Discord is about to require age verification for everyone

Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: pb

Quoting: Liam DaweIt doesn't really matter what alternatives there are - anything chat / social media will end up having to use these types of controls. Otherwise, they will end up getting blocked by various governments.

Is IRC blocked anywhere?

Even if it isn't yet, there's not much to stop governments forcing ISPs to block IRC servers. We've barely begun to see the effects of all this yet, it's going to expand.

And like every time this happens, VPN / Tor usage goes up, people learn to adapt and overcome. We even have access to mesh networking technology, and could even go back to point-to-point microwave antennas for backhaul (think Ubiquiti AirFibre). Lots of authoritarian countries try to block and censor the internet, with varying (but rarely, if ever total) success.

I'm similarly pessimistic about governments trying to do this, but it honestly just means we have to be ready with those fallback options, and unless they're going to stop selling WiFi cards and Pringles cans to the general public entirely, they can't win. 😉

Quoting: Liam DaweEven if it isn't yet, there's not much to stop governments forcing ISPs to block IRC servers. We've barely begun to see the effects of all this yet, it's going to expand.

I'll just reconfigure my bouncer tyvm.

Quoting: pb

Quoting: Liam DaweEven if it isn't yet, there's not much to stop governments forcing ISPs to block IRC servers. We've barely begun to see the effects of all this yet, it's going to expand.

I'll just reconfigure my bouncer tyvm.

Sure, but that's nothing something average people do which this will all affect. Although, as with a lot of these laws, they do end up pushing people to alternatives to find workarounds. It will be a never-ending battle.

Quoting: pb

Quoting: GoEsrI'm left wondering when governments will come for Steam accounts. My account is over 18 years old, so maybe they'll implement the same system Nexus Mods did.

I'm only 13yo in steam years. No sakura games for me. :-/

I guess that makes me about 15 years. My first Steam game was either New Vegas or Skyrim. (I didn't buy FNV at release. I think I got it just before Skyrim launched. I switched to Skyrim and I've yet to finish a FNV playthrough.)

As to Discord, this doesn't affect me. I don't use it. I don't do social media, period.

Quoting: SeegrasAll age verification schemes are ultimately dangerous to the very people they claim to protect, because they are endangering their privacy. And everyone else's as well.

This is bad; but the culprits here are idiot (and/or malicious) politicians in the respective countries pushing for these privacy violations.

https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/24/10-not-so-hidden-dangers-of-age-verification/

Maybe, but it will lift a burden on moderators of NSFW servers.

I have used this platform since 2017 when you couldn’t even right click in the UI. I’ve basically seen this thing grow up from an infant stage.

I now feel like a parent whose child just said they hate them.

Maybe this is a good thing, and it will help keep me off of social media.

Quoting: Liam DaweIt doesn't really matter what alternatives there are - anything chat / social media will end up having to use these types of controls. Otherwise, they will end up getting blocked by various governments.

I disagree. Self-hosted platforms are basically impossible to control in this way. I would like to see the government come for MY Mumble server. Libera already issued a statement saying that the odds of them requiring age verification is incredibly slim. And even if it did, somebody can just spin up a new IRC network that hasn't had the restriction imposed on it yet.

It doesn't have to be this way. The mistake is using centralized non-user owned platforms.

The Discord team highlighted their privacy protections for all this as:
* On-device processing: Video selfies for facial age estimation never leave a user’s device.

This method is likely very similar to the age verification process that is being used by Roblox. When the time came for my two 16 year old grandson's to complete this process on Roblox, they handed me their phone and I followed the onscreen instructions. On completion I got the message "We estimate your age as 21+." I felt young again!

Quoting: Shaddycat

Quoting: Liam DaweIt doesn't really matter what alternatives there are - anything chat / social media will end up having to use these types of controls. Otherwise, they will end up getting blocked by various governments.

I disagree. Self-hosted platforms are basically impossible to control in this way. I would like to see the government come for MY Mumble server. Libera already issued a statement saying that the odds of them requiring age verification is incredibly slim. And even if it did, somebody can just spin up a new IRC network that hasn't had the restriction imposed on it yet.

It doesn't have to be this way. The mistake is using centralized non-user owned platforms.

Sure, but we're not exactly talking about smaller self-hosted stuff, we're talking primarily about more public community stuff which is the target of all this.

Doesn’t sound like I’m going to miss much for being assumed to be a teen, so whatever, but I wonder if their facial recognition system would be able to tell a mask from a real face.

Quoting: JohnologueIs Matrix that bad? That's where I was hoping to direct some friends.

On top of the issues I mentioned, it's just a poorly-designed system with a bunch of usability issues.

Here are a few personal gripes I've had with it since Gitter moved to Matrix after being acquired by Element (the company that makes the Matrix client of the same name):

• You can't send media and text in a single message, so if you're in a decently-active channel, whatever image or video you're trying to post can easily end up separated from its context.


• Threads are a pain in the ass, especially if you're using an alternate client (for example, in NeoChat, threads are displayed alongside the channel's main messages as a series of replies). On top of that, you can't mark them as read individually (you have to mark the channel as unread then then mark it as read, which also comes with its fair share of bugs).


• Some of the markup is inconsistent, making it hard to use. Stuff like bold and italics and quotes is normal Markdown, but strikethrough text requires HTML-like tags for some goddamn reason.


• The search sucks a lot more than Discord's. It's much slower, and you can't use filters alongside keywords.


• The main channel I'm in has an official GitHub integration posting updates from GitHub repos, and the channel admin noted that setting the integration up required giving it *full* permissions, else it just wouldn't work. Also, for the record, pre-Matrix!Gitter had a dedicated sidebar for repo updates, instead of polluting the main chat like Matrix!Gitter's integration does.

Last edited by williamjcm on 9 Feb 2026 at 7:41 pm UTC

This is bad. The way Project 2025 is going, and the way much of big tech is complicit, there will at some point be a follow-up decree to treat LGBTQ topics as adult-only, requiring a major target of right-wing hate to doxx themselves when they are first in line for a revival of the nazis' pink triangle badges, driving them underground, and making the community fragmented and unavailable to most.

Book bans targetting school libraries in red states like Florida are already disappearing mentions of LGBTQ people and the history of race and slavery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_banning_in_the_United_States_(2021%E2%80%93present)

We pretty much need decentralised alternatives and going back to socialising offline.

[quote=Liam Dawe]

Quoting: pbSure, but that's nothing something average people do which this will all affect. Although, as with a lot of these laws, they do end up pushing people to alternatives to find workarounds. It will be a never-ending battle.

Not necessarily. Look at the pirate sites. Various governments tried to force ISP to block them so the sites started using proxies, the ISPs played whack-a-mole for a while until the regulators got bored and gave up.

I knew that this was gonna have a lotta comments. XD

Quoting: williamjcmI've heard a few horror stories about Mattermost, especially from bot developers, and Element is just a client for Matrix, a chat protocol that's so focused on security that they forgot to implement safety features (like banning/muting accounts and servers).

I don't know about banning servers specifically, but banning or muting users/accounts is already available.
Where do you get that from?

I deleted my discord account today, and man let me tell you how AMAZINGLY GOOD that felt. Now comes the fun part: waiting to see where are the game devs go for their communities.

Good, good! Let it implode!

Quoting: JarmerNow comes the fun part: waiting to see where are the game devs go for their communities.

Discord. They're gonna go to Discord. I would be amazed if any notable migration to another platform were to happen.