• iamthetot ( iamthetot@piefed.ca ) 
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      16 days ago

      Also cancelled mine. I don’t suspect this change will actually directly affect me personally, but it’s the final straw on a big pile of straw. I know plenty of people here will admonish those of us that were paying for it in the first place, but better late than never I say.

      Not entirely sure what I’m going to transition my group to. It’s quite likely we won’t actually have one replacement, but many. We used text, voice, video, and screensharing on Discord (plus many other, though less important features). I don’t know of an alternative that does all of it.

      • Pheta ( Pheta@fedia.io ) 
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        15 days ago

        I’m not sure about what you mean by video (using cameras, or posting videos) But I did check out Teamspeak, as I used to use it a long time ago, and it’s a nice medium between ease of use products like discord and security minded folks who use things like Matrix.

        Either way, Teamspeak did add screen sharing, and the cost to host a server is about the price of a nitro sub. That’s if you don’t self host, which is always an option and makes things free.

        It’s probably going to be the best option to convince my friends to finally leave discord’s ecosystem. Haven’t liked it since they started adding in bs like quests and the shop, it’s only a matter of time before it enshittifies so bad my friend group will be looking for a way to jump ship.

  • towerful ( towerful@programming.dev ) 
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    16 days ago

    I think this is the a major step in discords plan to be a service to games (ie business-to-business).
    They are positioning themselves to be an age-verifying platform for games, alongside in-game chat, in-game VoIP, in-game store and game community.

    At some point, games are going to have to require age verification. It’s just the way the “protect the children” bullshit is going (instead of “enable the parents to raise their kids”, which is far to socialist and progressive) Or game shops will. But if you don’t sell your game, that bypasses game shops. And if cracks can bypass purchasing, then… It’s on the game to comply with laws.
    If there is in-game chat: needs age verification.
    If there is in-game voip: needs age verification.

    At some point, discord is going to roll out this massive suite of dev tooling that “just works” for devs creating multiplayer games with voip, chat, in-game purchases, gifting in-game purchases to friends, friends lists, out-of-game chat, game communities etc. while also offering age verification.
    It already does a lot of that.
    They are getting ahead of the age verification laws so they offer a very simple path for developers to “just pay discord” to skip a HUGE legal minefield, and get a bunch of functionality for whatever cut discord decides .

  • Auster ( Auster@thebrainbin.org ) 
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    16 days ago

    For those that can’t (or at least for now won’t) self-host, any suggestions on medium-sized #Matrix servers?

    Or at least some database on those so users can check more easily, similar to the database sites for the ActivityPub?

    • who ( who@feddit.org ) 
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      16 days ago

      Since you mentioned self-hosting, I guess you’re talking about Matrix homeservers. Some are listed here:

      https://matrix.org/ecosystem/hosting/

      (Note that what Discord calls a “server” is not what anyone else in the networking community calls a server; it’s a confusing misnomer. Matrix calls it a space, but calling it a community would be understood by most people as well. Also, what Discord calls a “channel” is what Matrix calls a room.)

      • Auster ( Auster@thebrainbin.org ) 
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        16 days ago

        Meant instance 😅

        Also luckily I’ve been training myself to not use the word “servers” for Discord for years now. Linguistics as hobby and computer habits making me bothered that they’re repurposing the word I understand as a computer/datacenter that acts as provider and all that.

        But about your site, that isn’t what I asked for. I’m asking about a site that tracks total users and/or monthly active users, or medium-sized servers going by those metrics, like e.g. FediDB does. That page from Matrix.org, at least on phone, is more institutional, like a more resistance-free entry point for people curious.

  • 0xtero ( 0xtero@beehaw.org ) 
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    16 days ago

    IPO is clearly closing in fast. Enshittification intensifies. The VC’s need to get their ROI out so they can move to the next grift. Apparently they’re also going to have “age inference model that runs in the background” (read: AI) that pops in and hits your with that age verification if it determines you’re actually not acting like a teen.

  • Gyangrene ( Gyangrene@piefed.ca ) 
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    16 days ago

    Trying to get my friend group to switch over to Stoat (formerly Revolt) as soon as possible – I think Matrix is a harder sell for people not already in the federated spaces, or non-tech savvy people, but I’m hoping it fits the need.

