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Discord Users Threaten Exodus Over Age Verification Face Scan Controversy (www.newsweek.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Starting in early March, the platform will place every account into a default "teen-appropriate" experience unless it has proof that users are adults.

The move has brought widespread criticism from Discord users, who are citing privacy and security concerns following a recent breach of a third-party vendor that ended up exposing around 70,000 government ID images used to verify the age of Discord users.

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[+] -12 points 7 months ago (15 children)

"No good reason" homie you ever use a forum?

Discord is so much better for real time conversations. The biggest problem is to the point of this thread, discoverability is non-existent, you have to join the discord to be able to search for what you need.

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  • [–] 15 points 7 months ago* (4 children)

    Yeah but real time communication is not what this comment was about. The issues is that its being used as a social hub that replaces forums entirely. So when people ask questions about a topic they will do so in some shitty discord channel and the information (both question and answer) will be lost in the un-searchable, un-taggable, un-indexable discord black hole.

    Discord should be used for shitposting and hanging out with your gamer buddies, because thats what its designed for. Not as a fucking database of valuable information that will be lost forever.

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  • [+] -11 points 7 months ago* (3 children)

    It actually is, you're just not connecting the dots.

    The people use discord already to game and talk with buddies, developers of various apps/services then use it for similar and answering questions or troubleshooting issues in real-time.

    Forums are archaic and difficult by comparison, don't get me wrong, I don't like the situation either, but I understand how and why we got to this place, and what would solve the problem is if that data was indexed in a way that search engines could use them, but because you have to have a discord account and join the server and have access to that particular section because of how discord is designed it is not really possible.

    I actually freaurntly find helpful information in discord servers using search, but again, agree that it is not designed well for what its been forced into by network effect and convenience.

    Edit: I'll also point out forums aren't permanent either lol, like 99% of forums I used to frequent are completely gone.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    There's nothing intrinsically bad or "archaic" about forums. It's the forum platforms that sucked for some people. It took some thought and work to manage a forum. The only advantage a Discord server had was that it's simple enough, a brain damaged squirrel could run one. It saved you from having to do your homework and just created a simple plug-and-play space that required no skill on the owner/mods part.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

    I literally used forums for over a decade, grew up on them, ran my own phpbb and vBulletin, forums suck when real time communication with the same features and MORE exists.

    Edit: The world is never going back to IRC or forums, get over it.

    What we can do, is build a better platform learning from the failures of existing platforms. It seems everyone here doesn't understand that is exactly what I'm saying.

    Forums are archaic, which is why they died and platforms like reddit and discord flourished.

    I obviously have problems with both of those platforms, which is why I'm on Lemmy and love the idea of federation.

    I like the idea of Matrix, however I don't see any indication in the slightest that it is going to solve the real problem with how discord is used in relation to being a "troubleshooting/ticketing/solutions" gateway, as far as I'm aware they are not indexable and accessible outside of using a matrix client.

    The best of both worlds would be federated, have features built with indexability and discoverability in mind, while still retaining the real-time communication aspects that discord has.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago*

    Forums shows up in web searches and not needing an account to look through them makes them better than discord.

    And if you really wanted you can archive a forum page, but how many dead discord channels can be looked through on archive.org

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago (9 children)

    Discord is only good for live conversation. Forums are good for information consolidation and general long term discussions about anything.

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  • [+] -7 points 7 months ago (8 children)

    Actively troubleshooting an issue in discord is easier then making a forum post and going back and forth that way, which is why it has moved to discord organically.

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  • [–] 10 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    It's not easier, just faster, and that's only if someone who can answer your question happens to be on at the same time you are. Asynchronous communication does not require that, and has the added bonus of keeping the solution easily available for others to find by themselves rather than taking up someone's time. So it is far more efficient. If you can't find the answer to your problem after trying and genuinely need a solution right away, that is what live support is for.

    And I think that a big part of why so many have moved their support to discord is the long standing (and annoying) habit of people trying to use only one tool for everything. Sure, you can use a hammer on a screw, but it's not a good idea.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    "Asynchronous communication has the added bonus of keeping the solution easily available" no, that's not a feature of asynchronous communication in the slightest.

    Forums can and do go down or get deleted, there's nothing inherent to it that makes it stay any longer then discord messages.

    I'll keep banging this drum for those who still don't get it, the problem is DISOVERABILITY. Discord does not make conversations in their version of forums or threads accessible to outside users and that is actually where it goes wrong. Nothing about real time discussion limits indexability its simply how discord decided to go and to your point, people want everything in one place so they use the convenience provided by discord.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    Forums can and do go down or get deleted, there’s nothing inherent to it that makes it stay any longer then discord messages.

    You're comparing apples to vegetables here. Sure, forums can go down, but not all of them do. Take Reddit, it's been around a long time and many people use it for troubleshooting. As for discoverability, a lot of the time when I do a web search for a problem, it points to one or more discussions on Reddit. And that's just one example.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago*

    I'm clearly talking about discord with the discovery point, and that is exactly what I'm saying lmao.

    Also a bit of a stretch to call reddit a forum, it is similar but not the same, and we've already seen how reddit being a centralized service is a bad thing.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (3 children)

    Totally pointless if you can’t actually find it lol

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  • [–] -2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    You can jf you join the discord and search lmao, but I already said that the issue is discoveraviloty outside of the discord environment so I'm not arguing that point.

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  • [+] 1 point 7 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 child)
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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago*

    I never said you should, I'm literally arguing the opposite and saying that's exactly the problem with discord jfc.

    Edit: the problem with discord is not that its real time communication or information is not findable in the app, it IS, its that the information is not available outside that environment.

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