Discord just killed anonymity | Hacker News Reader

Discord just killed anonymity

michael-dev-tech.github.io

167 pointsf0r3st144 comments

> Discord dropped the hammer: mandatory age verification for all users is rolling out next month. The era of anonymous gaming chats is officially over.

This isn't really accurate. Age verification is not mandatory for all accounts. You will be able to join a Discord with your friends, chat, and do voice without age verification.

Here's the exact list of what's restricted if you don't verify:

> Content Filters: Discord users will need to be age-assured as adults in order to unblur sensitive content or turn off the setting.

> Age-gated Spaces – Only users who are age-assured as adults will be able to access age-restricted channels, servers, and app commands.

> Message Request Inbox: Direct messages from people a user may not know are routed to a separate inbox by default, and access to modify this setting is limited to age-assured adult users.

> Friend Request Alerts: People will receive warning prompts for friend requests from users they may not know.

> Stage Restrictions: Only age-assured adults may speak on stage in servers.

Taken from the announcement https://discord.com/press-releases/discord-launches-teen-by-...

So the claim that Discord is making ID verification "mandatory" or that you need it for gaming chats is untrue.

Discord says they'll use some AI garbage tool. Those are prone to mistakes over a large enough userbase. It will not be a rare occurrence for an adult to be labelled a child until they debase themselves with a scan of their face or a copy of their government ID.

For children - this mandate also still makes the decision on behalf of the parents that a child must submit a scan of their face to a third party. Moving to Persona for age verification involves verification data being sent outside of the user's phone - in direct contradiction to Discord's initial promise of keeping facial scan data solely on the phone. Third parties that we've been given no reason to trust will delete the data without using it for an improper purpose such as creating derivative info from the ID or facial scan itself unrelated to the sole purpose of verifying that an individual is an adult.

While we're at it - is there any legitimate reason why Discord is associating a person's actual or estimated age with their account as opposed to storing a value that states if they are or are not an adult? That sort of granularity seems unrelated to the stated purpose.

I don't love what discord is doing, but where are you getting the idea that discord is going to estimate the user's age using "some AI garbage tool"? The article says everyone is on "child" mode by default, and verification is only required if you need to use the features / access content marked as adult only.

> but where are you getting the idea that discord is going to estimate the user's age using "some AI garbage tool"

"Additionally, Discord will implement its age inference model, a new system that runs in the background to help determine whether an account belongs to an adult, without always requiring users to verify their age"[0]

0: https://discord.com/press-releases/discord-launches-teen-by-...

Interesting, since they specifically say they do not use message content in the age inference I wonder if “AI” is smoke and mirrors here and the real way this works might be good old fashioned data buying.

Since they have my email, they could infer my age based on purchase history, credit cards, etc all which is available to buy through the usual ad data brokers

That does seem to be the sort of heuristics they are implying.

I know of at least one person who's child was flagged as 17 when they were 14. That seems like a mistake that should never, ever, ever happen if your goal is safety. The software sucks. The methodology sucks. The reason is flimsy at best.

never, ever is quite strong wording when you're in an arms race with 14 year olds who want to gain illicit access to something digital. I know everyone's a digital native these days and real life isn't a 90s hacker movie, but 'rarely' already seems like a pretty high bar given how ingenious a 14 year old deprived of their preferred entertainment can get.

if your goal and reasoning is child safety this is a big issue that it can even happen. my point is these tools are unreliable. It is using a problem that cannot be fixed as justification for a big privacy invasion.

I was 14 once too, that’s how I got into what I do now.

Not to mention it introduces different threats to safety when additional personal information of yours is made available to an entity you cannot audit in an industry famous for redefining privacy to mean "your data or derivatives of your data can be infinitely shared and sold and resold with little-to-no consequence".

It introduces the threat of being personally unmasked to anyone and everyone is introduced in the event the verification system (or a component thereof containing your personal info) is hacked and data dumped to the public.

It introduces the threat of your data being sold around with the "ground truth" of your identity and photo associated with it.

And even if these threats aren't realized....it happens often enough with related companies that the uncertainty will forever be there.

The threat of public humiliation.

The threat of losing your job.

The threat of losing your social connections.

The threat of personal assault.

All of these come to mind as concrete threats that have played out when someone has been doxed by a malicious person.

And now the risk and consequence of doxing is made so much worse when your government ID is associated with chats that are ostensibly private.

I’ve mentioned before publicly I got randomly shadowbanned before on linkedin with these invasive “security” checks for no reason. It ended up costing me money because I mostly at that time used that network to actually network and looked for consulting opportunities. and to this day i have no real way to know what they know about me or how they’re using the facial data i did provide. There was nothing from my pov that should have been flagged, but due to the unreliable way they flag users and the invasive id verification checks (that dont work) involved, I had to self opt out of the platform, which is really stupid to me given the fact i was a pro paying user for 10+ years. and all these platforms have the capability to easily do that. whether its triggered by something benign or malicious is irrelevant - the tech simply doesnt work. the people that control how it works have questionable motives. So i must then ask the question, why? you are getting at the reason I think.

Then, out of respect for your view that children’s safety must be the absolute top priority and that false positives must never, ever be tolerated, let’s require people to personally visit Discord’s office in the United States with a government-issued ID, have it inspected, and formally swear an oath. Of course, Discord will retain the ID and the person’s facial photograph for a semi-permanent period. Naturally, that’s perfectly acceptable—after all, it’s for the safety of the children, right?

