, usually, there's also a minimum wealth paired
| with the tax. Again, I usually only see it for things
| like individuals with over $100M in assets.
|
| For options, it'd still be the same thing. If the strike
| price is $1 and the actual price is $60 and the option is
| vested then you'd be taxed on the $59 per option you
| hold.
|
| This only gets difficult if you are talking about options
| in a privately held company. But, again, that's not
| really the case for a lot of the most wealthy who the
| wealth tax is targeting.
| cj wrote:
| okay, another example:
|
| You hold Enron stock. You've been taxed 5% annually on
| the holdings for the past 5 years. To pay the tax, you
| decided to take out a loan instead of selling shares to
| pay the tax (you want to stay invested).
|
| Someone discovers Enron is a fraud, the stock goes to $0
| and you go bankrupt because you can't repay the loans you
| took out to pay the tax on a (now worthless) asset.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Were you smart, you'd have used your enron stock as the
| collateral in which case both you and the bank get
| screwed if the value goes to 0. You default on the loan,
| you don't have to go bankrupt in this case. Your credit
| takes a hit for 7 years.
|
| But yeah, if you take out a loan against your home and
| the housing market collapses and you lose your job (ala
| 2008) you can end up destitute. The stock market is
| always a gamble and this doesn't make that better or
| worse.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The situation you're describing is equivalent to paying
| your 5% in asset tax the normal way (by giving up 5% of
| the asset) and then saying "I love enron, let me take out
| a loan to buy stock with!" Buying stock with a loan is an
| obviously stupid move, and wanting to "stay invested" is
| nothing more than a rationalization. Keeping the same
| percentage of your wealth in the stock is already staying
| invested. Increasing the percentage for the sole purpose
| of keeping the same number of shares is a bad idea.
|
| And this hypothetical me, having to pay a wealth tax, is
| way way over the line of needing a financial advisor, so
| that advisor will be telling me it's a bad idea to take
| out loans to buy stock.
| jhasse wrote:
| A wealth tax would be like 5% of the $100k, nothing to do
| with the gains.
| cj wrote:
| Yikes. So even if I store my wealth in cash, you want it
| to deflate by 5% annually?
|
| How do you handle your neighbor who discovers he has a
| $2m Pokemon card in his closet? Is he forced to sell it
| to pay the 5% if he doesn't have the cash on hand to pay
| the tax?
|
| It's a messy proposition. I've yet to hear a clear
| proposal that doesn't have sticky edge cases.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Switzerland has a wealth tax while people like you wring
| their hands and the wealthiest see their wealth increase
| far beyond anyone elses.
|
| In From 1965 to 1995 the richest man in the world had
| about $30-40b in today's money. This was more than the
| 1945-1965 era, but way less than the mess pre-war thanks
| to aggressive action to limit wealth.
|
| Today the richest man in the world has $300b, Rockefeller
| levels before the 1929 crash.
| IcyWindows wrote:
| We don't know how much money the richest person has
| because many assets are not publicly traded or disclosed.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Even if you go only by Elon's TSLA shares, he has north
| of 200B net worth.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Today the richest man in the world has $300b,
| Rockefeller levels before the 1929 crash.
|
| I think it's more like 800B right now.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > So even if I store my wealth in cash, you want it to
| deflate by 5% annually?
|
| Generally speaking, that's the point. The wealth tax is
| trying to combat wealth inequality and the only way for
| such a policy to be effective is if those with
| considerable assets wealth decreases with time.
|
| > How do you handle your neighbor who discovers he has a
| $2m Pokemon card in his closet?
|
| Usually that's handled by having a minimum asset
| requirement before the wealth tax kicks in. 100M is what
| I've seen. It'd be a pretty easy tax to make progressive.
|
| > It's a messy proposition. I've yet to hear a clear
| proposal that doesn't have sticky edge cases.
|
| I've given the proposal I've seen in a different comment.
| Perhaps you didn't see it? But in any case, taxes are
| always messy. It's not as if you can't refine them with
| more and more amendments to address different scenarios
| as they come up. I don't think the "messiness" should be
| what keeps us from adopting such a tax system. There will
| almost certainly be a game of cat and mouse between the
| regulators and the wealthy regardless the proposal.
|
| Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.
| Kon5ole wrote:
| >You buy 1 BTC at $60k in 2024. In 2025 it's valued at
| $100k, so you pay taxes on $40k gain.
|
| Right, and at this point in the argument it's also worth
| asking "pay taxes with what?" which also quickly makes
| the idea of taxing valuations obviously absurd.
|
| It would force any value creator to sell his creation,
| which basically destroys the mechanism from which all
| welfare for anyone in our societies currently originates.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| In Canada you can carry back capital losses up to (I
| think) 3 years. Of course you lose the time-value of that
| loss. Can carry forward losses too.
|
| Similar things happen with (on the way to) "bankrupt"
| corporations that have large tax losses that can be
| applied to future profits.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| Wealthy people own assets, not money. Stealing their assets
| doesn't reduce the money supply. Elon Musk is "rich" mainly
| in paper wealth.
|
| Taxes raise inflation as they increase the production
| costs. If you tax too much wealthy people, they will leave,
| and take their capital away to invest it elsewhere. This as
| a result will lead to inflation due to lack of available
| capital for production.
| ghurtado wrote:
| > If you tax too much wealthy people, they will leave
|
| Are we not tired yet of the various versions of the
| Reaganomics boogieman? When are we going to grow out of
| trickle down economics mentality?
| Saline9515 wrote:
| The problem is black-and-white thinking that ignores
| reality.
|
| There are different kinds of wealthy people. Some built
| their wealth through talent and luck. Some inherited it.
| Some gained it through state cronyism and clientelism.
|
| Some own scarce assets (like real estate). Others created
| new assets (e.g., startup founders).
|
| You can dislike Elon Musk, but his owning a large stake
| in Tesla doesn't make others poorer. That's not true of a
| landlord who corners housing supply in a city.
|
| Wealth taxes are essentially revenge taxes without a
| clear objective. France tried one for years. It was
| costly to administer, riddled with exemptions, encouraged
| avoidance instead of productivity, and sustained an
| industry of tax specialists. The revenue was largely
| recycled into clientelist spending, sometimes increasing
| the wealth of the same elites (e.g., via housing
| subsidies).
|
| If the goal is to curb land hoarding, implement a land
| value tax. If it's to reduce dynastic concentration, tax
| large single-heir inheritances more heavily and lower the
| rate when estates are widely divided. If it's to reduce
| cronyism, cut state spending, simplify regulation, and
| strengthen competition.
| mulmen wrote:
| > If you tax too much wealthy people, they will leave
|
| You say this like it's a bad thing.
| ghurtado wrote:
| > Isn't it just so much easier to make sure that wealth
| isn't concentrated in so few hands?
|
| Except for the fact that, without first solving the problem
| you responded to, yours is impossible to solve
| PlatoIsADisease wrote:
| This wouldn't stop the AMA from controlling medicine.
| simplify wrote:
| Since when has raising taxes _actually_ solved any major
| problem? We have enough taxes, the issue is the corrupt
| politicians swindling it to themselves and their cronies.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| You pay enough. Musk doesn't. Does he even pay any at
| all?
| mcnnowak wrote:
| Wealth tax will just create an industry around hiding
| wealth for the rich
| chongli wrote:
| _Isn 't it just so much easier to make sure that wealth
| isn't concentrated in so few hands? Tax wealth, not work._
|
| Those tax dollars just go back to the wealthy in the form
| of interest payments on government bonds, which they own.
| wwweston wrote:
| You either win big enough under the current system, with its
| system problems, or you never win to improve it.
|
| Imagining better systems before doing that is just a form of
| xkcd's nerd sniping.
|
| And the biggest challenge to representative government might
| well be that most people are terrible at engaging it
| productively. Voting is the bare minimum and most people
| don't vote (let alone organize and lobby effectively). Some
| significant portion of those that do vote can't correctly
| draw a line between policies they'd like and candidates who
| intend to work on delivering, and that's before we get to the
| portion of the population that may not correctly anticipate
| policy outcomes or even really understand policy as a
| concept.
|
| The system has actually been functioning surprisingly well
| considering, and as catastrophic as recent elections could be
| seen as, the outcome arguably represents a reasonable degree
| of fidelity to the input from the electorate.
|
| If we still hold free and fair elections, the task of those
| who want representative government is to change enough of the
| electorate first.
| patrickmay wrote:
| Power will always attract the corrupt and corruptible. The
| problem is the power. Reducing the size and scope of the
| federal government and devolving power to the states,
| communities, and individuals is the only way to minimize the
| negative effects of humans with too much authority.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| Reducing the size of the government just makes it where
| billionaires and corporations control everything instead,
| which we're already seeing now. You'd need a way to reign
| in their power/wealth as well.
| eikenberry wrote:
| +1... Reducing government is part of power reduction, not
| the sum total. To reduce the size of government you need
| to reduce the size of things it manages. So, for
| instance, anti-trust would need a huge buf in enforcement
| to eliminate concentrations of power in business. I'd
| think strongly progressive inheritance tax would cover
| the rest.
| worik wrote:
| Abolishing private property is another way of defanging
| power
| eikenberry wrote:
| Has this been tried successfully anywhere? Seems like
| mostly a dead end as long as we have resource scarcity.
| 837263292029 wrote:
| Let's start with your private property.
| mackeye wrote:
| 95% of the commenters on this post own no private
| property.
| AppleAtCha wrote:
| This assumes that govt and individual families are the only
| players in the game. Now as in other historical periods
| large corporations hold arguably more power than either of
| those groups and reining in govt leaves little obstacle to
| them consolidating even more power and wielding it
| globally.
| simplify wrote:
| Power is not the problem, because power exists regardless
| of who owns it.
|
| We the people actually have a relatively high amount of
| power in our states and communities. We just don't use it.
| The real solution is to convince the masses to pay
| attention, which is harder today than it ever was.
| root_axis wrote:
| The issue isn't representation, it's division. The party that
| won is being well represented with respect to the values of
| their constituents, whereas the opposition views it as a
| daily nightmare. These two visions of the world cannot be
| reconciled.
| anon7000 wrote:
| Representation needs to be less about black/white political
| ideology and more about the specific needs of various
| people. Farmers need representation, white color workers
| need representation, small business owners need
| representation, but their needs are all different, and
| don't really boil down to left/right politics. The
| government isn't treated as a forum to collaborate on
| solving problems, but as a playground for the powerful to
| create boogeymen that get people riled up.
| overfeed wrote:
| > white color workers need representation [...]
|
| Don't worry - it's still there under the orange makeup.
| jk; I think you may have misspelled "collar"
| root_axis wrote:
| That makes sense, but for most voters the left/right
| politics matters more than the economic identities you
| mentioned.
|
| Most people don't care that much about the economy, they
| make up their minds based on other issues, then find a
| way to rationalize the state of the economy with that
| choice after the fact.
| lunarboy wrote:
| But the thing is your local gov & economic policies (tax
| codes, bonds, projects, trade) matter to your actual
| daily life and retirement far more than left v right.
| They just play that game to keep you enraged and baited.
| And people do actually care about gas, groceries, and
| inflation; they just don't vote in their own objective
| interest
| conception wrote:
| I would say one side is being told that they should believe
| it a daily nightmare, e.g. people on the right really
| disliking obamacare but loving the aca.
| reddozen wrote:
| The problem in America is that more than half the country
| does not live in a shared factual reality. Like:
|
| * Jan 6 was a fedsurrection, and also simultaneously all
| innocent people that needed pardoning (Pardoning the feds?)
|
| * World Liberty Financial receiving billions selling out
| American interests worldwide? Never heard of this but
| Burisma was worse!
|
| * The Raffensperger call was no big deal there were
| attorneys on that call. Trump's personal (now disbarred)
| attorneys, of course, not there to represent America's
| interests but how's that the big deal?
|
| * Also who's Raffensperger? But did you see those boxes
| under the table! What do you mean the clip is longer than 6
| seconds that's all I saw on the infinity scrolling apps.
| runjake wrote:
| This comment is not well-formatted and a bit "zomg", but
| an important mention:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Raffensperger
| _ph...
|
| This is the infamous call where Trump, according to the
| recorded tapes, tried to overturn the 2020 presidential
| election results by demanding that Raffensperger "find
| 11,780 votes".
| rchaud wrote:
| There is one reality that's undeniable: that political
| donations by individuals are strictly monitored and can
| land you in jail if violated, but PAC money is
| untraceable and unlimited. That fact alone has led to
| stacking the deck in favor of lobbyists and monied
| interests at the expense of the electorate and national
| institutions.
| reddozen wrote:
| I assume you mean Citizens United v FEC. Should they not
| have been allowed to release their documentary? Its not
| an easy question and there's a reason none of the
| dissents directly address Roberts' opinion.
| 5ykh wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer and won't address the merits or lack
| thereof of the ruling on the particulars of the case. The
| effect of the ruling was a sweeping change in money in
| politics. It effectively legalized an oligarchic take
| over of governance. It's a fact that money and
| advertising largely determine outcomes in battleground
| races. Tipping those races, along with the structural
| power imbalance in federal politics, means that control
| of the government is relatively easy and cheap.
|
| https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/15-years-
| after-c...
| reddozen wrote:
| I don't know if you read your own source but it's
| incredibly unconvincing "research" slop. In their "case
| study" they just point to a particular race and the money
| the candidates received and infer it's bad.
|
| No analysis if the politician was acting against their
| constituents interests... Pretty embarrassing paper to
| put their name on. I can see why there's no coauthors.
|
| Also they conflate political ad spending with issue
| awareness ad spending, which is a borderline malicious.
| antonymoose wrote:
| I agree while also disagreeing. It feels to me like the
| Democrats seemingly always get their way while in power
| while Republican presidents with a congressional majority
| get little to nothing done.
|
| To me they have the classic problem as with non-profits:
| "If we solve the problem we cease to have a cause to
| exist."
|
| Taking a look at what's been accomplished this past year,
| it's a lot of token Executive Orders on renaming things, a
| token deportation effort, no material change on mass legal
| immigration, nothing happening on the voter ID front.
|
| It's just theater until they lose out in the midterms and
| they to rally their base again in 2028 to "Save America" or
| "Keep It Great" or whatever hokum.
|
| Democrats will undo it all when the pendulum shifts.
| efnx wrote:
| The Republicans this term have gotten plenty done, it's
| just nothing that helps average people. Their wins can't
| be widely celebrated and so they aren't, as much.
|
| https://www.project2025.observer/
| watwut wrote:
| First, republicans blocked everything including formarly
| own proposals when Obama adopted it ... ever since Obama.
| It is other way round, the republican party is getting
| what it worked for, because democrats are weak
| opposition.
|
| > Democrats will undo it all when the pendulum shifts.
|
| It is impossible. Will they give reparations to blue
| cities? From what money?
|
| Likewise institutions - it is easier to corrupt and
| destroy them then to build them anew.
|
| Amd crutially, the right wing supreme court needs ro be
| enlarged or new constitution written for the bad
| precedents to be changed.
|
| > token deportation effort,
|
| The whole thing is bigger size then most militaries.
|
| > no material change on mass legal immigration,
|
| The whole classes of legal immigrants were suddenly ruled
| illegal and are violently mistreated.
|
| > nothing happening on the voter ID front.
|
| Republicans are trying to make voting for blie places
| harder.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| On the immigration front, please note that Obama deported
| more or about-as-much migrants per year than Trump in
| 2025. I don't really get why democrats oppose this, while
| they cheered the same policy a decade ago.
| efnx wrote:
| Because it is not the same deportation policy.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| Trump has to deal with the aftermath of the Biden years,
| where unauthorized immigrant population reached 14
| million in 2023. It is also harder to expel them if they
| are inside the US rather than at the border.
| wat10000 wrote:
| The problem isn't deporting illegal immigrants, the
| problem is revoking legal status, abusing detainees,
| hurting people on the street, and the occasional murder.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| Obama years had also the same kind of abuse and killings
| by the border patrol. At least 56 recorded deaths of
| immigrants caused by ICE and custody[0]. Some murders
| were settled to avoid a trial.
|
| Protests against ICE were much smaller then (billionaires
| didn't fund NGOs to organise them either), so it was
| easier for the agency to operate as well, and it was
| quickly memory-holed.
|
| [0] https://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/sites/default/f
| iles/re...
| wat10000 wrote:
| Any preventable death in custody is a tragedy, but
| there's a major difference between a death due to
| inadequate precautions against suicide or due to
| inadequate medical care, and tacking someone to the
| ground in the street and shooting them ten times in the
| back. I really hope you understand that and are just
| pretending not to in order to score points.
|
| Edit: also, why is it that whenever someone makes an
| "Obama did bad stuff too" argument, it's always with the
| intent of "so you shouldn't be upset about it now,"
| rather than "you should have been upset then like I was,
| and I'm still upset about what's happening now"?
| Saline9515 wrote:
| Regarding deportations, it's not "also bad stuff" - it's
| just an application of the law.
|
| I don't see the problem with pointing out the hypocrisy
| where very wealthy democrat donors fund activist
| organizations to disrupt the ICE/Border patrol activity,
| while looking away when their guy is in power. Protests
| evolved as well, organized by professionals with the aim
| to escalate and disrupt ICE's activity, which leads to
| such tragic events.
|
| In France, we are accustomed to the same kind of
| escalation, where antifa black blocks commonly throw
| molotov cocktails, leading to more violence and so on.
| Thankfully the riot police is well trained to avoid fatal
| incidents, which is clearly not the case of the current-
| day ICE (and generally in the police forces in the US).
|
| After all the complaining, the solution is likely either
| to desescalate both sides, and ask for accountability and
| more training - bodycams are a good tool, for instance.
| But I guess that "better training for ICE" isn't a very
| entertaining slogan ;-)
| wat10000 wrote:
| Why are you talking about deportations again? The problem
| is the associated abuses.
|
| What is the purpose of telling me that the same stuff
| happened under Obama? Let's say just for a moment that
| this is true, and that the difference in reactions is
| driven by some hypocritical activists. What sort of
| change are you hoping to induce in my mind by saying
| this? If that really was true, then the correct reaction
| would be to continue to be appalled by and oppose the
| current administration's actions, while also being
| careful to watch out for such things in the future by
| other administrations. But I'm going to do that anyway,
| so there isn't even any point to that.
|
| It really looks like you're bringing this up with the
| intent that I should stop change my mind about what's
| happening now and think it's all just fine and dandy,
| which is ridiculous.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| I was talking about the cause of the protests, which are
| primarily about the deportations, and started before the
| abuse took place.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_mass_depor
| tat...
|
| As I explained before, two movements are at play: a
| drastic ramping up of the ICE, with some unexperienced
| agents behaving unprofessionally, and at the same time,
| billionaires funding NGOs to organize protests,
| coordinate media and harass the agencies in charge of the
| deportation.
|
| Things such as blowing a whistle when ICE agents are
| intervening, doxxing agents or following their cars
| aren't going to help desescalate the situation or help
| create a sane culture in those agencies.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Which is it, did the protests start before the abuses, or
| are the abuses just a continuation of the Obama years?
|
| It's not supposed to be up to the public to deescalate.
| Law enforcement needs to behave professionally even when
| facing people who don't like them. That is literally
| their job. If they can't handle it without committing
| some murders, then the agency should be torn down.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Democrats always get their way because their way is to do
| nothing. They rarely roll back all the stuff the
| republicans do in the term before.
| octoberfranklin wrote:
| Term limits for congress.
| tremon wrote:
| And age limits for congress.
| vunderba wrote:
| Same for the Supreme Court. 20 years. A lifetime
| appointment is no different than a king.
| Affric wrote:
| What is interesting is that, as demonstrated by mass media
| and social media's influences over our politics in the last
| century we can be motivated, but we have let power become too
| concentrated in the wrong hands.
|
| China's qualifications for influencers thing is interesting
| by fundamentally doesn't address the power of social media
| publishers.
| leptons wrote:
| >Until we find a way to ensure political candidates aren't
| corrupt and bought off
|
| The US elected a convicted fellon, the corruption _is a
| feature_.
| recroad wrote:
| It's a representative government, it just represents Israel
| via AIPAC.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| No, our problems are much bigger in that we have a populace
| easily led by tribal sensibilities. Theses scumbags aren't
| coming from nowhere, we're electing them to these positions.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > lack of truly representative government.
|
| There is no such thing as (truly) representative government.
| To the limited extent that groups of people can at all be
| represented (which is a whole other questions) - governments
| are generally not about doing that. Yes, many world states
| have electoral systems where people can vote for one of
| several (lists of) candidates or parties, but the claim that
| in the normal and uncorrupted scenario, the elected properly
| represent the populace/citizenry - does not, I believe, stand
| scrutiny.
|
| Which is to say, don't try to "find a way in which candidates
| aren't corrupt and bought off"; that is in the core of
| democracies in money/capital-based economies. At best, the
| elected will act according to some balance of influences by
| different social forces, some being more popular and some
| being powerful and moneyed elites or individuals. If you want
| that to change, the change needs to be structural and quite
| deep, undermining state sovereignty and exchange-based
| economy.
| titzer wrote:
| The only thing that changes behavior is consequences.
|
| If there is no justice system enforcing the law and its
| requisite consequences, then there is _no justice_. I don 't
| think those in power understand the anarchy that their
| intentional dismantling of the justice system has and will
| cause, and how the blowback from that anarchy will be visited
| upon them.
| fennecbutt wrote:
| >People don't realize that all of our problems lately are
| stemming from lack of truly representative government.
|
| Hard disagree.
|
| I fully believe that we are collectively responsible for all
| of our problems because we are a shitfuck tragically tribal
| species who, in a world of ever expanding tribe sizes,
| desperately cling onto tribe sizes that our tiny brains can
| handle, hence becoming tribal about a myriad of trivial and
| pointless things like sports, racism, which bathroom someone
| uses or which policy on immigrants one supports. Dunbar's
| number.
|
| And we're so tied up in these micro tribal problems that we
| completely ignore the macro tribal problems that affect every
| single one of us. We're shit out of luck we literally evolved
| to act like this and there's nothing we can do to stop the
| behaviour; it's innate.
|
| Global temperatures are still rising and will continue to do
| so. We can try to stop it but we won't be able to.
| deaux wrote:
| There is, it's eugenics. We can absolutely select against
| psychopath traits and select for altruistic, greater good,
| communal self-sacrificial traits. We have the science.
| undeveloper wrote:
| how would you implement this without going into nazi-like
| levels of control on the individual? assuming "we have
| the science".
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Lmao you can't. Eugenics is evil and denies reproductive
| rights, bodily autonomy at the most basic animal level.
| It is literally the idea of creating a master race and
| culling off anyone who doesn't conform.
|
| If you find yourself in a situation where you want to do
| something Nazis did -- just not _that_ way -- you are
| halfway there.
| undeveloper wrote:
| yea, it's very suspect. regardless, every idiot who
| claims to have "found the science" has failed to produce
| anything beyond studies of n=10 (10 is PUSHING IT).
| deaux wrote:
| > how would you implement this without going into nazi-
| like levels of control on the individual?
|
| I wasn't really talking about the practicality of it,
| especially because it's the furthest thing from the
| Overton Window imaginable. Literally everything else is
| closer to it. Even marrying toddlers, as shown by recent
| events. Slavery's half-inside the window.
|
| It was just about the fact that it's possible.
|
| > assuming "we have the science".
|
| This isn't really disputable, given how much bigger
| nature is than nurture. See e.g. POTUS and his dad.
| Obviously it's not 100%, nothing is, but denying that "we
| have the science" to _massively_ influence things would
| be purely out of ideological dislike.
|
| Humans have practiced eugenics on animals on an absurdly
| huge scale. See domestication and its effects. Humans are
| animals, the idea that it would somehow be completely
| different for them has no basis in science.
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| I don't even think it's the tribalism. Society used to be
| racist AF and it worked ok. Heck, you could play a pretty
| amusing "guess the race/nationality" game with spicy quotes
| from 1880-1920.
|
| I think the problem is that by making everything objective,
| systemic, numerically tracked, quantified, etc, etc. we've
| actively selected for evil people. The people who get ahead
| in those systems, the groups who's interests get served,
| are not the good ones. They are the evil ones who have no
| qualms about exploiting the vulnerabilities and oversights
| of the system. In our quest to optimized everything, we
| have optimized for the prioritization of dishonest people
| and bad causes that attract dishonest people and it shows
| at every level.
|
| Ted K would probably have something to say about this.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| The US should have direct referendums at the national level,
| just like most of us have at the state level
|
| Most - maybe all - hot button issues have much more moderate
| takes than any party national committee positions, in the
| bluest of blue states and reddest of red states the actual
| individuals have much more consensus on every issue
|
| Whatever the founder's initial reasoning or lack of
| inspiration for national referendums for federal law passage
| doesn't seem to be relevant today
| jfengel wrote:
| If that were true, people would be unhappy with their
| representatives. For the most part they seem pleased with
| them. They think everyone else's representatives are corrupt,
| but in fact they are also doing what their constituents have
| told them to do.
|
| The corrupt ones are us, the voters. We hate each other and
| send our Congresspeople to do as much damage as they can to
| the others.
| beloch wrote:
| Implement campaign spending limits, regulate or ban PAC's,
| and commit to an ongoing effort to stomp whatever new methods
| big-money comes up with to influence politics.
|
| We do most of this in Canada and our leaders seem to be less
| influenced by big money. (Nevermind that we recently elected
| a billionaire PM...) The vast expense of running a U.S. style
| election campaign virtually guarantees that U.S. politicians
| are all bought and paid for.
| willhslade wrote:
| Carney isn't a billionaire, right? He's been a bureaucrat,
| not a plutocrat.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Sometimes I wish we'd bring back tarring and feathering.
| "People should not be afraid of their governments ..." and
| all that
| chr15m wrote:
| Bring back sortition, within elected parties.
| mrtksn wrote:
| It is kind of obvious that once someone reaches such a power
| they should be monitored all the time.
|
| Criminality among the rich and the politically connected is off
| the charts. It's way beyond any group of immigrants for example
| that these same people are trying to demonize.
|
| Chat control? Every single politician should have that on their
| phone.
| agilob wrote:
| They will have that exception on their phones.
| hacker_homie wrote:
| I think politicians should be the least privileged people in
| a society except those in prison. Any protections or
| exceptions for them alone are unconstitutional.
| dolebirchwood wrote:
| An idea I like to bounce around is that everyone at the
| highest offices of power (not going to define that here)
| should be forced to live in monastic conditions during the
| term in which they hold power.
|
| You are fed, clothed, and housed by the state. You have no
| luxurious amenities, no exercise of personal wealth, no
| contact with anyone other than for official business.
|
| If you honorably discharge your duties to the completion of
| your term of office, you will be compensated for life to such
| a degree that you will never have to work again.
|
| There's a lot of nuance that I'm glossing over, but the gist
| is that holding powerful positions ought to require severe
| personal sacrifice, but you will be handsomely rewarded
| after-the-fact if you bear that burden with dignity.
| digiown wrote:
| > handsomely rewarded after-the-fact
|
| The other more important effect is that it neuters any kind
| of quid pro quo type of corruption, if paired with a big
| enough stick. It's hard to bribe someone if they will get
| to live in luxury for the rest of their life anyway, and
| where discovery of the deal would land them in prison for
| life.
| ozgung wrote:
| It's not irony. It's by design. Politics is for controlling
| people. Rules don't apply to rulers. No one cares about
| children or anything. Even manipulating the public opinion is
| outdated. Technology helps them to control. Freedom is an
| illusion today. We are not free anymore.
| athrowaway3z wrote:
| Technology might be one half, but the other half is
| demographics.
|
| 40 years ago you'd have more ideals, riots, and young-minded
| ideas.
|
| Nowadays, our societies are old on average (especially the
| politically powerful).
|
| Older people on average are more inclined to pick whatever
| solution they feel promises a bit more security.
| themafia wrote:
| > 40 years ago you'd have more ideals, riots, and young-
| minded ideas.
|
| The government generated most of those too. As technology
| became more capable they utilized it more but that doesn't
| mean they were standing around with their hands in their
| pockets prior to that.
|
| > Nowadays, our societies are old on average
|
| Do they have an unfair access to technology? If not then
| does this actually have any impact?
|
| > Older people on average are more inclined to pick
| whatever solution they feel promises a bit more security.
|
| In your experience perhaps. I doubt the reliability of this
| logic.
| rglover wrote:
| The gates have already been closed at the pasture's edge.
|
| _Moo._
| kllrnohj wrote:
| Politics is simply how a society governs itself. Whether or
| not a society values the rules being enforce to rulers is
| itself _politics_. Dismissing politics like this is how we
| end up with exactly the problem of rules not applying to
| rulers.
|
| Get involved with politics. Be part of politics. _That_ is
| how freedom is earned & maintained.
| morgengold wrote:
| I hope this time it really sinks in that law and rules are only
| for the little man. Time to think about the system from
| scratch.
| imiric wrote:
| What makes you think next time will be different?
|
| Revolutions happen all the time. They all inevitably end up
| in the same place.
|
| The problem is not them. The problem is us.
| jMyles wrote:
| > Revolutions happen all the time. They all inevitably end
| up in the same place.
|
| The optimistic take is that this phenomenon is a
| characteristic of the _emergence_ of an information age
| (through the agricultural and industrial ages), and will no
| longer be true of the internet-connected human.
| imiric wrote:
| I appreciate the sentiment, but what makes you think that
| the internet or technology at all can help with this?
| Judging by the state of the modern internet and WWW,
| technology seems to be making things worse, not better.
| The idealistic view of the 1990s that connecting the
| world would make us more compassionate, tolerant, and
| rational, hasn't panned out. I don't see a reason to
| still cling on to that idea.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| Do you also not wash your laundry?
|
| Gross
| DaSHacka wrote:
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/non%20sequitur
| titzer wrote:
| The media has a big hand in steering the vast majority of
| people _away_ from critical thinking and proper outrage to
| useless, powerless disaffection that leads to impulse
| buying and binge-watching.
| 0sdi wrote:
| it has never been about children.
| hkpack wrote:
| These are literally _the same people_.
|
| Musk was hanging out with child sex trafficker and is allowing
| kids to create porn with grok on X.
| omnimus wrote:
| He is allowing a lot worse version. Allowing adults to create
| child porn with grok on X.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Funny how all of you guys focus on Musk but no mention of
| Reid Hoffman anywhere who was far more involved with Epstein.
| letmeinhere wrote:
| He sucks too. Not everyone is working backwards from their
| team sports fandoms.
| hkpack wrote:
| Look, I would really like to mention everyone every time,
| but it is so tiresome to be honest, all of these guys are
| awful and all of them are connected if not through epstein,
| then through some other private club.
| krmboya wrote:
| Only that you are incorrect that Elon hung out with
| Epstein. Unless there has been some new evidence
| deaux wrote:
| Indeed, _so_ strange that a lot of attention goes out to
| the wealthiest individual in the world.
|
| Didn't know that Reid Hoffman knowingly released a CP
| generator on a platform with hundreds of millions of users
| either.
| krmboya wrote:
| But is there proof Elon actually hung out with Epstein as
| the poster asserted?
| krmboya wrote:
| Did Musk really hang out with Epstein? I only saw email
| conversations between the two.
|
| By contrast, Bill Gates and Reid Hofmann hung out with
| Epstein A LOT.
|
| And Hofmann was Epstein's primary connection into the Silicon
| Valley scene.
| Arubis wrote:
| And, further, that all the child rape was coordinated, for the
| most part, in the clear over fucking Gmail.
|
| But we have to decrypt everything to protect the kids.
| squidsoup wrote:
| You're really pulling your punches there.
| schnable wrote:
| It's useful to point out hypocrisy, but are you suggesting we
| shouldn't try to protect kids because of Jeffrey Epstein?
| brigandish wrote:
| You might point out how this will protect children and what
| the trade offs are. You might also address the point that the
| same people who keep trying to do these "protect the
| children" attacks on privacy seem to be one or two steps away
| from people like Epstein. They didn't need to decrypt
| anyone's communications because they were the recipients -
| what did they do about it?
|
| It seems many of them continued to "hang out" with him.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Just like how you learn that all black men are criminals when
| you see a few of them committing crimes!
| wnevets wrote:
| > that the richest and most powerful members of our society
| have no problem hanging out with a convicted child sex
| trafficker.
|
| In most cases a lot more than simply "hanging out".
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Peter Mandelson was pushing very hard for digital ID cards
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Cards_Act_2006
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| A good implementation of digital ID can do things like verify
| age while respecting privacy.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > It is a great irony that the heavy handed push for "protect
| da kids" is all happening while we learn, day by day, that the
| richest and most powerful members of our society have no
| problem hanging out with a convicted child sex trafficker.
|
| They are hypocrites. In the UK there are _hundreds of
| thousands_ of girls who have been raped between the 1990s and
| now (17 000 cases of sexual exploitation in the UK in the year
| 2024 alone). At least one UK politician refer to the girls who
| 've been raped as "white trash" and recently people are shocked
| because many are implying that these girls, who are typically
| mass-raped, have been considered to be consenting.
|
| It's known for a fact they tried to bury the story once it's
| been revealed. Turns out the same method is used by these
| grooming gangs in countless cities nearly all across the UK.
|
| It's not just that the richest and most powerful do frequent
| child sex trafficker: it's that many politicians and judges all
| over the west are totally fine closing their eyes on the mass
| raping of girls (some boys are victims of rapes too but it's
| mostly girls).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooming_gangs_scandal
|
| > Rules for thee, free love for me.
|
| Rules for thee, free love for me and for my voters base.
| kneel25 wrote:
| I think it's wild you would make that connection for this topic
| ikrenji wrote:
| the "protect da kids" narrative is just a veil to make us give
| up more privacy and freedom for "security"
| aeternum wrote:
| It's far easier to control and prosecute communication when an
| identity is attached.
| watwut wrote:
| To be fair, the people in that group were literally writing
| articles about how meetoo went too far and sponsored lawsuits
| against feminists exposing the stuff.
|
| So like, their ideal vision of the world was "every man can
| treat women and kids this way, they belong to kitchen anyway".
| Havoc wrote:
| > Rules for thee, free love for me.
|
| No, only one rule - kill internet pseudo anonymity because it's
| dangerous in the same way as large gatherings are. The age
| circus is just convenient pretext / collateral damage depending
| on perspective
|
| When the Gen Z protests happened and internet was cut...wasn't
| to protect innocent from porn
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Discord aren't the good guys here. There are no good guys
| here.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The _extremely_ cynical take: All of this is by design for
| well-connected billionaire pedophile rings to kill competition
| from millionaire pedophile rings.
|
| The less cynical take: Billionaire pedophilia is just a really
| dramatic consequence of us building a society that cannot make
| billionaires accountable for their crimes. There's not much
| connection between that and the government overreach being done
| in an attempt to put regular pedophiles to justice.
|
| Discord is overcompensating for their extremely lax child
| safety record. It's not terribly difficult to find servers full
| of child groomers on Discord that are rarely banned. Same thing
| with Roblox. The business model of social media presumes that
| the average user is going to require almost no attention from
| the moderation team. That's why, for example, removing CDA 230
| safe harbor provisions in US law would be so catastrophic to
| online discourse. The only way any company can justify the risk
| of publishing Someone Else's Speech is if that risk is
| literally zero.
|
| The same calculus means that when we start requiring social
| media companies care about children on their platform, they
| immediately reach for the solutions that are trivially
| automated: ID and face scans. These companies are shoestring
| operations for their size, so everything has to "scale" on day
| one.
| brigandish wrote:
| > The only way any company can justify the risk of publishing
| Someone Else's Speech is if that risk is literally zero.
|
| Or, you know, employing customer service agents. The non-
| employing of such also allowed them to become billionaires so
| it seems kind of fair.
| jesterson wrote:
| If you look at almost all "protect the kids" initiatives, they
| are targeting mostly to deter free speech or cover other
| shenanigans. Same people who "want to protect kids" have no
| problem exploiting kids.
|
| General public should be more intelligent and look a bit deeper
| than a cool title, but I really can't realistically expect
| that.
| IamLoading wrote:
| i am trying to understand why discord is doing this. Is it
| because of the charlie kirk killer using discord?
| dchi04 wrote:
| A lot of whining here about how this is an imperfect response to
| the issue of children being exploited on Discord / using the
| platform to engage with inappropriate content.
|
| Until someone offers up something better, I take these types of
| initiatives from social media platforms as huge wins. Ignoring
| the problem will not make it better. We've been ignoring it for
| about 20 years now, and it's only gotten worse.
| pwndByDeath wrote:
| Be responsible for your spawn and don't be a weenie about
| asserting boundaries for them.
| peterlk wrote:
| The solution is parents! Stop making your bad parenting my
| problem!
| dchi04 wrote:
| If you believe that all parents are intelligent, informed,
| and put their children's well-being before everything, you
| are unfortunately wrong about society. Kids don't deserve to
| suffer just because they have neglectful parents.
|
| Discord, on the other hand, should be at least somewhat
| responsible for the interactions of children (which they
| profit off of) on their platform.
|
| And finally, you, a sentient adult with free will, can use
| another platform. Not your problem unless you want to make it
| yours, which is the response of choice on this thread.
| otterley wrote:
| How has it become your "problem"? Do you believe everyone
| should be able to get into any location anywhere worldwide
| without screening?
