Please, pretty please, be the spark that will stop OSS projects from hosting their “support forums” on Discord.
I wish it was only limited to support forums. I’ve even seen a Linux kernel driver where the Issues sections was closed and you should go to Discord instead. No thanks.
It’s horrible. We already had that stuff figured out. Wiki pages and forums to make information accessible even after 20 minutes have passed. Fuck that development and everyone that was/is pushing for that.
It’s too bad the open source community couldn’t find some programmers to help them make an alternative.
As long as the alternative is not another chat app that is not indexable by search engines. Forums fill the role pretty well, I don’t understand why devs would use Discord in the first place.
Fluxer apparently has that on their roadmap. https://blog.fluxer.app/roadmap-2026/
As part of #3, I’d also like to add the ability to publish forums to the open web. That way, people can discover, archive, and access discussions without logging in.
Sounds great. I hope it has video chat and screenshare or will implement it soon.
They do have those things from what I can tell.
As someone who has spent the last 2+ years testing revolt/stoat, matrix with element, and teamspeak, desperately searching for any viable discord alternative, I’m very interested in this. Where did you come across it? I tried to create an account but stuck pulsing on a loading screen.
@craigers @other_cat can I ask what was the issue with using matrix as a discord replacement? I would like to propose it to some friends, so it would be good to know if there are some fatal flaws
The EU has apparently decided that this has to be done for most public platforms by July 2026, so Discord may not have much of a choice and other platforms will likely follow: (Edit: I forgot, the EU strict age verification stuff seems to be limited to EU DSA’s definition of “platforms” so as a text messenger I’m not sure Discord is part of it. But this’ll still likely be coming to more services near you and perhaps Discord is just voluntarily joining the chaos…)
I could be wrong I’m not a lawyer, assume everything I write from here is bullshit, but see here:
https://www.mlex.com/mlex/articles/2368265/online-services-get-up-to-12-months-to-apply-age-verification-eu-guidelines-say “Online services get up to 12 months to apply age verification, EU guidelines say” This was in July 2025.
EU guidelines in question seem to be:
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https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/commission-publishes-guidelines-protection-minors and
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https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/redirection/document/118226
Quotes:
“[…] the Union legislature enacted Article 28 of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 of the European Parliament and the Council (6). Paragraph 1 of this provision obliges providers of online platforms […] to ensure a high level of privacy, safety, and security of minors, […]”
“Self-declaration is not considered to be an appropriate age-assurance measure as further explained below.”
“In the following circumstances, […] the Commission considers the use of access restrictions supported by age verification methods an appropriate and proportionate measure to ensure a high level of privacy, safety, and security of minors: […] an online platform accessible to minors has identified risks to minors’ privacy, safety, or security, including content, conduct and consumer risks as well as contact risks (e.g., arising from features such as live chat, image/video sharing, anonymous messaging)”
“Age estimation methods can complement age verification technologies and can be used in addition to the former,” (AKA the alternative to a literal gov ID check seems to be big data AI sucking up all user data to estimate user age.)
The in my opinion horrible solution the EU seems to have found to avoid sharing the physical ID for services that don’t want to request one, is apparently this app: https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android-wallet-ui Which from what I can tell
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The EU app seems to require Google device attestation so all custom ROMs are out and to be a citizen you can apparently no longer own your device,
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Unless you use iOS or Android you’re apparently not a citizen,
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Once everyone is used to using some citizen app like that, I feel like a fascist government could easily tie it to a social score or other authoritarian measures bewyond the age verification.
Anyway, I’m not a lawyer and this isn’t legal advice. But spread the word, somehow press seems to be ignoring this.
Hi, it’s me your lawyer!
Here’s some legal advice for you: delete Discord, hit the gym, lawyer up.
This has been official legal advice from me, your official lawyer.
Peace!
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Just say it was threatening you or something idk lol
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they don’t arrest child traffickers and rapists.
No no, it’s the child at fault for being at risk around them.
Like this: spiritual advisory pastor to serve only 6 months after molesting a 12-year-old for years
Morris’s attorney said the molestation was her fault because she was “flirtatious.”
Hear me out. Maybe, if you are a parent, its your duty to keep an eye on your child, and exert some control over the spaces and people they interact with?
Conservatives have been using the “think of the children line” to justify Draconian overeach for years. All while simultaneously doing everything in their power to take away programs that help children.
political parties aren’t real. Their only purpose is market segmentation.
It doesn’t matter which teams win in sports, billionaires own all the leagues.
Bugger off ml bot.
I, too, attack the source when I cannot refute the claim
Let’s not act like the dems don’t do some of the same shit.
And no I’m not both sidesing this shit…just saying that the dems/left uses this reasoning a lot as well.
Minnesota recently used their tax on billionaires to expand education and provide free lunch to children so while the party isn’t perfect they are not at all comparable.
What makes them so similar is first pass the post it guarantees a two party system and the practice of gerrymandering creating safe seats. The worst Democrats are the ones with the safest seats. If you want positive change start there.
We’re talking about trying to pass legislation in the name of “think of the children” logic. KOSA is a fairly recent one that is from the dems.