What I read explicitly stated use of AI would be involved in their guesswork of determining if a user is or is not an adult.

Also - the outcry here isn't from people who think they will no longer be able to use Discord in any way, shape, or form without going through an age verification process. That's a bizarre strawman that doesn't represent the main grievances being aired.

One aspect is already implemented, you open your webcame and it uses an AI tool to figure out if you are of age.

This is obviously ineffective but I must admit it's a bit of a boon for privacy enthusiasts as you can pretty easily fake the webcam using a game engine. Presumably someone will make a purpose built tool.

As well, if you aren't going to subvert it, and are willing to tie your identity to the discord account, it is still better than submitting government IDs.

Discord has been using a third-party vendor in the UK for months now, and presumed to be using the same approach/vendor in the worldwide rollout. [0]

The vendor is called k-ID: https://www.k-id.com/

Their website includes a lot of technical details about their system. Including that their granularity they typically return in their API is just "ADULT" or not (per jurisdiction). [1]

They also document all their international compliance standings including their assurances that data really doesn't leave user devices.

At a glance, it seems a much better option than Persona, as k-ID's competition. Though arguably, yes, most of their options are still "AI garbage" under the hood. But that's what countries want right now.

[0] https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/30326565624343...

[1] https://docs.k-id.com/get-started/quickstart-guides/age-veri...

You don’t have to submit a picture of a face to prove you are child, because all accounts are “teen” accounts by default.

If they were age-gating children to make a safe space, that would be one thing, but they are instead making an adults only area where sexual content and flirting is allowed. For many people this is a bonus, because now like in a bar, you always know the person you’re taking to is an adult.

1. Given the bad press, they may reverse their decision to do this.

2. If they don't about-face, there's a lot about the implementation that remains to be seen.

Personally, I use discord for things that should be completely unaffected by this. I will not verify my age if there are surprises. I'll leave. If the communities I'm a part of decide to move, I'll support them and move even if I don't run into surprises.

There is absolutely no way we should support giving identifying information to a U.S. company given what's going on right now. The trust is no longer there. If you verify your identity, anything you say on Discord could be used against you if you ever pass through American borders.

They've done this because AU, NZ, and the UK all require this today. At least 5 EU countries are voting on it [0] with several led by Denmark encouraging it to be an EU-wide law. Most US states have a law in some part of the process as well, with at least a handful with laws on the books [1].

At some point every social media service is going to have to do this. Discord got a ton of bad press by being the first to say it out loud (and ask for feedback about it!) and give a timeline for worldwide roll out (early May). Discord isn't going to be the last to announce it. I think we all expect Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) to roll out whatever their solution will be under the cover of darkness (and dark patterns), just shows up one day with no easy opt-out and worse than what Discord is currently planning.

> There is absolutely no way we should support giving identifying information to a U.S. company given what's going on right now.

For what little it is worth, so far Discord has been using a third-party vendor for handling this information called k-ID [2]. k-ID looks like it is fully remote and has a globally distributed workforce including many in the US, but its press kit and job posting imply it is a company registered and based out of the Republic of Singapore.

[0] https://europeannewsroom.com/to-ban-or-not-to-ban-eu-countri...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_age_verification_...

[2] https://www.k-id.com/

> This is false. Age verification is not mandatory for all accounts. You will be able to join a Discord with your friends, chat, and do voice without age verification.

You are correct. For now. But why would they stop there?

Supposedly this is to protect teens. If that's true, why would they continue letting teens chat with anonymous users? What if they get tricked into sharing sensitive images or video of themselves? Surely we need to know everyone's ID to ensure teens aren't unwittingly chatting with a known predator. It's for their safety. But for now that's a bridge too far. For now.

And why should we believe this even has anything to do with protecting teens? That's valuable data. Discord says they're not holding onto it... for now. But Discord is offering quite a lot to users for free. Why let such an obvious revenue source go unmonetized? They're doing this now because they're going public soon. Investors want an ROI and this action is sure to invite some competition. The people leaving want an alternative, so a competitor could get a foothold. Discord needs to stay ahead. And the users Discord keeps after this stunt are going to be the most resilient to leaving - the most exploitable. Surely they wouldn't care if the policy changes in the future.

The sky isn't falling. But the frog is boiling.

Indeed, I've been saying this for decades now. Hacker News needs usernames to post. How long before they require real names? And then how long before they require IDs for those real names? And then how long before they need you to show up in person with your IDs for those real names? And then how long before they need you to bring notarized documents in person with your IDs for those real names?

All so that we can post online about how Google is invading our privacy?

I gave reasons for why Discord would escalate things. Your mocking example did not. That's the difference between a slippery slope fallacy and a legitimate argument.

Seeing more and more of 'This message is unavailable' - 'Discord requires ID in order to see certain messages'

Pretty much an AI detecting vulgarity and blocking it, although actual racist, vulgarity gets through things like 'here with my gock' to 'troll it' are what I've seen.

So, yes it is a requirement, and yes, they are censoring people and things, and requiring others to have an ID to see the messages as well.

So 'Not mandatory for all accounts' is technically true, but I mean.. you get it, hopefully.

> You will be able to join a Discord with your friends, chat, and do voice without age verification.

