Why I'm leaving Discord

Discord adds government ID verification

The short answer to "why I'm leaving Discord" is that they're requiring you to upload your government ID to verify your age for NSFW content.

Impact

Let's be clear: the truth is, this has minimal impact for most people. If you're here, you probably read The Verge article, but if you actually read the Discord press release, you'll see that the "teen by default" policy only affects NSFW channels/servers. The only other thing it affects is that unverified Discord accounts cannot speak in "stage" channels.

If you're only a part of communities and friend servers, you may not ever interact with NSFW channels anyway. The stage restriction is more of a problem but... even then, you can approximate the stage feature with built-in permission management. This probably doesn't actually affect you.

The long answer

And that brings us to the long answer. The long answer is Discord is just another instance in a long pattern of VC tech companies that do whatever they want, regardless of the law or user concerns, and relentlessly make their platform worse or even endanger users for the sake of profit. And I'm tired of it.

Enshittification is the word of the decade as far as I'm concerned, and all the richest morons in the world are embracing it wholeheartedly.

The reason these tech companies like Discord and Twitter and Facebook get away with stealing your data and treating you like shit is because they're effectively monopolies. But their status as monopolies are predicated on people's laziness - their unwillingness to move somewhere else, and consequently their willingness to accept any new anti-consumer (or even illegal) bull shit practice that the company wants to try.

It's an ideological stance

We just. Can't keep letting them all get away with this. We shouldn't accept it. It's insulting, and it's also a consequence of declining literacy and curiosity into tech that big players have fostered. It's not an accident that only one generation has the skills to edit a PDF; they want you illiterate and incurious so that you just take whatever they decide to do to their user base.

With so much going on and so many challenges people face every day, I do not expect this to be a fight that any and everyone has the will to take up. But I do. And I want to help make it easier for people to leave abusive platforms, not help perpetuate the pattern.

I know how to build a website, I know how to self-host services, I know IT infrastructure. And, I know how to communicate and teach people. I like to think that - sometimes at least - I know how to inspire people.

Conclusion

So let me inspire you to take back your online experience. You don't have to accept the crock of garbage that these techno-fascists want to shove down your throat. There are alternatives.

The internet used to be fun and wacky and decentralized. There used to be websites. Now there are 4 or 5 corporatized platforms you go to on a daily basis, probably accessed through an app on your phone that has permission to access your location and camera all the time.

We can go back. It's both easier and harder than ever.

What's next?

I'll probably move to Matrix, but I also intend to check out Stoat and possibly Zulip? But I've also heard of IRC and I have a friend or two moving there, so I might check that out. For the time being, Stoat is probably the best Discord replacement, but I'd like Matrix to mature to a point where it could be a viable community platform.

I think my next blog post will be explaining what the heck "decentralized" means, because that's the first step to getting away from the hyper-centralized internet. Look out for that I guess!