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| The thing stopping kids from getting "exploited on Discord"
| ought to be the same thing that stops them from stabbing each
| other with pencils. Raise your kids better, and stop expecting
| everyone else to tolerate your failure to do so.
| dchi04 wrote:
| A majority of Americans are in favor of age verification.
|
| https://www.edweek.org/technology/not-meant-for-children-
| adu...
|
| Have you ever considered that it's the other way around?
| Maybe the security needs of a minority shouldn't block
| policies with wide support that will protect children online?
|
| Either way, the whole "parent better" argument doesn't work.
| It's victim-blaming. Thousands of kids download Discord every
| day to play video games with their friends only to eventually
| be invited to servers which host explicit content / bad
| actors that we know can permanently harm them. A bunch of
| software engineers on HN may understand the risks that online
| platforms pose to their children, but much of the population
| cannot/will not fully comprehend this. We should not allow
| their children to experience terrible things just because
| their parents aren't read up about which platforms will
| gladly allow creeps to interact with or message their kids.
|
| The answer here is simple: if you don't like age
| verification, move on to a different service. Creating spaces
| where there are rules and order on the internet for those
| that are vulnerable is much more important than you not
| wanting to upload a picture of your ID to a platform that
| you're using completely voluntarily.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| If parents can't figure out how to block their kids from
| accessing inappropriate content online, they shouldn't be
| giving them smartphones and computers. Diminishing adult
| spaces for adults in order to make them safer for kids is
| how you dumb down the entire world.
| dchi04 wrote:
| The entire point is that it's not dumbing down the entire
| world. It's dumbing it down for kids that fail age
| verification.
| trashb wrote:
| If a kid gets in a car and drives without license we don't
| require all car manufactures to install age
| verification/license checker do we?
|
| Usually we arrest and punish the offender, not the creator
| of the product used in the offence.
|
| Why would this be different with the internet, in this case
| Discord?
| ncr100 wrote:
| I wish I could simply show Discord my adult genitals as
| evidence of my adult-hood.
|
| The sharing of my ID with a known incompetent company &
| business seems like a risk they're foisting upon me.
| dchi04 wrote:
| You are not going to be liable if your information is leaked.
| They will be.
| asveikau wrote:
| I think she is a polarizing figure to some, but journalist Taylor
| Lorenz has been complaining about this sort of thing for a long
| time. She has been increasingly warning about a future in which
| we need to scan IDs for all of our online services, in the name
| of protecting kids. (With the obvious implications about that
| data leaking, governments using it to track dissidents, etc.)
| digiown wrote:
| Future? Just look at China. They do all this already.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| She's great but also damned to be a Cassandra, unfortunately.
| stemlord wrote:
| Curious how this will affect midjourney's earnings
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| what is the relation?
| codergautam wrote:
| Midjourney is primarily a Discord bot that generates images
| from text prompts within the Discord app. Now many paying
| Midjourney users could be forced to verify themselves.
| cheschire wrote:
| I deleted my Facebook account in 2011. After finding out how much
| critical neighborhood information I have been missing, I finally
| registered a new Facebook account fifteen years later to follow
| my neighborhood groups.
|
| A month later, the account was suspended for supposedly breaking
| guidelines. I never posted a single message, never reacted to any
| posts.
|
| They then required me to upload a video scan of my face to prove
| I was a person.
|
| We aren't quite at the end of the internet, but man I can really
| see the end of this journey coming sometime soon.
| prophesi wrote:
| Had a similar experience after rejoining a few years ago. My
| account wasn't suspended for breaking guidelines AFAIK, but
| rather flagged as a suspicious account that required an upload
| of my face and driver's license. I think the account still
| exists in this limbo state because I'd rather not upload all of
| that to Facebook, and yet still not able to login to request
| for the account to be deleted.
| monksy wrote:
| That won't guarentee that you get your account back. Many
| times it's used to permaban you later.
| octoberfranklin wrote:
| This is the big problem.
|
| We used to have a balance of power between the huge
| megaplatforms: they were the gatekeepers, but the worst
| punishment they could impose was forcing you to make a new
| account. Because they couldn't reliably tell us apart.
|
| This got nuked by the combination of two things:
|
| 1. Really good facial recognition
|
| 2. Everybody owning a bootloader-locked device with a
| front-facing camera (so you can't splice in FaceFusion to
| defeat #1).
|
| This is what made permabans possible. And it has upset the
| delicate balance that made things tolerable previously.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| FB/Discord/etc were never the internet. They were walled
| gardens you could enter via the internet. This could be a
| revitalization of the internet - pushing people back to
| decentralized ways of communications.
| cheschire wrote:
| Perhaps you may have not read about how Iran is moving to a
| whitelisted internet. Or perhaps you believe this will not
| happen in your country.
|
| However, "think of the children" will always result in more
| restriction in western countries, not less. We are watching
| countries prove that it works to isolate from each other.
| Europe is not isolating from America in exactly the same way,
| but is isolating business processes from American services.
|
| We are not on the cusp of the end of the internet, but the
| cliff sure seems in view to me.
| owebmaster wrote:
| > Perhaps you may have not read about how Iran is moving to
| a whitelisted internet. Or perhaps you believe this will
| not happen in your country.
|
| I hope for it to happen in my country, with local companies
| and developers competing to create the new social networks.
| The current arrangement fine foreign entities too much
| power.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| > perhaps you believe this will not happen in your country.
|
| That would hurt billionaires in America, so I'm not too
| worried about that gaining traction in my country. Even if
| it ultimately becomes the next superpower regime.
|
| More relevantly, I wonder of such restrictions would impede
| the First Amendment even if they did want to try.
| snohobro wrote:
| Ironically, this may be one of the many straws that breaks the
| proverbial internet camel's back. We all wax and wane about the
| old internet, the pre-homogenized, non-corporate, Wild West
| internet.
|
| Perhaps these constant restrictions will finally spur us to
| create our own spaces again Our own little groups that exist
| independent of the corpo-sphere.
|
| The only reason 'the way things used to be' went away was
| because the new thing was convenient. Well, now it isn't
| anymore. So let's just go back to the old thing.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| I yearn for the days of yore when a few of us would co-lo
| some boxes at a small local ISP we were friendly with, where
| we'd get to take advantage of their always-on and (at the
| time) blazing-fast T1 connectivity. It was low-cost for
| everyone, and we'd host our own services for whatever was
| useful to us and our friend groups.
|
| On the other hand: It was kind of awful when even my dialup
| access would get screwed up because someone's IRC server got
| DDoS'd -- _again_ -- and clogged up the pipes.
|
| ---
|
| These days, the local ISPs are mostly gone. But the pipes are
| bigger -- it's easy for many of us to get gigabit+
| connections at home. Unfortunately, the botnets are also
| bigger.
|
| How do we get back to what we had?
| elevation wrote:
| Compete with facebook in an area you can actually win.
| Don't try to be all of a mobile messenger, news feed,
| telephony platform, marketplace, forum, async messaging...
| just do one of those things well for a group of users
| (potentially around a focus.)
|
| Piggy back off of an existing community that has already
| built trust -- for instance, build a forum for a local
| activity that often attracts 10+ years of participation and
| involves equipment. Your board will become the best place
| for users (who already trust one another) to swap used
| gear, discuss local venue closures, etc. Adopt moderation
| metrics that sustain your community (don't let bullies and
| spammers spoil everyone's experience.)
|
| In 10 years, you can completely replace larger platforms as
| the community of choice.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >In 10 years, you can completely replace larger platforms
| as the community of choice.
|
| And by then you have to worry about money to upkeep the
| platform. You sell off or sell out your users, and the
| cycle repeats. Even for the most well meaning people, it
| comes down to the fact that scaling such communication
| isn't free.
|
| We hear all these stories of eccentric billionaires going
| all out on their hobbies. Why do we have no eccentric
| FOSS people who donate to keep such stuff FOSS?
| krater23 wrote:
| Sorry, but to host a small community on a v-server costs
| you today 3,50EUR - 15EUR/month, when you can't pay that,
| you have other problems than the dying internet. It's not
| 1990 anymore...
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Small community, yes. If you want to replace a site on
| the scale of Discord or Facebook? It does get really
| expensive.
|
| Having everyone pay in is one strategy. But we have 30
| years of people used to free and open mass communication.
| How many will give that up for proper freedoms and
| protection from state actors?
|
| Heck, it almost always seems like people give up freedoms
| whenever push comes to shove, no matter the industry or
| timeline.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| I read the suggestion to replace _your discord guild_ and
| not the entire Discord.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| What if they're not scaled? What if scale is inherently
| constrained?
|
| Going back a bit further yet, I also miss local BBSs.
| Some were popular while many others were not. Almost all
| of them regardless of popularity were a labor of love:
| Very few BBS sysops ever recovered what was spent to
| start the thing up and keep it going and it was not,
| broadly speaking, an inexpensive hobby. It was a mosey-
| losing operation.
|
| But since long-distance telephone calls were billed by
| the minute, the systems were geographically-bound by the
| financial disincentives of far-away users. This made for
| tight, local communities (often with small dozens of
| semi-active users, and sometimes even hundreds!) and
| pretty effectively kept the idea of global domination-
| style growth off of the table.
|
| So, again: The constraints shaped it to be how it was.
|
| What kinds of constraints might form a path towards to
| this kind of small success today, in 2026, while there
| are giants like Meta stomping around?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >What if they're not scaled? What if scale is inherently
| constrained?
|
| Very possible. I'm on Tildes and its invite only
| structure prevents the infamous Eternal September effect.
| It also means that it's nearing a decade and is very much
| not going to compete with other forums as a platform.
|
| I'm perfectly fine with that. But that doesn't seem to be
| what people en masse want. They want to connect with all
| their friends and family, and discover new ones through
| specialized communities. On a scale of a billion people,
| that's hard to manage. And if no one principled fills
| that void, the unprincipled will.
|
| >What kinds of constraints might form a path towards to
| this kind of small success today, in 2026, while there
| are giants like Meta stomping around?
|
| Plenty of methods for that, centralized or decentralized.
| It's less a matter of "do we have the
| technology/ingenuity" and more "can it defeat the massive
| network effects?"
| elevation wrote:
| > scaling such communication isn't free.
|
| So don't scale. There is a sweet spot where a few $2
| classifieds (e.g, for motor vehicles) will sustain your
| operating costs, and the high-trust environment keeps
| moderation efforts/costs low, while the total target
| audience is too small for most bad actors to bother with.
| grishka wrote:
| The fediverse already exists.
| MarsIronPI wrote:
| The fediverse is a mess that only works well about half the
| time (roughly). The other half federation breaks,
| moderation becomes impossible, moderators become
| intolerable but accounts are impossible to migrate.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I have my small little groups. I've walked away from big
| sites constantly and this won't be an exception. Definitely
| going to cancel my Nitro today until/unless they revert this.
|
| But leaving is never free. There's a lot of gaming
| communities (especially niche subcommunities like emulation,
| speedrunning, modding, etc) that are mostly on Discord and
| not anywhere else. Many probably won't move. A lot of tribal
| knowledge will be lost as it's locked in these communities.
|
| Heck, even some FOSS communities communicate mostly on
| Discord. I have more faith they will move. But not all.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| >A lot of tribal knowledge will be lost as it's locked in
| these communities.
|
| Based on a quick Google search, it looks like there are a
| number of tools to download and back up Discord
| conversation archives.
| Atlas667 wrote:
| The interests of the people who own/control technology, and
| have the most influence over standards, will make sure you
| are forced to participate.
|
| And they have always organized society to make sure this is
| the case. It's not a wacky conspiracy theory. These are just
| the interests of the people who create and have most
| influence over tech, and these interests are shared in common
| amongst most elements of that class. So, this class, the
| capitalist class, will just plan (conspire) to make it
| necessary for you to participate.
|
| Viewing tech in this way makes one see that the historic
| development of tech is not happenstance occurrence, just tech
| skipping along, unconsciously, into authoritarianism, but as
| tech being influenced by the interests of the people who have
| the most influence on its development: those who own it, who
| are often the same people who determine standards.
|
| The internet was never a free form idea upon which everybody
| could sway, its a technology owned, controlled and influenced
| by those who produce it.
|
| They WILL absolutely try to place social/state/labor
| functions behind this wall of authoritarianism. As they
| already have, and are currently doing with the growing ban on
| VPN usage, anti phone rooting measures, anti-"side loading",
| etc.
|
| It should not be absurd to suggest that the people in power
| have used, are using, and will use power in their favor.
| MarsIronPI wrote:
| > Perhaps these constant restrictions will finally spur us to
| create our own spaces again Our own little groups that exist
| independent of the corpo-sphere.
|
| The normies already did this. They just did it on centralized
| platforms like Discord. Until their backs get broken we're
| not getting anywhere. (Although I may be being a little too
| cynical.)
| robocat wrote:
| > Perhaps these constant restrictions will finally spur us to
| create our own spaces again
|
| We had forums using forum software but moderating the spam
| got too hard. If you create your own space using any common
| software platform then you'll be pwned (a la PHP-Nuke et al).
| I presume even pure custom web pages would end in tears these
| days (DoS complaints seem to be a more recent reason; also
| Bot form submission is pretty good at being bad).
| ArcHound wrote:
| It's not that bad. Yes, you need to make a couple of good
| sysadmin decisions, but it's very much possible to operate
| a small web.
|
| Source: my VPS-hosted site was up through all of the recent
| AWS, Cloudflare and Azure outages.
| elevation wrote:
| I helped an elderly woman create her first FB account. She'd
| just lost her husband and wanted to notify his friends about
| his upcoming memorial service. She knew their names but didn't
| have contact information.
|
| We created the account from an Apple device, registering from
| her home cable modem IP, giving FB her cellphone number and ISP
| issued email address -- all strong signals of consumer
| authenticity. But after she added five of her relatives within
| half an hour, her account was locked for suspicious activity.
|
| There was an appeal button; she was asked to take a picture of
| her face from many angles and upload ID. She gave them
| everything they asked for, but when Facebook reviewed the
| appeal, they closed her account permanently.
| alex1138 wrote:
| Mark Zuckerberg, folks. It matters when his default
| philosophy is "They trust me dumb fucks". Copying Snapchat 9
| times is more of a priority than account security. He wasn't
| "making a good point". He's a malicious asshole who deserved
| jail years ago
| retired wrote:
| It sure beats the Reddit system where you think you are
| interacting with people, only to find out a couple of days
| later that your fresh account is shadow-banned and nobody is
| seeing your comments and that none of your likes went
| through.
|
| At least Facebook tells you that you are banned.
| kps wrote:
| Reddit and HN.
| perching_aix wrote:
| Since when does HN have shadowbans?
| phpnode wrote:
| since almost forever, that's what the "show dead" toggle
| in your profile settings is for - it shows the dead posts
| from shadow banned people
| andersa wrote:
| I always assumed that those were posts that got flagged
| too often.
| daneel_w wrote:
| "Spamming", or rather, responding too quickly in an
| intense discussion, is cause for automatic shadowban here
| on HN. It happened to me on a previous account some years
| ago. The posts themselves were harmless, I merely
| responded to too many users in a too short timeframe. My
| attempts at having the ban undone also turned out to be a
| waste of time. Completely absurd.
| alex1138 wrote:
| I wasn't aware HN had it, but considering the number of
| [flagged] by people who work for big tech I'm sure some
| people actually posting truthful things have ended up on
| the shadowban list
| dymk wrote:
| No, FB has their own shadowban system
| qingcharles wrote:
| Tip: You can always tell if you are banned on Reddit by
| accessing the shadowban appeal page which is only visible
| if you are shadowbanned yourself:
|
| https://reddit.com/appeal
| chamomeal wrote:
| Last year I finally caved and tried to sign up for instagram.
| It's tragic but it's almost like a second internet. So many
| small business and bands only have instagram. So many lil
| communities post their events only on instagram. I always
| have to ask friends with instagram to tell me when a brewery
| is open, when a show starts, etc.
|
| So I tried to sign up (and I already HAVE an active facebook
| account from high school, with hundreds of friends) and it
| wanted me to scan my face. I did it, which I regret, only to
| be told five days later that I am too suspicious. So here I
| am, still locked out of all this information lmao
| MostlyStable wrote:
| While I recognize that, as a business who needs reach, they
| kind of need to be using these websites where everyone is,
| I really wonder how difficult it would be to mirror
| everything they post to some more open and accessible
| location (a self hosted webpage, anything). I can't blame
| them for using Instagram/Facebook/whatever, but I _can_
| blame them for using nothing _but_ that site. It would
| almost certainly get very little traffic so it wouldn 't
| need much bandwidth and costs should be low, and it would
| be a lot more consumer friendly.
| xnyan wrote:
| People or organizations using Instagram as their only
| form of online presence don't have the ability to self-
| host. Instagram is easy and reaches almost everyone they
| want.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| The indieweb circle calls this POSSE: post own site,
| syndicate elsewhere
|
| Most of the big platforms penalise posts that contain
| outlinks however.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Not to defend, but to understand. Last year our old "High
| School class of 19NN" group received about a dozen join
| requests per week from bogus accounts for a couple of years.
| At first they were trivial to discriminate because they were
| folks located on the opposite side of the Earth. But over
| time they became filled with pictures and names of (randomly
| generated?) Americans.
|
| I could still tell because their profiles were sterile and
| had few normal comments or likes etc. Also a high school
| class has a very narrow age range. We recently landed a fatal
| blow by disallowing joins by "pages" and adding a few
| questions. A trickle continued but stopped recently.
|
| The hamfisted false positive response you described is
| probably a result of the above.
| tintor wrote:
| `I could still tell because their profiles were sterile`
|
| That is exactly example that parent posted about. Not every
| fb user is addicted to it, and has used it for long time.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| They weren't new. They were oldish and had lots of posts,
| _but_ no real "engagement" from others. No significant
| comments, and a noticeable pattern in their photos, etc
| etc. I could go on, but not that interesting.
| jmaker wrote:
| Many consumer banking apps have begun integrating similar
| identity verification third-party providers. They are very
| inaccurate.
|
| Sometimes it works with the front camera on one smartphone
| but doesn't with another (iPhone 17's distortion), sometimes
| it recognizes your face on one day, but desperately fails to
| recognize you on another. I had to repeatedly record videos
| for it only to fail over and over again. Anything their
| system flags as suspicious, anything, will trigger the same
| video identification flow again, which effectively blocks
| your money in the account.
|
| I'm closing my accounts with a couple of banks with these
| video id flows. Simply because it's way too easy to lose
| access to my money in the account with them. If their QA is
| not good enough for this vital requirement, I don't want to
| know how they treat other requirements. They simply
| outsourced the id verification to some third parties that are
| way too unreliable.
| mihaaly wrote:
| When I researched a bank learning they want to use some
| third party never-herd-of identification service on me was
| the moment I knew I do not want to share any of my personal
| details and consumer habits with that so called bank. They
| do not care enough to pretend they keep all my data in-
| house.
| jmaker wrote:
| I've got the feeling that it's spreading and is soon to
| become the default.
|
| Another banking app has failed to identify me a couple of
| times (I attribute it to iPhone 17's front camera
| distortion) and fell back to the snail mail id code as a
| 2nd factor. It arrived only several business days later.
| Instead of just letting me use my own 2nd factor such as
| a TOTP device or a physical security key. But maybe there
| are some legal requirements for that flow, I'm out of the
| loop.
|
| So there's a whole range between passkey-is-enough on one
| end and outsourced video id or snail mail for 2nd factor
| on the other. The latter can of course be misused to
| siphon as much personal information as possible out of
| you, even linking and scraping your other banking
| accounts for consumer profiling - designed as a requisite
| part of the authentication/authorization flow.
| tintor wrote:
| Can you elaborate on this and tells us which banks?
| lossyalgo wrote:
| Name and shame please, so that we can avoid these nasty
| banks. I also hope you leave some bad reviews on
| TrustPilot.
| bmitch3020 wrote:
| Discover hit me with a 3rd party ID check (Socure) after
| being a customer of theirs for decades. They locked me
| out of my account, including access to savings, CDs, and
| credit card e-statements until I complied. And they did
| it without any warning.
| jbmsf wrote:
| I can't speak to the accuracy, but I just integrated
| stripe's offering for our product (which involves banking).
| We were small enough for a while not to need it, but
| eventually the fraudsters find you.
|
| If you don't take these measures, you will lose money to
| fraud. You may also lose your business because you aren't
| meeting your AML/anti-terror obligations. (I also just had
| to take my annual training course).
|
| There are a bunch of mitigations, of which identity
| verification is just one, and all of them are lousy for our
| good customers. I wish the banking systems were better and
| we didn't need to do any of it.
| kstrauser wrote:
| My sister died a few years ago. A couple of months later,
| someone created an account with her name and profile pic and
| started inviting family members. Quite frankly, I would have
| been ready to brawl with this person if I were in a room with
| them.
|
| I feel very badly for your friend. Unfortunately, those
| completely benign actions look identical to a common identity
| theft pattern.
| lossyalgo wrote:
| That happens regularly with various family members who
| already have IG/FB accounts. I always have to hop on our
| local Signal group and warn everyone that there's another
| fake clone account trying to scam people. Some of us try to
| report the profile, but the process has become increasingly
| frustrating, and often doesn't even work (sorry, we
| couldn't blah-blah-blah so we can't/won't do anything about
| it). Sometimes we just have to let the scammer be, block
| them, and warn people outside of Signal that there are
| scammers running around with our family members' names.
| It's a total shitshow.
| kay_o wrote:
| There is automated pipeline for this generated from
| obituary for monetary fraud.
| burnte wrote:
| > There was an appeal button; she was asked to take a picture
| of her face from many angles and upload ID. She gave them
| everything they asked for, but when Facebook reviewed the
| appeal, they closed her account permanently.
|
| I can't speak for every company, but I know with Facebook and
| Paypal, these requests generally are from automated systems
| and the chances of successfully reopening the account is well
| under 1%. The info you submit is not viewed by a human and
| the systems are mostly treated as a way to lighten the load
| on human support staff. They don't care if your account is
| reopened, they just want you to feel like you had a chance,
| did all you could, and then just give up.
|
| I discovered this about 20 years ago dealing with Paypal. I
| happened to know someone who worked in Paypal engineering at
| the time. I had a well established account, a Paypal debit
| card, linked accounts, etc., everything you could need to
| feel good about an account.
|
| Out of the blue it was suspended and I was sent into this
| system to send in verification documents. I gave everything
| it wanted. First it was ID, then a "utility bill" so I sent
| over my phone bill. That wasn't acceptable because it didn't
| prove I lived at my address for some reason, so I sent a
| natural gas bill. Even though that did have to be tied to a
| physical address (you can't deliver gas wirelessly!) I was
| asked for an electric bill. Then the lease. Then a bank
| statement. Every time I gave it pretty quickly. Then I was
| asked for a passport. I didn't have one. Suddenly that was
| the only thing that could unlock my account and as soon as
| they had the passport my account would be reopened. Nothing
| further would be done without a passport, not even
| communication.
|
| I asked my friend to look into it. She said, "that's on
| purpose, that's the NoBot. It gets people out of support's
| hair." Turns out if you let unhappy customers complain to
| humans on the phone they will, so some exec decided to
| improve call center metrics by forcing customers into a
| system designed to keep them occupied until they gave up. You
| funneled people into it, and it would continue to reject
| their submissions with new reasons infinitely. It just went
| through a list of things to ask for, and when it found one
| you couldn't provide, suddenly that was the key and without
| it you were screwed.
|
| Companies still do this today.
| alex1138 wrote:
| Some part of me deep inside that remembers Paypal in the
| early 2000s and their Kafka labryrinth systems thinks about
| Peter Thiel and how he's responsible for both Facebook and
| Paypal. Maybe coincidence, maybe not
| isubkhankulov wrote:
| Companies created these traps not to screw customers but to
| thwart fraudsters. There are SO many worldwide - see annual
| fraud loss stats.
|
| Paypal and many other companies that trade in valuables
| _have to_ put up protections because there are almost no
| reprecussions for perpetrators in certain foreign
| countries.
| burnte wrote:
| You're thinking of the fraud detection tools. I'm talking
| about a tool that was designed to NEVER let the user
| succeed. There is no way to successfully verify your ID
| and get your account reopened. They build it because
| their fraud tools were hyper aggressive and it was
| cheaper to lose the customers and block the fraud.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| That is because Facebook have already gone out of scale and
| no reasonable human can handle those appeals anymore.
|
| If you mix in the spammer and bad actors, it makes sense to
| just say no.
|
| The solution is, of course, have smaller social networks.
| deaux wrote:
| > That is because Facebook have already gone out of scale
| and no reasonable human can handle those appeals anymore.
|
| You've been brainwashed. How can you seriously make this
| statement?
|
| Meta has $200 _billion_ revenue.
|
| Amazon employs _1.56 million_ people worldwide.
|
| Meta could absolutely hire a million support workers and
| handle the appeals. They don't, but they could. Smaller
| social networks would be ideal, but not the only option.
| You can legislate a requirement of human support
| availability for gatekeeper platforms.
| 3371 wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree companies are doing so bad on
| customer support nowadays, but I'd argue that there will
| slways be more fake users than any size of human customer
| support can take, especially in the age of AI.
|
| I honestly believe it's a battle no one can win.
| deaux wrote:
| Fake phone support users? Of course not. Maybe in a few
| years.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| This all goes away if you require social media companies
| to charge users for access. The addiction to free stuff
| is what's really killing the internet.
| alfnor wrote:
| You think feds won't pay for bot accounts? Record labels
| already pay for botted streams, so I'm pretty sure MOSSAD
| would pay to bot Facebook. Hell, it already happens on X.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| The problem mentioned in the parent comment was the
| volume of fake accounts overloading customer support. If
| it's no longer free to create spam accounts for phishing
| etc, the profitability of scamming will shrink and
| decrease the incentives. I don't think feds are exactly
| slamming the support queue.
|
| More importantly than the bot problem, it would decrease
| social media usage in the aggregate while also
| encouraging more competition. Much easier to bootstrap a
| business if you're not having to compete with big tech
| offering the same thing for free because they can
| subsidize the losses.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| You should read report from those support workers. How
| many disgusting image they need to see each day.
|
| Adding more support staff just more complexity. Facebook
| need to break down into small networks. (ie. make less
| revenue, if that's all you care)
|
| You suggest they should scale up the support team, I said
| they should just scale down their whole business.
| Steve16384 wrote:
| Somehow I can't see Facebook volunatarily scaling down,
| and even if they did, it would leave a gap for a "global"
| network to take its place.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > You should read report from those support workers. How
| many disgusting image they need to see each day.
|
| Nonsense. You're talking about image moderation when
| somebody else is talking about appealing when their
| account is shut down after an accusation of being
| automated. There is 1) no one being (overly) traumatized
| by basic customer service, and 2) no reduced
| responsibility for removing child pornography from your
| platform if your customer service is terrible.
| teeray wrote:
| If you have the wherewithal, small claims is a secondary
| appeals process:
| https://www.keenesentinel.com/state_news/how-owner-of-
| teatot...
| seanlane wrote:
| https://archive.ph/TrqXA
| pests wrote:
| I battled an online casino that did this. I had under a
| grand in balance but my account got locked and they needed
| verification for every payment method I had ever used over
| a 2 year period, and I had used A LOT. I would reply back
| immediately with all the information, etc. Took a good
| month and a trip to my bank to get documentation on
| ownership of old debit cards but by the end of it I was
| sending them basically a 20 page package of all the proof
| they needed with everything already laid out perfect. I had
| accumulated a bunch of internal support email addresses of
| various agents or systems and would CC everyone every time,
| by the end the email chain was 200+ messages and I had 15
| people on CC. But I got it unlocked.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Substack also wont let you contact human support without
| spending days fkdskf around with its ai chatbots who refuse
| to ever, ever escalate to a person
| GaryBluto wrote:
| Exactly my experience. Hoovered up my data and refused to let
| me in after.
| BloodyIron wrote:
| It's as if all the other problems Facebook has done in the
| past never mattered. Nobody stops to think about how
| Facebook's _repeated and exhaustive history of abuse_ might
| actually impact them. If only there was some evidence of what
| might happen...
| lp4v4n wrote:
| My friend has a restaurant and showed me the ad he wanted to
| promote on Instagram about a pizza coupon was suspended for
| breaking the guidelines, they mentioned gambling or something.
| I was quite impressed. When you see that one of the
| "magnificent 7" is dysfunctional to that level, it's hard not
| to think we're living the last decades of American economic
| hegemony, by now propelled mostly by inertial monopolies than
| anything else.
| elevation wrote:
| The big ad networks want a cut from business users and will
| actively suppress posts from business accounts that haven't
| paid up.
|
| But instead of paying Instagram for reach, consider taking
| the same budget and spending it delivering samples and
| coupons to other local businesses mid/late morning. Bonus
| points if you make the coupons unique for each delivery so
| you can track which local businesses are your biggest fans.
| Office managers are generally receptive to this kind of cold
| call and you can leave a catering menu. Catering gigs can
| keep your kitchen busy during the off hours.
| dimgl wrote:
| > it's hard not to think we're living the last decades of
| American economic hegemony
|
| Bit of a stretch to correlate this with Instagram suspending
| some guy
| DaSHacka wrote:
| You see, they had to start at the conclusion and work
| backwards to somehow justify how they "arrived" at such a
| take.
| paradox460 wrote:
| Remember, we've been in "late stage capitalism" for over
| 100 years
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yeah, same here. I tried logging in years back and they wanted
| my driver's license. My last comment must have been in 2013 or
| so.
|
| I don't see it as the journey's end. But it's gonna be a much
| quieter road if most people don't walk away from this stuff.
| Maybe that's for the best.
| erghjunk wrote:
| I have a similar story. I quit in like 2016 or so and 9ish
| years later I wanted to shop for a used car for my oldest kid.
| I know already, of course, that Facebook now holds a monopoly
| on peer to peer sales of goods like that so I tried to make a
| new Facebook account. I was denied at the creation and told I
| had to try again with a video of my face (which I begrudgingly
| did) at which point I was denied AGAIN and told there was no
| appeals process.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > a monopoly on peer to peer sales of goods like that
|
| I don't know ... around these parts (Santa Fe/ABQ) while
| Marketplace is very popular, Craigslist continues to be
| widely used for this, especially since an ever growing number
| of younger people are not on Facebook (either at all, or not
| regularly).
| erghjunk wrote:
| I would be just fine with a return to Craigslist but it's
| still mostly useless in my neck of the woods despite once
| being the main (digital) tool for p2p sales.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Twitter (before Musk) and Facebook did the same thing to me...
| and that was a long time ago.
|
| Discord tried to do it to me a few months ago but I refused,
| contacted support instead. Eventually they made it work but it
| took forever. Lucky for me I hate Discord so tried to avoid it
| anyway.
| zer0zzz wrote:
| I had the same experience when I deleted my FB then years later
| reregistered one using the same email. I think thats kind of a
| good thing in some ways, specifically in the FB case because I
| wouldnt want someone to go online saying they are me when they
| are not.
| paranoidrobot wrote:
| Instagram did a similar thing for me back in 2016-ish.
|
| A family member had been sharing some photos they were taking,
| but only on Instagram.
|
| So I signed up an account, verified via email and phone number.
| I wasn't initially able to find the family member's account. A
| week later after I got the spelling of their username right,
| Instagram popped up "Your account has been suspended". They
| then sent me an email saying I needed to take a photo of myself
| holding government ID, and a piece of paper with a hand-written
| code they supplied, plus a close-up photo of said government
| ID. No way was I supplying all that just to be able to browse
| some photos.
| cryptoegorophy wrote:
| Do you not buy/sell on marketplace? I guess this might be a
| wrong website to ask such questions.
| cheschire wrote:
| I browsed for a while but didn't see anything worthwhile.
|
| I've had friends coordinate for me in the past for a couple
| things but honestly eBay is still my go to.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| I'm actually excited for it. We have a lot of infrastructure
| already in place so I'm looking forward to the internet being a
| deanonymized space where people watch what they say and there's
| accountability.
| lambdas wrote:
| Those pesky whistleblowers, journalists, and political
| dissidents have had it good for far too long. They've needed
| taking down a peg
| dyauspitr wrote:
| That's a strawman. It's such a tiny aspect of the what the
| majority of activity on the internet is that it's
| irrelevant to any large scale discussion of the internet.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Just like how school shooters are irrelevant to any large
| scale discussion of education? It is very relevant and
| impactful and you can't just hand-wave it away by saying
| percentages mean it doesn't count.
| mycall wrote:
| Until use of TCP/IP or DNS requires uploading a video scan, the
| internet will keep on.
| almosthere wrote:
| Try to remind your neighbors that you can go outside and talk
| to people to share news of the hood
| sbinnee wrote:
| It sounds like they would like the idea of Worldcoin[1] very
| much (I want to make sure I am being sarcastic. I hate the
| idea).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_(blockchain)
| Venn1 wrote:
| I set up a forum when I started my site for Linux content
| creation. Discord had become a black hole for technical know-how
| on a scale IRC could never dream of, and finding answers to
| common questions was nigh impossible since the technology has
| changed and the modern way to solve problem X was never asked in
| a forum and never indexed by a search engine. Granted, Reddit
| provided a bit of a stopgap over the last decade, but the
| solutions in the comments these days are more often than not a
| confidently incorrect copy-pasta from GPT.
|
| I use Discord for chat and voice calls since that is what I
| expect from a chat app, but the amount of companies that have
| built their community / knowledge base / support system around
| Discord is worrying. You know they can just delete that, right?
|
| I'll continue to use Discord for chat until prompted to put my
| face in the hole :)
| nickstinemates wrote:
| Key changes are
|
| - ID verification to see porn on Discord.
|
| - Also, some warnings to not befriend stangers.
|
| Not very heavy handed, you can google porn anytime. I am not sure
| who this serves.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| It serves UK, EU, and various US States' regulations to
| "protect the kids".
|
| Discord is only the next biggest canary in the coal mine. These
| regulations are going to force a lot more websites and apps to
| do this, too.
|
| I wish these sorts of regulations had been written hand-in-hand
| with a more directly technically-minded approach. The world
| needs a better technical way to try to verify a person's
| estimated age cohort without a full ID check and/or AI-analyzed
| video face scan _before_ we start regulating "every" website
| that may post "adult content" (however you choose to define
| that) starts to require such checks.
| reddalo wrote:
| I just wish parents would do what parents used to do:
| parenting. Then we wouldn't need any of this bullshit.
| anon_cow1111 wrote:
| It should go without saying but,
|
| *CANCEL YOUR NITRO SUBSCRIPTION NOW IF YOU'RE PAYING FOR ONE*
| (for whatever reason)
|
| This was just announced today and a flood of canceled payments
| within the next 24 hours are the easiest way to send a message.
| And also tell people on the servers you're on to do the same.
| It's not like they give you anything of real value for that
| money.
| pipo234 wrote:
| Not a subscriber, but I understand your call for retribution.
|
| I suppose the silver lining is that they are putting the
| responsibility for age verification adults. Which imo is better
| than requiring everyone; kids get a free pass to the kids
| stuff...
| hahn-kev wrote:
| Yeah I agree. I actually see most of the stuff in the teens
| mode as a feature
| anon_cow1111 wrote:
| I'll reply for both you and GPP,
|
| I don't know if this will personally affect any servers I
| use since they're not obviously adult, but I assume the
| slope will be slippery and if they're doing a faceID system
| now it will only get worse. Article says "analyze a user's
| video selfie, which Discord says never leaves the user's
| device"
|
| ...are they really going to implement a facial recognition
| algo in the browser, or is this a "download our app or fuck
| off" situation? I'm guessing the latter.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I pay for nitro as of now (not for much longer). If
| absolutely nothing else, I'm not going to give them
| monthly payments (which generally required a CC. Aka "I'm
| an adult") and still not be trusted to be an adult.
|
| And that's the thing, these policies are always loose and
| will be abused.
|
| - M rated game? Okay, it's adult only now. Sure.
|
| - Emulators? Well they can play adult stuff. Now they
| just happen to add friction on something that is
| convenient for billionaire studios.
|
| - LGBT content? Well you're talking about sexuality. Of
| course you need to be an adult. Here let's take face
| scans and totally not be a sitting duck for any malicious
| parties looking to identify traditionally disenfranchised
| people
|
| The escalation is fairly obvious at this point. We've
| seen it happen in real time.
| nicce wrote:
| They should disable ads and algorithms from social media by
| default and give those only for verified adults!
| Brybry wrote:
| Unless they're changing things with some sort of automated
| classification, then it's users who designate which servers
| and channels have adult content.
|
| In my experience, you run the risk of getting your server
| shut down in small servers if someone reports it. Or risk
| losing your community server status in larger public servers
| until you come back into compliance.
|
| Also in my experience what teenagers are going to do when
| they hit an age gate is use a fake picture/video. Sometimes
| they'll get banned for that and then they'll make a new
| account and do it again.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| Discord has been immensely hostile to the public in general
| since forever, and people love to flock to it and throw money
| at the company behind it.
|
| I don't expect the masses to change their incomprehensible
| habits just because of this.
| Choco31415 wrote:
| It's not incomprehensible. Discord makes it so much easier to
| organize communities than most other platforms.
|
| Telegram, Slack, Facebook, Team Speak, Reddit, GroupMe,
| nothing really offers the same feature set and ease of setup
| that Discord does.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > nothing really offers the same feature set and ease of
| setup that Discord does
|
| Apart from the open voice channels, what Discord features
| is Slack actually lacking? (and huddles can sub-in for
| voice channels much of the time)
| thinkling wrote:
| Most importantly, Slack limits the amount of message
| history you get to keep if you're not paying. And the
| payment plans are per-user fees which quickly becomes
| non-viable for non-commercial use.
| karaziox wrote:
| This doesn't feel like a real question... Slack free tier
| is basically crappy Discord, limited message history, no
| voice channels, huddles are also behind the paying tiers.