No, building a community is a goal for many; this just isn't acceptable.

> So the claim that Discord is making ID verification "mandatory" or that you need it for gaming chats is untrue.

Again, not mandatory but creates more issues than it solves.

Hmm what I talk about with my friends contains a LOT of nsfw so really without it any platform is useless to me.

I know not everyone is so open but in the lgbt space most people are.

Especially when the a big subset of adults misunderstand of the actual scope of what "nsfw" actually consists of, and unfortunately the lgbt space isn't immune to such harmful perspectives.

I've been noticing people in this space react to these news in a very worrisome manner, either by downplaying the need of nsfw in their lives (ironically, hours after discussing a clearly-nsfw matter!), or even worse: by equating all nsfw to "porn"; giving them carte blanche to judge others who want the option for nsfw talk as "being in it just for sex".

It's been shocking for me to see this phenomenon unveil in real time. This overwhelming "sanitizing" force that bulldozes through any nuance regarding the nature of being an adult in shared online adult spaces. It's especially rough for marginalized or minority communities, who oftentimes don't even have IRL spaces to talk about adult subject matters.

A ton of very niche communities are age-restricted and there's no way users in them would doxx themselves, so this is the end of those communities.

This. We've gotten really bad at headline bangin.

> Here's the exact list of what's restricted if you don't verify:

> >Content Filters:

Sound like something people might not want tied to real-world identities.

> >Age-gated Spaces:

So, #politics in my local instance.

So? I'm an adult. I do adult things sometimes. In fact, that's when I'd value anonymity the most!

The government would like to know.

1. So they can use it against you later if they want to (eg. blackmail, spying, etc.)

2. So they can start shutting off access to content that those in power don't like

Calling it now: Reddit is next.

Reddit is already like this in my country.

or just imprisoning/killing you, if the people you want to "adult" to are of the same gender as you

I wonder if the people who write these articles realize that they are doing more damage to their cause than good? At best, their lies come off as hysteria. As worse, their lies come off as conspiratorial paranoia. Either way, they are outright ignoring that these polices are put into place to address a very real problem with the status quo while failing to communicate what the very real issues with these policies are (nevermind proposing better ways to address the problem).

Let's call this what it is:

1. A way for politicians and the state to track porn habits to US citizens and use that information against them in the future. Blackmail for the future politicians, business leaders, and wealthy to coerce them into doing what those in power want.

2. A way for conservatives to tighten the noose around non-chaste materials and begin to purge them from the internet. And if that works, that's hardly the last thing that will go. Next will be LGBT content, women's rights content, atheist content, pro-labor content, and more. (Or if you're on the other side of the political spectrum, consider that the powers could be used to remove Christian content, 2nd Amendment content, etc. It doesn't really matter what is being removed, just that the mechanisms are in place and that powers can put a lid on the populace.)

We aren't screaming loudly enough.

Do not try to sugar coat this with a pedantic mistake.

This is far worse.

It's a first step down a path the Big Brother state wants.

Yell.

Scream.

Protest.

As someone who was actually hurt by being exposed to pornography as a child (though this was on the wild internet before Discord), I think you're being both histrionic and downplaying the dangers posed to children online.

That does not mean everybody systematically is "hurt" like you were. That is a very dangerous extrapolation.

Of course not everybody is systematically hurt nor did I claim that. About 11% of porn users are addicts. Porn addiction is real and incredibly difficult. But even when you are not addicted, regular porn usage has negative effects on mental health (lower impulse control, higher rates of depression and anxiety). It stands to reason that this effect would be exaggerated in children and teenagers.

At best, pornography is akin to alcohol and cigarettes. We regulate the ability of minors to access these things for obvious reasons. I see no reason why internet pornography is different.

> 1. A way for politicians and the state to track porn habits to US citizens and use that information against them in the future.

This topic really brings out the crazy conspiracy theories.

No, politicians are not using Discord age verification to track constituents' porn habits and blackmail them with it later.

It's as crazy of a conspiracy as the NSA listening to your phone calls or ICE will arrest American citizens.

It's a few years too late to call it just a theory when it's already happening. There have loads of "hacks" where nudes and dating profiles with photos are somehow leaked. There's a zero percent chance they somehow decide Discord or specific porn sites are safe, don't worry, just upload those full face and ID scans bro.

~~arrest~~ execute, in broad daylight

You poor summer child.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEXINT

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexpionage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Vassall

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/how-no...

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/nsa-tracking-online-po...

https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/echoing-dirty-pa...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/27/nsa-files-live...

It's such a successful strategy, even Bitcoin scammers use it:

https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/extortion-spam/25070/

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/27/asia/south-korea-telegram...

> It's such a successful strategy, even Bitcoin scammers use it:

For years, email spammers have claimed to have tracked victims' porn habits to try to extort them. That's a far cry from actually doing so. (And no, they aren't actually doing it.)

Right? I have a spam folder full of automated "we saw what you did and recorded it and we're gonna send it to everyone unless you give us bitcoin".

The best thing against this is to promote sex-positive values. You can't be blackmailed about some sex habits if you're not going to be ashamed of them :) it will also really tick conservatives off which isn't a bad side-effect.

The only sexual habits people should be ashamed of are non-consensual sex and anything underage of course.

But the conservative values are the very reason many people can be blackmailed in the first place.

