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'What a great way to kill your community': Discord users are furious about its new age verification checks — and are now hunting for alternatives (www.techradar.com)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 74 points 6 months ago (2 children)

The real problem is, that the majority of users won't change, and it's the users that make Discord. There could be a much better alternative but if users are too lazy to change, it is worth nothing.

This is the case with Facebook messenger too. There are great alternatives, but it's messenger that has the userbase

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  • [–] 23 points 6 months ago* (2 children)

    And compounding the issue is that there isn't a better alternative to discord in terms of feature set and accessibility. Matrix is the closest, but its just... not there yet. There's no option for people who care about privacy that isn't a steep downgrade, and that just sucks.

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  • [–] 19 points 6 months ago

    The reality is that there never will be, because the feature set offered by Discord is functionally impossible to provide to the public without charging a subscription fee most users would be unwilling to pay. It's a doomed business model, where enshittification and being acquired is inevitable.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    As someone who barely used discord, what are these other features, is it not just a regular chat app?

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  • [–] 8 points 6 months ago

    Not OP, but I'll answer from my own perspective. Note that Discord terminology can be a bit weird, since a server is just a unique shared group space, but hopefully makes sense.

    So you can:

    • Have private chats with one or multiple individuals.
    • Start audio or video calls through those chats, and screen share/stream in them.
    • I'll also mention the ability to send not just text, but images, videos, embedded GIFs, files, so on.
    • in servers you get the same thing, broken into text and voice channels (the latter allowing the full range of audio, video, and screen share).
    • in servers each user can be given roles to determine which channels they can see and use, or edit, among various other permissions.
    • Pinned messages, @ mentions for roles.
    • Though I don't use it much anymore, the option to effectively subscribe to a channel on another server to have messages from there propagate over (e.g.: a uni club server announces an event and you see it on another server in an events channel)
    • also servers don't have any upper limits on members, at least not one I've ever seen hit
    • Bot integration via API.
    • oh, also it all works on desktop or mobile (because it's mostly just a web app, but still)

    And key thing is: all very easy to get started with, whether you're just wanting to join a server, or start an entire community.

    Big deal for my uses currently is voice chat and screen share in one place, while still being able to organise stuff into separate channels, pin messages in them, etc.

    I think right now if I had to replace it, assuming I could get the people I interact with off (which is either 20 or 1500 people, depending on how much I'd want to carry with me), it'd have to be a mix of Matrix/Stoat and probably Steam's built-in features. Maybe a classic forum. That is, if I wanted to have all the features I use. I could do with less, but it's frustrating.

    I think the alternatives will get there eventually, self-hosted even, but self-hosting also has a hardware cost.

    That said, I really don't know why software stuff was ever moved on discord. My uses are gaming and university community-related.

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  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    For people that don't like Discord, this change does probably nothing. I only start it when I need it. I do basic communication,I don't buy anything and I don't follow 18+ content.

    For all purposes this change just decreases the likelihood of accidentally seeing pr0n.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago

    It's a sliding slope though. The initial reasoning is fair. But it will eventually spread to other features like (potentially) creating and owning servers or holding administrative and moderation roles

    It's the same with the chat control currently looking over EU. Nobody can say that they are against efforts to stop CSAM. The issue is that the efforts don't limit themselves to fighting that. Likewise the age verification on Discord does not seem to be targeted or limited to certain content. They are leaving the door open to use it any way they want

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