To anyone who uses Discord. If you value your privacy, and data security. It is best to start packing up and moving out of discord. They will be rolling out GLOBAL age verification schemes. Including Governmental ID verification, Facial scanning, and AI analysis of you content to "gauge" if you are truely under or overage. Extremely Orwellian stuff.

While I do not know of any catchall Alternatives I can offer a few separate suggestions.

For Private, Encrypted and Anonymous messaging service, Signal Messenger will be my recommendation. This is a replacement for the wildly insecure MMS (phone messaging), Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Telegram, etc. And will function fine for a replacement of Discords Instant messaging and even voice chat functions.

As for the community functions.... Well I sense as time progresses we will be pushed back into the forum age. Places like this forum I am typing in are alot safer from these rampant systems trying to be put into place. But there is also Reddit. Which has its own set of issues..


Here is the Discord Press release:

https://discord.com/press-releases/discord-launches-teen-by-default-settings-globally

And a Video by SomeOrdinaryGamer:

https://youtu.be/jAyAg7DBqbg?si=x8358h37U9WgGiE1

I recommend pulling your personal data from Discord and Leaving.

I use discord, but I've only been asked to verify my age when there's an explicit photo (don't ask). Haven't had issues otherwise.

I also haven't any issues with age verification.

@HomeBrewLamps - Now you know why I'm not on any social media!
It came about after I saw any use for it...one of the benefits of getting older is that you acquire a BS meter from years of observation and experience. 

@BT25 — I used it for a short period when I was 12 or so. Made troll accounts for fun (and trolled pedophiles, etc.) but haven't logged in since 2021 or so. So I very much understand your sentiments.

Yep, I saw that posted on one of the weather-related Discord servers I visit.
I mostly use Discord for storm/weather related stuff(thats the reason I joined in the 1st place), but also look at a few others (atleast one of which gets NSFW content posted)...

I will never send them my ID info, nor will I send photos of myself. I will certainly be doing some searches to see if there's ways to use AI generated images to fake as if they're your photos .lol.

My understanding is if you don't age-verify, you'll still be able to access basic stuff and servers that have no NSFW content. (so things like storms/weather, LG, etc should be fine)
No plans to delete my account at this point, but I do hope the guys that do run certain servers find a new/better place before march.

This is what can happen at anytime with any centralised platform. A platform that provides its own protocol and closed list of servers which provide the service

This includes Signal too, which has a closed list of servers and they are hosted in AWS (Amazon) and Azure (Microsoft), two companies who do a whole lot to reduce everyone's information security and freedom. (Amazon always, Microsoft sometimes)



Have a look at how plain old email works

There are multiple independent servers providing the same standard service. For you to communicate with me, you don't require me to register to the same server you are in

Each of us is on a serve we chose which meets our personal terms. The servers as standard can find and communicate with each other - The email address itself contains all the needed information



Your email service provider started bothering you with age verification or you are dissatisfied in general ?

Open a new email account somewhere else, drop a message to your whole contact list to update them of the change, and go on with life

You are not asking anyone to change their service providers to suit your change, which is one of the main mechanisms of lock in in any "closed" communication service



Can't find what you want ?

Set up your own server, with as little as hosting and a domain name

Virtual hosting "in the cloud" is subject to dependence on somebody else's servers, but as long as you control the system running inside your virtual space, you set the rules in the service you host, and can implement encryption to your liking. Security may not be perfect on the remote machine, but nobody will openly mess with your encryption to implement age verification

Physical hosting can be done with as little as any old PC or Raspberry Pi at home (for the volume of email you are expected to send and receive personally). Secure it to your liking

Domain you'll have to register and upkeep, nad for anything relible it'll cost (not that much), but there again you get to choose one of thousands of domain name registrars which all provide the same service



XMPP (Jabber) implements the same concept for classic instant messaging

Choose your server, choose your software to connect to it, and keep it open in the background to receive incoming chats