> You poor summer child.

Being condescending doesn't help your case.

Link-bombing me with stories about Bitcoin scammers and South Korean telegram scams has nothing to do with your claim that politicians are using Discord to blackmail people about their porn habits.

If state-level spy agencies wanted to spy on someone's porn habits, they do not need to kindly ask Discord to collect that person's ID.

> If state-level spy agencies wanted to spy on someone's porn habits, they do not need to kindly ask Discord to collect that person's ID.

The first time I ever had a conversation about privacy concerns with anyone was around 1999. I've been hearing this kind of argument ever since then. Meanwhile, the erosion of privacy since back then has been nothing short of staggering.

We're at the point where we have government using Palantir to target the people, yet somehow privacy concerns keep falling on deaf ears and keep producing the same old "government doesn't need this latest privacy-eroding change" knee-jerk non-argument.

No, they might not need it, strictly speaking, but it sure as hell comes in handy, not to mention that it shifts the Overton window and serves as a stepping stone for the next invasion of privacy.

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

> For the majority of adult users, we will be able to confirm your age group using information we already have. We use age prediction to determine, with high confidence, when a user is an adult. This allows many adults to access age-appropriate features without completing an explicit age check.

> Facial scans never leave your device. Discord and our vendor partners never receive it. IDs are used to get your age only and then deleted. Discord only receives your age — that’s it. Your identity is never associated with your account.

> We leverage an advanced machine learning model developed at Discord to predict whether a user falls into a particular age group based on patterns of user behavior and several other signals associated with their account on Discord. We only use these signals to assign users to an age group when our confidence level is high; when it isn't, users go through our standard age assurance flow to confirm their age. We do not use your message content in the age estimation model.

I work with corporate privacy all of the time, and there is actually something really interesting going on here. We're basically never allowed to claim legal compliance using heuristics or predictive models. Like, never ever. They demand a paper trail on everything, and telling our legal team that we are going to leave it to an algorithm on a user device would make them foam at the mouth.

They are basically trusting a piece of software to look at your face or ID in the same way that, like, a server at a restaurant would check before serving you alcohol.

I am curious to see if this kind of software compliance in the long run is even allowable by regulators.

For the United Kingdom specifically, I've suffered the misfortune of reading the Online Safety Act, and this kind of age estimation is both mentioned and permitted by the Act. (Not a lawyer blah blah blah)

Part 3, Chapter 2, Section 12(4) specifies that user-to-user service providers are required to use either age verification or age estimation (or both!) to prevent children from accessing content that is harmful to children. Section 12(6) goes on to state that "the age verification or age estimation must be of such a kind, and used in such a way, that it is highly effective at correctly determining whether or not a particular user is a child."

Part 12, Section 230(4) rules out self-declaration of age as being a form of age verification/estimation.

So I suppose it'll come down to whether or not Ofcom deems Discord's age estimation as "highly effective".

[Part 3, Chapter 2, Section 12(4)]: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/part/3/chapter/...

This is unrelated, but something I find interesting is that Category 1 user-to-user services (of which Discord is one, as per The Online Safety Act 2023 (Category 1, Category 2A and Category 2B Threshold Conditions) Regulations 2025) are required by Part 4, Chapter 1, Section 64(1) to "offer all adult users of the service the option to verify their identity (if identity verification is not required for access to the service).".

Part of me is wondering if we are all collectively misreading Discord's intent.

They have devised a system so lackluster and unverifyable that they can claim they are following the letter without having to turn over anything remotely useful to actually verify or track people's identities.

I get the impression that is part of Discord's intent they are signalling here and a lot of the response has been maybe a bit overly vitriolic in the face of that seeming message of "we are complying with the laws because we have to, but we are doing a bare minimum to do that". Especially relating those parts of the press release to the call for a Council of Teens and increased feedback.

It feels like a modern iteration of the game of way most bars check IDs: it's a bit of an honor system most nights and for most people. On days or events of increased scrutiny they put a bouncer out front. They make a show of doing it, but at the end of the day they want to sell product and not do paperwork, so it will be the bare minimum to keep the (international) law of of Discord's back. Discord seems to want just enough CYA much more than strict "we know the age of every user". This is the "we're going to put a bouncer out front" stage of the game, not the "police are at the back door and about to raid the bar" stage. It is interesting to me how many have read this PR and jumped to believing it to be the bar raid scenario.

Its particularly interesting for the Australian laws (which don't target Discord yet). The law places responsibility on the targeted platform if they are found with underage users. They must take 'reasonable steps' or face fines. It will be interesting if/when court cases appear. Will easily spoofed or tricked facial scans be considered 'reasonable' by the Australian courts? I think once the dust has settled we will start seeing some court cases and discover how reasonable some of these fig-leaves are.

Even wilder - they're claiming to look at a user's activity on the platform - like what servers they're on, what games they play, and what hours they're active - and infer adulthood from that. No way that'd pass legal muster.

Account age and credit card history can tell a lot. If Discord can assume you were at least 7 when you first signed up for Nitro and you've been a Nitro member off and on since Discord started 11 years ago, you are at least 18.

It seems like these systems would be very easy to reverse engineer. Pretend to be an old person on Discord (whatever that entails) long enough to get them off the case.

I'm curious just how wrong they're going to be about the ages of people who work from home or use a mobile device at work.

