What's the point of switching to Discord alternatives, if they're going to be subject to the same age verification laws? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by SnoringEarthworm@sh.itjust.works to c/opensource@programming.dev

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I know Discord is enshittifying and I'm all for switching to open source instead.

But everyone's reason for leaving seems to be:

"Discord wants my ID for age verification and I don't like that."

And the new apps will be subject to the exact same laws.

Are users just not realizing that (and therefore in for a rude awakening), or am I missing something?

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[-] orize@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Seemingly, everyone are missing that Discord are very likely to go public soon https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-06/chat-platform-discord-is-said-to-file-confidentially-for-ipo.

My guess is they will announce going public themselves as soon as they have normalized their ID collection and age verification AI programme. Big papa Microsoft or the like will buy Discord and make it an evergreen AI data set training ground.

[-] greyscale@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 2 days ago

We need to retrain our business operators to respect privacy, perhaps some reinforcement training with blunt objects.

this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026

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