| It is basically worse on all aspects unless you start
| paying
| chocolatkey wrote:
| A nonprofit I help out just moved from Slack to Discord
| for a very simple reason: Slack pricing was too
| expensive, and as the amount of people increased, the
| price continues to climb. Discord is free
| prmoustache wrote:
| It is not, you just aren't the customer but the product
| sold.
| shlant wrote:
| free as in beer is clearly what they mean. They are a
| non-profit talking about pricing.
| jdranczewski wrote:
| For large communities, the very granular role-based
| permission system of Discord can be put to some good use,
| I don't think Slack has a trivially equivalent feature.
| tempestn wrote:
| The biggest one for me is that Discord will keep all
| history for free servers, whereas Slack only gives you
| access to 3 months iirc (and as of a year or two ago, has
| started permanently deleting older content).
| moffkalast wrote:
| Dude, Slack deletes everything almost immediately unless
| you have a paid version which isn't cheap.
| pxx wrote:
| reliable message delivery, lol. slack drops messages
| silently. it is not fit for purpose.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| How many of them let me turn up/down or mute individual
| participants in a group voice call?
| ekianjo wrote:
| "easier" - what really matters is end user freedom, the
| rest is just decoration
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| Apparently not because they have 200mill users.
|
| I also value end user freedom, but I also accept reality.
| And I guarantee you you have compromised on your
| freedom/anonymity for convenience online. We all have.
| And ultimately discord is so turnkey that most people
| just don't care
| morshu9001 wrote:
| I'm in a Signal chat for a bar trivia group for some
| reason. I've missed invitations a few times cause it
| silently got out of date. But at least Obama can't read
| my messages.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| You compromised your freedom, then. Signal is a central-
| server network with a license that means you can't
| legally modify the client and use it on the network, and
| it identifies people by their phone numbers.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| The two nice features it has. I don't need bots to exist.
| ekianjo wrote:
| There is no binary version of how everyone is
| compromised. Because I refuse a bunch of applications
| like Discord I can assure you my footprint is lesser than
| those who use it.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| I agree completely. My point is that people simply will
| do that though, so instead of approaching it with
| hostility and judgment you should approach it with
| understanding and, if they're willing to hear it, maybe
| as an opportunity to educate. Proud proclamations and
| judgment won't get people to see how important this is.
|
| It's not just "window dressing." UX matters. So you need
| to talk to people in a way that acknowledges why they
| want those conveniences in the first place. It's the same
| reason I recommend Plex to some people and Jellyfin to
| others.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Wrong. What really matters is delivering dopamine reward
| signals in the user's brain. Everything else is just a
| mechanism.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Y'all forgot that the only reason we're on Discord was
| because MS actively killed Skype. Skype was much better
| software circa 2012 before MS let vulnerabilities run
| rampant, degraded the UI, and moved off the remarkably robust
| P2P calling system.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| I never had a Skype call work properly on the first try,
| even before Microsoft broke it
| shaky-carrousel wrote:
| I too remember Skype's universal salute: "do you hear
| me?"
| direwolf20 wrote:
| That's known as the millennial pause. Older generations
| like millennials want to ensure a communication is
| working before committing information, while GenZ and
| Alpha just start talking.
|
| It's named after the pause after pressing the record
| button while you check it changes shape, but "can you
| hear me?" is the same thing.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| I'm gen Z. You had to start Skype with "can you hear me"
| because the answer was usually no (via text). I now do
| that with phone calls because forced bluetooth has made
| headsets less reliable than before.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| On the contrary, older people properly announce themself
| on the phone, while younger people often don't answer at
| all, and let there be silence, until the other gives up,
| and asks who has picked up the phone.
| elboru wrote:
| I hear people saying that every day in Slack and Teams
| morshu9001 wrote:
| Teams is broken too
| shaky-carrousel wrote:
| I must be a lucky one because calls always worked for me
| on teams. On the other hand, everything else is a
| dumpster fire.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Honestly... People deserve this. They deserve the
| consequences. They were warned. They _chose_ this.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| Ok, do your worst. I got on Discord cause they offered the
| best free service, I'll just as easily leave if that ever
| stops being the case. "Teen mode" seems not bad, I need
| something worse.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| You will _not_ leave easily. There 's no point to you
| leaving if all your friends remain. Chances are they
| could not care less about these issues and would rather
| leave you instead of mass switching to a less convenient
| alternative.
| quietsegfault wrote:
| Ha ha joke's on you! I'd need to _have_ friends in the
| first place!
| prophesi wrote:
| Yeah, we've seen time and time again that the network
| effect of social media makes it next to impossible to
| actually move to a different service. The Discord feature
| set is great and all, but it's the fact that your
| communities are there that keeps everyone on it. I'm
| hoping they get enough backlash / canceled Nitro from
| this because I don't want to lose the communities I'm in.
| Already did that with Facebook/Instagram/etc and it
| sucks.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| I'd leave with or without them if it sucked. They can and
| will text me instead, just like they do since I left
| WhatsApp (because it sucked). The communities of randoms
| I don't even know irl can't, but that's exactly why it
| doesn't matter so much.
|
| That and my friends probably care the same or more than
| me about privacy.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| They also don't care. But I do care, chose the opposite,
| and will still bear the consequences, once a sizable
| population does certain things.
| bilekas wrote:
| Thank you for reminding me, I've been meaning to cancel for
| months but it's only 2.50EUR and having to sign into my apple
| account was such an effort I never got around to it.
| mkaic wrote:
| Just cancelled mine after reading this comment, I only really
| cared about the bigger file uploads and the HD screen-sharing
| anyways and I can live without those.
|
| Now that I think of it, I bet I could host a decent instance of
| some open-source alternative in a public cloud for around the
| same cost as what I paid for Nitro ($100 a year)...
| nubinetwork wrote:
| WebRTC is ridiculously easy.
| aaarrm wrote:
| I think there are actually discord client mods which let you
| stream in high quality anyway.
| RulerOf wrote:
| >I only really cared about ... the HD screen-sharing
|
| I bought and canceled nitro in a single day because it's a
| bad product.
|
| They promise HD screen-sharing, but it's only for _my_
| screen. When I hopped into a call, the other user's screen
| share is illegible. Higher quality is still locked behind a
| "Buy Nitro" message.
|
| If I'm paying for an improved experience, I should be able to
| get it.
| mdavidn wrote:
| It boggles my mind that they need a photo ID to prove that my
| 9-year-old account with a saved credit card belongs to an
| adult. The linked Steam account is 18 years old.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Yeah because they don't haha. It boggles the mind because the
| headline is clickbait.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Youtube routinely asks for ID on accounts that are already
| of drinking age, they dgaf they want document scans they
| can use for profiling and to likely sell to 3rd parties.
| Permit wrote:
| > and to likely sell to 3rd parties.
|
| Can you provide literally any evidence that would suggest
| this is the case?
| ted_bunny wrote:
| This sort of thing is common enough that simply
| establishing means, motive and opportunity are convincing
| to me. If not yet then soon. You can't hope for a smoking
| gun every time.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| Give it a couple years for the inevitable data breach to
| leak all the details
| randunel wrote:
| Since selling PII is a common practice in the US
| industry, I believe the onus is reversed, they need to
| prove that they delete/keep-private.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Yep, that's my reasoning too.
| matt_kantor wrote:
| Given how YouTube makes money from advertising, I suspect
| it's more profitable for them to keep the data to
| themselves and use it for targeting. I would not be
| surprised if they also share it with Adsense & other
| Alphabet entities (and presumably with government
| agencies), but am doubtful beyond that.
|
| Not that this is much better than directly selling to
| third parties.
| MaxikCZ wrote:
| they don't do this for age verification, they do this to
| build dataset to sell.
| sebstefan wrote:
| > 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.
| istoleabread wrote:
| Yes, I definitely trust the multi-billion dollar
| corporation regarding my data
| sebstefan wrote:
| Discord is an app that's so routinely reverse-engineered
| there are projects with a million+ users designed around
| patching changes to it, straight in the binary.
|
| https://betterdiscord.app/
|
| Do you think their big evil plan is to make up a lie that
| will last maybe 3 weeks, jeopardize the user trust and
| lose nitro revenue
|
| Surely there is _so much_ money to be made selling random
| people 's faces.
|
| If they tell you they're not selling your data they're
| not selling your data. What you should worry about is
| incompetence
|
| Not even 6 months ago a third party they used for ID
| verification got breached
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8jmzd972leo
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Do you think they reverse engineer the server side?
| sebstefan wrote:
| Oh hey Direwolf I've contributed some stuff to your mods.
|
| You mean if they lied about just the IDs but not the
| faces? The paragraph quoted mentions that the
| verification is done client side, "never leaves your
| device".
|
| If we admit that they're saying they won't store it, then
| secretly selling your IDs data behind your back, they
| have to account for that revenue in their books, put it
| in their privacy policies or do it illegally, it's weak
| to whistleblowers, third parties get breached all the
| time (as well as yourself), and you have to trust the
| people you're selling this to. It's not credible.
|
| There's similar debates with Whatsapp and their E2E
| encryption. Read this
|
| https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2026/02/02/whats
| app...
| alt227 wrote:
| > If they tell you they're not selling your data they're
| not selling your data.
|
| Oh you naive child. /s
|
| If they tell you they are not selling your data, its
| because they have a license agreement with another
| company which is selling your data. 'They' very
| specifically arent selling it, however they are very much
| profitting from other companies using it.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| > Do you think their big evil plan is to make up a lie
| that will last maybe 3 weeks, jeopardize the user trust
| and lose nitro revenue
|
| ???? Yes? Companies nuke their core product all the time
| for the sake of a big IPO number.
| eska wrote:
| _Surely there is so much money to be made selling random
| people 's faces._
|
| I really hope I misread sarcasm in that statement.
| Because of course there is a _lot_ of money in that
| sebstefan wrote:
| How much? 2 bucks per user?
|
| Their paid users shell out 3 a month...
|
| And then you think of the real world
|
| > secretly selling your IDs data behind your back, they
| have to account for that revenue in their books, put it
| in their privacy policies or do it illegally, it's weak
| to whistleblowers, third parties get breached all the
| time (as well as yourself), and you have to trust the
| people you're selling this to. It's not credible.
| trashb wrote:
| Of course discord has no track record of overextending
| their privacy policy and selling data you would not
| expect (sarcasm).
|
| For example but not limited to "programs you run and
| other system specific information". I believe I read a
| while back they recorded titles of all opened windows but
| I can't seem to find a reference for that.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/rsxeee/you_shou
| ld_...
| ornornor wrote:
| Right, because that never happened to discord or any
| other multibillion VC fueled company that offers its
| services for free. See also meta repeatedly lying about
| absolutely anything that has to do with privacy.
| Lambdanaut wrote:
| from the article:
|
| `For most adults, age verification won't be required, as
| Discord's age inference model uses account information such
| as account tenure, device and activity data, and aggregated,
| high-level patterns across Discord communities. Discord does
| not use private messages or any message content in this
| process`
| airstrike wrote:
| Cancelled
| html5cat wrote:
| cancelled. thanks for suggesting
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Why should we send a message?
| safety1st wrote:
| I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but I read the announcement
| and other than the risk of a slippery slope into more invasive
| ID demands, I'm not sure I have a huge problem with it.
|
| The default experience will be the "teen" experience - they
| list what that entails - stuff that's flagged as
| adult/NSFW/etc. is blurred out until your age is verified,
| which for most(?) people will require ID or face scan.
| DMs/friend requests from people you don't know take some extra
| clicks to view. Fine.
|
| It depends on how broad the definition of adult content ends up
| being I guess, but I'm simply not convinced that requiring ID
| to view "adult" content is the end of the world. If that means
| porn, I'm 100% OK with it, put porn behind gates. It has become
| far too easy to access. It's 2026 and we now have a generation
| of gooning addicts out there who never have actual sex and it's
| basically a guarantee that they won't find partners or start
| families any time soon, exacerbating an already problematic
| decline in the birth rate. This is not a version of society or
| anyone's "rights" that I care to defend. You want to goon, show
| ID. That's how it was before the Internet anyway.
|
| On the other hand if it means any speech that the platform
| deems to be "controversial" will be blurred out then my
| response will not be to submit ID, I'll simply limit how I use
| the platform. Anonymous speech continues to matter and needs
| protection. But Discord was never the entity that was going to
| provide that protection.
|
| I mean Discord is a gaming chat room. Expectations should be
| set by that fact. I don't need a gaming chat room to be NSFW,
| or even host i.e. political speech really. I get that people
| have used it for more than gaming, but it was always pretty
| clear what it was. If people don't like that this gaming chat
| room no longer supports other uses, they should switch to an
| alternative.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Clearly the outrage is about the slippery slope and the
| current techno-fascism gripping the US. I'm not being
| sarcastic.
|
| You do it for the children now, you poo-poo concerns because
| "who uses discord for non gaming anyway" and you're just
| letting the foxes in the henhouse.
|
| Twelve months from now and they'll want it for every chat.
| safety1st wrote:
| The problem with the slippery slope argument is that it's a
| fallacy. That is the origin of the term, it describes a
| type of argument that's logically invalid. Yeah I am
| concerned that things could get worse and this might be the
| first step to broader censorship that we don't want, but a
| fallacious argument alone is unpersuasive to anyone who
| tries to form opinions rationally. Specific evidence needs
| to exist for the claim for it to be convincing.
|
| Since slippery slopes are invalid by nature they're a type
| of argument that can be made for pretty much anything. If
| the case here is that a slippery slope is being used to
| defend pornographers and the "right to goon," I'm not on
| board. I think we have a long way to go to roll back porn's
| grip on teens and adults alike and reduce the harm it does
| to relationships, and this is just the beginning. Take for
| instance how Instagram at this point is basically a lead
| generation service for fraudulent OnlyFans businesses that
| sell parasocial relationships with a porn model's image
| where the customers aren't actually talking to her, they're
| talking to a team of guys in a basement in Eastern Europe
| somewhere. I think you shut down OnlyFans, you prosecute
| Meta, and to the extent where Discord is doing the same
| thing IG is, you prosecute Discord too. There's a long long
| list of things that needs to happen and shutting down the
| porn pipeline for teens on Discord is just the beginning.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Taking away porn access would be great except you can't
| do it at scale without with eliminating porn from the
| Internet altogether and prosecuting anyone who shares
| any, or by eliminating privacy and anonymity from the
| Internet altogether.
|
| I agree with your take on the damage of porn to the youth
| but don't yet agree that asking the government to watch
| every conversation is worth it. (That's what you're
| enabling long term)
| safety1st wrote:
| In order to make sure businesses aren't giving porn to
| teens, you can require they do meaningful age
| verification at the time they want to provide the porn.
| You can impose criminal penalties on a domestic business
| which doesn't do this, and other penalties on foreign
| businesses (such as locking them out of the payments
| network). You don't need to get 100%, even partial
| success will act as a deterrent. This is how the world
| worked before the Internet, you needed to show ID to buy
| porn, and public opinion is in favor of the world working
| this way again. Crucially, penalties on businesses (not
| consumers, and starting with the biggest ones) are the
| way you need to go because this is the only way this can
| feasibly be enforced.
|
| The libertarian concerns around privacy, freedom of
| expression and surveillance are all valid, but they're
| downstream. We have hard evidence that porn damages
| sexual health and relationships, and it has basically
| zero value to society; it's like digital cigarettes in
| this sense. We can't allow ourselves to be paralyzed on
| this issues because of a theoretical slippery slope.
| Whether Discord is going about this the right way is open
| for debate, and whether legislation solves the porn
| problem without introducing surveillance risks is also a
| good discussion to have. But the porn as well as the
| fraud and exploitation which always seem to accompany
| that industry need to go. Libertarians would be wise not
| to conflate the endorsement of privacy with an
| endorsement of porn -- most people support the former to
| some degree, but when people come forward with
| enthusiastic support for the latter, more often than not
| their motivation is addiction or profit, not a crowd the
| defenders of privacy want to be lumped in with.
| trashb wrote:
| I don't care what degenerate stuff you look at as you are
| free to do so.
|
| Privacy is a fundamental right, at that my opinion one of
| the more important ones, as when the right to privacy is
| removed the other ones are impossible to keep.
|
| To give up the right to privacy because you don't want
| kids looking at degenerate stuff on the internet is
| stupid, additionally the kids will work around your
| barriers.
|
| How about we teach kids (and adults) the dangers, putting
| the responsibility on the consumer instead of
| micromanaging/censoring everyone's information intake.
|
| If a minor drives in a car without a license we also
| don't require the car brand to install license & age
| verification in each car. We punish the kid that did it.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Outside of formal logic an argument does not need to be
| logically sound to have merit. You are extrapolating from
| "logical fallacy" to (something approximating) "invalid
| line of reasoning in most or all cases" which is simply
| not correct.
|
| There are many potentially slippery slopes in politics.
| The extent to which they prove to be a problem in
| practice depends entirely on context. Approximately none
| of those cases will involve formal logic.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| First it was "just extreme porn", then "just porn", then
| "anywhere that could potentially contain adult content",
| then VPNs, now all social media, all in about a year.
| You're claiming slippery slopes aren't real while in the
| gift shop at Splash Mountain.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| In Russia none of that slippery slope stuff happened.
| Just they murdered journalists and opposition, installed
| TPUs at every ISP and passed a law making any VPN related
| advice illegal. And people are fine with that apparently
|
| In Thailand porn was straight up illegal for ages and
| everything else was sane and open... until new government
| decided to kill freedom of speech.
|
| So slippery slope is illusion. If government is bad it
| don't need to try to be so complicated and gradual. It
| can't even think so far ahead, they will no longer be
| elected when that times comes.
|
| As for social media banning for teens that's just common
| sense. Social media is fuming pile of garbage designed to
| make people feel miserable so that corporate overlords
| make $$$ https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58570353.amp
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| There's a trivial way of fixing social media without mass
| surveillance or free speech restrictions: Just put a
| punitive tax on advertising revenue. People can say
| whatever they want, but the incentives behind social
| media disappear. This won't be implemented because this
| was never about making society a better place.
|
| And your examples only show that where there's no
| safeguards, governments don't need to be subtle, but in
| semi-functional democracies, they still need to at least
| pretend to be electable.
| tikitaviriki2 wrote:
| No, it started with "protecting the children" around
| 2010, and followed the bit-by-bit step-by-step boiling
| the frog approach for years, until the grip on the
| internet (as well as offline publications) became strong
| enough to do you know what to you know whom.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| pls explain how 2010 is related to current censorship
|
| it's not slippery slope when it's things that happened at
| different times. there are examples where x did not lead
| to y as well as where y happened without x happening
| before it.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| We're all going to have to scan our faces and upload our IDs
| just to use the internet because of your weird obsession with
| birth rates? Wonderful.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| > we're all
|
| Speak for yourself, I didn't touch discord for 3 years.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I don't use it, but it doesn't start or stop at Discord.
| Age checking is already implemented as live face video &
| ID uploads and already deployed by every large tech
| company all over the world. They just have to flip a
| switch in our market.
|
| To use my phone, Google wants me to verify my identity
| and age[1][2].
|
| They're boiling the frog, give it a few years, and if you
| want to use any internet connected device at all, you'll
| need to sacrifice your face and ID as tribute. If you
| want to talk to someone else, you'll need to identify
| yourself with the platform or network on which you
| communicate. If you want to run an app that serves you
| any user generated content in any capacity, you'll need
| to identify yourself first.
|
| [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-play-users-are-
| starting...
|
| [2]
| https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/10071085?hl=en
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Why do you want the children to grow up in an Orwellian
| dystopia?
| xyst wrote:
| I canceled that shit years ago.
| intellix wrote:
| Cancelled. Was a right job trying to get in as it just
| refreshed everytime I tried on mobile. When I went to the site
| separately after clicking subscribe it magically let me in.
|
| The cancel login flow didn't inform me that it found my login
| suspicious but the subscribe one did
| erfgh wrote:
| I bet they expect the canceled payments. Management will push
| through.
| nekusar wrote:
| Just did.
|
| And the community im interacting with is looking into self-
| hosted options.
| gloosx wrote:
| can't wait to beat it with a face-swap or some random driving
| license found on the internet
| pjmlp wrote:
| Great, yet another reason not to use it.
| gigel82 wrote:
| It's clear "age verification" is not something we'll get rid of,
| so I think instead we should push for a publicly verifiable
| double-blind (zero-knowledge proof) solution that can ensure it
| only gives the websites a boolean and doesn't allow correlation
| from either side.
|
| The alternative is having to give your ID to Facebook, Google,
| Microsoft, and all the other bad actors...
| areoform wrote:
| There's a special phenomenon that happens as startups grow large.
| They begin to drift away from the ground truth of their product,
| their users and how it's used. It's a drift away from users. And
| a drift towards internal politics. A lot like Rasmussen's drift
| towards danger, https://risk-engineering.org/concept/Rasmussen-
| practical-dri...
|
| As startups grow beyond a critical threshold, they start to
| attract a certain type of person who is more interested in
| mercenarily growing within the company / setting themselves up
| for future corporate rise than building a product. These people
| play to the company's internal court and create deeply bitter
| environments that leads to more mission-driven individuals
| leaving the company.
|
| Which is why we end up with decisions like OnlyFans hitting $1B /
| yr in revenue (with extreme profitability) off of porn and then
| deciding to ban porn,
| https://www.ft.com/content/5468f11b-cb98-4f72-8fb2-63b9623b7...
|
| Or, Digg deciding to kill its "bury" button and doing a radical
| "redesign" that made Reddit worth billions.
|
| Unity's decision to update its pricing. Sonos' app "redesign" etc
| etc.
|
| Corporate vampires will cheerfully slaughter your golden goose.
| Or, in the best case, severely cripple it.
| tyleo wrote:
| I don't think this is a phenomenon. At the best places I've
| worked, I've seen success correlated with actual user value.
| You do find climbers at certain places but I tend to think it's
| a large reason they fail.
|
| Also, I don't think your OnlyFans analogy holds up. My
| understanding is that their threat to ban porn was a stunt. A
| pretty effective one.
| tyre wrote:
| Do you have reading on it being a stunt? That seems like a
| huge gamble. You're basically inviting competitors and
| pissing off your supply (content creators.)
|
| If they view you as unstable, unreliable, or adversely
| motivated, they will look for alternatives to at minimum
| diversify. It's their livelihood.
| tyleo wrote:
| I don't know for sure but it's been implied that it was an
| intentional action to garner public outrage at the banks
| who wanted to stop processing their transactions.
| guluarte wrote:
| that's true, guilds moved to discord because it was easier to
| use than teamspeak
| canada_dry wrote:
| In pretty much all cases, the companies in question had peaked
| were experiencing declining growth and attempting to do a hail-
| Mary... and failed miserably.
|
| Compare Digg and slash. One completely died, the other has
| stuck with its formula and hasn't disappeared, but has just
| faded into irrelevance.
| marcd35 wrote:
| I think this decision is more defensive than "losing touch with
| their customers." The winds are shifting in other countries
| that are cracking down on social media use for children.
| Discord does not want to get caught in the shit storm of legal
| issues if they fail to comply. This is a proactive measure.
| Aerroon wrote:
| Yeah, this really seems like it's our politicians screwing
| us. The older I get the more harmful politicians seem to be.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| If you're in a democracy, that's the call to pay attention
| and vote in helpful representatives.
| Aerroon wrote:
| There are no helpful representatives is the problem. It
| doesn't matter who you vote for, because they're all just
| varying degrees of bad.
|
| There isn't a single politician I could vote for that
| could improve this situation. Even if there was, they
| would just get swept away by the ocean of people who
| actually believe in this "think of the children"
| narrative.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| If that's the case, you need to grow the representatives
| you want. Many of the people voted into mayor or governor
| didn't pop up out of the ether. They were working in
| local boards or as comptrollers or even business owners.
|
| That's why local elections are so important, despite the
| dreadfully low turnout.
| Aerroon wrote:
| A mayor or governor can't change these things though.
| That's part of the problem since I'm in the EU. It's
| irrelevant what representatives in my country want
| because they're too small of a minority. But even among
| those representatives there's nobody that actually cares
| about issues like this.
|
| > _That 's why local elections are so important, despite
| the dreadfully low turnout._
|
| Local elections here are about parties, not candidates.
| You can give your vote to Jim, but it's counted as a vote
| for Jim's party instead. The party picks whomever was
| their #1 candidate for the locality.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Youre joking, right? Nobody i have ever voted for has won
| anything
| nemomarx wrote:
| This is the real issue, and it's why just cancelling your
| discord subs and moving to stoat or etc isn't a solid long-
| term strategy. If KOSA passes in the us basically every
| platform will have to do something like this.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| That's a big if. And yes, if push comes to shove I guess
| I'll become a forum pirate. I won't tie my real ID up in
| anymore private servers than absolutely necessary (which as
| of now is governmental entities and banks, a highly
| regulated sector).
| nemomarx wrote:
| I don't think it's that big of an if anymore - there's
| worldwide pressure and interest groups to get some kind
| of age check on all these companies, at least. Keep some
| alternate contacts for friends at least
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| There's always been pressure. People have been fighting
| for decades on this. The only thing that's changed is how
| they've tried to disenfranchise dissent.
|
| There still is push back, so I won't say this is a losing
| battle. I'll keep fighting regardless.
|
| >Keep some alternate contacts for friends at least
|
| They know where to reach me. Whether they care enough to
| go outside their gardens to talk is another matter.
| areoform wrote:
| Multi-billion dollar corporations have never had any
| problems lobbying for their interests before.
|
| Perhaps collecting everyone's messages, social links,
| scanning their faces, and then adding ID data in for
| "ground truth" is the real interest here?
| nemomarx wrote:
| They were already collecting everyone's messages and
| social links, and would still be doing it without this.
| But I'm not sure if the age verification / ID collection
| is really as useful for advertising compared to just
| being able to read all of your chats, right?
| areoform wrote:
| > this decision is more defensive
|
| That is prioritizing internal politics over the realities of
| their product. The Discord userbase is young. And it serves a
| variety of use cases / the same account can be used to access
| open source communities, coordinate video game time with
| friends, interact professionally, and have a supercharged
| group chat for close IRL friends.
|
| In other words, Discord is the app where maladjusted early
| 20-something leaked classified data to impress his teenage
| friends. https://www.washingtonpost.com/discord-leaks/
|
| Any decision that isn't along the Apple's hard privacy stance
| lines, "we'll protect user privacy" is prioritizing the
| discomfort of that decision over the user base / use case.
| raincole wrote:
| It's not 'internal politics,' what are you talking about.
| It's the politics in our real world. UK gov is requiring ID
| verification for adult sites. France gov is calling a
| social media ban for teenagers.
|
| We're talking about elected European governments here. It's
| not like Discord shareholders just woke up this morning and
| decided to make themselves poor.
|
| Switching to another centralized service won't do shit as
| long as voters keep falling for 'protect the kids.'
| Morromist wrote:
| I think this is about "losing touch with their customers" and
| the need to IPO and make money from the customers.
|
| The thing is, most of discords users are in countries which
| haven't yet passed laws that ban children from using apps
| like discord. If they were privacy focused they could do this
| only where the law requires it, like Australia.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| I think this is actually a different growth problem, which is
| that they became so large that several countries are designing
| new regulations that specifically target them. I think discord
| is trying to spin this into a regulation-as-moat opportunity
| instead of dying by a thousand papercuts.
| m132 wrote:
| There's a bright side to this. With people getting used to every
| website casually requiring a face scan and ID pic, setting up
| phishing campaigns and opening rogue bank accounts is going to
| become easier than ever.
| montacir_AL wrote:
| no more discord GenZ
| hxegon wrote:
| Honestly I think this is necessary. I'm not sure how heavy handed
| their exact implementation of stuff like content filtering would
| be, but I've seen way too much sketchy stuff on discord servers.
| Predators, blackmail, harassment campaigns, it's not great and a
| lot of the servers I'm in already require ID verification by mods
| to even chat in general. It'd be great if this was opt-in on a
| server by server basis but I could see that being a problem too.
|
| I've seen way too many governments / companies use "protect the
| children" as a way to try and push overreaching garbage policy,
| however I think this one actually might help.
|
| That said, depends on exact details of how they want to do this.
| We'll see how it goes.
| sneak wrote:
| Showing ID doesn't stop crime or criminals, or stop fake
| accounts.
|
| I'm simply going to scan someone else's ID to keep my account.
| ballooney wrote:
| What are your favourite active irc channels for technical
| hobbies?
| serf wrote:
| to everyone that tried to persuade me to move my projects from
| forums to discord :
|
| phpBB never made me scan my face.
| anonnon wrote:
| Thanks to all the OSS projects that adopted this in preference to
| mailing lists to better appeal to zoomers. (And note that while
| these projects often do still have mailing lists, most of the
| actual discussion now takes place on Discord, behind an
| authwall.)
| psychoslave wrote:
| I'm so glad I always refused to accept this one.
|
| I don't know what people need as lesson. We already have so many
| FLOW options, and yet they are so many running after the last
| shiny ready for enshitification ready to go platform.
|
| Expect them to sell your whole life to whatever party with enough
| money to throw at their face.
| sneak wrote:
| Reminder: "age verification" is just another way of spelling
| "every single user of the service must provide a government ID to
| use it".
| jesse_dot_id wrote:
| No thanks
| AbraKdabra wrote:
| Yeah good fucking luck with that. Time for the "discord
| alternatives" search on Google.
| dgxyz wrote:
| My social group are moving to a private IRC server already. This
| is probably the best outcome really. I don't think any of us are
| under 50. But we have relatives who remember when this would have
| resulted in some of us being killed. I wish I was
| sensationalising but I'm not.
| Bender wrote:
| For the happy-clicky-emoji types one can put TheLounge [1] or
| Convos [2] or other web front-ends [3] in front of IRC. They
| don't scale as well but it would allow for those that don't
| care for the underlying IRC network. If it does not exist yet
| there is probably a way to write in a voice chat link handler
| for Mumble. It's a separate app but very low CPU/memory
| footprint and maybe that could weed out some low quality
| members.
|
| [1] - https://thelounge.chat/
|
| [2] - https://convos.chat/
|
| [3] - https://ircv3.net/software/clients#web-clients
| AndroidKitKat wrote:
| I set up this exact combo (thelounge + mumble) for my friends
| last night after this news. It's not a complete 1:1, but I
| think it'll meet our needs. I'm going on a road trip and as a
| fun experiment I'm going to try to get Claude to churn on
| integrating Mumble into thelounge, somehow, to mimic the
| Discord client. I'd really prefer something other than Jitsi
| for screen sharing, since I'm a weirdo and don't like the UX
| of making a 'call' and much rather prefer the 'hop in' style
| VC like Discord or Mumble.
| eshack94 wrote:
| Is this the final straw that kills their platform?
| jonstaab wrote:
| FOSS, optionally self-hosted alternative built on nostr:
| https://flotilla.social/
| hollow-moe wrote:
| Glad I left months ago
| toephu2 wrote:
| Glad I never signed up to begin with
| mlsu wrote:
| This is coming for all web-based services soon. Don't think for a
| second it's just Discord.
|
| It's just a small step ahead of "phone number required" auth.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| IIRC EU was going for a zero-knowledge-proof of age system, but I
| guess discord isn't going to be using that then. (I don't think
| the ZKP system is available yet)
|
| (here's part of it: https://digital-
| strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-rel... )
| mac-monet wrote:
| This is the true solution that gets the best of all worlds. The
| tech is just too immature still but this will change soon I
| hope.
|
| For those curious, check out zkPassport
| (https://zkpassport.id/)
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| It was nice while it lasted. Account removed. I understand the
| rationale and I don't care anyway. It is a shame, because one of
| the niche forums I was occasionally visiting there does not offer
| other locations.. but I would like to think this may change
| people's mind.
|
| Yay to further fragmentation:D
| poidos wrote:
| Been meaning to cancel nitro and move off to Matrix or something,
| thanks for the push Discord!
| smcleod wrote:
| I truly do hope this sinks Discord. It's a dreadful platform and
| an information black hole.
| moi2388 wrote:
| Calling it right now. There will be a data breach and we'll find
| out they in fact did not delete the ID data.
| SirensOfTitan wrote:
| I miss the era of Internet forums. They didn't need to be
| federated, just simple deployments of MyBB, vBulletin, PHP,
| Xenforo and so on.
|
| I made a lot of friends on those communities growing up, and it
| inspired me to go into software because I saw how it brought
| people together.
|
| And I still sorely miss the WhatCD forums. While I didn't make
| any friends there, it shaped my early experiences with music
| which still reverberates through me today.
|
| Even with the reinvigoration of new ideas from LLMs, tech feels
| like it has been languishing for well over a decade at this
| point. The playbook is to disrupt traditional industry at a loss,
| then enshittify when competitors are gone. A lot of tech plays
| really feel like some form of: bring the yellow pages into the
| digital realm and overcharge for facilitating that access.
| Finding a firm that even uses AI outside of a chatbot UX is rare.
| duncanscomments wrote:
| >And I still sorely miss the WhatCD forums. While I didn't make
| any friends there, it shaped my early experiences with music
| which still reverberates through me today.
|
| Could not relate to this more. Spent my formative years in
| those forums and they genuinely helped mold many of the tastes
| and interests that have stuck with me into adulthood. Not to
| over-romanticize, at the end of the day it was just a forum on
| a music tracker - but the sense of community and sheer
| diversity of thread topics made it such an interesting place to
| peruse.
|
| Discord certainly has its applications. But since it became the
| defacato community tool, I find it essentially useless.
| Discussions are ephemeral (from a UX standpoint at least), and
| much more constrained. Its difficult to lurk and only chime in
| now and then unless you're regularly online.
| hinata08 wrote:
| I hope Discord understands the risks they pose to their audience
| when they open source their IDs again.
|
| Discord is used by a bunch of closeted users having pseudos, who
| wouldn't do the same activities on it if everyone had their
| names.
|
| A part of the Discord users is from countries from which Discord
| isn't even officially accessible (eg China) or where involvement
| in LGBT discussions could result to death row (Afghanis are still
| on Discord)
|
| For me, a company that open sourced 70,000 IDs and ask for
| moooooore just weeks later is just a joke about the sharing
| economy
|
| The problem isn't even for new users. Some users have over a
| decade of private hobbies and will now need to associate their
| governement ID to their profile. Discord pinky swears they ask
| but don't keep this time, which isn't enough.
|
| Companies shouldn't be allowed to change such fundamental ToS
| after an account is created.
| lanyard-textile wrote:
| +1.
|
| It's a push out.
|
| That's fine. We'll take our attention elsewhere.
| prussia wrote:
| Discord also calculates a whole lot of (inferred) demographic
| information. Estimated age, gender, and surely much more. They
| also feed all the messages into a ML model, which guesses what
| people are talking about, and pushes a notification to other
| users. This is probably the culmination of all that, this is
| why they refuse to be e2e like every other reasonable messaging
| app...
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Discord is focused on large groups. E2EE doesn't work in this
| case. Group management overhead traffic is too high and too
| unreliable, and a bad actor could just join the group under a
| pseudonym to log messages. Discord isn't E2EE for the same
| reason Hacker News isn't.
| thefz wrote:
| I REALLY doubt anyone XYZ while XYZ is illegal/pursued/banned
| in their country hasn't already extensively thought about their
| own threat model, and that disclosing this kind of infomration
| on a public platform is not safe.
| sibellavia wrote:
| > Discord is used by a bunch of closeted users having pseudos,
| who wouldn't do the same activities on it if everyone had their
| names.
|
| Exactly. I am sure they won't share their face or ID and will
| move somewhere else. Big opportunity for other platforms to
| stand up and grow their user base.