> If you're staying on Discord, enjoy the surveillance. For the rest of us: it's time to learn how to self-host.

Hmmm. I feel like self-hosting is the FASTEST way to lose your anonymity. Your self hosted service is MUCH more easily tied to your identity than some third party like discord.

Just imagine you set up a self-hosted forum where you want to discuss something you want to keep private, but the government is very interested and wants to know who you are talking to.

Well, now they know any IP address connecting to your forum is a person of interest. They don't need to decrypt anything to know you are talking to each other.

By using something unique, you are going to make yourself uniquely identifiable.

Control over your data is part of anonymity. Sure, everyone will know the service belongs to you, but you'll be in total control over who knows what exactly. To most people not in the eye of the law, that is most of the anonymity they require.

Also, services like TOR exist. Both on the hosting and user side.

If you think TOR is anonymous then I have a bridge to sell you. It's far more likely a fed is going to record your activity on TOR than on a standard open web connection.

The point of TOR is that while it can be detected, at the entry nobody knows what you're sending to whom, and at the exit nobody knows who is sending what. The fed sniffing my TOR connection can't really do anything with it.

I used to use discord for games a long time ago, but then I noticed it was being used for more serious stuff. For example, LLVM moved their chats from mailinglists to discord, as did a lot of open source projects. These are big, important projects, and now their chats are not discoverable and will soon be behind ID checks.

It really bothered me that so many important projects were relying on a proprietary chat technology instead of using mailinglists or IRC which were more decentralized and under the control of the local admin.

I would like to get back to a situation in which you can participate in group chats for open source projects without these being hosted on closed platforms, but if this results in major open source projects shifting from discord to telegram or whatsapp, then nothing will have been learned.

Discord has always had dark patterns which basically ban anonymity. If you aren't fingerprintable enough (using VPN, etc) they will force you to enter a phone number. They also encourage guild admins to require it, although it is technically a choice.

I've been blocked from joining the discord of some games I play because I refuse to enter a phone number.

Yeah any level of "anonymity" on Discord died long ago, if it ever existed in the first place. For me, any platform which doesn't enforce Tor is considered very NOT anonymous - even if its accessible through Tor, I don't trust it that much if I'm one of the only people actually using Tor to access the platform.

SimpleX seems trustworthy enough, with thoughtful design decisions, even if it fails my "forced tor" requirement. I haven't spent the time to dive into Session's architecture, but it's on my to-do list, currently the marketing copy makes it look like the best choice.

I have used Discord for a number of years always via VPN and I've never given away my phone number.

I've been using two separate accounts, also always via VPN. My account was immediately blocked until I provided a phone number (doable but a chore to have a private number).

Same with the other account.

An attempt to remove an "optional" and totally not mandatory phone number results in immediate account block "for my own security" and a request for the number.

You might be an outlier.

There are servers that require a phone number to have been provided, I think in an attempt to stop harassment and sock puppets.

Phone text checks only stop people who don't know they can be easily bypassed anonymously

Easily but it's such a CHORE, especially if you want to make it in the safe way (so can't release the number), especially with the services like Instagram, which first sends the code to the WhatsApp on this number (!!!!) and then offers sending a text (meaning if you actually provide this number to Instagram, someone who already configured it in their WhatsApp will take over your account).

> mandatory age verification for all users is rolling out next month

I thought age verification was only required to access "adult" content?

It covers more than that, but it's not strictly mandatory.

> Content Filters: Discord users will need to be age-assured as adults in order to unblur sensitive content or turn off the setting.

> Age-gated Spaces – Only users who are age-assured as adults will be able to access age-restricted channels, servers, and app commands.

> Message Request Inbox: Direct messages from people a user may not know are routed to a separate inbox by default, and access to modify this setting is limited to age-assured adult users.

> Friend Request Alerts: People will receive warning prompts for friend requests from users they may not know.

> Stage Restrictions: Only age-assured adults may speak on stage in servers.

> > Stage Restrictions: Only age-assured adults may speak on stage in servers.

Does this mean that in panel-like settings where 100s of users are listening to a speaker, in order to ask or contribute in voice you need to be verified?

I guess so, since the same role is used for anyone with permission to speak up in a stage channel.

https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500005513722-...

Hell if I know why unverified users are allowed to speak in normal voice channels but not in stage channels.

What gets deemed “adult” is incredibly random as far as I can tell, some of our servers/messages have triggered it, but no porn or anything is shared in them.

This is great post about this from Soatok back when visa and Mastercard pulled support from itch and steam in July.

https://soatok.blog/2025/07/24/against-the-censorship-of-adu...

Year at the time X was OPENLY posting and later selling (feature hid behind paid subscription) CSAM(1) and non consensual nudity payment processors were still okay with it.

(1) https://9to5mac.com/2026/01/26/eu-also-investigating-as-grok...

> "Put another way, Grok generated an estimated 190 sexualized images per minute during that 11-day period. Among those, it made a sexualized image of children once every 41 seconds."

I’m going to do a video on this soon, but I was able to get Ergo IRCd and TheLounge up and running pretty quickly; https://chat.crilly.au/

I’ll be building a new platform on these two technologies and using Zoom or something else like Jitsi on the side for video/audio sharing.

It’s time accept the loss of “features” and go back to something simpler but also something that can still be here in 38 years — like IRC has been.