Average age of Lemmy is too low to remember the democrats always managed to support the war on drugs. Save the children indeed. Think of the children is just the go-to bipartisan reasoning for bad legislation
Off the top of my head I can only think of Lieberman and honestly the ESRB was a reasonable compromise.
Tipper gore? KOSA
Don’t know what KOSA is. Also, Tipper wasn’t a politician.
What’s tipper gore got to do with anything in the last thirty years? And kosa was bipartisan and died in the house.
30 years is a blink in time. You do realize laws don’t magically stop being potential issues after a few years right?
The Patriot Act which was bipartisan was passed almost 30 years ago now (25 years ago) now.
KOSA was introduced by a Dem.
You’re reaching to pull a both sides. Regardless republican platform positions harm children, Democratic ones feed them.
I’m not both sidesing, but both sides…
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You’re mostly correct, but Dems are not left in any political paradigm with the slightest awareness of the existence of non-American countries.
So are you for or against mass surveillance veiled as “child safety”?
Stop a calling this “age.verification” and start calling it what it is, “identity harvesting”.
Ive been trying to migrate off since 2020
Communities I follow refuse to, and no other service is close to parity. Guilded was the closest until they allowed themselves to golden parachute with their Roblox purchase, so they’re now not longer worth considering
Teamspeak and teamspeak6 is a joke, anyone who prefers it is off their rocker
I’ve been following Revolt/Stout, River on FreeNet since I found it on FUTO, and others but frankly all alternatives I’ve found suck for varius reasons
What are the others missing? In other words, what are the main features of discord that make it stand out so far above the rest?
Discoverability and moderated official servers
You need to be able to find say a public battlefield, minecraft, dayz, CivilizationVi, whatever community and subcommunities easily, so for minecraft you need to be able to find speedrunner, hardcore, smp, and so on groups
Active People to talk to
Chicken and egg problems. Gotta have signifcant quantities of people to attract more active people
Intuitive and easy joining, clean links.
Have to be able to say “oh we can hop on here and chat/discuss” to onboard new people from YouTube, Twitch, Owncast, whatever
The shared link cant be a string of letters and numbers because uninitiated correlate that with bad actors
This was something Guilded was starting to get right before they were bought out and shut down and it was massive for getting people to join
That’s an absolute failure of all of those products to not provide that environment on their own.
This used to be commonplace
Discord at its best was simply a hangout where you and your friends can talk to each other without needing to be playing the same game.
It became entirely too complicated and bigger than it needed to be. It’s a. Overblown IRC voice chat. And before nitro, it was exactly all it needed to be.
Now it shot itself in the foot like so many others by trying to be something that isn’t what made it great
I think its yet to be seen if they shot themselves in the foot or not
Remember Reddit?
Yeah they were dirt bags and still exist just fine aren’t they
I’d wager its more likely that the same scenario repeats than this being a catastrophic event for discord personally
Unfortunately
You are most likely correct that it’s too early to say. I don’t have a problem conceding that point to you.
I think Reddit did shoot itself in the foot though, regardless of if they are still around. I don’t know that they will ever be able to regain what it has lost.
As a Reddit refugee myself I can say that for me they absolutely fucked over the chance to have me return to their platform, and many if not most of other refugees I’m guessing would share a similar opinion
Definitely uninstalling discord. I hardly use it anyway.
No one conversed with me there anyway haha. I found it to be such an unwelcoming place. And the data leaks and age verification crap as well - I hope there’s a decent alternative somewhere because I miss chatting with people.
Potential alternatives:
Guilded
Element
Revolt
Telegram
Mumble
Session
This is a free to use platform, just saying:
Meet Pavel Durov, the tech billionaire who founded Telegram
Pavel Durov was born in St. Petersburg in Soviet Russia.
The tech entrepreneur cofounded the encrypted messaging service Telegram with his brother Nikolai in 2013. The brothers were born into a family of intellectuals, according to a biography on the Digital-Life-Design Conference website. Durov spoke at the conference in January 2012.
Durov is now worth $17.1 billion, according to Forbes. Much of his fortune comes from Telegram, which he said hit 1 billion users in March 2025.
Nope. Never use telegram.
You can get banned out of the blue and just lose all the contacts.Never touching that
So what if you get banned? There are all those others you can struggle with if that happens. None of the others listed match the security featureset and ease of use of Telegram.
Americans- If you’re thinking “this isn’t so bad” please consider that all it takes is a teeny tiny, insignificant api added to the back end with absolutely no notice to users and suddenly the DHS has a database of dissenters, with cross-referenced IDs, photos of faces, chat history, link share history, raw uploaded photos, and approximate locations.
Say no to this. If you need a temporary alternative that’s quick to get going, create a signal group chat with your friends.
Pain fucking ass but deleted my Discord account. Sure wish had a decent alternative. I see a lot of suggestions just don’t which to try? Any that work great with Linux Debian?
Do the people you talk with use Signal?
Signal and Discord are two different types of messenger. Discord is more a hybrid of a forum and like Teamspeak, but with vidchat and screenshare as well as a lot of aesthetic options.
