Age verification for all.

Discord announced on Monday that it’s rolling out age verification on its platform globally starting next month, when it will automatically set all users’ accounts to a “teen-appropriate” experience unless they demonstrate that they’re adults.

Users who aren’t verified as adults will not be able to access age-restricted servers and channels, won’t be able to speak in Discord’s livestream-like “stage” channels, and will see content filters for any content Discord detects as graphic or sensitive. They will also get warning prompts for friend requests from potentially unfamiliar users, and DMs from unfamiliar users will be automatically filtered into a separate inbox.

Direct messages and servers that are not age-restricted will continue to function normally, but users won’t be able to send messages or view content in an age-restricted server until they complete the age check process, even if it’s a server they were part of before age verification rolled out. Savannah Badalich, Discord’s global head of product policy, said in an interview with The Verge that those servers will be “obfuscated” with a black screen until the user verifies they’re an adult. Users also won’t be able to join any new age-restricted servers without verifying their age.

  • melfie@lemy.lolEnglish
    46·
    2 days ago

    Tired of so many discussions being locked away in Discord, so hopefully they ramp this up and require identification to do anything so everyone will move to a more open platform.

    • Virtvirt588@lemmy.worldEnglish
      22·
      2 days ago

      Discord and github are the two platforms barely anyone dares to speak about. The Foss community barely mentions the usage of such platforms, despite nearly all of projects use discord as the support line.

      It is really such a shame, since those projects make a significant contribution to open source software in one area. but just shits itself in the other.

      • jacksilver@lemmy.worldEnglish
        34·
        2 days ago

        At least public githubs aren’t difficult to access and/or crawl. The big issue with Discord is that there is a wealth of information locked behind a proprietary system.

        Unlike forums or even reddit, there is not way to get to most of the information posted on discord.

          • jacksilver@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            2 days ago

            A lot of discord content is private, and those that aren’t require you to have discord to search. On top of that, I’m pretty sure you need to join a server before you can search it’s contents.

            Since I don’t use discord, there is no real way for me to access content hosted on it. Compared to Reddit or a Forum, I don’t need to be a member of the community to access information shared there.

      • xorollo@leminal.spaceEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        It would mean a lot to me if open source projects used op n source coms for discussions. I tried discord recently and couldnt even get prast email verification. I went into a server, asked questions and couldn’t check to see if they were answered. Sorry people I ghosted!

      • Digit@lemmy.wtfEnglish
        6·
        2 days ago

        Free software contributors I hang out with do mention the likes of irc, matrix, codeberg, and activitypub’ising git a lot.

        No time to waste mentioning inferior software that’s abusive.

        Let alone use it.

    • innermachine@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      2 days ago

      What discussions happen on discord? I’m late 20s and play video games regularly and I have never used it. Thought it was where people streamed themselves playing video games or selling bathwater or whatever. Back in the day my home boys and I used to chat on teamspeak while gaming, but who has time for that shit anymore? My gaming is almost all single player or with the wifey 3 feet to my left lol.

      • xXemokidforeverXx@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        A ton of game companies (especially indies) have moved bug reports and patch notes over to discord. Suggesting something on the steam forums often gets you redirected to their discord server. And it’s not just gaming companies. I’ve got several pieces of software that the easiest way to find out about betas and updates are to use their discord server. It feels fairly unavoidable if you want to stay informed.

      • VinnyDaCat@lemmy.worldEnglish
        81·
        2 days ago

        What discussions happen on discord?

        You ever have an issue with anything and you find the answer on some random reddit discussion that ends up in your search results when you’re looking around?

        Discord isn’t really like the older methods of chatting, where people used platforms to chat for the sake of chatting. Entire communities from forums decided to just upend everything and move into discord. Niche software and other files are often shared among discord communities, or assistance for said files and programs is offered only through specific discord communities.

        The platform is still better than anything we had back in the day, it’s just that for some reason people have decided that everything needs to be stored in there.

        Anyway, I don’t see much changing. People will probably attempt to take this culture onto whatever new platform they move onto.

        • innermachine@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          2 days ago

          Man I miss when we had real forums. I used to go on nasioc for Subaru info now everybody is on FB pages. I have not yet found a need for downloading discord but I’m sure I’m bound to run into it eventually…

      • TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        The cybersecurity certification companies use discord for support exclusively, and no you can’t use a different company because they are the ones the market recognizes. Offsec, Altered Security, for example.