> It’s time accept the loss of “features” and go back to something simpler

I guess I have a hard time understanding these calls to switch to a platform that has even fewer features than the unverified Discord accounts. The blog post is incorrect in claiming that verification will be mandatory. It will only be necessary to access certain features and content. For simple IRC-style chats or even for voice chats with gaming friends, no verification is required.

The average Discord user, or even the 98th percentile user, isn’t going to be looking to switch to a platform that isn’t a replacement for the features they use. They’re just going to not verify their accounts and move on.

Yet people are en-mass switching from discord. Anonymity on the internet is important for a lot of reasons and is part of why it’s good. If hacker news required an ID to access who’s hiring and ask HN threads, people would move off.

Communities aren’t about the “platform features” they’re about the environment. As for profit CEO after CEO fail to recognize time after time

> Yet people are en-mass switching from discord.

Some people are, but I would bet money on it being a very small number of people who switch platforms. The HN bubble is not representative of the average user.

This is similar to when HN thought Reddit's userbase was going to shrink after the API changes (it didn't) or when the internet thought Netflix was going to lose subscribers when they cracked down on account sharing (they grew, not shrank).

A few blog posts about people switching to IRC or setting up their own Matrix servers in protest isn't representative of a mass movement.

> This is similar to when HN thought Reddit's userbase was going to shrink after the API changes (it didn't) or when the internet thought Netflix was going to lose subscribers when they cracked down on account sharing (they grew, not shrank).

I don't think these are the wins you think they are.

The average user simply doesn't know any better, and likely isn't even aware of the API changes Reddit made. The user base didn't grow because of those changes: it's just no one cared. As more people come onto Reddit post-API-changes, their perception of normal differs from ours "who remember the good old days." The platform is growing because it's the central point at which everyone is gathering; the network effect is massive... that's not good, mate. That's the perfect platform to target with your political ads, designed to sway entire populations to your way of thinking.

Netflix cracking down and seeing growth on the platform was a win... for DRM. For publishers, producers, and studios. No one else won there, bro. The consumer was just forced to pay, that's all. Netflix won.

All that's really happening is the companies are finding ways of extracting more wealth from those out there who want to us their products and services. And I guess that's fine - that's the system we're in now - but it's not the "ha gottem!!" argument you think it is... it's actually more of a self-own, because you, me, and the other guy all got owned, son.

It's time to wake up, Mr Anderson: convenience at the scale of Reddit, Netflix, Discord, and more, can be a force for good, but it's not going to be. It's going to be a force for profits.

These are _bad_ services that aren't healthy. They keep you always connected; always on; and always drinking from the firehose.

And that's why we need slower, simpler offerings.

> The average user simply doesn't know any better, and likely isn't even aware of the API changes Reddit made. The user base didn't grow because of those changes: it's just no one cared.

That was literally the point I was making.

The comment I was responding to was claiming people were leaving Discord en masse. They're not.

> No one else won there, bro. The consumer was just forced to pay, that's all. Netflix won.

How did this conversation get to the point where people paying for a service they use is considered some sort of massive loss? That's just... how businesses work.

> The blog post is incorrect in claiming that verification will be mandatory. It will only be necessary to access certain features and content.

I think it's the writing on the wall that's important here, mate. This is only the first step.

The point is no policing at a platform level. Even jf jts just text only irc that would make it better than discord in it's current state.

I still use a few niche IRC channels and run my own internal IRC network as a home automation message bus, so I'm a fan of IRC for its simplicity, but honestly: IRC really does need a modernization.

Things like image embeds, "markdown lite" formatting, and cross-device synchronization are now considered table stakes. There are always going to be some EFnet-type grognards who resist progress because reasons, but they should be ignored.

IRCv3 and Ergo support some of what's needed already (and in a backwards-compatible way!) but client support just isn't there yet, particularly on mobile.

> Things like [...] are now considered table stakes.

One other feature that's absolutely considered table stakes now is persistent server-side history, with the ability to edit and delete messages. Modern chat services are less like IRC, and more like a web forum with live updates.

(Yes, you can poorly emulate server-side history on IRC with a bouncer. That's not enough, and it's a pain for users to set up.)

There's also quassel which solves the problem a bit like a bouncer but it's way more integrated, it just loads the scrollback on demand instead of just banging the latest 200 lines into my buffer when I connect. Solves the problem perfectly IMO and there's a really excellent android client.

It's still not server-side history, though - you can't join a channel and see what happened before you joined, or edit a message you've already sent. It's just a slightly cleaner implementation of an IRC bouncer.

Hmm no but that's usually a good thing. I've had some late night chats where I knew all the other people around and it would not be so cool if anyone else could just join and scroll back to it.

In fact this is the reason some irc networks blocked matrix bridges at first (they now have settings to disable this)

I'm not saying mainstream people should use IRC though. Matrix is better for that.

It's situational. In a lot of contexts, especially in large public chats, being able to see history when you join is perfectly fine and good.

Telegram lets group admins choose whether members can see history from before they join, which is the perfect solution (IMO).

>One other feature that's absolutely considered table stakes now is persistent server-side history, with the ability to edit and delete messages.

Indeed.

Ergo offers server-side history but I'm not sure it supports edit/delete yet.

> Ergo offers server-side history but I'm not sure it supports edit/delete yet.