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| Finally the kids will be safe. We did it everyone! /s
| storus wrote:
| I use Discord to talk to university students (top 10 in CS) and
| it only works with university email. I am wondering if I am going
| to be treated as <13 from now on as well or if they waive it in
| our case.
| jcranmer wrote:
| It is possible for 12-year-olds to attend university.
| reactordev wrote:
| So glad I never put my eggs in the discord basket
| lacoolj wrote:
| So how do we know (other than obvious, NSFW servers) if we are in
| a server that is not "teen appropriate"? I don't feel the need to
| prove I'm old af, so if I'm in a server for sports betting, is
| that not teen appropriate? What about a pokemon server with a lot
| of swearing? Or just a custom server made by a friend for web
| dev, but has lots of random politics thrown around?
|
| I really just don't know what isn't "safe" for teens, so
| hopefully this will be pretty clear somewhere.
| unixhero wrote:
| Good to reduce fraud, isn't this zero trust in practice.
| bilekas wrote:
| So a good EU OpenSource alternative : https://stoat.chat/
| formerly known as Revolt.
| 8xeh wrote:
| They'll have to "partner" with some company that's in the
| business of building a database of IDs and biometrics to do AI
| things with. Other companies in this space (Jumio) have a bad
| habit of ignoring privacy laws and will keep your information for
| years.
|
| I wouldn't mind showing my ID to a person (in person), but
| there's no way I'm letting some company get a scan of my ID or
| passport to store in some giant database that's a rich target for
| hackers. Might as well give them access to all my bank accounts
| (Plaid) too.
|
| (It sure would be nice if there were a national privacy law in
| the US.)
|
| Also, it's illegal for companies to use facial recognition in my
| jurisdiction, so if I allowed them to "verify" me, they'd be
| breaking the law.
| rasz wrote:
| >They'll have to "partner" with some company that's in the
| business of building a database of IDs and biometrics to do AI
| things with.
|
| Palantir? /s
| bilekas wrote:
| When will it be normalized to be able to say "Parents should just
| be doing their job" before we decide to ruin everything online
| for everyone else.
|
| Although I know it's not really about protecting the kids. I
| wonder if the politicians are exempt from this too as they were
| chat control.
|
| > The scanning would apply to all EU citizens, except EU
| politicians. They might exempt themselves from the law under
| "professional secrecy" rules.
|
| https://nextcloud.com/blog/how-the-eu-chat-control-law-is-a-...
|
| What about my "PERSONAL SECRECY" ?
| EduardoBautista wrote:
| Saying parents should be doing their jobs will lose you votes,
| that's why. Anything that implies personal responsibility is
| political suicide.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Parents need to have personal responsibility, but
| corporations get to use section 230 to absolve themselves of
| any. Game seems rigged.
| ethin wrote:
| > Parents need to have personal responsibility, but
| corporations get to use section 230 to absolve themselves
| of any. Game seems rigged.
|
| This is not at all what section 230 does. All section 230
| does is get rid of lawsuits that wouldn't be able to
| satisfy standing of a first amendment lawsuit or similar.
| Section 230 has to be one of the most misunderstood and
| confused laws known in the modern day. Absolutely nowhere
| in the text of the law does it say or imply that an
| interactive computer service, or the operator of such
| service, gets total immunity for anything and everything
| they do. Yet this myth is constantly perpetuated.
| bilekas wrote:
| As soon as politicians are also included in these acts, then
| you could see a shift in their opinions.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Passing off responsibility to parents is already the status
| quo. Hardly political suicide.
|
| Saying that companies should face some level of
| responsibility for their products is the dangerous move.
| That's part of why the Internet has barely been regulated.
| psychoslave wrote:
| Are parents also supposed to be blamed if society as a whole
| would let thrive streets with permanent civil war, drug
| barrons, organized child prostitution networks and so on?
|
| Of course parents must take care of their children. And of
| themselves. But they are only fragile humans and can bear
| only that much of a load in a day. Certainly there are people
| that drawn in negligent or even mistreating behaviors. That's
| not a valid reason to blame individual in general and
| abstract the societal constraints they all have to deal with.
| That's actually nothing special to parents.
| npunt wrote:
| Any idea that is based on "If everyone just..." is wishful
| thinking. Describe the mechanism by which you convince everyone
| to just do something.
| blharr wrote:
| Sure, but the ID solution is an "if everyone just gives up
| their privacy / anonymity / sensitive data" and the mechanism
| is by denial of service
|
| In fact its worse. Every site must also implement this
| security check. Or everyone must agree to just use sites and
| services that follow this policy. Otherwise anyone can just
| use another, often 'less safe' website.
| npunt wrote:
| I'm not advocating for that either, I'm only pointing out
| that "if everyone just" is a collective action problem that
| is a non-solution because it doesn't describe the mechanism
| by which everyone does something.
|
| Your example confuses the locus of control. The platform is
| making the choice and relies on user _inaction_ rather than
| action. Users as a whole basically always descend
| gradients, and if they like / are addicted to the service,
| they'll descend with enough momentum to carry them over
| one-time friction like an ID check. The null hypothesis is
| they continue using the service. For it to be an "if
| everyone just" answer, it would be "if everyone just
| decided to stop using these extremely sticky services"
| because that is the de facto choice they are presented
| with. And it similarly suffers from an "if everyone just"
| lack of plausible mechanism.
|
| The point of calling out non-solutions masquerading as
| solutions is to keep people's energy focused on possible
| but unstated solutions, rather than spending time blaming
| people for behavior largely determined by myriad immovable
| circumstances.
| terribleperson wrote:
| Pass a law that requires devices and software to support a
| per-device or per user account 'child' or 'minor' flag. The
| flag must be lockable with a password or another account.
| Pass a law that mandates that websites and content handle the
| flag appropriately, whether that means denying service or
| limiting access.
|
| This would protect children while only minimally infringing
| on privacy.
|
| The mechanism by which we make everyone 'just' is laws. The
| laws that are being passed are telling of the actual goals.
| npunt wrote:
| I too think this is likely the only workable solution. My
| bias is the OS/ecosystem layer is the right place to handle
| access to the digital world.
|
| However as digital access becomes more and more essential
| to doing anything in life, this makes the layer even more
| load bearing, so I wish to see a legal framework for
| privacy/security as well as appeals process for the painful
| edge cases where people get locked out for whatever reason.
| That problem is even harder.
| tosti wrote:
| Apt username. I already have to deal with non-functional
| wifi because of frequency band restrictions. And instead of
| buying physical media (or streaming), I have to "pirate"
| content because of DRM.
|
| Any hardware or software that disobeys the user is useless
| for the user. It just becomes a tool for power grabs.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Nothing in that description involves hardware or software
| disobeying the parent user. The parent has all the power.
| What's wrong with that?
| tosti wrote:
| It's fine if it's opt-in until the opt-in becomes opt-out
| and I get to use my old gear until it dies. That would
| still be fine with me except for the fact that my income
| and by extension wife and family depend on me using a
| computer. That would still be fine if somehow we could
| escape this system and still have food and shelter but
| that won't fly with the healthcare system we depend on.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I didn't see how one (admin) account setting a flag on
| another account could be anything _but_ opt-in. It 's
| really unclear to me what you're worried about, the whole
| world getting put onto child accounts or something? I
| don't think a law that bans the vast majority of online
| commerce would get any support, among other reasons.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I have a friend who is a social worker. Hearing stories from
| them, I think people severely overestimate the level of
| involvement that many parents have with their kids. Social
| workers who are checking in on middle school kids at the
| hospital with burn marks on their arms or elementary school
| kids who showed up under the influence of cannabis aren't also
| going to have time to enforce online safety.
|
| If this is what it means for a parent to "do their job" then
| what do you propose happens to parents who are unwilling or
| unable to police their kids' Discord account?
|
| For this reason, I think we are seeing the beginning of the end
| of low-trust social media. They can't tell if a user is a child
| or even a human. People will move to things like group chats
| because they don't rely on sending your ID to a verification
| service in the Philippines.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| Parents are just burnt out, I think. Online spaces have
| become so consolidated and enshittified that it's seriously a
| choice between basically keeping them offline - which is a
| very socially isolating thing to be these days - and letting
| a small number of faux-accountable monopolies ranging from
| Discord to Google and Meta call the shots. It's kind of a no-
| win situation.
|
| I'd love to have my kids in relatively small, intimate online
| spaces where I can't necessarily assume they will be perfect
| (nor do I want them to be - they deserve to have some room to
| learn to navigate problems for themselves) but I can at least
| assume they won't be overwhelmed by the impossibility of
| successfully navigating life in a globalized fishbowl. But if
| there's one thing late stage capitalism abhor, it's a self-
| contained community of real humans from which the powers that
| be can't extract "value".
| bilekas wrote:
| > Parents are just burnt out, I think.
|
| I'm sorry but I don't buy this. We have been parenting
| forever, parents get burnt out. That doesn't mean you just
| ignore what your kids are doing.
|
| It's your responsibility to be their guardians, not the
| government.
| antonymoose wrote:
| No one has the ability to monitor the frequency and
| volume of their children's social contact on a platform
| like Discord or Roblox. It would be a full-time job for
| me.
|
| Can we normalize "it takes a village" again? After all,
| we do let bars and liquor stores get a slap on the wrist
| for selling to minors. If you let a child into an adult
| movie theater you'd be in jail. Why do we pretend we
| don't live in a world with laws and standard conduct the
| second we connect to a modem?
| Brybry wrote:
| For a more fair comparison to liquor stores and adult
| movie theaters: it would be requiring people to be 18 to
| sign up for internet service, which is how it already
| works.
|
| Parents are buying the alcohol from the liquor store
| (internet service, which kids cannot buy themselves) and
| giving it to their kids.
|
| If you don't approve of the alcohol you're giving to your
| kids then stop giving it to them (it is legal in my state
| for parents to buy alcohol for their kids). So what if
| other kids are drinking too and it would be socially a
| pain for the kid? That's _always_ been true of having a
| parent with stricter rules.
|
| When I was a kid in the 90s my parents limited how much
| TV we could watch. I knew other kids who could only use
| the family computer for a limited time and while their
| parents were in the room.
|
| I sympathize with parents who do want to provide internet
| service to their kids and want better parental control
| software.
|
| But making the internet worse for everyone is not the
| way. Discord has _already_ had a partner leak IDs before.
| [1]
|
| [1] https://discord.com/press-releases/update-on-
| security-incide...
| AppleBananaPie wrote:
| I like the alcohol comparison it's interesting in how
| accurate it is and yet society does it.
|
| I also think it's obvious your comparisons of parents
| limiting time of things like this in the 90s is not
| apples to apples.
|
| Being the person to start a new trend (in your local
| bubble) is non-trivial and hard to explain to a child
| growing up around nearly all their peers having access.
|
| Doubly so if it's something that (I think science
| supports this?) is far more addicting than it was in the
| past.
|
| I'm not saying folks get a free pass but I'm not sure we
| had a global drug crisis that 90% of the population was
| participating in before which from your analogy is what's
| happening.
|
| Thanks again for the alcohol comparison I'm going to
| phrase it like that in my head to hopefully get all of my
| brain on board with the seriousness of the topic for my
| kids :)
| Brybry wrote:
| For a 90% global drug crisis comparison: Also when I was
| a kid my parents generally didn't let us eat sugar. They
| were fine if we ate sugar at a friends but they didn't
| themselves buy sugary cereals or ice cream or candy or
| soft drinks (except for special occasions like
| birthdays).
|
| As a kid I hated it and it made me feel like my family
| was weird. I can only think of one friend growing up that
| didn't have soft drinks in their house and his mom was a
| registered dietician. I'll have to ask my folks sometime
| if they fielded complaints from other parents.
|
| And, yes, the comparison of today to the 90s is not
| apples to apples. There are legitimate safety reasons why
| kids today need cell phones. In the 90s there were pay
| phones everywhere and that is no longer true.
|
| But I assume parental controls on today's cell phones let
| parents block all apps but Contacts/Dialing/Messaging if
| they want to.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| Since when is pointing out one of the many ways that
| oligarch capitalism makes life unnecessarily hard for
| everyday people, and wishing that antitrust laws were
| actually enforced so that, among other things, we could
| have more options for taking care of our kids without
| resorting to authoritarian power moves like this new
| Discord policy (or, to take another example, YouTube
| making it hard for media critics to talk about cartoons
| without getting age restricted) asking the government to
| take care of my kids for me?
|
| Believe it or not, the current neoliberal hellscape
| actually empowers the people who want to parent my kids
| for me. Because when everything is run by massive and
| centralized powers, most people (quite understandably)
| stop being able to conceive of handling things in a way
| that isn't yet another massive centralized power move.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Theoretically we shouldn't need speed limits in school
| zones. Personal responsibility should be enough, since no
| reasonable person wants to run kids over. And yet, we
| have speed limits in school zones.
|
| Laws do not prevent crimes. Neither does personal
| responsibility. What laws can do that personal
| responsibility cannot do is convert moral guilt into
| legal guilt. You might feel bad for running a kid over.
| You'll feel even worse after being punished for it.
|
| Also, corporations are legal entities. They do not have
| personal responsibility. They respond to regulations.
| janalsncm wrote:
| And those burnt out parents are the "good" parents who are
| even trying. There's a huge cohort of parents that let
| iPads parent their kid, unsupervised all day. And that's
| not illegal.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| What's ruined by this? Honestly asking
| bilekas wrote:
| It's giving my identification to a no face company, that I
| don't know will handle the data correctly. And if they don't
| I have absolutely no recourse.
|
| Also, why should I need to identify myself at all ? I used to
| use IRC for the better part of my life, I still do infact. So
| to have to Identify myself by sending my ID to a random
| company is insulting to me.
| Gigachad wrote:
| You don't have to ID after this, you just won't be able to
| access NSFW discord servers.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Then don't give it to them. Stop using the platforms that
| require this.
| SlightlyLeftPad wrote:
| The amount of time and energy that I have to put in to keep my
| 3 individual kids safe online while still allowing some access
| is mind-blowingly high. It shouldn't be as hard as it is. It's
| so hard, in fact, 99.9% of parents give up on it. I'm not one
| to do that but I've strongly considered it many times.
|
| Parental controls are fractured across every platform, they
| can't enforce everything in one place, domain filtering isn't
| practical, some sites (like YouTube) are needed for schoolwork
| and they include adult content intermingled with no sane way to
| bifurcate those. It's also impossible to disable the forced
| short-form video push onto toddlers and teens.
| ReliantGuyZ wrote:
| This only addresses one axis of your concern, but if they are
| accessing YouTube via desktop browser (or Firefox on
| Android!), the "Youtube-shorts block" extension gets rid of
| the Shorts UI. You can still watch Shorts, it will just
| display them in the normal video UI without infinite
| scrolling. It's a huge quality of life boost.
|
| Although obviously this does nothing for those using the
| mobile or TV apps.
| Gonxa6282 wrote:
| Even though it's a bit easy to disable, you can use the
| "Unhook" extension to turn off Shorts.
| SlightlyLeftPad wrote:
| It will take a 15 year old less than 5 minutes to figure
| out how to disable it.
| terribleperson wrote:
| There is a simple and better way to do this, which is device-
| wide age status attestation. That is, the whole device or
| user account has a 'minor' flag set, and passes it on to
| software, and so on.
|
| Governments are not pushing for this because this is not
| about protecting children, it is about removing privacy and
| increasing control.
| Neywiny wrote:
| User agent flags? Those are some of the easiest to spoof.
| Wouldn't last 10 minutes.
| Footnote7341 wrote:
| No, there is hardware based attestation, and it could be
| set by an administrator / parent for the user account.
| kelipso wrote:
| That doesn't really matter if something like more than
| 95% of time it's followed. Compared to now where there is
| nothing.
| chr15m wrote:
| No corporation wants your kids to use their platforms less.
| Zero incentive for them to fix this. Parents are at war with
| corporations.
|
| We must hold the line.
| rendall wrote:
| I sympathize with this a lot. What you're describing really
| is exhausting, and it shouldn't be this hard.
|
| My take is that parental controls fail because they're trying
| to solve a social and psychological problem at the technical
| layer. No amount of filters or settings can keep up with the
| internet, and kids are better at routing around them than we
| like to admit.
|
| What's worked better for us is treating this like other hard
| topics. We talk to our kids directly about social media,
| disturbing content, and strangers online, the same way we
| talk to them about drugs or sex.
|
| We're explicit about why some things aren't allowed, what
| kinds of content exist out there beyond just sex, and that if
| something upsetting happens, telling us is always the right
| move and won't cost them our trust or love.
|
| That doesn't remove all risk, but it shifts the burden from
| constant surveillance to shared understanding. To me that
| feels more realistic than trying to centrally control an
| environment that isn't controllable.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > When will it be normalized to be able to say "Parents should
| just be doing their job"
|
| you can say this, but it is not enforced, so this part of
| discussion is not really productive.
| dmix wrote:
| The UK/US haven't even spent widely on internet addiction
| education or built widescale programs like they did for drugs
| or even speech therapy. Jumping immediately to banning and
| gatekeeping everything on the internet is silly and naive.
| The world won't be a better place because we fear other kids
| parenting skills, it will be highly locked down and these ID
| checks/bans will hit every part of the internet.
| azernik wrote:
| That article is making quite a stretch from "the laws have
| exceptions for intelligence agencies, police, and the military"
| to "EU politicians will use those exceptions for themselves".
| It does this with zero evidence.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Parents can't do this. Kids need to be kept off this as a
| monolith otherwise they just get left out and become outcasts.
| nottorp wrote:
| And how much does Discord commit to paying in damages if my face
| scan or ID scan leaks from their servers? Via security
| vulnerabilities or employees making some money on the side?
| delegate wrote:
| One thing that could happen is that someone might decide to vibe
| code a Discord clone, without all the extra crap. I'm sure there
| are people out there doing this already.
|
| There's this interesting arc of growth for apps which are
| successful. At first users love it, company grows, founders get
| rich, they hire expensive people to develop the product and
| increase revenue until eventually the initial culture and mission
| is replaced by internal politics and processes.
|
| Software starts getting features which users don't want or need,
| side effects of the company size and their Q4 roadmap to
| 'optimize' revenue|engagement|profits|growth|...
|
| Users become tools in the hands of the app they initially used as
| a tool. This model worked well so far and built some of the
| biggest companies in history.
|
| AI could make this business model less effective. Once a piece of
| software becomes successful and veers off into crap territory,
| people will start cloning it, keeping only the features that made
| that software successful initially. Companies who try to strong
| arm their users will see users jump ship, or rather, de-board on
| islands.
|
| At least I hope this will be the case.
| bigbuppo wrote:
| People have dropped platforms en masse over lesser things. This
| is not going to go well. Are they even going to make it to their
| IPO?
| oth001 wrote:
| And I'll be uninstalling and looking for an alternative
| tonymet wrote:
| I know Discord is popular, but I've tried about 3 dozen servers
| on a ton of hobby topics (linux , raspberry pi, golang, various
| games, politics) and I've found the caliber of conversation to be
| very poor. Nothing like forums, stack exchange or even reddit
| (especially pre-2012) in terms of topic focus, support quality,
| creativity, technicality. Convos tend to be banal, cliche,
| monoculture.
|
| I would love to hear a testimony from someone who finds their
| Discord servers to be edifying or uplifting. What worked?
| chickensong wrote:
| It excels for small communities, groups of friends and the
| like. My IRC channel migrated because it's user friendly,
| embeds images, and voice chat is a breeze.
| tonymet wrote:
| I agree for private servers it's good. We used it for backup
| ops when our internal chat server went down. The feature set
| is very good
| oth001 wrote:
| Also curious how people like Epstein and James Alefantis are just
| casually using Gmail and Instagram to post CSAM and suggestive
| torturing of kids. Seems like the onus should be on the
| companies, not the users..
| sejje wrote:
| Wow.
|
| On one hand, I'm not surprised.
|
| But on the other hand-- I would be terrified to be in charge of a
| company who needed to make this ask. It's just such a big deal,
| such an important bit of information to protect from hacks.
|
| I hope they lose most of their customer base. But I'm terrified
| they won't.
|
| The gradual erosion of privacy is no longer gradual.
| apazzolini wrote:
| Based on the (lack of) people I see refusing the _optional_
| facial recognition check at the TSA checkpoint for flying, I can
| 't imagine this will be anything other than an overwhelming
| success for Discord and the surveillance state.
| nunez wrote:
| Discord's about to Tumblr over themselves with this one.
| tabbott wrote:
| I'm biased, as I lead the Zulip project. But I think this is a
| reasonable place for me to post some thoughts.
|
| Given current events in the USA, I can't emphasize enough how
| worried one should be about the fact that a few companies like
| Discord, Google (Gmail), and Meta have databases with access to
| the private conversations of hundreds of millions of people with
| their closest friends and family members, linked up with their
| identity.
|
| Some of the big strengths of running a self-hosted Zulip server
| for your community are:
|
| - Zulip servers are operationally simple, highly stable and easy
| to upgrade.
|
| - Zulip is much better than Discord or Slack for managing the
| firehose of busy communities. Or at least, a lot of people tell
| us that they prefer the user experience to everything else
| they've tried, after a few weeks of getting used to it. :)
|
| - Your community leaders get to make the policy decisions about
| data protection, identity, etc.
|
| - It's 100% FOSS software, with an extremely readable and
| maintainable codebase that ~1500 people have successfully
| contributed code to. I don't think you'll find modern
| alternatives with a comparable featureset to Discord that are
| more resilient to the sponsoring company being acquired or going
| out of business.
|
| - We are a values-focused organization
| (https://zulip.com/values/) where providing a public service is
| important to us all.
|
| - Each server is completely self-contained and independent, with
| the only centralized services needed from us being desktop/mobile
| app publication and mobile push notifications delivery (which is
| free for community use and soon to be E2EE).
|
| I'm happy to answer any questions.
| areoform wrote:
| Does your app pass the grandma and quarterback test? Can I get
| my grandma and the group's jock/quaterback to use it without
| handholding?
| crabmusket wrote:
| Data point of one: in my small community group that has moved
| to Zulip we do have a grandma contributing. No jocks though
| so I can't speak to that.
|
| I would also like to note that Slack did not pass the grandma
| test in our case. I highly doubt that Discord would given how
| hyperactive the UI is.
| Vinnl wrote:
| As a software engineer who's had to interact with Discord
| only a handful of times, I had no idea when other people
| could hear me or where I had to click to find people I was
| looking for.
| crabmusket wrote:
| I've only rarely used it for voice, so I think I'm not in
| the right demographic. But I find its text/chat UI janky
| as hell.
| tabbott wrote:
| I'd say so, especially if you start on desktop and have them
| watch the 2-minute onboarding video. We are satisfied with
| what we see with our internal usability studies with
| nontechnical users.
|
| Among customers, one reference that I can quickly cite is
| this one:
|
| https://zulip.com/case-studies/gut-contact/
|
| > Agents at GUT contact use Zulip every day to communicate
| with their team leads. "Most of our agents are in their 60s
| or 70s, so the software must be as simple as possible. That's
| why we love Zulip," says Erik Dittert, who's been leading GUT
| contact's IT team for the past 20 years.
|
| I would recommend doing a little training/handholding
| call/video when moving over a community -- but this is true
| for any new app.
|
| My mom needed training to do basic things in Squarespace, and
| I had a friend who worked at Slack whose manager started
| every chat message with "Hi <name>" and ended it with a
| signature, like you would an email. :)
| crabmusket wrote:
| > start on desktop
|
| Echoing this. Navigation is better and clearer on desktop.
| The mobile apps works really well once you know what you're
| doing. Part of onboarding into Zulip is being able to get
| an "overview" of the community and the discussions that are
| currently happening, and this is easier on desktop.
| guhidalg wrote:
| In my experience, the median user for communication apps
| is mobile _only_. Before that, it better be a website
| that works well on phones, and decently on desktop.
|
| As a developer I don't like it, but reality doesn't have
| to appease me.
| crabmusket wrote:
| This is a case where people can start talking past each
| other.
|
| In my view and experience, Zulip is a collaboration
| platform for groups who want to get shit done. I wouldn't
| recommend it for a "place to hang out".
|
| People who are serious about achieving something will use
| a laptop. Similarly, in a cousin comment - they will
| watch a short onboarding video.
|
| No platform is "intuitive" for everyone. WhatsApp and
| Signal are "basically just SMS" so they can lean on the
| knowledge phone users built in the 00s and 10s. Anything
| else is a new mental model and takes some adjustment.
|
| EDIT: also if you are an open source community, or a
| company, and you choose Discord for your support/project
| collab community... do better. (Looking at you
| CloudFlare)
| int_19h wrote:
| > People who are serious about achieving something will
| use a laptop.
|
| That _really_ depends on what that "something" is.
| crabmusket wrote:
| That's true, and there are also people - like my partner
| - who only own a mobile device. She unfortunately
| wouldn't be able to have what I regard as the ideal
| experience joining a Zulip.
| regularfry wrote:
| > People who are serious about achieving something will
| use a laptop
|
| Two decades ago it was said "People who are serious about
| achieving something will use a desktop" in response to
| laptops being underpowered.
| areoform wrote:
| > and have them watch the 2-minute onboarding video
|
| I'm going to be very honest here. The jock ain't watching
| no video. Dude has (possibly) early CTE. Do you think he
| has the attention span to sit through a two minute video?
| _For a messaging app??_
|
| That's an automatic fail.
| addandsubtract wrote:
| Tbf, Discord takes way more than 2 minutes to understand.
| pocksuppet wrote:
| But reveals it step-by-step. When you click on a Discord
| link without an account, it says: Hello! What is your
| name? You check there are no faefolk around, and then
| type your name. Now you are in the chat room and you can
| chat to people.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| A lot of discords have hoop jumping for rules or
| explainers. Then Nitro nags almost immediately and
| periodically thereafter. Server ops beg for Nitro
| boosts/packs.
|
| I've gotten through a few of these, but they're not
| trivial.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| But the friend group server won't have hoops, and the
| other nags while annoying don't act as a barrier to basic
| use.
| LogicFailsMe wrote:
| discord lost me at having to use task manager to shut it
| down on Windows.
| 1337biz wrote:
| I am using it every day but never saw the need to
| download it.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| First, quarterbacks are not typically the concerning
| position with respect to CTE. Second, because he plays
| football he doesn't have a 2-minute attention span? "Dumb
| jock" is about as accurate as "ignorant HN poster".
| Third, he either spent 2 minutes learning how to use
| discord, or stumbled through it long enough to learn, why
| can't he do the same thing with Zulip? Would it help if
| they chopped it into a dozen TicToks?
| savanaly wrote:
| They were needlessly inflammatory, but none of that
| changes the fact that something requiring you to watch a
| 2-min video to get started does not pass the [non-
| inflammatory term for non-technical person but you know
| what I mean]-test.
| crabmusket wrote:
| It's not required. It's just there if you want it. Zulip
| is easy enough to jump into, especially if you have
| friends who actually care to onboard you into a
| community.
|
| Adminning a Zulip for a small community group, I've
| actually found I have better tools to help with this.
| E.g. in Slack, we had constant nags to "please reply in
| the thread!" In Zulip, I can just move messages where
| they belong, and either leave the automated notes there
| to show where the messages went, or DM the person to let
| them know what I did.
| areoform wrote:
| I'm saying this in a jocular tone, because - otherwise -
| the reality is too depressing. But I _know_ people like
| this.
|
| Anyone with a large enough social group will have some
| people like this. These are people who've engaged in
| football, boxing or contact sports like rugby. Or, people
| with severe ADHD. Or have had some kind of traumatic
| brain injury. These are real users and they're my
| friends.
|
| I won't switch to using your application if they're going
| to be left out in the cold.
|
| If a messaging application can't be used by that person,
| then that's a default fail. I'm not going to expose them
| to it.
| crabmusket wrote:
| But you will expose them to Discord's nagging popups for
| random quest thingies, animated emojis, disorganised
| channels, etc.? It sounds like you've already decided
| it's a foregone conclusion.
|
| I am not arguing from a particular desire to get your
| jock friends on Zulip. Like I said in another subthread,
| I consider Zulip to be mainly for people who want to
| achieve things together, not just hang out. It's a
| productivity app. I wouldn't recommend it as a social
| app. Why I'm replying is because I feel your approach to
| the discussion is a little... uncharitable?
| areoform wrote:
| They're already using discord. It's a single click.
|
| I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm not here to argue
| particulars. I'm sharing my reality as a user. A user who
| runs multiple communities. Including one for my friends.
| And my friend group extends to 2k+ people (my friends,
| their friends, their friend of friends... It adds up).
|
| It's not fair that the CTE friend uses discord out of the
| box, but that's the power of network effects. Any
| competing solution needs to be 10x better to incentivise
| the switch.
|
| I can setup a new discord server in a click. Versus,
| Sponsorship and discounts Contact sales@zulip.com
| with any questions. Community plan
| eligibility Open-source projects
| Research in an academic setting Academic
| conferences and other non-profit events Many
| education and non-profit organizations
| Communities and personal organizations (clubs, groups of
| friends, volunteer groups, etc.)
|
| Respectfully, I'm not emailing your sales team to create
| a movie night server. Or one for class / group notes.
| Actual use cases. https://zulip.com/plans/#self-hosted
| tabbott wrote:
| That's a huge friends group! :)
|
| You don't need to email the sales team unless you have
| questions about the policy. It should be clear that
| "groups of friends" are eligible from the text you
| quoted.
|
| You just need to spend 2 minutes filling out a brief form
| that's integrated in the server setup process if/when you
| have more than 10 users on your server. We enjoy hearing
| the brief notes users provide about how they are using
| Zulip. Is that too much to ask in exchange for reliably
| delivering you a service that you use every day?
|
| It takes quite a bit longer to install a self-hosted
| server or configure an organization for thousands of
| users than to fill out the form -- I'd expect most people
| to spend more than 2 minutes creating a VM before they
| even get to running the installer. I'd expect that nicely
| configuring a Discord server for 2K people takes hours.
|
| Is there something that we could change in the website
| that would make it obvious this is not an onerous
| process? The purpose of the section is to make clear that
| self-hosting Zulip is free for this sort of non-
| incorporated community use ... but we do need to have
| some eligibility process where you describe what you are,
| or it's free for Amazon too.
| cole-k wrote:
| Not the original commenter, but I have faced similar
| friction from people who are _not_ grandmas or
| quarterbacks. I don 't particularly agree with its tone,
| but I agree with the original commenter's general
| message.
|
| I won't be so confident to identify what it is, but there
| is _something_ that causes "end users" to bristle at
| Zulip.
|
| Where I'm coming from, everyone uses Slack. I spearheaded
| an effort to switch to Zulip because our Slack server is
| on a free plan and our messages get sucked into the void
| after 60 days now. Everyone agrees that this is bad, and
| that we don't have the money for Slack premium (we're an
| academic organization, so AFAICT we wouldn't even have to
| self-host to avoid paying), and yet so many people do not
| want to switch. Here are some common responses I've
| gotten:
|
| * I refuse to use another messaging app and Slack is
| nonnegotiable for some of my collaborators.
|
| * I don't want to learn a new UI.
|
| * I don't want to learn a new UI that isn't basically the
| same as Slack.
|
| * I will only switch if everyone else switches.
|
| This is half a social problem ("I will only be receptive
| if everyone is using this"), but I do think there is some
| legitimate friction in Zulip's UI. I am fairly confident
| that we could successfully switch to Zulip if the Slack
| dissenters could be convinced to use Zulip --- or if
| Zulip could somehow be coerced into being more Slack-
| like.
|
| As the "agent of change" at my organization, I felt like
| the resources Zulip provides are lacking in what I really
| need. Like I know there are technical details on how to
| move to Slack (https://zulip.com/help/moving-from-slack),
| but what I _really need_ is help with the above:
| convincing people to try and acclimate to the UI. And
| yeah, I kind of agree that a 2 minute video on how to use
| Zulip is not the resource I need since it presupposes a
| degree of openness and cooperation that I don 't have
| access to.
|
| These are somewhat disorganized thoughts, but happy to
| expand upon anything if you're interested. I really do
| want to successfully move our org to Zulip since I'm
| tired of our messages disappearing.
| account42 wrote:
| Rather than getting outraged about prejudices that you
| don't want to be true, try to see the point of the
| response you are replying to: if you need to watch a two
| minute video to understand a chat application then it
| does not have a good user experience.
| folmar wrote:
| I use it for a non-it non-engineer group and everyone is
| happy with browser experience.
|
| The mobile app is worse as it only allows writing in a few
| views that are not easy to access, and is becoming slower
| over time.
| crabmusket wrote:
| I recently moved a small community group from Slack to Zulip.
| Half because of the UX for infrequent visitors (topics are so
| much better than "50 unread messages in #general"). And half
| because of your organisational values, which are more aligned
| with ours than are those of Salesforce.
|
| The Bluesky team talks about "credible exit", and Zulip has
| that in spades - which makes me not want to exit.
|
| Thank you for the work you do. Hanging out in CZO watching the
| Zulip team work in public is inspiring!
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| > topics are so much better than "50 unread messages in
| #general"
|
| my experience is exact opposite
| katsudon wrote:
| How so? I haven't used Zulip but am curious to hear why
| adastra22 wrote:
| Not the person you are replying to, but I much prefer
| catching up on a small number of channels, than having to
| click around a bunch of different individual topics. But
| it is a tradeoff.
| crabmusket wrote:
| You don't have to click into topics. Zulip has a "channel
| view" which lets you see all messages in a channel,
| chronologically, just like Slack or Discord or IRC.
| That's actually the default experience when you click on
| a channel in the sidebar.
|
| It also has an "entire server" view if you want to see
| everything in one stream.
| adastra22 wrote:
| I see thank you!
| aragilar wrote:
| I think it depends on how you're interacting with the
| instance/server. I find the rust zulip much easier to
| follow than the k8s slack (or the lancer discord). I can
| see on a (much) quieter instance where it's a group of
| friends you want to see most messages where a single
| channel is a better option.
| crabmusket wrote:
| I agree with this. We use Slack at work, where we have a
| small team, and most of us are reading most messages in
| realtime. It works*
|
| Contrast that to my experience with a group of volunteers
| who might log in a couple of days a week, communication
| is a lot more async, and you might not care about all the
| topics of discussion. I have found Zulip makes it easier
| to come back and catch up on just the bits you care
| about.
|
| *I still think Slack encourages a "continuous partial
| attention" way of engaging with chat that I don't like.
| But, we do make it work.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| Imagine communication server as... a house
|
| Discord server is a flat. It's full of predetermined
| brick-walled rooms (channels) that have titles on the
| doors. You look at the titles, you choose the closest to
| the topic you want to talk about, you walk in.
|
| Slack server is a meeting place. It has rooms, rooms have
| titles... but you can't talk in them. If you start a
| conversation there, you're encouraged to "go outside" (to
| a thread) with whoever joins you to solve the problem. If
| you walk into the room, you'll only see pointers to
| "meeting places outside" (also sometimes you can't even
| discover that room exists without a pointer?)
|
| And Zulip is a warehouse (or a blimp hangar) - it's one
| open space with no walls. When you come in you hear
| everyone echoing off the walls. To not get lost, there
| are markings on the ground that color-code which parts of
| the space are for what category. And people are standing
| in groups, so you can come closer and concentrate on one
| topic at a time
|
| ---
|
| If I want to ask a question,
|
| - on Slack I'm immediately get shoved into a car and
| driven away to discuss (I don't feel community)
|
| - on Zulip I have to navigate the cacophony of main
| screen, stand in the open and scream my question, hoping
| that people approach and form a group around me (I feel
| both open and alone)
|
| - while on Discord I walk into a room that's "close
| enough", maybe look at conversation that happened right
| before to get a feel, and ask away (I feel like I'm in a
| lived-in space and can navigate the tone)
|
| ---
|
| If I want to participate in a conversation
|
| - on Slack I have to keep track of new threads. I have to
| explicitly open each one. I have to read through to see
| the convo state
|
| - on Zulip I have to scan the "all recent messages" main
| screen, form an opinion on what discussion I'm interested
| in, explicitly open it, start reading last messages (now
| of the specific topic) again to form opinion again on
| what the state of convo currently is
|
| - on Discord I can see the channel name to pre-emptively
| get general theme I'll be in (and I can mute channels I'm
| completely not interested in), I open it and start
| acquainting myself with the current convo state right
| away, learning specific topic from the context
|
| ---
|
| I can definitely see how Discord's hard structure-ization
| can fail on large scale, when there is constant demand to
| use the rooms.
|
| And I definitely have experienced channel "memory leak"
| (when they get allocated at one point and stop getting
| used as activity lowers, necessitating archival or
| garbage collection)
|
| But I do feel that discord got that perfect middle ground
| between "everything together" and "everything in
| separate" extremes that all other options tend to fall
| into
| viraptor wrote:
| I agree with most of what you said, apart from Slack in
| practice.
|
| > on Slack I'm immediately get shoved into a car and
| driven away to discuss (I don't feel community)
|
| It completely depends on the community / people. I'm in
| multiple slack servers where the threads are an exception
| for things that would otherwise really pollute the
| discussion. But otherwise, everyone just chats mostly in
| #general (or different rooms if the community is really
| large)
| zem wrote:
| agreed, slack channels can definitely have the "lived-in
| space" feel to them (which is feel is the key point to
| the GP's comment)
| kzalesak wrote:
| Slack depends heavily on the vulture that you build
| around it. I've been in companies where it was either
| everything in the specific channel (Discord like)/dm
| only, and in others, where threads have worked wonders.
| What caused this?
|
| Different people at the wheel making decisions on how we
| will all use it, and encouraging the structure.
| crabmusket wrote:
| This experience sounds very formed by the particular
| communities you've interacted with on each platform?
| wredcoll wrote:
| Your metaphor is slightly insane but I agree with the
| conclusion 100%. People who try to segregate every single
| line of text into a completely seperate walled off space
| is incredibly annoying, if for no other reason than real
| conversations tend to cover multiple subjects.
| maccam94 wrote:
| In Zulip, if a thread meanders with messages about a
| tangent, the authors/mods can choose to move those
| messages to a new thread (and IIRC messages with links
| between the two threads are created so it's easy to jump
| back and forth for any missing context)
| buzer wrote:
| Personally I found Flowdock's thread model the best at
| least for small'ish teams (company size was <30). You can
| see it in action at https://web.archive.org/web/202107280
| 31306/http://blog.flowd.... Unfortunately the company
| itself didn't survive. It was eventually acquired by CA
| which then killed it later.
|
| (from my older comment) Essentially there is a default
| view which contains all messages as usual. Each message
| also has a symbol next to it. If it's grey message
| bubble, it's a message that is not tied to any thread (it
| can be replied to to start a new thread. Previously if no
| other messages have appeared on channel so far, it can be
| dragged & dropped to another thread). If it's colored
| message bubble, it's the first message in the thread. A
| colored arrow means it's part of the thread with that
| color.
|
| This allows you to mostly just stay in default view with
| all of the channel's messages. As long as people are
| putting the messages in the thread itself, you could
| quickly use the colors to see which thread the message is
| on (color collisions did happen, but they were fairly
| rare). You would need to open the thread only if you
| needed more context or wanted to reply to it, though
| replying can also be done by writing to channel &
| dragging the message to thread.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Yes it's odd that nobody I know has copied this. Clearly
| better than what Slack and Teams are doing.
| junon wrote:
| Agree, unfortunately. Zulip is one of those apps I _want_
| to see succeed but I cannot for the life of me get used to
| the UX.