What makes this difference is that this entire infrastructure was designed and set by wide consortium of people aiming to make the internet free and open for all

Vs. whoever owns Discord applying their private rules to a service they privately own, and have all rights to do so, and you have a right to not use it

What bothers me is the ever growing expectation that you do "have" a specific service. Whatsapp and the covid-era video chat apps are by far the biggest offenders here

I see a growing amount of times people who send things to me needing a confirmation that i indeed dont have Whatsapp or asking me to join into it, businesses who decline customer service because it is only available through Whatsapp (or is stated to be available also by phone, but nobody answers it), etc

I'm not a lawyer, but i do think this might possibly be illegal if it can be proven that you cannot get service A (education, customer service, ....) without agreeing to unrelated, unexpected and unreasonable terms of service B (Software EULA). However, i repetedly see it thrown out of the window

There is a reason why almost nobody self host an email server these days and it's that while it's relatively easy to set up it's pain in the a to maintain. Not only the handling and upkeeping of spam filterings and blacklist a random mail server tends to get black listed with the big players like google and microsoft which are biggest players on the email services these days. Internet used to be full of small and even free email services long time ago but one by one the number seems to go down.

What comes to Discord, I don't think we are going to see any mass migration to anywhere. Todays people put conveniency above privacy.

There is a reason why almost nobody self host an email server these days and it's that while it's relatively easy to set up it's pain in the a to maintain. Not only the handling and upkeeping of spam filterings and blacklist a random mail server tends to get black listed with the big players like google and microsoft which are biggest players on the email services these days. Internet used to be full of small and even free email services long time ago but one by one the number seems to go down.

One of the biggest challenges for a service provider is managing trust with your own customers, and complying with an ever increasing rule book on how to do it

In a private server this is one issue less because you yourself are the customer. You have to manage the actual security (encryption, sysadmin) and external registrations (domain and certificates), but there are much less unanswered questions there

(I am currently an owner of a registered domain name, but not of a personal email server)



In the case of email the requirements to be whitelisted are openly explained :

https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/dns/dns-records/dns-spf-record/
https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/dns/dns-records/dns-dkim-record/
https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/dns/dns-records/dns-dmarc-record/

As long as the actual check is "This is Ash who owns the domain, and not a 3rd party bad guy pretending to be Ash", not "This is Google, and not Ash who is just Ash", this works as expected...

I have checked (in private) with a sysadmin friend who maintains servers in businesses before posting this comment. The ones who still have a web server of their own (he is a Microsoft guy, so his clients tend to be on Exchange), generally send and receive emails correctly with anyone else as long as they have the above 3 records

He also confirms that private email servers are on the decline, but i (ash) think this is more consequence of a general pushing of everything to the cloud (including all licenses, office, CRMs, you name it), less anything to do in particular with email

Would not put it past the big players to also give preferential treatment to their (and each others) webmail or cloud mail service vs. a private server, or to Exchange vs. some free software email server, all other variables equal. But i conclude from the discussion that this is not a thing, or at least not huge



I don't call for mass migration...

I call for you to join the unrestricted services if you want to communicate with me online, because i'm not joining the restricted ones to communicate with you

Whether you do or don't keep your other online accounts is none of my business

Even if the domain record settings are perfect big email services tend to label IP adress with "no history" or recent changes to untrusted because these are usually adresses where the junkmail comes. They may accept the mail but label it automatically as junk mail.

I understand what you mean & know that the big companies do stuff like this all the time, but in this case businesses do have private mail servers and they work (and emails arrive correctly)

If your recipient doesn't get your emails despite you having set everything correctly (and working when tested with another recipient for reference), it's ultimately their email service which is broken

Few email filters will block anything that is not gmail etc. Ove the years i had once or twice landed in "spam" with emails i sent from Proton, and while Proton are not Google, they are by far a bigger player than any private company mail server for own use, and i am certain all their certificates are intact