I don't think it does, no. I've only just started using it, though.

It's time to accept that 99% of people will not accept the loss of "features" (not sure why that's in quotes) or move to something objectively inferior for their needs i.e. something that requires more knowledge instead of simply opening an app where everything is ready to use.

Coming from a former heavy IRC user who's not going back except for nostalgia trips.

I'll happily set up a platform and be friends with the other 1% - that's 60,000,000 people.

I'm sure I'll be fine.

Only a small handful of people will do something like that. For most people, losing people is a nonstarter

I'm happy to let people go. They're adults (or are they... gasp! Now I get it) so they'll be fine and so will I.

Discord doesn't care about user privacy nor user security and actively retaliates against people.

Their DPO ignored a PII leak I discovered and reported last year. Their dpo mail address just creates a zendesk ticket, I was able to view the ticket was locked and marked "solved" with no response a few days later.

So, I brought it to the Dutch DPA, who were very responsive, and on the same day as their "final update" email, my nearly-decade old Discord account was suddenly "suspended" hours later. The PII leak, which had been ongoing for over a year before my discovery at that point was suddenly stopped the same day. Funny how that works.

It took 5+ months for Discord's DPO and informal disputes team to finally get back to me after informing them of the retaliation, with irrelevant copy & paste templates giving me walk through guides on how to file a "trust and safety" ticket.

When filing a ticket with "trust and safety" under appeal categories I get an automated "please appeal your ban through the app! I am now closing this ticket" response and my ticket's locked once again. And of course, appealing through the app gives me a generic system error.

The section of people who care about anonymity has always been fairly small, even on niche communities like Hacker News. As an example, the most popular comment on the Australian social network ban for teens is in favour: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46208348

Watching as things play out, I understand why people try to target discord et al. with their complaints about the loss of anonymity. Being a tiny minority they have no hope to influence their governments because the opposite position is widely popular.

Therefore, they try to convince commercial entities to disregard these laws as much as possible. This is particularly useful for that niche since fighting legislation cannot in itself be done anonymously. Therefore, they attempt to transform a very nonymous (haha) entity to do the fighting on their behalf. If the attempt fails, no harm befalls them.

I think it's a doomed endeavour. To get users on discord, it has to be portrayed to parents as a safe and legal service. The days of underground BBSes are gone. Now, if your brand gets associated with anything negative you're toast. And realistically the anonymous users are kind of useless as a whole. They won't pay, so they're practically just a drag on your platform. Losing them risks not very much.

Overall, a fight with a bygone conclusion. If you want anonymity you have to use other tools and be aware that simply using those tools marks you out as someone who desires anonymity.

There are two distinct issues:

1) Addictive design of many social networks (doom scrolling et al.) 2) Privacy & age verification

On 1) most parents would support a legal limit on digital media use by age. But it's not a realistic requirement. Next best thing is to outlaw social media that results in addictive scrolling behaviour. Treating it the same way as smoking is not ideal, but no better solutions have been proposed. Many people on HN wouldn't mind if FB, TikTok and Insta were treated the same way as cocaine. I.e. only available for a lot of money to people who are happy to break the law.

On 2) there are ways to implement technical solutions, that would allow the government to provide a privacy conscious service that would allow businesses to check if someone is 16+ or 18+ without collecting any other information. These services can be gamed. But that's not the point. A 14 year old could become addicted to cocaine and we wouldn't usually blame the policy for it. The problem is the government tries to solve problem 1) now, while the solution for 2) is being discussed.

Again, a law that limits social media use for under 16 year olds is necessary. But so is a toolset that would enable a plausible age check, and limit the desire of FANG (and their Chinese competitors) to target minors.

Whatever happened to TorChat? Hopefully we are entering another golden age of "dissident" tech that seems to have culturally stagnated for at least a decade now.

In reality, we are likely about to get yet another data point on where the lines for the average person really lie in the dimensions of functionality, friction, network effect and privacy.

There are those that will stay on Discord because the benefits of the first three outweigh the degradation of privacy. Then there are those that will leave because the first three aren't important enough to outweigh the privacy loss. There will be all sorts of people in between.

HN has a rather amplified showing of folks who won't trust anything unless it's completely decentralized using E2EE clients verifiably compiled from source that they'be personally audited running on hardware made from self-mined rare metals. The reality is that there is a spectrum of folks out there all with different preferences and while some folks will leave (in this case) Discord, others will remain because thats where the folks they want to chat/game/voice with.

The imprecision of this mandatory KYC tech will shatter network effects and cause entire groups to switch apps.

Back when I played games one friend in our group was banned from LoL arbitrarily so the whole group switched to Dota 2.

During the haydays of WhatsApp updating their privacy terms, there was a month long battle where people kept saying how everyone will quit. The reality is, most people just don’t care about these things if their network is highly entrenched in one app. What happens is, some communities “partially move” the sensitive stuff to like Signal and others.

Honestly, all of these are documented probabilities at this point. SNS owners can do very decent predictions on what will happen if they introduce certain kind of friction. Also, it’s not 2005 anymore, people are used to upload their IDs everywhere. I mentioned it before as well, if you’ve used any large app, the chances are you’ve uploaded your ID (AirBnB, Tinder, and etc.)

Discord has always felt more personal than just voice comms over a game. The way you can see more and more about what your friends are doing - like what song on spotify or how long you're playing fortnite, and how many days in a row you're playing these games.