| stavros wrote:
| Huh, I have the opposite experience, I love Zulip's UX.
| The fact that everything is a thread in a channel means I
| can quickly skip the threads I don't want, and I don't
| have to mark things as read in an all-or-nothing fashion.
| Slack doesn't let you do this, if you read a channel,
| it's now read, and you can't say "actually, keep this
| thread unread for later".
| junon wrote:
| I understand that part but it makes it really difficult
| to peruse when joining a large instance. I have little to
| no idea what I'm even looking for, which actions are
| going to cause side effects others can see, etc.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| How does Zulip compare to Campfire and Stoat (and other FOSS)
| efforts? How is onboarding for non-tech people?
| tabbott wrote:
| Onboarding has a thread going here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46951401.
|
| My understanding is that Campfire hasn't been actively
| developed for ~10 years (https://once.com/campfire/changelog
| shows some minor fixes after the OSS launch; their GitHub has
| no 2026 commits). There are no mobile apps. It is not an
| actively maintained Discord alternative.
|
| Stoat is early in development. For example,
| https://github.com/stoatchat/stoatchat has 1421 commits,
| compared with 68K for https://github.com/zulip/zulip/. I wish
| them luck! It's really important that we have multiple
| independent efforts.
|
| https://www.rocket.chat/ and https://mattermost.com/ are
| open-core military contractors these days. You'll see what I
| mean if you visit their websites. But like Zulip, they are
| full-featured team chat systems, and if the parts of their
| system that are OSS work for your organization, they're
| certainly valid options.
|
| Finally there is Matrix/Element. They have an inspiring
| vision and similar values to mine, and I'd recommend checking
| it out. Element/Matrix is built on an ambitious distributed
| consensus protocol with an E2EE option, which provides
| capabilities Zulip don't have but also adds complexity. Zulip
| is focused on just doing team chat really well, and does not
| support more than ~100K users in an instance. Hopefully will
| have a lot more resources now, thanks to Current Events. I
| wish the Element team the very best of luck!
|
| ----------------------------------------
|
| Overall, Zulip's focus has always been on making a delightful
| chat experience, especially when you have multiple
| conversations happening at the same time. We aren't trying to
| build a clone, but instead the best possible experience for
| having lots of possibly complex conversations. So there will
| be some differences from what you're used to.
|
| But critically, we spend a very large amount of our time
| relentlessly fixing micro-interactions that annoy us or are
| reported to us. If you read #design, #issues, and #feedback
| in https://zulip.com/development-community/, you'll get an
| idea of how we work.
|
| So while there's some features we don't have that are present
| in other products, and we don't have dozens of designers on
| staff to do cool end-of-year animated reports like Discord
| does, you can expect few bugs and a lot of interaction design
| polish.
|
| -----------------------------------------
|
| The one mistake that I think a lot of folks make in
| evaluating options is focusing on buzzwords like E2EE without
| thinking through their threat model. E2EE doesn't add much
| practical security over self-hosting for many threat models,
| and it comes with significant usability trade-offs. And some
| current E2EE systems don't actually protect against a
| malicious server, say because they only protect message
| content, not metadata like who has access to what... just
| against raiding the server's disk.
|
| (For example, WhatsApp has E2EE for message content, but I
| expect Meta's databases know everyone who's had a
| conversation with me on WhatsApp and the precise timestamps
| and approximate lengths of every message I've sent or
| received on the platform. And apparently some keyboard apps
| send what you're typing to remote servers!).
| Lerc wrote:
| I think the single most convincing feature that I would
| like in a conversation app is for there to essentially be
| two companies with a public benefit charter that said that
| they cannot have common ownership or management, yet
| provided the same paid service, developed a common product
| though open source and had an etremely easy migration
| between them.
|
| Ideally migration should be easy enough that it would be
| easy enough to automate a mobious strip subscription where
| it seamlessly alternated between providers.
|
| If that structure existed it would be nearly impossible for
| a single provider to enshittify. The sad fact is that no
| matter how many assurances (often sincerely delivered) have
| been made, we have all seen instances where buyouts,
| management changes, or just someone in control going nuts,
| have turned platforms sour.
|
| Open source is great but as this thread shows, just being
| open source does not mean functional or maintained.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| So like git and GitHub/GitLab/BitBucket should have made
| GitHub enshittification impossible?
| Lerc wrote:
| No, How git and GitHub/GitLab/BitBucket should have made
| git enshittification impossible.
| tabbott wrote:
| Nothing is certain in this world, but I don't think that
| means one should give up and just use megacorp software.
|
| And Zulip is specifically designed by some very capable
| people to be resilient. While we can mess up future
| versions, but you can always run (forks of) the older
| version. And as discussed on our values page, we've
| worked very hard to make the code readable and
| maintainable. (Various professors use Zulip as a teaching
| codebase).
|
| We've made a lot of investments in the goal of having
| keeping-the-lights-on work for Zulip to be doable with a
| couple excellent people working part-time. It's good for
| our ability to spend our limited time on improving the
| product. But it also means that it doesn't require a lot
| of people to care in order for Zulip to remain functional
| and maintained. And I certainly care quite a bit.
|
| So while I'd certainly expect other maintainers to
| introduce a lot more regressions, especially if doing
| significant changes... If you like the product today,
| probably the option will exist to continue using roughly
| that for a long time.
| al_borland wrote:
| > Campfire hasn't been actively developed for ~10 years
|
| For people looking for a simple chat that stays simple, is
| this a bad thing? When do we call something feature
| complete? If a product is free, they no longer need to
| manufacture new features to justify continued payments. It
| does look like there were updates 2 months ago. Based on
| the few number of open issues, and a PR closed last week,
| it feels like it's being maintained, even if it's not
| getting major new features.
|
| I'm not a Campfire user, so can't speak to the UX, but I
| feel like there is a market for actively maintained
| projects, that are considered feature completely, which
| aren't searching for new features to shoehorn in. In the
| long-term, this need to constantly add features generally
| gets interpreted as enshitification by users. Avoiding
| falling victim to this relentless push for "more" can be
| seen as a feature in itself.
| shiroiuma wrote:
| >For people looking for a simple chat that stays simple,
| is this a bad thing?
|
| If the application does everything you want it to do,
| then no, it's fine. How much new development does grep
| get these days?
|
| However, it was mentioned that it has no mobile apps, and
| that's a deal-breaker for probably most organizations and
| teams. If you can't access your team's communications
| channel when you're away from your desk, that probably
| isn't acceptable to many. And of course, developing and
| supporting mobile apps (on at least 2 platforms these
| days) is a large effort, and also requires constant
| maintenance since the two dominant platforms are
| continually evolving and changing their APIs.
| regularfry wrote:
| Looks to me like it doesn't have mobile apps because it
| doesn't need them to work on a mobile.
| al_borland wrote:
| No mobile app sounds like a feature in my book. Few
| things are so urgent that people should be expected to be
| reading and replying to chats while away from their desk.
| bloqs wrote:
| Sold
| stefanka wrote:
| Thank you! Zulip is a great project.
| easterncalculus wrote:
| What is the video calling and screen share experience like?
| crabmusket wrote:
| Zulip "shells out" to other apps like Zoom or Jitsi for this
| with a light integration in the UI.
| Firehawke wrote:
| I'd call that a pretty major feature omission since it
| means splitting things across multiple apps.
| justincormack wrote:
| No different to ising Slack and Zoom which is a very
| common combination.
| sumeno wrote:
| It is when you're talking about competing with Discord
| which has very good voice and streaming support
| shimman wrote:
| Why is it a major feature omission? Screen sharing isn't
| an easily solvable problem, there aren't any good FOSS
| libraries out there (at least that I'm aware of).
|
| Expecting a way way way smaller team that didn't get
| $1billion in founding, like Discord did, is an extremely
| poor mindset to have.
|
| All you're proving is the need to implement a tech tax to
| force companies to fund FOSS at the behest of the federal
| government, which frankly I'm all for.
| sumeno wrote:
| It's a major omission because the voice and video
| integration is one of Discord's killer features. Sorry
| that it's hard, but something that doesn't integrate
| those seamlessly isn't a discord alternative
| shimman wrote:
| Okay, I'm sure if they got $1billion in funding they
| could implement the same feature but expecting a way
| smaller team with way less resources to have parity with
| such a company is just unrealistic.
| sumeno wrote:
| I'm not expecting anything from anybody, but I'm also not
| switching to a discord alternative that doesn't support
| those features
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Discord's main competitive advantages:
|
| * Centralized identity, and participating in multiple
| communities at once: People sign up once, then navigate
| to whatever autonomous communities they choose quickly.
|
| * No hosting requirement (good for ease of use): Want a
| new autonomous space? Create it! Boom! No installation,
| no hosting, no monetary cost.
|
| * Video streaming: No other chat client does this easily.
| Not Mumble, Ventrilo, Teamspeak, or these chat programs.
|
| If you want to defeat Discord, particularly in the gaming
| server arena, you need to make interacting with multiple
| servers better and you need screen/video streaming.
| shimman wrote:
| Discord's main competitive advantage was getting a cool
| $1billion in founding and being able to support a massive
| team without the need to worry about profit for the
| entirety of its existence.
| sfn42 wrote:
| Nobody gives a shit about that man. I don't care if it's
| unfair. I care that this app does the things I want. How
| it came to be is entirely irrelevant to me.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > Create it! Boom! No installation, no hosting, no
| monetary cost.
|
| Don't Discord servers have free tier caps? A few of the
| larger ones I'm on beg for Nitro boosts/packs from
| premium users for capacity and features.
| bdlowery wrote:
| Zulip is a website packaged into an electron app. It does
| not take $1billion to implement webrtc into a website as
| screensharing + video / audio calls are a solved problem
| on the web (Zulip is a web app).
|
| Where did you get the idea that it takes a ton of money
| to do it?
| easterncalculus wrote:
| This is my problem with the alternatives, nothing has
| replicated simple voice channels (next to text ones) that
| you can see who's in and just jump in and out of, with
| screen share. This shouldn't be any harder to implement
| than video calling itself but almost nothing has done it.
| Even spacebar chat is more interested in keeping discord
| bots compatible than achieving feature parity.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Looking for your features but no voice chat, no screen sharing,
| no deal.
| barbs wrote:
| Looks like it has integration with Jitsi Meet
| https://zulip.com/integrations/jitsi
| sleepybrett wrote:
| in slack and discord i don't need another app i just hit
| the huddle button (in slack) and join a voice chat room in
| discord.
|
| This is the problem with pitching zulip to this audience.
| The original thing that got gamers to switch to discord, it
| was their original and probably still is their primary
| target market, was a single login to a huge universe of
| voice chat rooms. Before discord gamers were setting
| up/renting teamspeak and ventrillo services (that were
| voice chat only). Hell for the first couple of years of
| using discord with my gaming group the only thing anyone
| ever posted in text was what time they were going to be on
| and what game they wanted to play.
| bschwarz wrote:
| I would say the main thing that got people to switch to
| Discord was the fact that voice chat was free, paid for
| by VC money.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| sure but also that you didn't have to pass around your
| teamspeak/ventrillo information to every rando you wanted
| to play with, less friction in discord with invite links
| etc
| prmoustache wrote:
| I have never created an account nor logged on to use
| jitsi.
| tabbott wrote:
| The built-in Jitsi integration lets you create a voice chat
| call via a single button click. You can also put those call
| links in a channel description if you like.
|
| We do have plans to make the integration offer some
| additional ways to jump into a call, and have been talking
| about adding video chat. But our focus has been on building
| the best text chat possible, given there are multiple
| actively developed FOSS video call systems that we can
| integrate with.
| crabmusket wrote:
| Jitsi used to be so frictionless, but now that their public
| instances are a bit more locked-down (understandably...) I
| wonder if developing a deeper first-party integration would
| be sensible.
| prmoustache wrote:
| If you are selfhosting zulip, what prevents you to
| selfhost jitsi?
| crabmusket wrote:
| I have in fact done that before several years ago, though
| when I looked at it again late last year it seemed more
| complicated.
| BrouteMinou wrote:
| Why zulip instead of the good ol' IRC?
| orblivion wrote:
| It has modern features. It stores message history. It has a
| fairly unique feature of letting you create ad-hoc "topics"
| (that go under a "Channel") that make it easier to manage the
| flood of conversation.
| crabmusket wrote:
| Channels + topics >>> just channels
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| 1: IRC loses all messages to you while you are not connected
| 3836293648 wrote:
| Not for years. If that is still the case for you, ask your
| server hosts to update to a version that supports ircv3
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| https://ircv3.net/specs/extensions/chathistory says hi
| d3Xt3r wrote:
| Know of a good IRCv3 client for Linux/Web/Android? And
| what are some good v3 servers these days, besides Libera?
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| I've set up Ergo and KiwiIRC before, and it seemed pretty
| cool. I even enabled the Jitsi plugin in KiwiIRC, so it
| was like an indie alternative to Slack or Teams. I turned
| it off years ago, but if I were to do that again, I might
| try with UnrealIRCd.
| rockskon wrote:
| Last I checked, IRC wasn't really mobile-friendly.
| Valk3_ wrote:
| > Zulip is much better than Discord or Slack for managing the
| firehose of busy communities. Or at least, a lot of people tell
| us that they prefer the user experience to everything else
| they've tried, after a few weeks of getting used to it. :)
|
| Could you expand on this?
| bo1024 wrote:
| Slack has basically one main hierarchy level (messages are
| grouped into channels) while Zulip has two, streams and
| topics. So you can create a stream for each project (say) and
| create a different topic for any given point that needs
| discussion about that project.
|
| Kind of like if each slack thread discussion had a title and
| was discoverable from the left sidebar and didn't get in the
| way of the other threads.
| crabmusket wrote:
| > didn't get in the way of the other threads
|
| But also, critically, if you want to, you can drop back to
| the "show me everything sequentially" view. Threads hide
| discussions away - which is good when you want to focus on
| something _else_ , but bad when you can't remember where a
| discussion was.
| folmar wrote:
| The killer feateure is that it's very easy to move last
| $x messages to another topic, so if someone writes a
| short note that begins a conversation everyone is free to
| reorganize it, and also moving messages between threads
| is easy and nice.
| jwiz wrote:
| From what I have read (not having actually used Zulip) it
| always sounded like the chats were threaded in the same way
| that mailing lists or newsgroups are threaded.
|
| How accurate is that understanding?
| crabmusket wrote:
| That seems like a reasonable comparison. I've thought of
| Zulip as halfway between IRC and a forum.
| tabbott wrote:
| Check out https://zulip.com/for/communities/ and some of the
| linked case studies; they explain it better than I'll be able
| to in a quick comment.
|
| But the main reason is that the topics-based organization and
| ability for moderators to move/split conversations means one
| can read and participate in a community much more fully given
| a fixed amount of time.
| bo1024 wrote:
| What's the state of accessibility on Zulip?
|
| (Thanks for making Zulip, I love it)
| tabbott wrote:
| You can do everything with the keyboard, and we do write
| everything with screenreader accessibility and colorblindness
| accessibility in mind.
|
| But we don't have a dedicated accessibility tester on staff,
| so we're reliant on people reporting issues that bother them
| in actual use.
|
| I should also mention there's a nice TUI app:
| https://github.com/zulip/zulip-terminal, which can be helpful
| for some people.
| bo1024 wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| I'd like to convince other parts of my organization to move
| to Zulip, this will help.
| rw_grim wrote:
| This is great to hear and ironically we (Pidgin) just decided
| that Zulip was going to be the next protocol we were going to
| add support for just barely 24 hours ago before all this
| Discord nonsense!
|
| https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/protocols-to-support/234/1...
| tabbott wrote:
| Awesome, feel free to start a thread in #integrations in
| chat.zulip.org! We'd be happy to chat about some of the
| things that will make your life easier to do carefully when
| writing a new client.
|
| The main thing regards our double-entry API changelog system.
| Basically, the API documentation for individual endpoints,
| say https://zulip.com/api/get-user, natively cover for each
| endpoint all the changes relevant for that endpoint from
| https://zulip.com/api/changelog... and how to write nice code
| using feature level checks to support all server versions.
| rw_grim wrote:
| That sounds great! I literally just wrote the initial
| skeleton last night so there's lots of work to do so any
| help is greatly appreciated! I'm hoping to have something
| somewhat usable by the end of the month.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| Happy to hear Pidgin is still at it after all these decades.
| I still fondly remember using it when it was still called
| Gaim and only spoke OSCAR, back when Rob was involved before
| he started Asterisk. I lurked on IRC back then and even made
| a simple TUI when libpurple first came out.
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| > Zulip servers are operationally simple, highly stable and
| easy to upgrade.
|
| You lost me there. I need to have all my contacts on Zulip.
| Nothing else matters to me
| esseph wrote:
| Then you're fucked, and stuck on big tech and hostile
| governments. If you can't convince friends to move, that is.
| sgarman wrote:
| My biggest feature use of Discord is the drop in / out voice
| with PTT. I couldn't quite tell if this feature exist.
| dijit wrote:
| Doesn't exist in Zulip, theres a "camera" button that
| generates a jitsi link, I tried (and failed) to make it a
| google meet link, but it works surprisingly well, though it
| is a context switch.
| tabbott wrote:
| Yeah Google Meet doesn't have an API to just create a call;
| several people have tried to hook together the Calendar
| APIs to make a reasonable similar integration and failed.
|
| I assume this API omission is intentional on Google's part
| but don't understand the motivation.
| gpvos wrote:
| PTT = push to talk (at least that seems the most probable
| match on Wikipedia)
| dijit wrote:
| Hey, just wanted to say that I am a happy Zulip customer.
|
| I used it at my previous employer and after a month of
| hangringing from people- many did not desire to go back to what
| we had before. (though some people did say they wanted Slack
| for the emojis and "prettiness").
|
| Now I started in a new position and I've positioned Zulip (on
| prem) as the only viable solution since we're shirking SaaS as
| a strategic move.
|
| The people who followed me to the new place are quite glad of
| this, or at least thats what I am told.
|
| So, thank you, sincerely.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| > hangringing
|
| I'm sorry to be that guy but it's "handwringing" - twisting
| your hand like you wring your clothes until you agree
| crabmusket wrote:
| > like twisting your hand until you agree
|
| I'm also gonna be that guy - hand wringing is a stereotype
| of an expression of distress, not coercion. You're thinking
| of the idiom "twisting someone's arm".
| dwb wrote:
| I believe it was actually meant to be haranguing
|
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/harangu
| i...
| dijit wrote:
| Hey man, don't be sorry!
|
| I actually didn't know so this was a good correction! :)
|
| I think you got flagged for the "incorrect" definition, but
| I think you were being playful with a mnemonic to remember
| it- so that's not fair.
| tabbott wrote:
| Thanks so much for sharing the story!
| deafpolygon wrote:
| I don't have any questions as of yet, but reading your site; it
| speaks to me and those values align with mine. Just wanted to
| say that I think the world could use a bit more of this.
| caconym_ wrote:
| I'm asking because I hate Matrix and actually want you to
| convince me: why should I accept the risk of migrating my
| friend group from Discord to Zulip, which has already "broken
| the seal" of restricting features behind a monthly fee even for
| self-hosted users, when I could migrate us to Matrix instead?
| Matrix seems like the much less risky option.
|
| I see that you have a "community" tier that's free and doesn't
| restrict notifications, but it's not clear to me exactly what's
| involved in proving that we should qualify.
| ameliaquining wrote:
| Mobile push notifications are a special case because it's
| literally not technically possible to self-host them. Or
| rather, it's possible if you build the iOS and Android apps
| from source and distribute them through TestFlight or an
| analogous Android channel, but it's not possible for the
| developer of an App Store or Play Store app to allow its
| users to point it at a different push-notification server,
| because the public key has to be hardcoded in the app binary.
| So if you want your self-hosted Zulip server to work with the
| Zulip client apps in the App Store and Play Store, you have
| to use Zulip's push server, and there's nothing Zulip can do
| to fix that.
|
| Matrix works analogously; if you use the Element app from the
| App Store or Play Store, then you're using Element's push
| notification server, even if your Matrix homeserver is self-
| hosted. It's possible that Element allows their server to be
| used gratis in situations where Zulip charges a fee, I don't
| know their policies or anything, but in principle Matrix
| still leaves you exactly as dependent on a third party's
| goodwill unless you make your friends install a privately
| distributed mobile app.
|
| Zulip IIUC does not restrict self-hosting of any feature
| that's technically possible to self-host.
| cyberax wrote:
| > because the public key has to be hardcoded in the app
| binary
|
| Nope. On iOS the flow is:
|
| 1. Generate a "push token" on the device (with the user's
| approval).
|
| 2. Send this token to your server.
|
| 3. Now you can send notifications to the device via this
| token. Your server needs to authenticate itself with Apple,
| and this requires an Apple account. But it's not linked to
| an individual app.
|
| The situation is different on Android. Google went out of
| their way to make it impossible to customize `google-
| services.json` at runtime. So the built-in "easy" flow
| won't work. But notifications ultimately work using
| veeeeery obfuscated remote procedure calls to Google Play
| Services and you can run them manually. I need to do a
| write-up about this....
| electroglyph wrote:
| i would read that write-up!
| mycall wrote:
| > Your server needs to authenticate itself with Apple,
| and this requires an Apple account
|
| How does Firebase Cloud Messaging work with Apple without
| an Apple account, or is that implied in the client
| generated push token residing in Firebase?
| cyberax wrote:
| I'm not sure, because I'm using Apple's notification
| servers directly, not through Firebase.
|
| I believe it works just as a proxy, and you need to
| specify your own Apple credentials when you set up the
| Firebase project?
| alias_neo wrote:
| You're implying some difference here that I don't see.
|
| Both platforms need some way for the client to register
| to their respective push services, Apple needs an Apple
| account, Android needs google-services.json.
|
| Both platforms require your app to generate a token which
| the platform's respective push service holds, and send it
| to your server which you then use to identify the client
| you're pushing to.
|
| Apple also requires the Auth p8, Bundle ID, Team ID and
| Key ID, which are roughly equivalent to the contents of
| the google-services.json.
| cyberax wrote:
| On iOS you don't need a separate binary, the server-side
| infrastructure is not scoped to individual apps.
|
| I don't think that it's possible on Android.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| The solution for this is to install the self-hosted Zulip
| as a PWA, but unfortunately they don't support web push.
| caconym_ wrote:
| Yeah. This is exactly my worry: as soon as solutions to
| technical problems like this start going in the direction
| of "we'll offer a monolithic solution and charge users
| for access to it" instead of "we'll make it as generic as
| possible even if the alternatives for now are flawed", it
| makes me wonder about the long term trajectory of the
| project.
|
| I don't mean to cast aspersions on the developers--I
| respect everybody's right to try to get paid for good
| work, and this looks like good work. I am just not
| convinced it's the right option for my specific needs.
| ameliaquining wrote:
| What would "as generic as possible" look like in
| practice?
| caconym_ wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46954896
| crabmusket wrote:
| I think it's right to worry about this. However, the
| Zulip project has a long (10 year?) history and track
| record with a stable team.
| tabbott wrote:
| Can someone explain to me why we should do engineering
| work to build features where the stated objective is to
| help corporations use our product without paying for it?
|
| Remember, self-hosted mobile push notifications already
| have a free community plan!
|
| I can't say whether Zulip might be a fit for your needs.
| But you can always email our lovely sales/support team.
| https://zulip.com/help/self-hosted-billing#paid-plan-
| discoun... should give you a sense of our policies.
| caconym_ wrote:
| > Can someone explain to me why we should do engineering
| work to build features where the stated objective is to
| help corporations use our product without paying for it?
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by this. I am looking for a
| replacement for Discord for my small community of
| friends, and before today I had never heard of Zulip and
| knew nothing about its pricing or policies or history.
| account42 wrote:
| > our product
|
| It's either your product first or an open source project
| first. If you care more about having a marketable product
| then it's fair for people who care about open source to
| go elsewhere.
| aragilar wrote:
| It's not a technical problem, it's a policy problem from
| the mobile vendors. You'd basically be paying them to
| deal with Apple's and Google's messaging infrastructure
| through their (zulip's) infrastructure.
| caconym_ wrote:
| I understand that (IIUC in Matrix the client decides what
| push gateway to use, and the Element client just hardcodes
| matrix.org and lets anyone use it for free), but it doesn't
| really do much for my practical concerns. I'm looking for
| something my users can tolerate (which means no monthly
| fee) _and_ that I can be reasonably confident won 't
| rugpull us or vanish in the next ~10 years.
| ameliaquining wrote:
| I guess my question is, what makes you confident that
| Element won't change the terms under which people can use
| their push server?
| caconym_ wrote:
| Nothing, but there already exist many other Matrix
| clients (shitty as they may be at present), as well as
| (IIUC) an Element PWA that uses web push (which is IIUC
| supported by Synapse) for notifications. Synapse also
| (IIUC) can be configured to use an arbitrary push
| gateway.
|
| This is what I mean by "generic" in the other comment you
| replied to. I appreciate the value of tightly integrated
| server and client applications, and fully believe that
| Zulip's implementation of notifications may be both a)
| better for usability and b) a lower maintenance burden
| for the development team than supporting web push in a
| PWA, but---again---I am looking at this from a certain
| perspective where the way Matrix is architected and the
| breadth of the ecosystem imply less long term risk for my
| use case.
| ameliaquining wrote:
| So it's not actually an architectural issue, it's just
| that _in practice_ there are multiple competing Matrix
| apps whereas nobody has yet bothered to do this for
| Zulip?
| vitro wrote:
| But how ntfy does it then? It is one app that allows you to
| subscribe to multiple different notification endpoints. I
| have uptime notifications set up this way.
|
| Wouldn't it be possible for Zulip to go this route as well?
| MrCharismatist wrote:
| Because ntfy doesn't, at least not in a way that detaches
| you from a central authority.
|
| On its own notification to your device will happen
| eventually when the ntfy app on your phone wakes up and
| polls. Pull, not push.
|
| My ntfy server has a config line for an upstream, which
| is a service that then uses push. Basically it's self
| hosted and handing off push.
| prurigro wrote:
| The difference between ntfy and another type of push is
| that you don't need a server owned by the group that
| makes the app forwarding messages through apple or
| Google. You can have your chat server send messages to
| your ntfy server, which then arrive on your phone.
| Latty wrote:
| The default behaviour for self-hosted on Android is to
| have a foreground service which holds a websocket open,
| so it does get pushed from the server and doesn't rely on
| your phone being awake.
|
| https://docs.ntfy.sh/subscribe/phone/#instant-delivery
|
| The upstream approach you describe is only necessary for
| iOS devices that don't permit apps to do that.
|
| https://docs.ntfy.sh/config/#ios-instant-notifications
| thayne wrote:
| On Android the OS implementation of "push" notifications
| is pull/poll based as well. At some interval, the OS
| polls Google's servers to see if there are any messages
| available. Firebase essential acts as a message broker,
| so that it only has to poll a single server, instead of a
| separate server for every service that wants to send
| notifications, and there is only a single service
| polling.
|
| But I really wish Android supported specifying additional
| servers to poll (and/or replace the default server), so
| you could use a self-hosted service in addition to or
| instead of Google's service.
| belthesar wrote:
| The same way that Element does - they host a service for
| you that relays push notifications their Firebase Cloud
| Messaging endpoint for Android or iOS Instant
| Notifications for Apple. I believe ntfy's hosted option
| is the way they offset the costs of hosting this, even if
| self-hosted options can take advantage of those servers
| free of charge.
|
| I think it's reasonable for Zulip to ask for compensation
| for access to these gateways, since Apple and Google do
| not make them available to end users free of charge, and
| the burden of responsibility to ensure that these systems
| aren't abused is on them. Also, the fact that they offer
| mobile push notifications for any self hosted server of
| up to 10 users is pretty generous, and there seems to be
| a Community plan option for larger servers that includes
| "groups of friends" as a qualifier. It really seems
| they're offering quite a bit.
| Latty wrote:
| This isn't true, self-hosted Android push notifications
| in ntfy are provided using a "foreground service" by
| default (i.e: the app keeps a websocket open and
| listens), unless you set up firebase for yourself and
| build a custom version of the app with the cert baked in.
|
| https://docs.ntfy.sh/subscribe/phone/#instant-delivery
| gf000 wrote:
| So it either drains battery and gets significant delays
| (as per ntfy's own docs), or it still uses Google's
| solution. There is no free lunch.
| Latty wrote:
| I think you misread, the delays are if you _don 't_ use
| instant delivery. I use it and it's extremely
| consistently delivered instantly, which makes sense, it's
| a websocket.
|
| As to battery drain, I'm sure it technically does consume
| more, but according to my phone it's an insignificant
| amount: <1% of usage which is the lowest stat it gives
| you. Their docs suggest the same thing:
|
| > the app has to maintain a constant connection to the
| server, which consumes about 0-1% of battery in 17h of
| use (on my phone). There has been a ton of testing and
| improvement around this. I think it's pretty decent now.
|
| https://docs.ntfy.sh/faq/#how-much-battery-does-the-
| android-...
|
| Honestly it's a good solution that works well with few
| downsides, the only real one is that iOS doesn't support
| doing it, but personally I don't have any apple phones so
| I do get an essentially free lunch.
| account42 wrote:
| Listening on a socket doesn't drain any battery when no
| data arrives unless the app does other things that
| actually use CPU. That's just what Google/Apple want you
| to believe so you depend on their proprietary lock in
| services.
| xmcqdpt2 wrote:
| Also like, how else would the Google / Apple services do
| it? Probably via sockets right? I guess you could do it
| in a pull-based approach on a timer, but that doesn't
| seem more efficient to me.
| gf000 wrote:
| But waiting on multiple sockets for each app is surely
| more expensive than a single one, isn't it?
| ameliaquining wrote:
| A single process waiting on multiple sockets is basically
| no more expensive than a single socket, but if each app
| has its own background process then that _is_ more
| expensive. So for best performance you really want to
| delegate all the push-notification-listening for all the
| apps on a device to a single background process owned by
| the OS, but it 'd be fine for each app to use its own
| push server (though of course most apps do not actually
| want to self-host this).
| Arch-TK wrote:
| Google doesn't have any magic way to do instant
| notification that nobody else has access to. The only
| thing they have access to in this regard is disabling any
| battery optimisations without triggering warnings.
|
| Notification and battery performance is on par with
| google's solution except when an android build does dumb
| things to prevent the background activity, in which case
| notification performance gets worse and battery draw gets
| worse (not sure why exactly, it's just a common issue in
| these regards).
| Latty wrote:
| Well, there _is_ an advantage, if everything is using the
| one service then you only need to have one thing alive to
| check it, so each new app is "free" if you already have
| push enabled (assuming that push notifications are rare
| enough the activity isn't the cost), as where each app
| doing it themselves is going to cause more battery use,
| so it isn't _directly_ equivalent.
|
| However, it also isn't a big deal, at least in my
| experience, at least for ntfy.sh.
| miki123211 wrote:
| It does.
|
| Ntfy pays Apple/Google for the ability to deliver
| notifications to you. They use the free plan as a
| "gateway drug." It's just a cost of business to them, a
| marketing tactic to acquire paid users, no different in
| principle than plastering ads on billboards.
|
| You can't set up your own Ntfy server (at least not
| without also having a private copy of the Ntfy app).
|
| (Things may be different on the fDroid side, but many
| custom notification servers are a batterly life and
| privacy concern nevertheless).
| vitro wrote:
| You can self-host their notification server, and in their
| app you provide this server's url.
| esseph wrote:
| > but it's not possible for the developer of an App Store
| or Play Store app to allow its users to point it at a
| different push-notification server, because the public key
| has to be hardcoded in the app binary
|
| Setting up stoat.chat right now, I'll let you know if I
| have any notification issues with it ...
| yosamino wrote:
| There is a lot of truth in what you write, so I am just
| going to point out the UnifiedPush project[0].
|
| Of course with the, rather large, caveat of that not
| working outside of
|
| > TestFlight or an analogous Android channel
|
| This implements a push service (caveat: Android only) that
| is less restrictive than what google provides, and allows
| the reuse of an existing notification server (ntfy,
| prosody, etc) by other installed apps.
|
| Since f-droid exists, this allows for a halfway decently
| user-friendly-ish way to completely self host outside of
| relying on googles server's and zulip, for example, could
| offer the ability to receive notifications through it if
| there's an a unified push distributor available on the
| phone. It seems that there is at least awareness for this
| in the project [1].
|
| But with google tightening the noose around alternative
| ways to install apps, who knows how long this will be even
| possible.
|
| [0] https://unifiedpush.org/ [1]
| https://github.com/zulip/zulip-flutter/issues/1198
| lukeschlather wrote:
| It would be nice if you could run separate instances of an
| app that were considered separate, and forking around a
| push notification key would make a lot of sense. Another
| reason I would like to do this is to be able to have
| different Discord accounts coexisting on the same device.
| (But, the idea of having some set of different Zulip
| instances is maybe the exact same use case, with better
| server-side support.)
| tabbott wrote:
| I don't think we've ever charged a friend group or other non-
| incorporated group of people a dime for self-hosted
| notifications.
|
| For the community tier, you don't have to do anything up to
| 10 users.
|
| If your server has more than 10 users, you fill out a brief
| form (https://github.com/zulip/zulip/blob/main/templates/corp
| orate...). We work hard to consistently process these
| requests within a couple business days, and the vast majority
| of communities are approved for full sponsorship without
| further interaction.
|
| (Large communities managed by a business are quoted nonzero
| but extremely discounted pricing for self-hosted
| notifications).
| tabbott wrote:
| Regarding risk: I certainly won't blame you for feeling risk-
| averse given the history of the tech industry. I can tell you
| about some unusual choices we've intentionally made to
| minimize risk for our users:
|
| - We eschewed VC funding. A big part of my motivation was
| that I felt that VC funding usually requires eventual
| enshittification. https://zulip.com/values/ talks more about
| this.
|
| - Zulip has been 100% FOSS software for more than a decade.
|
| - At the very beginning, we built a complete data
| import/export system that allows migrating between our Cloud
| hosting and self-hosting; we put a lot of care into
| maintaining it well.
|
| I can't promise that we'll never have something to sell for
| self-hosting communities. For example, I could imagine
| offering a paid add-on for encrypted backups.
|
| That said, I'd like to push back on the idea that charging
| businesses for a tool that's an important part of their daily
| work "breaks the seal". Organizations with a software budget
| should be _happier_ to pay a fair price for ethical, user-
| first software from a friendly vendor than for a closed-
| source product from a megacorp. And Zulip 's full-time
| development team should be able to make a living building
| ethical FOSS software.
| caconym_ wrote:
| Thanks for the response. I'll discuss it w/ my users.
|
| > That said, I'd like to push back on the idea that
| charging businesses for a tool that's an important part of
| their daily work "breaks the seal". Organizations with a
| software budget should be happier to pay a fair price for
| ethical, user-first software from a friendly vendor than
| for a closed-source product from a megacorp. And Zulip's
| full-time development team should be able to make a living
| building ethical FOSS software.
|
| I think you touched on the sort of thing I'm concerned
| about with your mention of enshittification, though I think
| you're probably right that VC funding is involved in most
| cases. It is good to know that you've been at it for a
| decade and have (apparently) built a sustainable business
| selling a product people like.
|
| My concerns (which I hope are understandable) aside, I
| certainly support your right to charge money for what
| you've made, as I said here
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46953048).
| kortilla wrote:
| >Organizations with a software budget should be happier to
| pay a fair price for ethical, user-first software from a
| friendly vendor than for a closed-source product from a
| megacorp.
|
| Yet we don't pay for Linux, grep, vim, etc, etc. Why is
| your open source project the only one worthy of requiring
| payment?
|
| IMO you should drop the doublespeak of claiming these are
| open source values while simultaneously charging money.
| It's offensive to people who contribute to actual open
| source projects like matrix, clang, Linux, kubernetes, and
| on and on.
| crabmusket wrote:
| Huh? Where did he argue that you shouldn't pay for those
| things?
| gf000 wrote:
| Grep and vim are a much smaller magnitude than Linux, so
| don't mix the two. And you do pay for Linux indirectly,
| it ain't written by some developer in their basements out
| of their good heart for a long time. It's written by
| Intel, Nvidia, cloud vendors' etc - full salaried
| employees. You just pay for it via hardware or cloud
| fees.
|
| But to be honest your stance is extremely detached from
| reality. It's a huge privilege to be able to work on a
| hobby project, people tend to need food and a place to
| live, you know?
| account42 wrote:
| Grep and vim are obviously stand ins for a myriad of
| tools that together are much larger than Linux. And even
| Linux still has unpaid volunteers and even the majority
| corporate contributors are not that relevant to the
| discussion because none of them have control over the
| project to the degree that they could enshittify it.
|
| > people tend to need food and a place to live, you know
|
| That has never been enough reason to require that others
| support your business model. I for one don't need or want
| any more "products" in my life, especially ones that are
| or depend on services I can only get from a single
| vendor.
| peebee67 wrote:
| How is it double-speak? The "free" part doesn't mean
| "free beer"...
| dangus wrote:
| The federation of Matrix seems risky to me to the person
| self-hosting. I don't want to host random people's content.
| I've read some interesting articles about the design flaws of
| Matrix that led me to believe that it's not a good option.
|
| What is confusing to you about the community tier? It is
| basically describing any type of community of people who are
| not a for-profit business. Groups of friends, non-profits,
| volunteer groups, etc.
|
| Zulip isn't charging you anything unless you're a business
| with more than 10 users and need push notifications, and that
| is still only $3.50/month/user if you don't need more
| enterprisey things like SSO and compliance stuff.
| caconym_ wrote:
| > The federation of Matrix seems risky to me to the person
| self-hosting. I don't want to host random people's content.
| I've read some interesting articles about the design flaws
| of Matrix that led me to believe that it's not a good
| option.
|
| You can just not federate.
|
| My experience with Matrix as a "discord replacement" at the
| scale of a few tens of people is that it works and is
| stable but is also jank and has a lot of features I don't
| really care about, federation being one of them. Hence my
| enthusiasm for a possible alternative.
|
| > What is confusing to you about the community tier? It is
| basically describing any type of community of people who
| are not a for-profit business. Groups of friends, non-
| profits, volunteer groups, etc.
|
| The part that isn't clear to me is how you prove to the
| Zulip people that you are worthy of being included in that
| tier. I'm certainly willing to write a few sentences
| explaining my use case, but the help page is light on
| specifics.
| dangus wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's just an honor system similar to a
| lot of similar software.
|
| Corporations tend to self-comply because they don't want
| to risk failed audits and lawsuits.
| eigenspace wrote:
| I use Zulip every day for the julia programming language
| (https://julialang.zulipchat.com).
|
| I really like Zulip, and I'd like to migrate my friend-group
| onto it, but it probably won't happen. I think Zulip is just
| a bit too heavy-duty for a friend group chatting, and also
| lacks the visual polish that a lot of people want.
|
| For now, my friends and I mostly just use Signal for group
| chats, which leaves a lot to be desired, but IMO is still
| just a better experience for our purposes than Zulip or
| Matrix.
|
| That said, if you have friends who are keen to try things
| out, I would definitely recommend at least trying Zulip and
| see what you like and what you don't. It has a lot of really
| nice features and things to love.
|
| Having interacted a fair amount with the Zulip devs over the
| years, and being an open-source product, I believe that they
| have no plans or intention of trying to fleece or milk self-
| hosted users or small communities.
| caconym_ wrote:
| Thanks for the input. I'm working on setting up an
| instance, so we'll see how it goes!
| zukzuk wrote:
| Glad to hear E2EE is coming soon, but it's been "soon" for
| probably a year now. It's a bit odd that encrypted
| notifications still don't work, and I'd argue it's a very big
| caveat with regard to privacy and security.
|
| Our main reason for using Zulip is that we work in a highly
| regulated space (healthcare) and would like to be able to
| safely talk about things. I suspect this sort of situation is a
| major motivator for Zulip adoption, so it's weird that transit
| encryption was left as an afterthought.
| tabbott wrote:
| (There has always been an option to just not include message
| content in mobile notifications).
|
| Cryptography is not something you can do sloppily, and
| requires coordination between the mobile and server teams.
| Zulip 11.x included the protocol, but while doing the mobile
| implementation, we decided to make several more changes which
| have delayed it to the upcoming Zulip 12.0.
|
| Some important context is that we retired the old React
| Native mobile app this summer in favor of the new Flutter
| apps (https://blog.zulip.com/2025/06/17/flutter-mobile-app-
| launche...), which has been an enormous improvement in the
| quality of the app and developer experience.
|
| But as you can imagine, the cutover and relentlessly
| addressing feedback after it took a lot of time for the
| mobile team. We've also experienced an AI slop bombardment in
| the last few months that has consumed a lot of time. I'll
| save that story for another time.
| rustystump wrote:
| First time hearing about this project and it feels mature.
| However, the landing page example of the app on web is...messy
| and noisy to the point i am totally lost.
|
| This is not the case for slack or discord. I think having an
| awesome clean first impression would do wonders to sell what
| younare doing.
| tabbott wrote:
| Can you give more specific feedback -- what specifically are
| you looking at, and what specifically do you think
| contributes to it being noisy?
| duskdozer wrote:
| Well for me it's the animations, and it doesn't seem like
| prefers-reduced-motion is handled anywhere. I go to some
| great lengths to try to eliminate animations with custom
| js/css, and things are still moving and changing. The logos
| are probably most immediately noticeable.
| goalieca wrote:
| > Given current events in the USA,
|
| This part absolutely isn't necessary because it's a wrong idea
| no matter who is in charge.
