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.
For an exact 1:1 replacement? Yeah, I do agree about that. If anyone looking for options doesn’t mind making some compromises it opens the doors quite a bit.
I shared in another reply a link to some alternatives. Guilded seems to be the closest to a 1:1 replacement for now.
My personal concern is having to repeat this again if the next proprietary platform becomes too big. My friend group has gone through google hangouts (it was a different time lol), the curse client, which became a Twitch product eventually and then Discord.
I’m at the point where I’m considering going back to web forums and things like teamspeak/ventrillo.
Oof. That’s news to me. I’m seeing some stuff about Stoat pop up. Guess that’s what I’ll look into next
Let me know if you get it working with voice channels, tried tonight, no luck, couldn't make voice channels at all. For text it's fine I guess but that's not enough.