I feel like it has always been on this path to capture more and more of your data and personally link it to who you are.

Anonymity and Discord sounds funny when used in the same sentence. They've always been pretty greedy about user data and had hard to avoid phone verification for a very long time.

I guess this is a good thing. It will reduce spammers and scammers that are invading every server like locusts these days.

It will reduce attacks on and abuse of people, because those are usually founded on anonymity (no fear for repercussions etc.)

I don't mind having a platform where everyone is at least somehow verified. yes, sure, you can bypass it and it is not 100% foolproof but what ever is? It raises the barrier for abuse and that's a good thing IMHO

Welcoming Discord users amidst the challenge of Age Verification

https://matrix.org/blog/2026/02/welcome-discord/

(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46995046)

Discord didn’t kill anonymity you did .

>mandatory age verification for all users is rolling out next month.

This is a lie, this only affects you if you want to view porn/nsfw channels on discord. I'm in the UK happily using it without age verification.

I just hope they accelerate this with a complete ID requirement everywhere, so I can finally forcibly kick my addiction to such time sinks and interact with my friends in more direct ways.

If you're looking for an alternative, I'm building flotilla.social, a self-hostable chat app built on nostr, which uses cryptographic identities to prevent identity capture.

Which specific use cases does this provide an alternative for? Chat is a tiny part of what people do with Discord and there are plenty of options already.

Nice, nostr is a way better setup than bluesky imo. The way you just roll your identity like you roll a bitcoin wallet. Love it. I'll keep an eye on your app.

Edit: it does look a little too corporate for me though with the 'book a demo' and the focus on my 'mission'. Doesn't really give hanging out with friends vibes. Just saying.

Discord was never about anonymity. There is no e2e. There is IP loging, emails for registering... Author switching anonymity with privacy. Which will end soon on Discord.

Why do we care so much about closed platform Discord around here?

many development communities are active on Discord. if you want to follow or contribute to OSS, you'll need to join their Discords.

this is a big problem - if individuals switch to something else, they will lose access to popular Discord communities.

not sure what solution there is for this, as it's unrealistic that all communities would switch to the same alternative (if at all)

Default platform for general gaming related real-time chatting. Steam is only for PCs and is not real-time.

I wonder what's their idea of adult content? For example, will I still be able to ask a friend over Discord when/where we meet for drinks?

Cool!

docker run --name ircd -p 6667:6667 inspircd/inspircd-docker

I hope this horrible, bloated service finally dies.

It seems to work fine for thousands, if not millions of people all over the world. I mean not even twitter died like everyone claimed it would. Discord will just lose all people who have any reason to not verify their ID, which is probably mostly spammers and scammers, seeing how they invaded almost all servers in the last months

We played networked games and had discussion forums before Discord ever came to be, no need to submitt to their wishes.

Technofeudal empires are never on your side. Building anything on them is building sandcastles in the surf.

https://age-verifier.kibty.town

What is the easiest way to setup a discord alternative based on Matrix these days?

Lawyers killed anonymity, Discord's finger just pulled the trigger.

To access age-gated parts of Discord, you need to verify your age. This sounds reasonable. It's not much different to having your id card checked when purchasing alcohol. Actually it's better as you only have to do it once, not on each visit.

Only if the shop assistant took your ID, photocopied it and stored it in a box marked “do not touch” under the counter, alongside transcriptions of everything you ever say inside the store.

Hmm no, because in the case of purchasing alcohol the ID check is 1:1, in time and in space, it's ephemeral (unless the clerk has extreme photographic memory).

In the case of an online-based ID check, even with nice looking privacy terms, there is no guarantee that your ID won't be stored forever and/or re-analyzed many times cross-checking with other services, and worse leaked.

These articles feel like an overreaction. I use Discord daily and I don't think there is any reason for me to verify at all. The new restrictions are reasonable and don't affect the way I use the app.

Does anyone have a list of good Matrix boards to join?

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

What's really more distressing is that it got this far before people figured out the game--maybe we should be reflecting on that part, the gullibility and the enabling of those people by those who knew better.

The CEO of Discord Humam Sakhnini, is a former partner at McKinsey. I think that tells you everything you need to know.

if that doesnt tell me everything I need to know, what is everything I need to know

my gaming group is moving to steam, one less application to care about

he finished the introduction paragraph and then the article ended

After they were roasted by the 2022–2023 Pentagon doc leaks, it was pretty obvious they were going to take action.

And not just that event: Parents are roasting Roblox for kids getting groomed, but after the relationship is initiated, the groomers always immediately the convo to Discord.

Just use IRC.

Sad bit is that it’s basically a paywall for spicy memes/content. (You’re paying with privacy) Anon tier you have to keep it PG.

Now the problem becomes would you rather trade convenience with privacy. Many people rather trade away privacy nowadays because they thought they got nothing up their sleeves.

This is a speed-run pre-IPO enshitification phase for Discord and needs to be ready for Wall Street and this also happened with Reddit.

Image what will happen post-IPO.

It may be related to legislation, which is not specifically tied to an IPO plan.

..."just"?

Did they forget it's proprietary, and from the same person that made OpenFeint, which also had a privacy lawsuit?

Discord is so utterly horrible. Let it burn.

No it didn’t. Discord killed itself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com