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| >>Given current events in the USA, I can't emphasize enough how
| worried one should be
|
| I've been putting my pants on every morning for the last
| several years, had breakfast, gone to work, and come home
| without worrying about any current events in the USA and my
| life seems no different than 50 years ago except I have modern
| gadgets.
|
| Social media is not the world. In fact, it's 10% of what the
| real world is like and how the real world thinks. It's why I
| ignore social media except for HN and one other but I only scan
| the headlines and rarely pop into comments like this.
|
| And I'm happy.
|
| EDIT: And the comments below are proof why you, too, should
| ignore all social media and why you, too, will be happier.
| dc96 wrote:
| Fixed this for you: "I haven't been affected, so everyone
| else is overreacting."
| pb7 wrote:
| Almost no one has been affected so yes.
| wredcoll wrote:
| First they came for the Communists And I did not speak
| out Because I was not a Communist
|
| Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out
| Because I was not a Socialist
|
| Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not
| speak out Because I was not a trade unionist
|
| Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out
| Because I was not a Jew
|
| Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak
| out for me
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| I never liked this quote, because it makes help a matter
| of anticipated reciprocal help rather than simply a good
| thing to do. Besides, memories are short.
| wredcoll wrote:
| How much "good thing [we] do" is based on anticipated
| reward has been a topic of debate for roughly as long as
| we've had language, but I'll take anything that convinces
| people like that to actually care about people other than
| themselves.
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| Thousands of people have put their pants on, had breakfast,
| gone to work, and then been intercepted by militarized
| federal agents, thrown to the ground, locked up in prison
| camps, then deported overseas.
|
| Glad things are comfy for you though.
| estearum wrote:
| Or just beaten, locked up, abused, then released, because
| after all they had never done anything wrong to begin with!
| wyclif wrote:
| _never done anything wrong to begin with_
|
| Except illegally migrate to the US without applying or
| engaging in human traffic and smuggling.
|
| You may not like it, but the USA is still a nation of
| laws. It's also a modern nation. Third world shitholes
| have lots of problems caused by illegal immigration
| because they don't do enough to enforce the law and
| restore order for their citizens.
|
| I'm rather glad that US culture hasn't yet turned into
| another Afghanistan or Pakistan.
| malnourish wrote:
| It's not a crime to be an unauthorized resident of the
| United States; it's a civil offense. Knowingly hiring an
| ineligible worker is a crime, however. I'm curious why we
| aren't going after the employers attracting and hiring
| undocumented residents.
|
| Besides, people were being deported in significant
| numbers across multiple presidents in both parties
| without resorting to the strategy and tactics of the
| current administration.
| wyclif wrote:
| I know they were. But when Obama and Clinton were doing
| it, one of the big differences was that there were not
| all these Karens blowing whistles and interfering with
| those operations. The difference is that now there are
| far more deranged people who want to take the law into
| their own hands, and often these people are violently
| attacking law enforcement.
|
| I don't like having these conversations, and I don't
| consider myself a defender of the current ICE. It's far
| from a perfect organisation and it has a lot of problems.
|
| But it seems clear to me that the concept of law and an
| ordered society has taken a big hit. Trump Derangement
| Syndrome is not an excuse to allow that to evaporate in
| Minneapolis and all the other cities with extremely
| violent protests and attacks on law enforcement.
| estearum wrote:
| It seems you're under the belief that the Karens blowing
| whistles is _creating_ the different enforcement
| mechanism.
|
| Can you explain how this is not disproven by:
|
| 1) POTUS's own statements for years prior to taking power
| that he would enact a totally different kind of
| immigration enforcement regime
|
| 2) The massive budget increase and personnel surge for
| ICE, planned at least several months before Trump even
| took power
|
| 3) DHS policy memos shared days after Trump taking power
| that claimed nationwide expansion of expedited removal
| powers
|
| 4) Declaration of expansive state powers under AEA, also
| planned months before taking power and therefore months
| before any public resistance to immigration enforcement
|
| These are all extremely, extremely aberrational actions
| and policy decisions, all of which contribute to the
| current facts on the ground in Minneapolis and elsewhere,
| and _none of which_ were in response to Karens blowing
| whistles.
|
| What evidence do you have that Karens are causing the
| enforcement shift, versus the enforcement shift causing
| the Karens, given that the enforcement shifts were
| planned for months before the Karens even had any
| whistles to blow?
| wat10000 wrote:
| Do you actually believe every person getting abused is an
| illegal immigrant, or are you just pretending because
| it's the only way to make your point?
| estearum wrote:
| No, _including_ illegal immigration. There are people who
| have immigrated fully legally within the boundaries of
| the laws of our nation and still gotten targeted,
| detained, arrested, and even deported.
|
| There are American citizens getting stopped and harassed
| for their papers.
|
| It's always hilarious hearing the "America can't become
| one of those shithole countries!" while advocating for
| policies and attitudes that are pervasive in said
| shithole countries.
|
| Here are a few examples of said violations by our
| government: https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/11
| 8180/documents/...
| account42 wrote:
| Now show me the country where law enforcement does not
| occasionally happen to inconvenience people who in the
| end turn out to be innocent.
|
| Are you also going to call for ban of all vaccines
| because they or the methods in which they are
| administered can in rare cases be fatal?
| estearum wrote:
| Where did I call for a ban on anything?
|
| I'm simply calling for my government to obey the
| Constitution.
|
| If they can't execute these operations without violating
| people's rights, then uhh... they can't execute these
| operations. That's not me "banning" anything, that's just
| called "following the law." Violating people's
| Constitutional rights (even immigrants', even illegal
| immigrants'!) is already banned.
| estearum wrote:
| Can't edit my prior comment, but anyway here are some
| thoughts from a Founding Father, 2nd President of the
| United States, and leader of the American Revolution,
| John Adams:
|
| > We are to look upon it as more beneficial, that many
| guilty persons should escape unpunished, than one
| innocent person should suffer. The reason is, because
| it's of more importance to community, that innocence
| should be protected, than it is, that guilt should be
| punished; for guilt and crimes are so frequent in the
| world, that all of them cannot be punished; and many
| times they happen in such a manner, that it is not of
| much consequence to the public, whether they are punished
| or not. But when innocence itself, is brought to the bar
| and condemned, especially to die, the subject will
| exclaim, it is immaterial to me, whether I behave well or
| ill; for virtue itself, is no security. And if such a
| sentiment as this, should take place in the mind of the
| subject, there would be an end to all security what so
| ever
|
| Lots of wisdom in this
| mcv wrote:
| > You may not like it, but the USA is still a nation of
| laws.
|
| I would love it if the US was a country of laws, but the
| rule of law has been quite thoroughly killed by the Trump
| administration. It wasn't very effective even before
| Trump, as you can see by how the prosecution of Trump's
| crimes got blocked or derailed every step of the way, but
| after his election, the Constitution has gone completely
| out of the window.
|
| > Third world shitholes have lots of problems caused by
| illegal immigration because they don't do enough to
| enforce the law and restore order for their citizens.
|
| Their problems don't come from illegal immigration. Not
| even a bit. Unless you use it as a euphemism for
| colonialism. The real problem there is corruption and a
| lack of rule of law. And the US is heading in that same
| direction fast.
|
| > I'm rather glad that US culture hasn't yet turned into
| another Afghanistan or Pakistan.
|
| Republicans are working on that.
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| Were these thousands of people all legal US citizens?
|
| >Glad things are comfy for you though.
|
| Things for my family, my relatives and me are great! When I
| was in my early 20s I often went hungry. Now I'm worth a
| lot of money. Couldn't be happier as a normal, decent,
| everyday US citizen.
| Melonai wrote:
| As someone completely unaffected by both the protests and
| deportations, I still feel quite sad about the current
| situation.
|
| I feel like we should still have empathy, not only for
| the people who are completely clean legally, but also for
| the illegal immigrants. Sure, they made a choice which
| put them at odds with the legal system, and yet I still
| don't want them beaten up, stripped of any of their
| rights (as non-citizens), with their families destroyed.
| I keep thinking, if I was in their situation, I could've
| made that same choice, it's certainly possible, if I was
| just born somewhere else.
|
| Now I don't think illegal immigrants are guilt-free I
| suppose, some of them are horrible people I'm sure, and
| they still deserve humane treatment, I have a lot of
| faith that that's still one of the most important pillars
| of a good society.
|
| Obviously we can argue about numbers, maybe abuse doesn't
| even happen often at all, maybe every single person
| abused has committed a crime. It could be, and even then
| we should try to be humane, if we can...
|
| I am always happy to hear when people are doing well
| though! Most of us won't be directly affected, luckily,
| and I really hope it will stay that way as well. The less
| people in duress, the better.
| userbinator wrote:
| Continually pandering to "humane" bullshit is why the
| country has become the way it is.
| wredcoll wrote:
| And what exactly is that way? Semi-official paramilitary
| groups harassing americans? Desperate attempts to
| demonize minorities? Threats to prevent future elections?
| Trade wars that fuck over the american economy and
| moronic foreign policy that pisses away decades of power
| accumulation? That's all the fault of asking people to be
| humane?
| userbinator wrote:
| The erosion of accountability and personal
| responsibility. If there weren't any illegal immigrants
| there wouldn't be any need to go looking so invasively
| for them. This is a very strong course correction after
| many years of neglecting things.
| jocular wrote:
| That's some serious right wing programming.
| wredcoll wrote:
| The presence of illegal immigrants does not, in fact,
| mean we have to go looking for them. It _definitely_ does
| not mean we have to break the law while doing so.
|
| Also it's weird how the group that used to talk about
| personal responsibility elected trump, the literal
| antithesis of taking responsibility for anything ever.
| account42 wrote:
| > The presence of illegal immigrants does not, in fact,
| mean we have to go looking for them.
|
| It does unless you are calling for the selective
| enforcement of laws.
|
| > It definitely does not mean we have to break the law
| while doing so
|
| Which is fair but most people upset with ICE are
| essentially calling for no enforcement due to a couple of
| incidents among a country of 300 million just like with
| any other issue being advanced by the opposing tribe. I
| think we can objectively say that the previous level of
| enforcement was not a sufficient deterrent to reduce the
| level of illegal immigration. Whether the current
| enforcement is "breaking laws" or if incidents are
| tolerable mistakes will be for courts to decide.
|
| > Also it's weird how the group that used to talk about
| personal responsibility elected trump, the literal
| antithesis of taking responsibility for anything ever.
|
| I think many of the voters, certainly enough to swing the
| scale, voted for the lesser of two evils rather than
| being believers in everything trump. As a random non-
| American I am not convinced they made the wrong choice.
| account42 wrote:
| You are free to spend your own money to make those
| people's lives better in their own country or even to get
| them US citizenship or residency through legal channels
| if applicable. Turning developed countries into a welfare
| system for the world's desperate is not a solution to
| anything and will only result in those developed
| countries regressing to lower standards of living if not
| outright imploding as you end up importing the root
| problems causing the desperation along with the
| immigrants.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Wrong question. The right question is, "were any of them
| US citizens or legal residents?" And the answer is yes,
| some of them were. For some of them the use of past tense
| is particularly appropriate because they are no more.
| account42 wrote:
| That is not the right question because a) zero mistakes
| is not a reasonable standard for any country-scale
| operation and b) legal residency does not preclude there
| being a valid reason for deportation such as violating
| the terms of that residency permit.
| wat10000 wrote:
| What we're seeing isn't mistakes, it's deliberate abuse.
| You don't accidentally tackle somebody and shoot them in
| the back ten times.
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| Those people were people who previously made the decision
| to illegally immigrate to the US. Lots of people start
| their day normally and then get arrested by militarized
| cops because they are wanted for murder or assault or
| burglary or cryptocurrency fraud. The fact that the US has
| a criminal justice system including police that arrest
| people suspected of crimes, isn't new, isn't obviously
| worse than competing systems (e.g justice via informal
| militia/lynch mob), and doesn't have any implications for
| the use of Discord today that it didn't have a decade ago.
| viraptor wrote:
| > Those people were people who previously made the
| decision to illegally immigrate to the US.
|
| There are no limits here and there many publicly
| available proofs of people getting harassed and detained
| regardless of legal status and deported contrary to court
| rulings that apply to their situation. You don't need to
| repeat the current ICE/DOJ lies - they can speak for
| themselves.
| pb7 wrote:
| You should consider how allowing millions of illegal
| immigrants impacts legal residents next time you vote
| then.
| userbinator wrote:
| The legal immigrants have it the worst --- they're the
| ones who got in legitimately, that already being a
| struggle as it is, only to be cheated by all the ones who
| didn't.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| What does it mean to be "cheated by all the ones who
| didn't"? Their ire, if it's a real thing, is directed at
| the wrong people. They should direct it at the ones who
| made becoming an American citizen a long, drawn-out
| bureaucratic process, not their fellow immigrants who
| came to the US seeking a better life through hard work.
| As a true blue and red-blooded American, I'd vote a
| hundred times to make it as simple for those people to
| become an American citizen as it was for my forefathers,
| who only had to hop on a boat over in Europe and not shit
| themselves to death before they got here.
| viraptor wrote:
| This has nothing to do with the treatment of the current
| people residing in the US by ICE, regardless of status.
| ericjmorey wrote:
| You should reconsider it.
| shevy-java wrote:
| You would have to include ALL actions, including ICE
| troopers shooting dead US citizens too. You can not
| merely confine it to "this is what they do in theory";
| you need to look at what they do in practice.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| I have considered it, which is why I'm voting blue.
| deaux wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/09/irish-
| man-se...
|
| No they weren't.
| pb7 wrote:
| Did you even read the article? He entered the country on
| a tourist visa and never left. That is entering the
| country illegally. Getting married and applying for
| adjustment of status does not give him legal status. He
| should rightfully be deported.
|
| Every story is like this without fail.
| ericjmorey wrote:
| You just said that he entered legally. Then you said the
| opposite.
| account42 wrote:
| You do understand that visas have terms and limited
| durations, right?
| dboreham wrote:
| Except most US voters disagree with you. Someone married
| to a US citizen does have residency rights,
| notwithstanding the paperwork quirk that you're supposed
| to exit and re-enter, which typically involves flying
| somewhere going to the US embassy to get a stamp and
| flying back. So just as most people don't support the
| death penalty for speeding, most people don't support
| criminal deportation for someone who has the right to be
| in the US but for whatever reason (perhaps lack of money
| or perhaps fear of strip searching and disappearing to
| the gulag) didn't follow the proper process. Because most
| voters don't see this situation as a crime and certainly
| not one requiring deportation, the law doesn't treat this
| situation as a serious crime, or actually a crime at all.
|
| If you want to aggressively going after folks who have
| skirted immigration rules perhaps the place to begin is
| in the east wing (if it still existed).
| shevy-java wrote:
| That assumes that e. g. ICE were only involved against
| people who have broken the law. First and foremost - this
| is not the case. Second: when you look at the two
| executions of US citizens, that is also something not
| touched by your comment. It is not good to try to
| describe e. g. ICE without also mentioning the negative
| sides, such as them having shot dead at the least two US
| citizens already for no justifiable reason.
| account42 wrote:
| > for no justifiable reason
|
| How about we wait for the courts to come to a conclusion
| on that instead of making assumptions based on agenda-
| driven outrage media?
| mcv wrote:
| This narrative has been debunked many times already.
| Legal residents, even citizens, have been arrested,
| deported, or shot. And people get denied entry based on
| social media posts. Your comment is way off base and
| severely detached from reality.
|
| If the US criminal "justice" system arrests people
| suspected of crimes, why are the criminals running the
| country while innocents get locked up?
| pb7 wrote:
| They should have thought of that before entering this
| country illegally. Millions more have an opportunity to
| avoid this risk right now by leaving voluntarily but they
| choose not to.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| Citizens are abducted by ICE too. Even native Americans
| moogly wrote:
| Newsflash: citizens have also been deported. Maybe you're
| next, who knows.
| pb7 wrote:
| Want to bet?
| shevy-java wrote:
| Nobody needs to bet - in a lawful society, the law should
| protect citizens from government agents shooting them
| dead. ICE already shot dead two US citizens. What would a
| bet change here? That is a system that clearly does not
| work.
| account42 wrote:
| People died after they deliberately put themselves in
| harms way in an attempt to illegally interfere with law
| enforcement. That's tragic but doesn't make the law
| enforcement inherently wrong.
| ericjmorey wrote:
| WTF are you talking about? Next time you fail to obey a
| yellow light signal, you'd be rightfully distraught if
| you were put in prison and someone were to say that you
| deserved it because you should have thought about
| stopping at the yellow as the law prescribed.
| account42 wrote:
| People who were actively violating the law of the country.
| estearum wrote:
| Not true. As mentioned elsewhere, plenty of people were
| not in fact violating any laws when this happened to
| them.
|
| Here's another case. In this one, the government targeted
| someone who had violated no laws for exercising the 1st
| Amendment rights afforded to every individual in our
| country.
|
| https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2025-04/FIRE%20
| Ozt...
| wat10000 wrote:
| If your eyes are closed, then things look the same whether
| you're in the middle of a calm meadow or on a highway about
| to be run over by a truck.
|
| If you prefer not to look, maybe because you're convinced
| there's no truck, or you don't think it would help avoid the
| truck if there is one, fair enough. But the fact that your
| personal experience is unchanged is meaningless.
| account42 wrote:
| It is well known that news and social media is biased
| towards outrage. Most issues people get upset about are
| really not that big in reality and quickly forgotten once
| the public consciousness moves on to the next thing. If
| there is someone yelling "look out for the truck" all the
| time no matter what the rational choice is to ignore them.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Ignoring them means not letting them influence your
| opinion _either way_. You should still allow yourself to
| reach the same opinion they 're espousing by your own
| means, otherwise you're letting them control your
| opinions just as much as somebody who slavishly agrees
| with them.
|
| Ignore the boy crying wolf, but you should still watch
| for wolves. If you don't want to, fine, but "I don't look
| for wolves and my sheep are fine" is not a very good
| argument.
| dfabulich wrote:
| > I only scan the headlines
|
| Have you scanned any headlines about ICE lately? Maybe do a
| quick search for news about Minnesota?
|
| (I'm pretty sure that if you'd been putting your pants on in
| Minnesota, you would not have written this comment.)
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| Are you saying legal US citizens are having a tough time in
| Minnesota with ICE? My cousins and their families aren't.
| They're too busy leading their own normal, daily lives.
| estearum wrote:
| Yes, two of them were just killed. Does that qualify as
| "having a tough time?"
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| And how many people live in Minnesota? What were they
| doing when they were killed?
| estearum wrote:
| I don't get your point. What proportion of residents does
| an event need to negatively impact for you to believe
| that it's hassling people?
|
| Surely it can't be 100%, right? No event in any major
| city, even horrific events, actually affect everyone.
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| How many illegal aliens were killed in Minnesota?
| estearum wrote:
| Huh? Did you respond to the wrong comment?
| bleepblap wrote:
| What's the ratio of citizens to non-citizens that's okay?
| One citizen per every hundred or are you thinking 10-1?
| pb7 wrote:
| Have you considered they could maybe just stop
| interfering with federal law enforcement and let them do
| their jobs as they have been doing for decades under all
| sorts of administrations? You'll be hard pressed to find
| a tear shed for agitators protecting illegal immigrant
| criminals with deportation orders.
| estearum wrote:
| Neither you nor anyone else believes this is how
| immigration enforcement has been done "for decades under
| all sorts of administrations."
|
| You can make it appear as if you have a better grasp on
| reality by just acknowledging that this is a much
| different enforcement mechanism than we've seen in the
| past, but you think that's okay.
|
| Anyway there are now several known cases of people being
| detained or deported _without_ deportation orders. This
| is another point that you could at least give the
| appearance of honesty and grasp on reality by
| acknowledging.
| account42 wrote:
| You're right that immigration enforcement in the past did
| not have to deal with mobs trying to interfere with that
| enforcement.
| estearum wrote:
| DHS's own data proves that current enforcement priorities
| have changed.
|
| So what's more probable in your mind?
|
| ( Hypothesis A ) -- Mobs trying to interfere with law
| enforcement has caused DHS to focus on arresting and
| deporting immigrants without criminal background
|
| ( Hypothesis B ) -- DHS's focus on arresting and
| deporting immigrants without criminal background has
| required significant scale-up of personnel with minimal
| training (validated by DHS's own data) and required
| tactics that a large number of Americans believe to
| strike an unacceptable cost-benefit balance
|
| ( Hypothesis C ) -- The two facts (enforcement approach
| and public response) are not causally related to each
| other at all
| bleepblap wrote:
| It's telling you chose to not answer the question and
| instead chose to introduce a different (straw man)
| question in response.
|
| At least people in the past had the integrity to
| acknowledge their positions head-on. One of the
| lamentable things missing today
| wat10000 wrote:
| Interfering with federal law enforcement is not
| punishable by summary execution.
| bleepblap wrote:
| You keep moving the goalposts that much and maybe the
| patriots can win the Super Bowl.
| malnourish wrote:
| Yes; my neighbors had trouble going to the grocery store.
| From appearances, you might think they're on vacation
| from Mexico. They have been here for generations, and one
| of their family is a high enough ranking member of the
| military that I won't say more to avoid the risk of
| doxxing them.
| jocular wrote:
| It's sad and pathetic to see such apathy.
| shevy-java wrote:
| That is not a good analysis because it insinuates that
| everything stays the same. This is clearly not the case.
| Besides - no matter whether in a democracy or in a
| dictatorship, almost everyone puts on pants.
|
| It is also incorrect to confine this "merely" to social
| media. This is clearly government overreach. They want data
| from The People.
| bloqs wrote:
| while there is nothing wrong with it, you are clearly in a
| stable section of a stable country
| grayhatter wrote:
| Because I have some experience with FOSS, I know you don't get
| the recognition that you deserve. So on behalf of everyone
| who's too distracted to say thank you.
|
| Thank you!
|
| Admittedly, it did take a day (less than), but once I got used
| to the interface Zulip provides. It's better than what I would
| have asked for! It's phenomenal software! The whole experience
| is better than anything else that exists. And everyone charging
| for the same features should feel embarrassed given how much
| better Zulip is!
|
| Genuinely, it's impressive what y'all have created. So thank
| you!
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Yes, hear hear! As someone who've run a couple of FOSS
| communities, many of them having chats via IRC, Slack,
| Discord, forums and more, using Zulip has always been one of
| the most welcome options, yet also the one that takes the
| longest for people to understand if they've never seen it.
|
| But it's easily worth it, as you can actually come back and
| read through old discussions and understand things and it
| isn't a mess. It's like if you could force Slack/Discord to
| only do threads, and the entire UI is optimizing for that
| specific UX. Overall pleasant experience once you get over
| the initial bump :)
| k12sosse wrote:
| This feels like you're chatting with yourself.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I think you need to invite more people to your Zulip
| instance if you keep feeling like you're chatting with
| yourself.
| 31337Logic wrote:
| Thanks so much for this!!
| pocksuppet wrote:
| > Given current events in the USA
|
| Don't worry - they're repealing section 230 of the
| Communications Decency Act.
|
| The one that says platforms aren't liable for what their users
| post.
|
| This means there will be no platforms at all very soon.
| fumar wrote:
| What is the purpose of repealing this act? Make platforms
| liable and thus enact more restrictions, is that right?
| LastTrain wrote:
| Makes selective political retribution easier.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| As you suggest, it's clearly to curtail free speech
| further; but in a way that their supporters can claim isn't
| fascist because 'it's the companies doing it not the
| government'.
|
| We do really need non-USA based social media, stat.
| pocksuppet wrote:
| Companies already have the right to curtail space as much
| as they want. The government wants to force companies to
| ban left-wing speech.
| drstewart wrote:
| >Don't worry
|
| I'm not worried. We'll use Zulip which has values and thus
| takes responsibility for everything its users post, right?
| 8note wrote:
| how does zulip as a technical solution solve the ultimate
| problems with discord and gmail and so on - EU chat control, US
| porn control, etc?
|
| arent you as a zulip instance owner going to have to implement
| all the same stuff as discord?
| smelendez wrote:
| It depends on what you're doing with the instance, where you
| and your users are located, etc.
|
| If you create an invite-only Zulip chat for your pub trivia
| league or school parent association that's all adults,
| probably not.
| numbers wrote:
| man, I want to support something like Zulip, I would even want
| to work on a product like this but one thing I'd say is you
| have to go back and study why Slack beat Hipchat and others.
| It's so simple in hindsight but it was the marketing and the
| UI/UX of Slack that made it so much easier to use. If you'd
| like, I have a ton of ideas and experience building UIs and
| would love to give you some of my input. Too much typing for a
| comment at the moment.
| tabbott wrote:
| You should stop by #feedback in chat.zulip.org and share your
| ideas!
|
| Regarding the history: Slack had very effective marketing,
| powered by a lot of venture capital. And HipChat was a weak
| product that had an embarrassing total hack, which did not
| leave customers with confidence that their data was safe
| there.
|
| Zulip is not venture-funded, so we're reliant on people
| sharing it with others to get the word out.
|
| As a side note, I don't think Slack could have succeeded if
| it launched today. Microsoft Teams has far far more users as
| Slack, and it's slopware. You can thank the end of anti-trust
| enforcement for that.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| Fun fact: Shortly after MS Teams launched I created an
| internal "reconstituted" desktop Teams client for myself
| and the poor souls in my org that had MS Teams thrust upon
| them. It extracted resources from the (unminified!)
| electron app as well the js and CSS files from their web
| version, then repackaged it again via electron, wrapping
| into a standalone executable. Think like a really
| complicated greasemonkey/tampermonkey script.
|
| My fork at the time replaced their criminal white space use
| and offered a more compact and information dense
| alternative using CSS and JavaScript, injected all post
| rendering. Ah, the silly things one is capable when faced
| with a minor inconvenience and a wandering mind...
| LastTrain wrote:
| You are referring to yourself as an "organization", can you
| define that precisely?
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| LOVE Zulip!
| VoidWhisperer wrote:
| Based on some (admittedly very surface level) research, one
| spot where Zulip will still struggle to replace Discord is
| Voice/Video chats and Screensharing - the little I could find
| about voice chatting in zulip is that it has to be configured
| to use an external service (jitsi, zoom, etc)
| tabbott wrote:
| If you do no configuration, it'll use the public Jitsi
| service for video calls. So no action required unless you
| want a different video call provider.
| sankhao wrote:
| Thanks for your work. Moved my company from Slack to self-
| hosted Zulip after Salesforce unilaterally decided to transfer
| our account to Alibaba Cloud and the transition has been very
| smooth. We especially appreciate proper markdown support !
| reciprocity wrote:
| Wow what the hell, Salesforce.
| scotty79 wrote:
| It's kind of weird that e2ee is kind of afterthought
| everywhere. If I was making a chat system I'd obviously didn't
| want to keep anything that the users talk about on my servers
| unencrypted or decryptable. Why would you? If something is
| supposed to be public then keep it. If not, don't.
|
| The weird "we pinky promise to try to keep it non-public for
| some time" is a weird idea.
| wredcoll wrote:
| It turns out e2ee in a chatroom is really, really, really
| difficult.
| tabbott wrote:
| Most consumers don't know the difference between "encryption"
| and "end-to-end encryption".
|
| Zulip uses standard TLS encryption, where the messages are
| encrypted in transit, but the server has access to the
| messages.
|
| The server having access to the messages is extremely useful
| for many key features. Access control policies. Search.
| Markdown rendering that can make guarantees to clients about
| its behavior. Mobile notifications for mentions. And many
| more. There's options for all of these problems, but it's
| /hard/ and you end up having a lot of risk of nasty bugs
| where "all the message history become unreadable" and a lot
| of performance issues.
|
| This is why why end-to-end encrypted messenger apps like
| Signal are extremely minimal with basically no chat features,
| and can take a while to load long conversations ... there's a
| lot of expensive cryptography happening in the background.
| AFAIK it's not realistic to use the Signal protocol with the
| volume of messages people do in high-traffic Discord or Zulip
| communities.
|
| Some other E2EE chat systems have more features but fail to
| actually provide end-to-end security. (For example, the
| server provides the source code for the web app and can
| freely modify that code to steal all the messages the user
| can still read, or the server is still in charge of metadata
| like channel membership ... so a malicious server could just
| add a fake user to every channel).
|
| You get almost all of the security benefits of these "E2EE"
| chat systems by having a trusted person self-host the server,
| and setting a message retention policy if you want messages
| in certain channels to be automatically be deleted after a
| period of time.
|
| Our vision for Zulip is not billions of people on our Cloud
| service. People should own their own communities, not
| corporations. And in that world, usually the person who runs
| the community can be trusted to host it.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > where the messages are encrypted in transit, but the
| server has access to the messages.
|
| So the easiest and most useless kind. There were 1000s
| succesful db leaks for 1 successful mitm. Last time I heard
| of one, I did it myself on WEP. Https everywhere trend is
| super annoying for me because all it does for me is make my
| life difficult when I want to save time and transfer by
| setting up local caching proxy for myself.
|
| > the volume of messages people do in high-traffic Discord
| or Zulip communities.
|
| Why do people recieve volume of messages that's too
| expensive for their device to decipher? Are they gonna read
| them all?
|
| Decryption should happen as needed. Before render. Before
| building local search index.
|
| And what's up with notifications? Can't background process
| of my local app notify me?
|
| > metadata like channel membership ... so a malicious
| server could just add a fake user to every channel
|
| If you post to a channel anyone can join it's by definition
| public message regardless of any encryption. So no
| encryption needed.
|
| > For example, the server provides the source code for the
| web app and can freely modify that code to steal all the
| messages the user can still read.
|
| We should have an abstraction that is a socket that
| encrypts outgoing packets with my private key and deceypts
| incoming with provided public key.
|
| Such chat apps should have only the right to use such
| sockets but not general ones.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Do you know if migrating from Mattermost to Zulip is remotely
| possible?
|
| I had been using Mattermost because it's also (mostly) FOSS.
| However, they've recently been changing their released OSS
| edition to restrict capabilities... Unfortunately the org I
| maintain it for is having some issues with it now and I have
| metaphorical egg on my face.
| tabbott wrote:
| Yep, it's easy: https://zulip.com/help/import-from-
| mattermost.
| phantomathkg wrote:
| Self hosting could be an option, but it does not help when a
| country require you to identify if a user is adult or not.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Doesn't self hosting usually exempt you? Most such
| regulations only apply to commercial entities above some
| minimum user count.
|
| While I personally strongly favor federated solutions those
| are of significantly more concern in this regard.
| sfn42 wrote:
| Good luck telling a FOSS project what to do. At the very
| least you'd have to pay for the work and it seems to me
| they could claim whatever price they want.
| tonymet wrote:
| very good take. IMO "current events" goes back to The Patriot
| Act if not further. Aggressive digital surveillance by
| 3-letter-agencies has been active for 20-60 years
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| Hi Tim. For pricing, it would seem that large, public-facing,
| Discord-style organizations would have to go with the free plan
| to avoid the pricing being prohibitive. Think something like
| the new Limewire community on Discord which has 2 million
| members. Or am I missing something about what a 'user' is
| considered in terms of being billable or not?
|
| On a related note, I'm gonna check out Zulip for
| PortableApps.com. Any interest in having the Windows desktop
| app be portable? (We'd love to do that if we wind up using it)
| tabbott wrote:
| The advertised pricing is for workplace use where the users
| are on payroll; if you read the plans page carefully you'll
| see we have free or highly discounted pricing for other use
| cases, both in Cloud and self-hosted.
|
| Zulip is not designed to support 2M user accounts in a single
| organization. But if you enable the public access option
| (https://zulip.com/help/public-access-option), such that no
| account is required just to read content, you can end up with
| 1-2 orders of magnitude fewer "total accounts" that just
| wanted to see something once and don't actually use the
| server.
| 71bw wrote:
| Just dropping in on a completely unrelated note to thank you
| for developing PortableApps - as a kid with no UAC access
| almost two decades ago now it helped me immensely to develop
| my interest in IT :-)
| vetrom wrote:
| What is Zulip's position on speech they/(you?) disagree with --
| if someone is paying for non-selfhosted Zulip, are you going to
| delete/shutdown/dox users/operators that you politically
| disagree with?
|
| If say the hyprland people were using a Zulip instance and
| someone astroturfed/brigaded/massreported a campaign to shut
| them down because they didn't agree to some external code of
| conduct and external enforcement of such, what would Zulip's
| response, as a company, be?
| tabbott wrote:
| Moderation of self-hosted servers is entirely the
| responsibility of the server's owners (and perhaps hosting
| providers, if it's extreme enough). We have no way to know
| what's happening on self-hosted servers, and it's none of our
| business.
|
| Regardless, there is no technical mechanism through which we
| could block access to a self-hosted Zulip server via the web
| application (which is hosted by the self-hosted server itself
| and designed to work on both desktop and mobile devices).
|
| For Zulip Cloud, you can read
| https://zulip.com/policies/rules. One of the nice things
| about Zulip's model is that communities that we do not want
| to host can just migrate to self-hosting.
| teh_infallible wrote:
| Can you get Zulip supported by OpenClaw? Zulip was my first
| choice communication channel.
| tabbott wrote:
| https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/discussions/5163
| suggests it already has a PR.
|
| I'm told (https://chat.zulip.org/#narrow/channel/127-integrat
| ions/topi...) that upvoting that discussion might help it get
| prioritized.
| bdlowery wrote:
| so instead of discord, google, meta having access to private
| convos... we should all switch to Zulip and have Zulip being
| the one with access to those convos? Or join someones self
| hosted instance and let them have access to those convos?
