Discord has announced that it will begin requiring government-issued ID or face scans for use of large parts of its platform, extending beyond its original compliance with UK ID Verification Law and various Online Safety Acts around the world. What we found disturbing was what seems to be Discord’s strange web of connections, including links to the UK Government via partners, links to Peter Thiel and Palantir (and even Epstein) via venture capital-funded identity verification services, and Discord’s prior partner data breaches leading to concerns of the application’s ability to protect its users. This all comes at a time when Discord is rumored to be preparing for an IPO, which would be an awfully good time for Discord to suddenly know a whole lot more about its users – data that could be valuable for marketing or other disagreeable uses. At least as a positive, this has led to a rise of Discord alternatives.
I agree with the sentiment but still feel the need to point out: specifically, relying heavily on one proprietary, non-federated option is what did it.
Open software with an established, open protocol (yes, even one as bloated as Matrix) has way less eggs-in-basket danger. The difficulty, last I checked, of self-hosting stoat is one thing that makes me a little wary of it too.
Yeah, that’s a valid point.
I like that Stoat is self-hostable, but the lack of federation or even a way to sign in to multiple different instances in the same app makes me not even want to try. Why should I self-host something when everyone else is going to be on the flagship instance, which mine can’t talk to?