      • Gyangrene ( Gyangrene@piefed.ca ) 
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        16 days ago

        Oh, for real? Thanks, I’ll check it out - appreciate it buddy!

        Edit: Just check it out, and it’s honestly got a alot (almost all) of the features I’m looking for, including a Canadian English language option. It sucks that it doesn’t seem to have custom roles/tags or custom emojis, but aside from that it being able to pin messages, have separate channels and voice rooms and being E2E encrypted are ticking the right boxes for me.

      • Gyangrene ( Gyangrene@piefed.ca ) 
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        15 days ago

        From what I can gather, I think the Stoat team is likely experiencing insanely heavy and unexpected traffic to their platform, and their server is still trying to catch up - I am also running into the same problem, but I assume the team is working hard behind the scenes to get everyone in and stabilize the platform as soon as they can!

  • What I don’t understand is, have these people never heard of OAuth? I don’t know what it is, we have decades of this and people act like it doesn’t exist and don’t see the value in it. Even Lemmy, try to suggest why it might be valuable to separate identity versus community hosting, it’s like you have to walk people through it step by step.

    There’s no way I’m giving platforms like this even more private information, but if governments put forth both publicly available OAuth servers along with the possibility of privately purchasable OAuth servers for this sort of thing, I would have no problem with it because then you have the possibility of vetting age authenticators like you would VPN providers, and the data would never leak into the social networks that abuse it. It’s like the regulators and the Internet has conveniently forgotten about OAuth and certificate authorities and has just said, “Yeah, let’s just have users leak their data all over for this” as if there were no better way. Maybe that’s the point, because I suspect organizations like Palantir will be quite happy at things like this.

    • Honestly, we should start doing hardware-based age verification instead. Have the government run a simple yes/no service for individuals to be able to verify their age. The service simply asks if you’re over 18, and the government responds with a simple yes/no.

      You verify your identity on the device once when setting it up, it asks the government if you’re over 18, and then your user account is verified as an adult when the “yes” response is returned. The only time it would need to be repeated is when someone turns 18, which would be something the user would need to manually prompt their device to retry. And notably, the government isn’t being pinged for every site you visit, they only got pinged for the initial device setup. So they don’t get access to any of your browsing data.

      Now your phone can automatically send a “yes, I’m over 18” signal to any site or service that asks. And kids won’t be verified, meaning they won’t even be able to see the “are you over 18” prompts; they’ll simply be booted off the site (or in Discord’s case, restricted) as soon as it automatically asks their device for an age verification. No action is required on the user’s part, and the site/service didn’t need any invasive info about who you are. As far as an adult is concerned, they got direct access to the site without any kind of annoying “are you over 18” prompt. And as far as a child is concerned, they got automatically redirected right back to Google’s home page as soon as they clicked the porn link.

      For shared devices (like computers) it could be handled on a per user basis. You verify your age on Windows/Linux/MacOS when creating the account, and then whenever you’re logged in, any site can simply ask if you’re over 18. Don’t want your kid to stumble across porn? Don’t verify their account. Now safeguarding kids on the internet is as simple as parents safeguarding their computer password and refusing to verify their child accounts.

      It’s basically the best of all worlds:

      • The government/private data brokers don’t get free access to your browsing data, like what would happen if every individual site asked the government for verification. This is our current reality, with data brokers hoovering up photos of IDs to feed to their data scientists.
      • The adult user only needs to take action once to verify their age, and then after that the age gates are automatically opened. You don’t need to verify independently with each site, because your device handles that automatically during the initial handshake.
      • Sites don’t get any additional personal info about you, except for the automatic pass/fail hardware response saying that you’re over 18. They don’t need to collect your info to pass to a third party verification system. They don’t need to ask the government, because that has already been done. And they don’t need to worry about things like GDPR compliance for collected info, because there is no additional collected info.
      • Your browsing info isn’t shared with third parties, because the sites/services you use have no need to ask third parties for verification.

      Of course it’ll never happen though, because it would restrict what kinds of info data brokers could collect and sell.