|
| I am confused.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| You can host your own instance or choose someone you trust to
| host it. With discord, google, meta you have no options.
| EGreg wrote:
| I've been building a decentralized, open source platform at
| https://github.com/Qbix/Platform before it was cool.
|
| I don't think it's cool even now.
|
| I mostly got hate on HN every time I posted about it LOL. I
| think something about "decentralized" gets some people really
| riled up (maybe it's the association with crypto / blockchain?)
| but frankly, it's the ONLY solution to extreme centralization.
|
| Someone's got to build a platform with all the features of
| Discord, but make it decentralized and open source.
|
| I've spent over $1M and 10 years on it. I have to package it so
| that it's easy to install. But I'm working on something to take
| care of that, in the next few months, that will also include
| actually safe AI agents inside.
|
| It will look sort of like this:
| https://engageusers.ai/ecosystem.pdf
|
| I'm happy to welcome anyone aboard who takes the time to learn
| the platform, but I won't lie, it's huge. As you would expect
| an open source decentralized clone of Facebook / Discord to be.
| I just hope it's architected well enough for developers to pick
| it up quickly. At the very least, I think it's a lot less
| spaghetti than Wordpress and Joomla :)
|
| PS: In 2018 I launched something that HN hates even more... a
| Web3 company that released open source smart contracts at
| https://github.com/Intercoin . Why you ask? Because once a lot
| of value is at stake (whether it takes the form of money,
| votes, or even just community roles), it's better to have
| thousands of computers secure it than "just trust" the central
| site.
|
| When founders of famous centralized messengers criticized
| decentralization, I had to write this:
|
| https://community.intercoin.app/t/web3-moxie-signal-telegram...
|
| And history has proven me right... their only move is
| "withdrawing" from a country like Sweden. Well I guess the DSA
| would make them withdraw from all of Europe:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1ixrv14/signals_ce...
|
| Don't forget, it's not just Discord. As of Jan 1, Texas is now
| requiring digital ID to _download any app at all_ or visit many
| internet sites, and forcing Apple /Google to build it in "to
| protect the children" of course. And Utah is following suit
| soon too. The Supreme Court last year said that digital ID can
| be required by states.
| altmanaltman wrote:
| You need someone to rework that ecosystem.pdf file if you're
| serious. You spent a million dollars on this but your
| ecosystem pdf looks like it was created by a 12-year old
| trying out slides for the first time.
| phatfish wrote:
| Crypto is the problem not the solution, that's why no one
| cares. We aren't going to pump your shit coin so you can rug
| pull, give up.
| dheera wrote:
| Hi Tim! (We know each other :))
|
| I'm curious whether you feel you're actually in control to
| actually make policy decisions about data protection or whether
| you feel you could be hit any day by the "$5 wrench" by the
| government any time they feel it necessary. I'm starting to
| feel that in this environment, nothing is safe, even if
| encrypted and on FOSS platforms.
| tabbott wrote:
| Hey Dheera! It's been forever.
|
| Personally, I advocate for self-hosting communications
| software, ideally on physical hardware that someone in your
| community has control over. Zulip runs great on old laptops,
| if you can solve the IP address problem for hosting it in
| your house.
|
| And if you want to be extra careful, put your chat system
| behind a VPN/firewall, so it's difficult to identify what
| software is being used externally.
|
| And if you're not going to do that, because it sounds like
| too much work, the next best thing is to at least pick a
| Cloud service where you can migrate your group to paranoid
| self-hosting overnight if you decide the work is now worth
| it.
|
| Self-hosting this way doesn't protect against all threat
| models. I am human and have children who I love dearly, so
| it's hard to rule out the possibility of my being compelled
| to make a malicious release.
|
| But at least the Zulip source code is entirely open and
| highly readable; so users would at least have a chance to
| notice and not upgrade. With a centralized architecture like
| Discord, you're entirely reliant on whisteblowers.
| carabiner wrote:
| Are we the bad guys?
| xyst wrote:
| Zulip is amazing, thanks bro.
| dackdel wrote:
| hope you get some money man. instead of just "oh you do FOSS,
| thank you" - fuck those guys.
| pbowyer wrote:
| Hi @tabbott I've been meaning to pass this feedback on for 5
| months, and I hope it comes across in the spirit it's meant.
|
| I tried Zulip (cloud offering) with some techie/designery
| friends, so we should have been right at home but... the
| desktop app on macOS and the web app was visually unappealing
| and clunky, and we ended up going back to a paid Slack plan.
|
| I looked for docs on how to theme Zulip (so I could
| contribute), or for existing theme packs that would soften the
| transition but found neither.
|
| tl;dr: The functionality was good (Love the threading!) but the
| UI feels like the 2000s came calling. Some UI polish would go a
| long way.
| checkmatez wrote:
| My feelings as well.
| bryanhogan wrote:
| I'm really hoping for Zulip to succeed, which is why I'm even
| commenting. But it really needs people with UI/UX expertise.
| E.g. good user onboarding does not mean showing them a 2 minute
| video, as another comment on here mentioned.
| 7bit wrote:
| Value-focused organizations mean nothing to me. They throw out
| their values as soon as they are in the way of financial
| success.
| crabmusket wrote:
| Having a fully open-source self-hostable product improves
| this significantly.
| benterris wrote:
| Also your website (https://zulip.com) is so fast and snappy, I
| was surprised to see everything load instantly when clicking
| around. I have not tried the app yet, but seeing a static
| website like this is quite refreshing.
| didntcheck wrote:
| How well does Zulip protect users' privacy against snooping
| admins? I.e., does it have E2EE DMs? Unfortunately, this is a
| legitimate threat to be concerned about
| _bobm wrote:
| How do you see Zulip comparing to anytype, https://anytype.io/
| ?
| lurk2 wrote:
| > https://zulip.com/values/
|
| Every word of this page appears as its own line on mobile.
| miki123211 wrote:
| Some of the big weaknesses of running a self-hosted Zulip
| server for your community are:
|
| - Your server admin can see DMs (or at least metadata, not sure
| if Zulip does E2E for DMs). The same is true for centralized
| services in theory, but unless you're a terrorist or a person
| of interest to a major government, it's extremely unlikely that
| a Discord employee will have an incentive to spy on your
| messages specifically. Your admin is likely part of your
| community and may know you personally, so the temptation is
| much, much higher.
|
| - If the admin dies and nobody else has the keys to the
| kingdom, the server can go down at any point, and there's no
| way for users to reconstitute the network semi-automatically.
| Discord servers don't just go away unless somebody actively
| makes them to.
|
| - It's much less secure in practice, it relies on your admin to
| always be on guard and constantly update their server to
| prevent vulnerabilities, either in Zulip or in the myriad of
| other self-hosted services running on it. One guy in his
| basement that goes on vacation once a year and has family
| responsibilities is far more likely to make mistakes than a
| team of trained cybersecurity professionals.
|
| - Many Discord users are in 20+ servers. Anything that doesn't
| provide a one-click server joining experience (for users who
| already have an account on a different server) is nowhere near
| a Discord replacement.
|
| - People want bots (for things like high-fidelity Youtube music
| streaming on voice channels), and those are mostly Discord-
| only.
|
| - Anything open source will be worse at phishing and fraud /
| abuse prevention by definition, as many fraud-prevention
| approaches rely on the fraudster blindly guessing at what the
| code and ML models (do you even have ML models for this) are
| doing.
| alt227 wrote:
| > it's extremely unlikely that a Discord employee will have
| an incentive to spy on your messages specifically
|
| No, but history shows some unscrupulous staff members will
| always snoop, whether its just pure interest or something
| more nafarious like intent to sell on the black market. This
| makes the risk of your private data being leaked > 0, which
| should always be treated as a valid risk.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > If the admin dies and nobody else has the keys to the
| kingdom, the server can go down at any point
|
| This is how infrastructure works, and supposed to work,
| besides the point that servers "die by themselves" which of
| course isn't true in reality. You decrease the bus factor if
| this is a problem for you.
|
| > Discord servers don't just go away unless somebody actively
| makes them to
|
| If all the sysadmins at Discord died and nobody else has the
| keys, exactly the same problem happens. Discord though surely
| have multiple backups of the keys and so on, something you
| too can do when you have your own infrastructure, so overall
| that argument feels almost dishonest, since you don't compare
| the two accurately.
|
| > Anything open source will be worse at phishing and fraud /
| abuse prevention by definition
|
| What? Completely orthogonal concerns, and if your main
| "fraud-prevention approaches" depend on security by
| obscurity, I'm not sure you should even attempt to be
| involved in those efforts, because that's not what the rest
| of the industry is going by a long mile.
|
| > People want bots (for things like high-fidelity Youtube
| music streaming on voice channels), and those are mostly
| Discord-only.
|
| Actually, the further I get in your comment, the more it
| seems like you don't actually understand what Zulip offers
| nor what the parent comment is about. Music streaming on
| voice channels? Completely outside the scope of Zulip...
|
| ----------
|
| I think you have to understand the comment you're replying to
| a bit better, before attempting to lift Discord above Zulip.
| They're specifically talking about Zulip as an alternative
| "for managing the firehose of busy communities", not as a
| general replacement for every single Discord "server" out
| there. Yet you've responded to the comment as that's what
| they've been doing.
| evv wrote:
| > This is how infrastructure works, and supposed to work
|
| No, infrastructure doesn't have to work this way. This is a
| very old-school mentality.
|
| Sign the content with a key that you control. Back up the
| content locally. And boom- your server is easily replaced.
| It only helps copy data around and performs certain
| conveniences.
|
| I've been working on this full-time for a few years. If we
| succeed, we solve link rot (broken links) on the web.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Well, you're basically repeating what I'm saying, but
| with more detail. It's still what I true, "the one who
| holds the key holds the kingdom", just shifting it to the
| user rather than the admin. This is great, and works too,
| but doesn't make what I say less true.
| prmoustache wrote:
| >- People want bots (for things like high-fidelity Youtube
| music streaming on voice channels), and those are mostly
| Discord-only.
|
| So basically Discord is a warez service?
| TheAmazingRace wrote:
| Hi tabbott. Thanks kindly for offering to answer questions. :)
|
| I signed up on your site just a bit ago, but I'm a bit
| concerned with the paid upgrade. Unlike Discord, I need to pay
| per user, which I find onerous and would get out of control
| fast for the group I run with around 100 members. Is there any
| plans for a flat fee model? I'm even happy to pay twice what I
| pay for Discord Nitro, but yeah, $8/mo per user is too
| expensive.
|
| If it helps at all, it's for a retro computing community group,
| and not for profit.
| bilkow wrote:
| Not affiliated with Zulip, but have you checked the "Free and
| discounted Zulip Cloud Standard" info on their help center?
| https://zulip.com/help/zulip-cloud-billing#free-and-
| discount...
|
| Sounds like you could be eligible for free or for a
| significant discount. Also:
|
| "If there are any circumstances that make regular pricing
| unaffordable for your organization, contact sales@zulip.com
| to discuss your situation."
| TheAmazingRace wrote:
| Thank you! I didn't see this when I was first looking into
| it.
| jsrcout wrote:
| ENOPE.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Medium term, moving to another platform is the best solution. In
| the short term, I think using some other platform for the locked
| features is best?
|
| For example, if we are in a server for coding, maybe we will have
| to use zoom or google meet as a stopgap. Curious if others have
| better alternatives.
| jm4 wrote:
| It took all of 2 minutes to delete my account and block Discord
| from my network. Credit to Discord for making the process very
| easy using the mobile app. I'm not going to put up with this crap
| just to occasionally use this app to play games with friends. My
| kids sure as hell aren't going to comply with this policy either.
| docmars wrote:
| This is such a huge mistake, Discord. Hopefully enough people put
| a lot of pressure on them to reverse this.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| it's like there's an inherent user-hostility in every platform
| that is expressed in a less-than-ideal user experience in it's
| usage or in the ways that the host will harvest all of your
| personally identifying information for various purposes (which it
| will also inevitably fail to properly secure, resulting in a near
| guaranteed leak at some point in the future).
|
| I personally don't find ease-of-use to be worth the price of my
| privacy but most people are more than happy to sell themselves
| out piecemeal in the form of data until there's nothing left but
| a bunch of numbers in a spreadsheet to attest to their ever
| having existed.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| right now someone is vibecoding a locally hostable discord clone.
| btown wrote:
| > The first option uses AI to analyze a user's video selfie,
| which Discord says never leaves the user's device. If the age
| group estimate (teen or adult) from the selfie is incorrect,
| users can appeal it or verify with a photo of an identity
| document instead.
|
| Are they shipping a video classifier model that can run on all
| the devices that can run Discord, including web? I've never heard
| of this being done at scale fully client-side. Which begs the
| question of whether the frames are truly processed only client-
| side...
| digiown wrote:
| Can't you just modify the client to send the resulting signal
| then? I'd anticipate a ton of tutorials like: Just paste this
| script into the console to get past the age gate!
| qrobit wrote:
| It will be easy to check with devtools when the update is
| released
| zb3 wrote:
| They could use AVF pKVM for this (which'd require a partnership
| with Google) but that of course requires locked bootloader +
| remote attestation..
|
| So actually, I hope they're just lying..
| utf_8x wrote:
| If you're looking for an alternative to Discord, check out Stoat
| (formerly Revolt). [1] Especially if you're an iOS dev with some
| free time as the iOS client could really use some love... [2]
|
| (not affiliated with the project, just really want to see it
| succeed)
|
| [1] https://stoat.chat/ [2] https://github.com/stoatchat/for-ios
| Atlas667 wrote:
| Just another instance of companies participating in the creation
| of the police state.
|
| These companies do not do this under external pressure from the
| state, they do this because it benefits and consolidates their
| power as well.
|
| It's bricks for their castle wall.
|
| Corporations should not be considered a separate entity from the
| state. Corporations form state power. This doesn't mean they are
| always in-line with the state, but that they lead the state as a
| block, as a class, defending their common interests.
|
| Policing is one of them.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Good. Maybe then we'll stop having Open Source projects using it
| as their only store of knowledge :)
| gverrilla wrote:
| Good, this will hit hard on nazi-incel-related "communities".
| expedition32 wrote:
| Based. Kids should start gamefaqs again!
| andreagrandi wrote:
| Jump here, you can see Lucca (as we say in Italy, more or less..)
| dismalaf wrote:
| I'm only on a few programming related discords and not going to
| lie, even those are slightly toxic. So bye discord.
| Eji1700 wrote:
| Okay, i'm not very good at coding, especially web.
|
| It seems to me that the "logical" solution to this is some sort
| of local key like "sudo" that the user enters/has access to. This
| key is on a cookie or request or something that says "This
| request is being done by a verified adult" and then the website
| goes "cool here's your data". If the request does not have it,
| then the website says "Sorry you need one of these
| keys/permissions to access".
|
| I see this as elegant because like modern IDs, YES THEY COULD GET
| AROUND IT, but at least it gives parents and users who want to
| abide and try the ability. Kids get fake id's, they get stuff
| they shouldn't. So long as audits show that the businesses are
| trying to catch this and punishing those who ignore procedures
| properly, things are "fine".
|
| How infeasible is this from a coding perspective? I get that
| we're fucking with standards here, but I figured it would make
| most sane users and companies happy. Companies don't have to keep
| PII, just a log of "yes this access from this IP was approved,
| but we discovered is was used falsely and banned that key", and
| users have a tool that's setup once locally (or refreshed when
| you want a new key).
|
| I guess you'd need some way to authenticate these as if it's too
| easy to spoof whats the point, but it strikes me as leagues
| better of "store everyone's colonic map"
|
| How off base am I here? Is the theory somewhat sound or is this
| just dead from the ground up?
| calmworm wrote:
| Why does the idea of collecting millions of images of minors not
| sit right? Roblox, Character.ai, Discord...
| danparsonson wrote:
| Why would minors need to provide photos? The point of this is
| to verify adult users.
| calmworm wrote:
| I was speaking of the "face scan" option listed as #1 option
| on Discord's "How To Complete Age Assurance". It's well known
| minors are using and/or gaming the face scanning on other
| platforms. Some adults are even having their accounts
| downgraded to a minor-level restricted account based on their
| face scan. All around it's a terrible implementation for age
| verification.
| b_brief wrote:
| I can see the moderation and age-verification motivations here,
| but I am wary of how this changes expectations around identity on
| social platforms.
|
| Mandatory age checks with biometric or ID data can create long-
| term privacy and reuse risks that the ecosystem has not fully
| reckoned with yet.
| abalone wrote:
| Taylor Lorenz has done excellent reporting on this. It's a right
| wing censorial moral panic that's forced some Democrats to go
| along with it by positioning it as "protecting kids". This
| legislation is moving at a fast clip and we have to fight back.
|
| * SCREEN Act age verification with huge implications for all
| online privacy:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bnp3nmpK9g&list=PLu4srHCWJr...
|
| * Abolishing Section 230, the law that protects platforms like
| this from being sued for user content (just published today):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eqt8vrtP-U&list=PLu4srHCWJr...
|
| * UK online safety act (it's not just the U.S.) - interview with
| the lawyer defending 4chan:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD3PGp9RhTw&list=PLu4srHCWJr...
| winddude wrote:
| Delete!
| thephotonsphere wrote:
| Okay, that's the end of #Discord (at least for me) because I will
| never upload 'selfies' or a copy of my id to a social media site,
| or something.
| cantalopes wrote:
| I guesa i dont need to use discord anymore
| gsich wrote:
| Good bye. Discord is not trustworthy with this kind of data. As
| proven recently.
| rockskon wrote:
| This is categorically unacceptable.
|
| People's livelihoods and safety are threatened when there's
| people's personally identifying information associated with their
| Discord chats - even if linked by "anonymous" identifiers.
|
| Imagine your photo ID next to the horniest thing you've stated
| next to some random asshole on the Internet.
|
| Discord has _no_ moral right to make such a dramatically
| consequential decision about the personal privacy of its users in
| jurisdictions where such age verification tech is not mandatory.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Actively withdrawing from all US proprietary software and
| subscriptions ...
| burnte wrote:
| Goodbye Discord.
| h4kunamata wrote:
| The usual "to protect the kids" bs. Only people who does not
| understand the implications of this, will provide personal
| information.
|
| Watch:
|
| A) Discord relaxing its rule because of mass exodus B) People
| moving elsewhere where no personal information is required
| dmix wrote:
| This won't stop at Discord. Banning websites/apps and ID gating
| is going to be everywhere in a decade.
|
| Protect the kids puritanism is on max level right now, throw in
| some future terrorist attack or political issues that scare
| people enough like they fear TikTok and the internet will be
| fully controlled.
| pmdr wrote:
| I'll hardly miss using Discord, but if this isn't going to be a
| wake-up call to ALL (mainly) open-source projects using it, then
| we're all doomed.
|
| We should seriously go back to mailing lists and IRC as a
| standard for OSS. Everything else should be viewed as disposable.
| skydhash wrote:
| And websites that are not SPAs in disguise.
| abraxas wrote:
| I really don't understand the demise of usenet as a way to have
| a public message board. It worked perfectly well for decades
| and then died off all at once when the bigtechs did everything
| in their power to squelch it and instead replace with their
| walled gardens.
| starkparker wrote:
| Really really surprised there isn't more discussion about the
| background inference service that's mentioned in passing here. If
| you thought Electron/wrapped web apps were a performance problem,
| I can't imagine the weight of _also_ running a local AI model
| that's constantly playing Guess My Age.
| monksy wrote:
| Please do not fall of the deceptive language that is used here.
| They're calling this "teen experience".
|
| This is not about "i see gentila we ban". They're very vague
| about what is obscene, sticking to that level of a consistent
| definition, and they're very heavy handed in punishing.
|
| They're introducing a highly restricted experience unless you
| hand over your details to either a "technology" (which that's
| very unclear about how honest they're being) or a company that
| has been caught for leaking sensitive details.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| Yeah the LGBTQ folks I know are highly suspicious of how this
| will roll out.
| templar_snow wrote:
| As an ethical conundrum, this one is clear. The safety of women
| and children online (human trafficking, r*pe and child abuse
| networks openly coordinate at industrial scale on Discord, Roblox
| and Telegram) trumps the concerns of a relatively small group of
| Richard Stallman-level purity obsessives. Good move on Discord's
| part; hopefully Roblox and Telegram shape up and follow suit. If
| you don't understand the severity of the current situation in
| 2026, Google the group "764."
| seanw444 wrote:
| I've needed a nudge to cancel my 5 year Nitro streak. This was
| it. I guess if they reverse course before March when the billing
| cycle is over, I'll renew. Hope I'm not alone in this. The only
| way they'll decide to not move forward with this is if enough
| people do the same.
| boca_honey wrote:
| So you'll still use Discord, just not Nitro?
|
| If cancelling your premium sub is all you're willing to do, it
| means you're not being militant enough.
| amniarix wrote:
| https://keet.io is this industry's best kept secret. Encypted p2p
| chat with audio and video, no signups, it just works. My kids and
| their friends switched from Discord to Keet to avoid all the
| signup / authentication friction.
| uyzstvqs wrote:
| Is it open source?
| lknuth wrote:
| It looks interesting but no source availability is a red flag
| for me.
| tacker2000 wrote:
| So now all the open source projects that use this walled off
| closed platform (even though scores of people complained and
| warned about it) can go back to hopefully using something open
| and searchable.
| dollylambda wrote:
| IRC is still a thing
| CMay wrote:
| This age verification thing is being overblown if you understand
| how they're implementing it. You still shouldn't use Discord, but
| this isn't why.
| r2vcap wrote:
| Sorry, the era of free communication is fading. Across middle
| powers, developed countries, and increasingly North America,
| governments are tightening the rules around online speech--and
| often jawboning platforms into going further than the law
| strictly requires. The list of examples is so long I can't even
| begin to type them all.
| popcornricecake wrote:
| Instead of "free communication" I would say "free large public
| social media", because without going all DPRK, there's no
| stopping people from using the internet, a means of free
| communication.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| I like this a lot. That being said my response to this whole
| biometric/ID push is going to be to leave every space that asks
| for it. I don't think I'm going to miss these all that much.
| sumeeta wrote:
| meh, discord hasn't done anything interesting in years. i'm
| mostly on Sup these days https://sup.net/i/rgc-fnqc43h
| chickensong wrote:
| What interesting things does Sup offer?
| tristor wrote:
| Thank you to Discord for making it easy to cancel my Nitro
| subscription from the mobile app. I've had Discord Nitro since it
| started being offered, buh-bye.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| I don't think there is anything anyone can do about this trend,
| other than come up with viable age-verification schemes that
| preserve privacy, and don't require things like scanning your
| face or sending random companies your ID.
|
| There are plenty of approaches to this, and I won't spam this
| comment with all the thoughts I have on the subject. But my
| frustration is people want things like "cancel your nitro
| subscription" well I don't have one. What else? It's just small
| things that will not impact anything. Every service out there
| will require this sort of verification soon. Being angry doesn't
| stop it. Even voting doesn't seem effective to me. But better
| solutions might.
|
| If they could verify your age as accurately as a store attendant
| a physical store could, what else could they want? And if that
| could be done without giving random websites any identifying
| information about yourself, wouldn't that be better than this
| mess? Two things can be done, you can resist this nonsense while
| supporting alternatives to it.
| jajuuka wrote:
| It's bad enough that Discord seems to be vulnerable to attack.
| But now they want to hold on face scans and ID's that directly
| tie to their accounts? It's already not smart, but especially
| dangerous for public figures like streamers and vtubers. Not only
| can it dox their appearance (if they are hiding it) but also give
| the insane stalkers direct ways to harass them or assault them at
| home.
|
| However I think Discord is far too embedded for communities.
| Whether that be social or development. So I don't think we'll see
| a big exodus. Having teen mode be the default will just mean that
| NSFW flags on channels or content will be a death sentence for
| that board or community. Similar to how Reddits big push to shove
| NSFW into a corner has gone. There are obvious examples like
| adult content that are NSFW intentionally. But things like art or
| cosplay can easily be twisted as NSFW and it just shuts down the
| reach of these kinds of artists.
|
| Unfortunately most people are dug in now and it takes absolute
| extreme actions to get people to move. The fact that X is still
| around should be clear evidence of that. It's draining over time
| but that kind of universal community has not be replicated. Just
| a couple different echo chambers.
| akst wrote:
| They've been rolling out a bunch of stuff like this in Australia
| and the UK. As an Australian I'm fairly certain I was made to do
| some sort of facial recognition some time ago.
|
| I kind of hate it, but honestly it's had minimal impact on me and
| my usage of these services if I'm being real.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| Well, deleted my discord. It was the only social media I had, if
| it can be considered as such.
|
| Shouldn't have been using a free product anyway. Committed the
| crime of convenience and paid with my telemetry. At least I
| stopped.
|
| HN, you my only fren.
| cedws wrote:
| I understand the frustration towards Discord, especially because
| this is a global rollout of a policy they're only required to
| enforce in specific countries, but it's IMO misdirected. They're
| likely trying to get ahead of the legislation. The way the winds
| are blowing indicates the Western governments that haven't
| already passed legislation mandating ID verification soon will.
|
| You can move to $ALT_PLATFORM but unless it's self hosted they'll
| eventually have to enforce the same policy.
|
| Direct your anger at the geriatrics in government who don't
| understand the risks of these laws first. You only have to watch
| the TikTok CEO's hearing in Congress to see how American
| politicians don't understand technology.
| Lermatroid wrote:
| This. Still canning my nitro sub for now as I do think they
| should hold off until necessary, but people ignore that the
| root of this trend of ID verification is governments who are
| willfully ignorant to having staff who can accurately assess
| the technological landscape and enforce smart regulation.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Who implements these idiotic policies? We do! Politicians could
| not code their way out of a paper bag! Giving up is not the
| solution. Refuse to do it. Make ID pass for a full-white jpeg.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Platforms want this, they're happily implementing it because
| they'll get a mountain of data to train on and sell, and
| they'll finally get to sell their userbase as real monetizable
| humans to their partners.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| > Direct your anger at the geriatrics in government who don't
| understand the risks of these laws first.
|
| No offence but I think you are being extremely naive if you
| think that the people in power and the lobbyists who have spent
| the last 10 years relentlessly pushing for ID verification
| online and mass content scanning in the US and in the EU do not
| know what they are doing.
|
| Here is the thing, most people are increasingly unhappy about
| the way things are going whether they are on the right or the
| left of the political spectrum. Governments can see that and
| don't want to see what happened in Nepal recently repeat
| itself. So they are getting ahead of the curve.
|
| First require everyone to ID themselves online, then tie
| everything you say to your ID then use that against you one day
| if you decide that enough is enough.
|
| The western countries are looking at what China is doing and
| simply iterating on it. They wrap it in a nit little bow to
| either "fight terrorism" TM or "protect the children" TM.
|
| This is a pure power play meant to save their asses and the
| people who have been warning that this was always going to be
| going in that direction have been ridiculed and called
| conspiracy nuts but here we are.
|
| Look at OFCOM in the UK. First it was to protect children form
| porn. Now they are looking to expand their powers to moderate
| speech online based on what THEY think is acceptable. If the EU
| gets it's way, you'll have client scanning in all messaging
| apps across the EU. And it won't stop.
|
| This sort of thing is never about protecting kids, reducing
| harm or whatever they call it. It's about control about what
| you see, what you write, all done with the purpose to determine
| if you as an individual will become a problem for them in the
| future.
| budududuroiu wrote:
| Platforms want this because it means they can get rid of the
| mountains of money they were paying for moderators to keep
| "child unfriendly" content off their platform
|
| "If your kid is on Discord, and sees something they shouldn't,
| it's their or your fault, not ours"
| mock-possum wrote:
| > They're likely trying to get ahead of the legislation. The
| way the winds are blowing indicates the Western governments
| that haven't already passed legislation mandating ID
| verification soon will.
|
| Isn't that the first rule from On Tyranny? "Do not obey in
| advance"
| ralferoo wrote:
| https://archive.is/E0kQ8
| bombashell wrote:
| Why is this such a big thing? Who cares about the face scan?
| dakolli wrote:
| It'll basically create a unique hash of your face, to be tied
| to all your comms. I can think of a dozen ways this could be
| misused by a nation-state.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Take a picture of your debit/credit card back and front for me.
| I won't use it to buy stuff, but I wouldn't mind a picture of
| it for safe keeping.
| blurbleblurble wrote:
| I thought we didn't talk about political issues around here?
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| How many times do we need to praise the simple XMPP server? It
| does everything you need it to do, has done so since the 90s, and
| doesn't require any PII, ever. I remember 20 years ago MS trying
| to cram Lync down our throats. That pile of crap was inferior in
| every way, yet it still succeeded. Does anyone remember it? No.
| So don't jump to another platform. Stick with the original
| solution and hold onto it for the rest of your life.
| https://xmpp.org/
| siliconc0w wrote:
| Sad to see we're going with a "child by default" internet. It'd
| be so easy for device and OS makers to align on an API that could
| tell the browser/app whether the user is under 18 or not.
| leprechaunne wrote:
| Hey our small company is making a privacy focused alternative to
| discord, it launches on Sunday and if you're interested you can
| join the waitlist here
|
| Even if you don't want to use the beta, your support to show it's
| a valuable use of our time would be great
|
| https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScL0ZVwWu8K-hJWrloq...
| bagels wrote:
| Discord doesn't need my identity and I don't need discord. Bye
| bye.
| Peacefulz wrote:
| The writing has been on the wall for a while. I moved off of
| Discord about a year and a half ago, after they started gating
| long-time free features behind Nitro. Then later, I find out that
| nothing is encrypted in transit on their application. I haven't
| had much luck moving friends off of the platform and on to things
| like Matrix, or Signal yet... but I'm trying all the time.
| wswin wrote:
| Finally, but done wrong. This should be done by 3rd party app
| (probably owned by government) with access token without sharing
| one's identity.
| polski-g wrote:
| Is there an AI service that can generate fake IDs?
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| I'm based in Australia and had to do this early shortly before
| the teen social media ban came into place here.
|
| I chose the face scan option as I simply don't trust most
| providers when it comes to uploading my ID. Countless data
| breaches have happened over the years where driver's license and
| passport details have been stolen from databases.
|
| For those unaware, a driver's license is often referred to as the
| "golden ticket" for identity thieves. A single license usually
| contains all the information needed to open credit in that
| person's name.
|
| Yes, they will claim their process is super secure, and they take
| security seriously. But then again, they all say that.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > On-device processing: Video selfies for facial age estimation
| never leave a user's device.
|
| If true, there's little problem with just this from a privacy
| perspective, but that also makes it useless. Someone is going to
| make a browser extension to bypass/feed it a fake webcam feed.
|
| > Identity documents submitted to our vendor partners are deleted
| quickly-- in most cases, immediately after age confirmation.
|
| However if they ask me to submit my ID to any third party, I'd
| sooner ditch discord. My default assumption is that this will get
| leaked, tying everyone's discord account to their real identity
| publicly. Discord seems to have halfway decent opsec, but I don't
| trust their "vendor partners" at all. I'll try submitting a fake
| ID, but if I get banned for it, then so be it.
| altairprime wrote:
| This would, most likely, go hand in hand with "Discord is no
| longer allowed on rooted devices" and "Discord desktop is
| disallowed from client-side effort", given the necessity of
| attestation to make it viable on mobile and the near-total
| absence of third parties taking advantage of the necessary
| protections on desktop.
| digiown wrote:
| _sigh_
|
| I doubt it'd work here though. You know you can just print
| out a fake ID and show it to the camera. I doubt the app will
| be able to tell. Attestation doesn't really change this.
|
| If it truly never leaves your device, you'd also be able to
| use the same fake ID for your entire friend group.
|
| The cynical and best-case take is they don't actually care,
| and it's just a gesture to show to authorities to prevent
| further regulation. In which case they wouldn't try
| especially hard, which is a good thing.
| altairprime wrote:
| The authorities would need to provide the framework for
| more intensive regulation, which would end up being
| expensive and also duplicating the work of the post
| office's ID verification service, at which point you're
| verging on "federal identity verification service". Which,
| yes, really ought to exist -- we defer that to _banks_ and
| _cell companies_ today?! -- but I somehow doubt it likely
| to occur under the current structure.
| digiown wrote:
| Perfect enforcement is not required for authoritarians.
| All they need is to have a threat of punishment, and a
| questionable process of uploading your ID is more than
| sufficient for that purpose. Most people will comply in
| advance.
| altairprime wrote:
| More groups than authoritarians support online age checks
| of various sorts, and any for-profit enterprise would far
| rather externalize the heavy lifting of profitless
| identity verification to a government agency or contract.
| Coincidentally, I noticed Discord doesn't seem to accept
| ID.me; how curious! If anyone has a larger database of
| verified ages with online proofs, I'm not sure who it
| would be.
| zb3 wrote:
| Yes, this shitty world where we can't control our devices we
| need to have (as they need to work against us) seems to be
| inevitable.
|
| But I'm actually happy that these "protections" don't yet
| exist on desktop (albeit DRM already does). If something
| really needs to work against my interest (for greater good),
| be it a smartcard, not my smartphone and definitely not my
| PC.
| altairprime wrote:
| > _these "protections" don't yet exist on desktop_
|
| (Note: They do, but platform-native things are anathema to
| Electron and most apps, so.)
| zb3 wrote:
| Ah, you probably meant TPM + Intel/AMD signatures +
| Windows + Microsoft signatures + Microsoft restricting
| the way Windows can be modified?
|
| Not good, hopefully Microslop continues its downfall so
| that apps won't start using this "for securiy"..
| octoberfranklin wrote:
| No, because they won't do it in a web browser.
|
| It'll be a smartphone app that only works on bootloader-locked
| devices (iPhones or Google SafetyNet for Android)
| dave_sid wrote:
| Glad I don't use it.
| mcv wrote:
| I'm not necessarily opposed to age restrictions, but letting each
| website figure out its own age verification system is a terrible
| idea. Uploading your ID to lots of websites opens you up to
| identity theft.
|
| Any government that demands age verification from websites,
| should offer an eID system where each site can redirect you for
| the age verification. That way random sites don't have to worry
| about handling sensitive data.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| Yes, a good digital ID system would enable age verification in
| a way that protects privacy.
| sneak wrote:
| Somewhat related: I created an HN users Signal group, following
| the massive success and utility of creating a friends-and-
| associates Signal groupchat (that ends up discussing
| privacy/security/AI/etc).
|
| HN User Chat:
| https://signal.group/#CjQKICCPlygJ6YXA0jqqOcE0K3AHovCOX4WKEN...
|
| If you follow me and want to join my friends-and-associates one,
| I'm @sneak.07 on Signal.
| frankcort wrote:
| When I first read the headline, I assumed it meant they were
| requiring face scans to protect against AI Agents/Bots, not to
| "protect" kids.
| cromka wrote:
| I am not one for conspiracy theories but I notice a pattern...
| Did you know Chrome now offers to save your passport and other ID
| data in their keychain? Why, after so many years, do they _now_
| offer to save this information that, if leaked or backdoored,
| will easily bind login information with their owners?
| ajdude wrote:
| FYI they're sending the data to K-ID, a Malaysian AI company to
| "detect" the age.
| firecall wrote:
| I wonder if this is compliant with EU laws around data
| sovereignty and similar?
|
| If that's the right question? :-) Not my area!
| skeptrune wrote:
| Wow
| deaux wrote:
| Any business or community that keeps using Discord as their main
| channel after this is complicit in helping build another ICE
| database.
| the_stocker wrote:
| You can be running this in 10 minutes
| https://github.com/Merkoba/Hue
| claiir wrote:
| This part is interesting:
|
| > [verify to] Speak in a stage channel.
|
| My understanding is non-stage voice channels are E2E encrypted,
| and Discord retains no recordings, whereas stage channels are
| not. Is this a liability thing--Discord not wanting to have voice
| recordings of non-adults?
| rambojohnson wrote:
| bye Discord.
| BloodyIron wrote:
| welp glad I set up my own replacement for my own business/events
| https://hub.lanified.com
| zorkian wrote:
| (( This is a repost of what I shared on Reddit here
| https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/1r05vkj/comment...
| but I think the context will be helpful for this group, too. This
| article title is very misleading. ))
|
| Tl;dr: The vast majority of adults will never have to interact
| with our age assurance systems and their experience won't change,
| because we know Discord and how people use it, so we're designing
| to respect privacy and deliver a safer experience while
| minimizing friction for adults.
|
| Hey folks -
|
| I've been on Discord since very early 2016 and actually joined
| the company in 2017. Safety is one of my areas, so today's
| announcement on our blog is something I've been pretty involved
| with. I've always cared about Discord's approach to privacy (E2EE
| for A/V was another of my projects here), so I figured I'd add
| some more context to today's news.
|
| I can say confidently that the vast majority of people will never
| see age verification. I say this because we launched age
| assurance in the UK and Australia in 2025, and we have some
| pretty good data on this now. The idea here is that we can pre-
| identify most adults based on what we already know (not including
| your messages!), and that looks to get us pretty far here. No
| face scans, no IDs, for the vast majority of adults.
|
| And if you are one of the smaller subset of folks that we can't
| definitively pre-identify, then still, you only have to do it if
| you're accessing age-restricted servers or channels, or changing
| certain settings. That's really not most users. (Altho... might
| be more Redditors, tbh.)
|
| Last, I know that there is concern about privacy and data leaks.
| That's a real concern. The selfie system is built purely client-
| side, it never leaves your device, and we did that intentionally.
| That'll work for a bunch of users who aren't pre-identified as
| adults. But if you do end up in the ID bucket, then yeah, you're
| right that has some risk. We're doing what we can to minimize
| this by working with our range of partners (who are different
| partners than the data leak you read about), and if it's any
| help, we learned a lot internally from the last issue. But I get
| if that doesn't necessarily inspire more confidence.
|
| Anyway, we'll be sharing more next month as we get closer to the
| global roll out about the system, including the technology behind
| it in March. I honestly wouldn't be happy if we didn't build
| something good and I am excited about what we're launching, but
| please let us know what you think when we share more details.
|
| And I really appreciate everybody's feedback here today. We're
| definitely reading it!
| chickensong wrote:
| > we're designing to respect privacy
|
| Orly?
|
| > we can pre-identify most adults based on what we already know
|
| Ah so.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| Kids can create accounts only at age 13+, adulthood is at age
| 18 (at least in my country) which means any account older than
| 5 years should automatically be marked as an adult's account.
| Please tell me that's the case.
|
| If you still require an ID for those accounts, that means you
| don't really care about age verification, you just want to tie
| people to a government ID.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| They sold the kids' souls to the algorithm. They caused the
| Mental health crisis. They caused Dysphoria. The Depression. The
| "Ghost" we fight against--they fed it.
|
| Now that the governments are scared to deal with it, the
| Governments are scrambling. They are slapping a "Band-Aid" on a
| gunshot wound and it's all bullshit.
|
| Kids lie. They fake the age. They use VPNs.
|
| The Corporate Reality is that Meta, X, TikTok want them to.
| carshodev wrote:
| Both social media and chats need a truly open decentralized
| protocol that is accessible and usable by the general public. It
| feels like with clawbot becoming popular that people are open to
| the idea of self hosting something if it has an easy enough
| interface.
|
| The same thing could be done for social media and messaging.
| People should hold control over their own content and the
| application layer should just be content organizers and
| consumers.
| ZetsuBouKyo wrote:
| to take control of your own content while preventing it from
| being harvested for ai training, there's a straightforward
| method.
|
| - use a browser extension to encrypt comments sent to any
| social media platform. - by sharing your public key with
| intended recipients via a third-party channel, the platform
| only sees gibberish.
|
| this makes ai training impossible, keeps corporations in the
| dark about your conversations, and ensures that any government
| surveillance only yields encrypted strings.
|
| however, the platform might ban you as a bot, since this
| effectively prevents both the company and the government from
| snooping on your data.
| carshodev wrote:
| This makes it non social media, the reason I post on social
| media is to ALLOW the world to view what I speak about. I
| don't mind if my data is harvested or trained off of.
|
| Posting with encrypted data makes no sense as you are
| disrupting the social network with worthless garbage for
| 99.999% instead it would just be better to have an RSS type
| feed that your consumers (friends) can subscribe to and it
| shows the comment you made and the link to what you commented
| on.
|
| Or if you just want to say something about it to 1 friend
| just send it to them.
|
| You could still have pub/priv keys and an autodecrypt system
| though or use traditional authentication for allowing content
| pulls.
| tempuser377373 wrote:
| So many comments but i dont see anyone mentioning llm to
| replicate Discord, or others Twitter, Facebook. If claude can
| create a C compiler this would be trivial. And demonstrate the
| actual real world benefits of AI.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| That's a solid no from me. Looks like I'll be moving my gaming
| friends back to Steam and the others to a secure messaging
| platform or one I can host myself. Before Discord I was running a
| Mumble server that everyone could connect to and everyone liked
| it a lot.
| catgirlinspace wrote:
| Guess I'll have to try convincing all my friends to move to
| Matrix.
| zeroq wrote:
| I'm really torn on this one.
|
| I remember the internet from '99. Before facebook, before
| messangers.
|
| People were communicating via usenet mailing groups - think
| online forum but via email - and it was quite common that they
| were not only signing their mails with full name, but often with
| a home address so others could send them postcards - think
| patreon for caveman.
|
| IRC users had frequent local meetups and regulars could easily
| put a face behind an username.
|
| I understand it was different time at different place, but oh
| boy, it was so much better.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| You didn't have the hoi polloi on the internet back then.
| zeroq wrote:
| Well, yes, you could argue the internet was like "harvard", a
| proper secret society club, where only wealthy and approved
| were invited, but still, even in '99 the internet was freely
| available at unis and I remember we had a whole plethora of
| weirdos.
|
| The other weird artifact of that era were "gaming caffes" -
| much like internet caffes, but before the internet was widely
| available and people were often bringing their own PCs to
| play starcraft or quake on LAN.
|
| I play competitive games online to this day and I really miss
| these days. Today's online scene is extremely toxic. I still
| remember my den which was often frequented by local gopniks,
| outmost disgusting creatures, but when we played the game
| there was a strong sense of chivalry and sportsmanship that's
| nowhere to be find in today's online games.
| yegortk wrote:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-42054-9
| thrownaway561 wrote:
| What I don't get is out this is to protect teens, but what person
| that is 13 has an ID?
