Starting in early March, the platform will place every account into a default “teen-appropriate” experience unless it has proof that users are adults.
The move has brought widespread criticism from Discord users, who are citing privacy and security concerns following a recent breach of a third-party vendor that ended up exposing around 70,000 government ID images used to verify the age of Discord users.
Or just use Steam - which the average Discord user has already installed. Supports Chats, Groups, Voice Chat, Streaming, Discussion Boards that are discoverable, solid 2FA authentication… only thing missing is Video Calls, which they could implement easily when looking at what is already there.
Just move back to the flood plain every time your house gets swept away, rebuild on the side of the volcano every eruption, and keep moving to proprietary platforms every time one enshittifies. Right?
Wrong. You’re here on the fediverse because you know that’s wrong. We need an alternative, but right now they’re all pretty tough to set up by ourselves. For example, I’m once again working on getting revolt/stoat running, and it’s pain (probably mostly due to my environment, I might give up and put it on its own machine).
My game plan here is that I’m moving everyone I can to Stoat. It’s not likely to go the corpo route any time soon. From there I plan on figuring out a matrix server and streamlining the process for my less dedicated friends the same way I did jellyfin.
I don’t think that Valve has that game plan, as they have proven again and again for about 20 years now. Having no shareholders really keeps them grounded. But you’re right, a completely FOSS solution that is easy to use would be preferable - but in the short term Steam communities might get an upswing.
The problem with steam is that it will eventually go the same way.
At the moment the internet is being used by big tech similar to a sheepdog rounding up sheep. Hopefully most will refuse this and move platform, that platform will eventually attempted to be broken down and register a few more users etc. If you have younger siblings or kids, they’re fucked. Unless you educate them about their privacy and how important it is.
Well, Valve hasn’t done so for about 20 years now, how long do people have to give a company that has proven again and again that they are not in the game for extracting maximum value out of their client base? I’d love for a FOSS solution to pick up the slack, but none are currently in a state where they can pick up millions of non-technical minded users in a heartbeat. Valve has those users already, so they are able to provide a solution NOW, not in a few years.
Should Valve eventually start enshittifying, which would require going public first, maybe there will be a readily usable FOSS solution. For now, it’s one of the easiest routes out of Discord (and the content on the Steam Forums is scrapeable over the web, so it’s pretty easy to transfer out, not like discord)