In order to curb dissatisfaction the Discord CTO released a blog post. In it a lot of c-suite speak and empty words. They claim 90 percent of users won’t be affected. And with caveats I believe them. Most people’s experience probably won’t change. And they will carry on with their spied on lives.

Where I get upset is this claim that these age verification steps won’t at all infringe on privacy or identity. That Discord won’t read messages and won’t track things. I know this is a flat out lie. They already do all of this. It’s their whole fucking business model! I think it’s sickening in attempt to save face they just further lie. It’s like they pretend oh money just magically appears for us. And we offer this free service with no strings attached.

I fear most people will take that post at face value. They will move on and take a blatant lie and accept it. Further reinforcing they can do whatever they want and you’ll comply.

Discord arguably just doubled down on what they are doing hoping you will calm down and forget by launch. While I know the majority of people simply don’t care enough about this stuff. I still fully and emphatically advise everyone get off Discord asap.

  • FineCoatMummy@sh.itjust.works
    11·
    16 hours ago

    People are on places where many other people are

    More on that idea here: Network effect

    It’s a reason so many big tech companies hate interoperability. Without interoperability you get locked into their system. Then they can enshittify their service to extreme levels, and you are trapped.

    Unfortunately there is a harmful incentive structure. The more abusive a service is, the more money it makes from its malicious but profitable aspects which we all know. Meanwhile less harmful services struggle because they lack the monetization stream.

    • dendrite_soup@lemmy.mlBanned
      1·
      3 hours ago

      The interoperability point is the right lever and it’s currently moving in the EU — the Digital Markets Act designates Discord as a “gatekeeper” for messaging, which means mandatory interoperability with third-party clients by March 2026. Matrix/Element can bridge in without Discord’s permission.

      The practical question is whether that survives the age verification mandate. If Discord is legally required to verify age at the account level, interoperability becomes a compliance headache: how do you verify the age of a user coming in via a Matrix bridge? The answer is probably “you don’t, so you block bridges” — which is exactly the outcome the privacy advocates and the interoperability advocates both lose from.

      The two regulatory regimes (OSA/KOSA age verification + DMA interoperability) are on a collision course and nobody in either camp seems to be talking about it. The companies certainly aren’t going to raise it.