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Is IRC illegal yet?
| raincole wrote:
| French lawmakers vote to ban social media use by under-15s (
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/27/france-social-...)
|
| Online age verification in the United Kingdom (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_age_verification_in_the...)
|
| Blaming Discord and switching to another centralized service
| won't do shit as long as voters keep falling for 'protect the
| kids.'
| StrLght wrote:
| Discord isn't under pressure to implement these measures
| _globally_.
|
| I fully agree that they shouldn't be blamed for kick-starting
| age verification, because governments are pushing for this all
| around the world. But it's simply ignorant to pretend that
| Discord isn't helping these governments to normalise this
| process with their actions. They're also signalling that
| businesses are willing to comply and that they have all means
| necessary to do this.
| throw10920 wrote:
| Forget cancelling _my_ Nitro - what 's the best way to convince
| my friends to cancel theirs?
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| Not being there. Tell them you'll be at ____ when they need
| you.
|
| What ____ is, that's the problem. There's no self-hostable
| option that has easy audio/video like Discord does.
| trashb wrote:
| mumble or teamspeak is pretty easy IMHO.
| delfugal wrote:
| Well, that ends DISCORD. Add to hosts file with 0.0.0.0 DNS
|
| Why would any sane person allow this tracking and cross tracking
| and selling of our private info? Ridiculous for a commenting
| service.
| FreePalestine1 wrote:
| I will go against the grain and say that I am happy that Discord
| is doing something about the NSFW content that is being fed to
| children on its platform. I don't use Discord that much
| personally but I heard from friends that it is a goto for NSFW
| content, similar to reddit.
|
| Every time the topic of ID for 18+ content comes up, the entire
| internet melts down over "big brother" and "privacy", yet no one
| flinches at presenting ID for alcohol at the store. And further
| more, nobody offers an alternative solution the problem. Status
| quo isn't acceptable. "Kids will always find a way to bypass
| measures/access their porn", is also not an acceptable answer.
|
| We as a society need to do something about the unprecedented
| levels of porn addiction in today's youth. "Enter your date of
| birth" prompts are performative and do nothing.
|
| I will say I am usually the first person to oppose any sort of
| government overreach, I am very pro privacy.
|
| I believe the energy put into the criticism and boycott of
| Discord should be put into finding solutions for verifying ID in
| a secure and private manner online. Something like Apple Pay for
| IDs?
| kennywinker wrote:
| I think the issue here is that companies (and govs) are
| choosing the worst possible solitions to a real problem because
| it benefits them. Gov wants it for control, companies want it
| to sell ads and mine data. They team up, and screw everyone
| over while overlooking other viable solitions
| trashb wrote:
| > We as a society need to do something about the unprecedented
| levels of porn addiction in today's youth. "Enter your date of
| birth" prompts are performative and do nothing.
|
| I agree, however show your ID is just a "Enter your date of
| birth" prompt with obfuscation.
|
| Buying alcohol is physical and therefore has some advantages,
| for example you can be sure that your ID is not copied/sold as
| you are there and get it back.
|
| In another comment the idea was presented to make a "I am
| adult" card you can buy (physical like the alcohol). I think
| that would work a lot better than upload your government id and
| face to random app/website.
|
| Maybe I'm old school but I was always told "don't make a copy
| of your ID" by the government, a photo was included in that
| definition.
| sMarsIntruder wrote:
| Goodbye Discord. It was good to have you.
| Ms-J wrote:
| This growing trend of accounts for everything enables the
| collection of all your data and attacks such as this gating your
| access behind sending in more personal info.
|
| Your IDs and biometric data for most services is sent to multiple
| companies, governments, and who ever else comes asking, armed
| only with a piece of paper. It is never deleted. It is used to
| create a profile of you and your activities.
|
| Never use an account if possible.
| edg5000 wrote:
| We need something vendor agnostic that still allows having a
| community. Something thats essentially a protocol like bitcoin,
| email, text, torrents. Probably some of this exists. Then there
| will be providers offering this a commodity, just like how email
| and hosting can be rented from any company with simmilar quality
| (kinda).
| shevy-java wrote:
| How convenient how "age restriction" leads to mass surveillance.
|
| Also makes me wonder how people used to promote discord in the
| past. Big Brother is watching you.
| josfredo wrote:
| That's why you never promote anything, or if you do, you do it
| with full awareness that you are being irresponsible, because
| you don't know what the future holds, and acting like things
| won't change is incredibly shallow.
| Madmallard wrote:
| How do they green-light this? No one wants this. It doesn't make
| any sense.
| medbar wrote:
| What's with this recent push for ID verification from every site
| and service?
| haizhung wrote:
| Cowering to autocrats all over the world.
| spragl wrote:
| I have mentioned this before, but age verification can be solved
| by hash chains. They can prove age without compromising privacy.
|
| It is crazy that the solutions Discord goes for are IDs and
| selfies. It definitely gives the impression that there are shady
| ulterior motives.
|
| Hash chains are simple. If they were adopted, Discord would
| clearly be in bad faith taking the steps that they do now. If you
| search you will find quite a bit of information. My introduction
| to hash chains is for for age verification specifically:
| https://spredehagl.com/2025-07-14/
| nicman23 wrote:
| this is just a think of the children attack
| stingraycharles wrote:
| How would that mechanism work in practice, though? If every
| parent needs to become a trusted authority, wouldn't that just
| move the goalpost? Who would be the trusted authority, and who
| would implement that?
|
| I agree that the mechanism is elegant, but figuring out which
| entity should be trusted in a way that scales globally is
| somewhat difficult.
| IshKebab wrote:
| The use of the parent is an example. In reality it would be
| some official age checking provider (maybe the government).
| spragl wrote:
| Yes. I think that wahtever organization that issues your
| passport, would be a natural choice for setting this up.
|
| But nothing prevents it from being a private company,
| although I cannot see a sound business model for it. Also
| it would need to project great credibility for customers to
| trust them with their information.
| lrem wrote:
| Realistically this would be another service attached to the
| government ID. Something like this does function in some
| European countries, doesn't it?
| xyzal wrote:
| It works quite well in Czechia. Upon verification request,
| you are redirected to a government site, where you select
| exactly what data (Full name, DOB, address ... ) you intend
| to share with the entity requesting the information.
|
| I can imagine you could share just your DOB in such a case,
| while keeping your real identity private. In such a way
| Discord would learn only your age, keeping everything else
| from them.
|
| Government learns that Discord was provided your data, but
| this is supposedly a trusted, regulated entity.
| lrem wrote:
| A better system is in beta in Switzerland. Government is
| the root of trust, but only signs your private cert
| regarding your ID. All the interaction with third parties
| is local to your device, the government doesn't get to
| know you interacted with Discord. Discord gets a single
| bit "is the user of this device 16/18 (restricted/full
| legal autonomy age) years old?" With chain of trust to
| the government.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| It depends on you thread model and how much you trust
| government.
|
| In your model, government now know you are on discord --
| they know where to ask when they want to find you.
|
| It really depends which government you are under.
| vasco wrote:
| If the input is "give ID", what the software claims to do is
| almost meaningless since you cannot prove that software was
| running. What do I care that someone can tell me they built a
| privacy-first way of validating IDs/age if I cannot be sure
| that is the software they are running?
|
| They can just as easily save the ID to disk and return "all
| good" for all I know.
| spragl wrote:
| No, the solution does not require that.
|
| It requires that Bob proves posession of a private key, that
| only he has ever had. That private key could be generated
| specifically for the commitment that he got from Alice.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| Something like half of Israel's economy is intelligence
| gathering wtf do you think is happening here it's pretty
| obvious. economic leverage, surveillance, foreign influence,
| tech exports being used politically, etc.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Even easier, just get tokens that carry no other information
| from ones government, and the government runs an API, that for
| a given token tells whether that token is valid. Can tokens be
| stolen? Maybe. Can your face be stolen? Today yes.
| pbmonster wrote:
| What's stopping kids from all using the token of that one
| older brother?
| choo-t wrote:
| Same thing as using the ID or photo of the same older
| brother : Nothing.
| pbmonster wrote:
| No, using another ID has a much higher barrier: more
| likely to get caught (it's the same ID, after all -
| tokens might (or should) be better anonymized so services
| don't build user profiles just using the age tokens),
| more likely to get punished (there's a real name attached
| to it), more likely to lead to a video verification
| request to compare ID picture with actual face.
| choo-t wrote:
| Discord say they won't keep a copy of the ID, so getting
| caught for duplicate ID would contradict this narrative.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| I don't see how this is worse than using a TAN list, or
| using someone's phone to circumvent 2FA.
| sebstefan wrote:
| No API, they sign the tokens with the government's private
| key and you verify them with the government's public key
|
| If discord needs to contact an API, then the government can
| associate the token with you, and you with discord, and know
| what you browse online. No thank you.
| spragl wrote:
| Hash-chains allows the solution to be token-less. You no
| longer need those per transaction information leaking API
| calls. You also avoid dependency on a single provider.
|
| The communication in connection with a transaction would only
| go between the identity owner (Bob) and the provider (Cycle
| shop).
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| The EU is working on a actual privacy-preserving initiative [0]
| that allows owners of ID wallets to verify their age, without
| their actual age or personal data being transmitted. The
| standard and reference implementations are open source on
| GitHub. Yet everybody screams uploading IDs and total
| government surveillance.
|
| [0]: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-
| blocks/sites/spaces/EU...
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| The same EU that is trying to backdoor every messaging app to
| "protect the children" TM? I 'll use their ID system on my
| dead body.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| This is just pointless whataboutism. There are smart devs
| and crypto experts designing a sound, privacy-friendly
| system that is open source. It does what is supposed to do
| and how everybody would want it to be implemented. Yet
| people reject it on irrational grounds for whatever
| negative aspect they associate the EU with.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| It's funny how pointing a fact is called whataboutism.
|
| You trust the EU's pinky promise a keep their word that
| your ID will be safe and secure and never tied to what
| you say, the content of your messages or who you send
| them to. If that is so, then go ahead and use it. That's
| your business.
|
| > whatever negative aspect
|
| The EU literally wants to read your personal messages
| because it doesn't trust that you are not some criminal
| in disguise. Instead of the state having to prove that
| you are criminal breaking the law, it wants to read
| everything you send and store the data permanently in
| case you break the law one day. If you think that is
| acceptable and that is an entity that can be trusted,
| then I don't know what to tell you.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| If I understand correctly how this works, it doesn't
| require trust or knowledge. The service gets exactly 1
| bit of information (over/under the required age), the
| government system gets nothing.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| "Don't trust, verify". It is an open protocol based on
| cryptography for everyone to verify that simply does not
| allow to submit identity information when you perform the
| age verificaiton check. There is no opinion here, no "you
| have to trust X not to do that later" - it is the
| property of the used technology to just submit the
| verified age. You can't derive identity information now
| or in the future just if you age-verified yourself. You
| are being paranoid and talking about a fantasy, non-
| existing system that is not the one I linked to.
|
| On a side note, whataboutism is not about "stating a
| fact". It is when the stated fact has nothing to do or
| does not interfere with the original point being made. As
| in "Why would I trust the EUDI act when the EU does
| shenanigans like come up with stupid norms of the shape
| of bananas" - Stated is a fact, but it has nothing to do
| with the actualy EUDI act.
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| > It's funny how pointing a fact is called whataboutism.
|
| What do you think whataboutism is?
| pessimizer wrote:
| At this point, it's just something stupid people say. It
| used to mean that when you pointed out that my people
| were desperate for the freedom of living under
| capitalism, I would point out that you lived in an
| apartheid state.
|
| Somehow, here, "whataboutism" means that if after you
| point out that the EU is coming up with an age
| verification system that they claim preserves personal
| privacy, I point out that the EU is also very much,
| openly, against any sort of personal privacy. Somehow
| that's some form of communist propaganda. Or Russian
| propaganda. Terrorist? Whatever. The important part is
| that I'm someone who should be watched or arrested if I
| continue to question your motives on behalf of our
| enemies.
| ntoskrnl_exe wrote:
| No matter how open source something is, as long as you
| can only run it on a non-rooted Google or Apple device,
| and it's hardcoded with remote attestation features
| exclusive to these two platforms, it suddenly isn't much
| better than a bro asking you to trust him.
|
| Btw the other guy has a point, by definition you can't
| support both privacy and something that obliterates it.
| Meneth wrote:
| Yes, that EU. It's very big. The left hand doesn't know
| what the right hand is doing.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Dear littlecranky67, as overseer for your digital wallet, I
| am happy to inform you that the owner of the discord server
| kinkydwarfporn doesn't know who you are and your privacy is
| protected.
|
| Signed your friendly EU official.
|
| As long as someone in the chain is able to physically connect
| the dots it is game over for privacy.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| Your comment assumes there is an "overseer". There is not.
| Guys, read the technical documents. It is all standardized
| and open-source. I can code my own wallet.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| >The EUDI Wallet notifies the user of a pending request
| to prove their age, including: the name and identity of
| the requesting party.
|
| >She consents to share the requested info and her wallet
| uses verifiable credentials issued by a trusted authority
| (e.g., national civil registry) to generate a
| cryptographic proof that she meets the age requirement.
|
| I am fairly sure that here is enough info to be
| deanonimized by the authorities issuing the EUDI and the
| wallet app developers.
| pbmonster wrote:
| How difficult would it be to add further anonymization? Let's
| say I want to prevent the bike shop from building a usage
| profile on the basis of the age check (e.g. because I'm buying
| booze). Would I just need to get more chains from Alice, or is
| there an easy way to integrate e.g. group signatures into the
| scheme?
| spragl wrote:
| I think the way to go would be for Alice to give you lots of
| commitments. They are computationally light-weight to
| generate anyway.
|
| That would at least be a good and also simple solution. Maybe
| there is a perfect solution, but then I dont know it.
| zaxioms wrote:
| If you wanted to implement this in real life, who plays the
| role of Alice?
| spragl wrote:
| I think that whatever organization that issues your passport,
| would be a natural choice for setting this up. But it could
| be some other authority. In a way it is the identity owners
| and the providers that decide who they will trust as
| authorities.
| erfgh wrote:
| Well your solution includes handwritten signatures and everyone
| being a handwriting expert so that they compare handwritten
| signatures. I wouldn't call this an elegant solution.
| spragl wrote:
| That is what the example uses. In the real world that would
| be a digital signature. Look under the heading "Fitting the
| parts together" to see what the real world solution could be
| like.
| your_friend wrote:
| Hope they use zero knowledge proofs like ZKPassport app
| simianparrot wrote:
| Nitro cancelled, all boosts for my servers cancelled, have
| recommended my communities all do the same. It'll be a lot less
| smooth but we can go back to IRC + Mumble.
|
| Enshittification and profit-maxing strikes down yet another
| decent piece of software. Rest in piss.
| therealidiot wrote:
| Yeah, no. Account gone in advance.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| Technofascism. Do not comply.
| pxeger1 wrote:
| I've had a Discord account for 10 years. They seem to assume all
| discord users are at least teenagers, so surely they can't think
| I was 8 when I created the account. So can't I have the "full"
| experience automatically?
| vibedev wrote:
| because they want your data, and to be fair there's no safe way
| to determine your age, account could get stolen or transferred
| to other person.
| ArchieScrivener wrote:
| Discord does not care about you old coders, they want the faces
| of the young. Moses traveled the deserts until the idol
| worshiping generation died out. Big Tech sees you as the problem
| and knows the young will fall in line.
| nusl wrote:
| I hope that this causes enough outrage that Discord starts to
| lose its effective-monopoly for gamers and other folks. The
| platform has been getting more and more shitty over time and it
| isn't healthy for one product to have this much power.
| grub5000 wrote:
| I would guess that there needs to be a clear, cheap, easy to
| use alternative to discord in order for a large numbers of
| communities to move over. It probably has to be a single clear
| alternative as well - multiple will exacerbate the decision
| cost
| Madmallard wrote:
| Well I've spent the better part of 7 years building a community
| on my own discord server with dozens of friends, many of whom I
| interact with daily in voice.
|
| So... what now? I just have my life literally turned upside down
| because of a greedy surveillance state?
| popcorncowboy wrote:
| > "On my OWN discord server"
|
| [Emphasis added]. You are confused about ownership, and now
| sadly are suffering the consequence. The answer to your
| question is simply yes.
| trashb wrote:
| Move the community over to a platform where you actually own
| the server. There are self hosted alternatives. (or pay a
| hosting provider to run it)
| rzerowan wrote:
| Genreally this is the part of the slope when most everyone perks
| up and realizes what game is being played.
|
| Combined with recent AUS,UK laws mandating the same across most
| online services - im sceptical that even opensource offering
| could evade te dragnet.
|
| We already knew that any ID verification for kids would
| inevitable mean everyone gets carded then sorted. With this AI
| profiling essentailly piggybacking on the likes of Facebooks
| decades long shadow profile shenanigans , and the recent Ring
| revalation that theyare essentially doing the same via their
| cameras. Its a bleak panopticaon that has all the essential
| building blocks in place.
| singularfutur wrote:
| Discord says immediate deletion. They already leaked 70k IDs.
| Your biometric enters the permanent record somewhere. Discord,
| their vendor, or Utah. Someone keeps it.
| Dansvidania wrote:
| I really hope this triggers a mass exodus
| coopykins wrote:
| I think discord has been terrible for the internet. A lot of open
| information has become gated. And now it's gated behind a
| platform that many of us are not willing to use anymore. Let's
| hope this pushes out people and communities back to forums and
| such, but in reality other platform will take over.
| pixel_popping wrote:
| Not required by law, what could then be the reason, I wonder?
| puzzlingcaptcha wrote:
| Thanks, I'll just keep using XMPP MUCs like a caveman I am.
| coderatlarge wrote:
| i can live without discord but I'm required by law to interact
| with irs and therefore idme and their mess...
| johnisgood wrote:
| > On-device processing: Video selfies for facial age estimation
| never leave a user's device.
|
| What stops kids (or anyone) from using "AI" (which they are
| already using to a great extent)?
|
| I bet you could bypass it without any video, too, while we are at
| it.
| uwagar wrote:
| every website will ask or phone someone to verify your id in the
| future. what a horrible day thatd be.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I think Apple / Google need to implement verification on the
| device - we already accept the device knows who we are.
|
| And then social media platforms should be able to have the device
| confirm the user is over 18 and that's all they need to know.
| Iulioh wrote:
| At this point might as well...
|
| There is a news story every 12 minutes for a company that
| leaked IDs
| jonplackett wrote:
| I really think on device verification is the way to go - and
| I don't even see why we need to use ID.
|
| Parents are always in control of a kids device. Just mandate
| devices have a child mode that parents can activate and have
| it send a 'this is a child' flag to all websites and apps.
|
| But this assumes this isn't all about ID checking everyone
| online, which is what it's really about.
| Arkanosis wrote:
| That would either mean you can tell the device to lie (which
| makes it useless), or that you don't own the device you use
| (which makes it unacceptable).
| sebtron wrote:
| > or that you don't own the device you use (which makes it
| unacceptable)
|
| It's already like this, unless you go out of your way to
| install a custom Android rom, which 99.9% of people will
| never do.
|
| I agree it is unacceptable.
| jonplackett wrote:
| The thing is though - only KIDS need to not own their device.
| With parents overseeing it.
|
| Why do we even need to age check adults?
| absolutevibe wrote:
| Apple already has this
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/declaredagerange/ I
| saw Claude app request it the other day.
| tom1337 wrote:
| Apple actually has this already. For countries that support IDs
| in Apple Wallet there is a "Verify with Wallet API" [1] and for
| other countries the app developer can get the age range from
| the iCloud Account [2] - but that is not verified with any
| legal authority and only based on user input.
|
| 1) https://developer.apple.com/wallet/get-started-with-
| verify-w... 2)
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/declaredagerange/
| HackerThemAll wrote:
| I have my Gmail account since they were on invitations, circa
| 2004, and Google certainly knows this. That's the ultimate
| proof I'm an adult :-) That information could be exposed and
| used by 3rd parties.
| gib444 wrote:
| Happily walking right down the path they are leading us down...
|
| A world where nothing can be accessed except through a Google
| or Apple hardware-attested, photo ID verified device
| lII1lIlI11ll wrote:
| This only applies if you take all those "protect the children"
| initiatives at face value. It seems to me that the actual
| reasons are different. Governments want to police speech online
| and be able to arrest people who say things they don't approve
| of, so they are pushing platforms to collect user's PID. Some
| also want to discourage people from doing things they don't
| want them to do but that are politically unfeasible to
| criminalize (watching videos of consenting adults engaging in
| all kinds of sexual acts) and adding more and more friction to
| the process (no pun intended!) is the best thing they can get.
| And the internet companies want more of your data to track you.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Like the UK, where you can tweet that someone should burn
| down a hotel full of migrants, and you can be arrested for
| tweeting that.
|
| Or like Russia, where you can tweet that you don't like the
| president, and you can be arrested for tweeting that?
| lII1lIlI11ll wrote:
| Like both, of course!
|
| When you build a panopticon for some group you perceive as
| "good guys" to use keep in mind that eventually it will be
| controlled by "bad guys".
| tim333 wrote:
| The burn down a hotel thing wasn't about panopticons -
| Lucy Connolly posted publicly with her own name and
| photo. (https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRestIsPolitics/commen
| ts/1lvrepk/...)
|
| The sentence was probably excessive though.
| lII1lIlI11ll wrote:
| UK also apparently arrest people for posting videos of
| zieg heiling dogs and other such nonsense. Which is
| exactly my point - once the instruments to track and de-
| anonymize people online are set up, they eventually will
| be used for all kinds of purposes.
| tim333 wrote:
| Yeah but that doesn't seem to be the purpose or design of
| the current tech. Like anyone can still make an anonymous
| account and post whatever.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| X requires email and phone number verification and your
| tweets are still buried if you don't pay (with a credit
| card)
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Should it be legal to tweet a sieg heiling dog in
| Germany, when it's your dog, and you taught it to sieg
| heil, and you filmed it at Auschwitz? Or what's the exact
| boundary between acceptable and unacceptable?
| lII1lIlI11ll wrote:
| > Should it be legal to tweet a sieg heiling dog in
| Germany, when it's your dog, and you taught it to sieg
| heil, and you filmed it at Auschwitz? Or what's the exact
| boundary between acceptable and unacceptable?
|
| Yes? Yes, of course? Being an idiot on internet has
| traditionally been legal in civilized liberal western
| countries. Such person could be banned by a platform that
| doesn't want such content and ostracized by their peers
| (they guy who made sieg heiling dog video claimed he did
| it for his girlfriend or something and I would dump him,
| if I was her) but I don't want my government to build a
| panopticon to prevent such behavior and I don't want my
| taxes wasted on policing it.
| bmitch3020 wrote:
| > someone should burn down a hotel full of migrants
|
| > you don't like the president
|
| One of these things is not like the other. In the second
| case, it's expressing disagreement with a political figure
| that has directed multiple mass murders of vulnerable
| people.
|
| But in the first, it's promoting the mass murder of
| vulnerable people. Free speech isn't freedom to promote
| hate crimes.
| jansper39 wrote:
| > Like the UK, where you can tweet that someone should burn
| down a hotel full of migrants, and you can be arrested for
| tweeting that.
|
| During the middle of a riot where people were actively
| trying to set fire to a hotel full of migrants.
| Razengan wrote:
| Look up how people were prosecuted in the US during the
| 1950s and onwards for having "communist sympathies" or
| being against racism.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Do you think someone should be arrested for encouraging the
| burning down of a hotel full of people in real life? If so,
| why should it be different online? If not, well then you
| have more serious problems.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| I do, but a lot of people don't think it should be
| possible for the government to track down the person who
| tweeted let's burn down the migrants hotel.
| lII1lIlI11ll wrote:
| Does not having government-controlled cameras in our
| apartments make it impossible for police to prosecute
| wife-beaters? Can police do some actual work to catch
| "bad people" as opposed to making internet a panopticon?
| jonplackett wrote:
| Yeah I 100% agree - but if you give them an alternative way
| to do the same thing without everyone having to get IDed -
| then I'd they still want that they'll have to come out and be
| explicit.
| nticompass wrote:
| How would that work on a PC? Not everyone uses Discord on their
| phone/tablet.
| kobalsky wrote:
| jumping from the frying pan straight into the fire.
|
| why on earth would you give Google or Apple more attestation
| power and control.
| PrimeDirective wrote:
| Is this legal in the EU?
| trashb wrote:
| Should be yes, however the data (if any) gained is considered
| "personal data" and should be handled conform GDPR legislation.
| grougnax wrote:
| Well. Goodbye Discord. I'm leaving.
| chickensong wrote:
| There's discord in gas town tonight.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| What are the chances this is being implemented solely as a tool
| of control by Trump, eg to target his paramilitary attacks?
| zecg wrote:
| Luckily, they well enshittified it prior to this move, so my
| account is already deleted. I wish Discord a swift irrelevance.
| domenkozar wrote:
| We're going to see more social networks struggle and something
| like world.org or similar that protects privacy is needed.
| iso1631 wrote:
| There are many ways to do anonymous proof of age. E.g. go to a
| physical store and buy a proof of age token, the store will ID
| you as much as they would for buying alcohol or cigarettes.
|
| But that doesn't meet the requirements which is proof of
| identity.
|
| As a parent I pay for my child's phone and sim, and thus I have
| parental controls and I can limit access to discord, or youtube,
| or porn sites, both on the device level, on the sim card level,
| and on the home internet level.
|
| I'm all for making parental controls easier to use, if you want
| to pass laws, enforce minimum standards on companies, encourage
| or mandate pan-company cooperation (why can't I control my
| child's microsoft account from my apple parental control page, or
| an EA account from a steam control page). I'd even be happy with
| sites being mandated to add say a DNS record saying "this is a
| site for over 18s only due to $reason", and then I, as the bill
| payer, can choose to allow that or not.
| erelong wrote:
| The writing was on the wall here like a decade ago
|
| And often is there for existing apps, that things like this can
| happen
|
| So people might take stock of existing apps like Discord that
| they might want to migrate from
| kamma4434 wrote:
| So Long Discord, It's not like It's the only forum in town
| dev1ycan wrote:
| Why does every company work with persona? It's the shadiest
| company outside of Palantir, what is going on?
| Razengan wrote:
| > _Identity documents submitted to our vendor partners_
|
| Fuck you
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| after discord then what ???? fb,twiiter,instagram etc ???? hell
| nah
|
| do we really need to do this EVERY FUCKING SERVICE that we would
| like to use ????
| zeptonix wrote:
| Absolute idiots, who the hell is going to do a face scan? Or
| share their ID with ... Discord?
| xbmcuser wrote:
| With the current US administration all the worlds citizens should
| be careful about their data in the hands of US corporations.
| Unlike China, US has and can kidnap you from your own country if
| they feel like it even if not citizens of US. This was the case
| with previous US administration but they tried to at least follow
| their own laws if not international laws. This administration
| does not care about US laws or International laws.
| megabless123 wrote:
| current US regime*
| ghm2199 wrote:
| What I don't understand is why not have designated
| actors/ombudsman like notaries in the society that can verify
| your age/id without anyone knowing what it's for.
|
| One can easily implement a nationwide system like this. You can
| trust people in your own community. There are no central govt
| actors. In such a system no one has any knowledge of which
| service you are proving your identity/age for and the
| cryptographic approval can be done without any ids being
| exchanged. The input to the ombudsman is a hash you provide which
| he can sign with his key and send to a server, that can ask the
| ombudsman: "this thing you are signing is for age verification >
| 18, check persons ID and press confirm if that's the case". The
| ombudsman presses confirm after checking the id and you are done.
| Every city municipality can elect a local councilman/notaries to
| do this, for a small fees.
| zigman1 wrote:
| Eu actually plans to introduce something similar through its
| EUDIW initiative. It will be a digital wallet focusing on
| privacy preservance and user control over attributes that are
| shared.
|
| It will take some time tho before it is successfully
| implemented.
| 827a wrote:
| This might be an unpopular opinion, but imo this is a
| directionally correct decision from Discord. I feel that it's
| important that there exist privacy preserving, anonymous
| communication platforms; not that every platform must have or
| must not have these qualities.
|
| Platforms need to adapt to how they're used (or how they want to
| be used). The amount of child exploitation that happens on
| Discord should make any civilized person working in that company
| uncomfortable, and its natural and good to want to do something
| about it, not out of external or governmental pressure, but
| because you yourself can see the dashboards and logs, and can see
| what's happening.
|
| There's a needle of difference between a government mandating
| identity verification, and a private organization saying this is
| how we want to run our company. Threading that needle _is_ living
| in a free and safe society. If we can 't thread it, and we fall
| to one side or the other, then you have to choose whether you
| prefer safety or freedom. Personally, I'd rather have both.
| PsycoRobot wrote:
| It took so long to have a decision like that from Discord. I use
| Discord everyday and I know that a lot of teenagers use it and I
| think a decision like that can help to keep safe these teenagers
| from the internet. When last year Discord introduced that AI face
| scanning I thought that it was a serious problem for the security
| of our data but if, as they say, they remove all of the data of
| the ID extimation.. why not?
| nemomarx wrote:
| People are pretty skeptical that discord will actually delete
| it (because they had a data breach showing a lot of undeleted
| face scans and id pictures already) or that their partner
| organization who does the validation won't just save it
| instead.
|
| Also I don't really think this solves the grooming issue - it
| stops them from going in certain channels or getting pictures
| from non friends but an adult who wants to get past that to get
| to kids probably will. You'd really want like "teen only"
| servers with verification going the other way, if anything.
| I've never seen that proposed oddly
| f001 wrote:
| It's hard to trust a company when when they've already
| demonstrated that they [can't be
| trusted](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/discord-
| faces-ba...). And i'm sure there will be an argument of "but
| this will make it more likely that they'll be safe about it to
| not have a repeat", which will likely be true for a while. Then
| cost-cutting offloading to a third party that promises to not
| keep the data, or a new feature will come in that needs the
| photos, or a misconfiguration will happen where things that
| should be deleted won't be, and we'll be in the same boat
| again.
|
| The only safe data is that which does not exist.
| christkv wrote:
| We need to being back p2p
| saos wrote:
| Good. ya'll will be surprised by how many under age kids use
| it...
| sam345 wrote:
| Sounds reasonable particularly given age of account
| implementation. And even if new account, if I don't have my face
| scanned then they won't show all the garbage. I have no problem
| with that.
| dcchambers wrote:
| As an adult that interacts only with other adults in good faith,
| it's easy to look at this and feel outraged.
|
| But there is a very real and dangerous situation where children
| and adolescents are using Discord with zero guardrails,
| constantly interacting with adults - many of whom are predators.
| This is happening every day. Millions of children around the
| world "meet people" playing games online, take the conversation
| to Discord, and then get brought into a very dark world online
| that their brains are simply not ready for.[^1]
|
| I don't like the idea of blanket face scans/ID scans with that
| data stored in perpetuity - but age verification of some kind is
| a must IMO.
|
| [1]: https://www.afterbabel.com/p/its-not-just-a-game-anymore
| kcb wrote:
| Discord has parental controls. There's a myriad of services out
| there that restrict and monitor phone usage for kids. Use them
| and lock their phone and discord accounts down to nothing.
|
| Restricting adults because parents decide to give little Timmy
| unrestricted access to technology is stupid.
| SirMaster wrote:
| This is a really misleading title. It doesn't "require" either.
| The majority of adults will not see any verification as the
| system is already able to verify they are old enough through
| other data/means.
| tsoukase wrote:
| Such an important announcement for a platform reminds me the
| attempt of OnlyFans to ban sexual content. I wait the D soon
| retracts this decision.
| gethly wrote:
| I don't trust any government clerk with my personal data, let
| alone Discord. What a joke.
| greenwalls wrote:
| I think I'll pass on a chat room face scan. Wow.
| badhorseman wrote:
| Amazing how this coordinated attack on internet privacy has been
| so effective, the amount of people in my country who see this as
| an attack on "Big Tech" or even "The Tech Bros" is astonishing. I
| do not even know what one can do about people who are so unaware
| of what behooves them especially given the recent coverage of
| Epstein and just how prevalent all sorts of blackmail is and how
| useful this would be for gather kompromat not just by their
| government intelligence agencies but also foreign intelligence
| agencies and even just scammers come blackmailer.
|
| not to mention the recent prevalence of so called sextortion on
| teenagers.
|
| disturbing stuff, hope the kibosh gets put on all these policies
| and their is a public push-back, but that is really seeming like
| a fantasy.
| trashb wrote:
| Maybe this time finally a lot of communities will realize that
| discord sucks as a Archive, Forum, FAQ or news channel.
| johannesrexx wrote:
| Discord is in a position to demand nothing.
|
| No privacy loving person will comply with Discord on this matter.
|
| Discord is doomed to only have weak compliant users on its
| platform.
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