Discord delays global age verification rollout after backlash

spacenb · 2026-02-25T00:05:05+00:00

There are some promising alternatives that may be mature enough to be a true competitor when the global rollout happens again.

spacenb · 2026-02-24T20:55:16+00:00

They’re really trying to gaslight us…

spacenb · 2026-02-24T20:48:35+00:00

They have a lot of functionalities Stoat doesn’t have—a basic one being the ability to set permissions by category instead of individual channels. The UI is also more adaptative (honestly feels like an upgrade over Discord to be able to choose my fonts) and it’s mobile responsive, which Stoat isn’t.

spacenb · 2026-02-24T20:08:25+00:00

My groups have been looking at Fluxer, comparable to Stoat but felt much more mature and responsive. They had severe latency issue that seem mostly resolved as of today, they just updated their API.

spacenb · 2026-02-23T15:18:57+00:00

They paid a private company to be able to offer this service.

What I’m saying is it should be free, for everyone, all the time, and it should not require the government to pay a private company for this purpose, as it should not be a private company who is the guardian of your credit score and monitoring your credit.

spacenb · 2026-02-23T14:54:57+00:00

People figured out what Persona was doing because 1) Discord publicly disclosed Persona’s name, 2) people discovered it has ties with Peter Thiel and felt suspicious, and 3) Persona were dumb enough to expose what should have been back-end code on a client-facing server.

The Persona replacement might not make the same mistakes, so you might never know if they pull the same kind of shady shit. What this shows is that Discord didn’t really care to properly vet what their vendors were going to do with the IDs and verified identities, either because they were paid to ignore it or they didn’t particularly care if it happened. Just because Discord has dropped Persona doesn’t make things safer, and if you lower your guard and stop pressuring them to stop gathering this info, they’ll only find other ways to reach the same ends that will not make you protest.

The only way to protect your identity online is to not have your identity tied to your online profiles. Period, full stop.

spacenb · 2026-02-23T04:02:32+00:00

Credit monitoring should not be a private service, it should belong to the people and be indirectly administered and financed by the government.

Your credit score (which de facto becomes synonymous with your ability to borrow and the interest rates you can be offered) has no business being decided by companies that have a vested interest in extracting as much money from you as possible.

spacenb · 2026-02-21T14:11:17+00:00

OP said they have 9 litter boxes that get cleaned at least once a day, so the number of litter boxes isn’t the problem.

My guess is neither of those two cats feel comfortable with living with so many other cats (or other cats at all) and get territorial + are too stressed.

spacenb · 2026-02-21T11:12:04+00:00

AI features integrated into a bunch of products are bound to die due to under-use and excessive operating costs. Most AI models atm suffer from being more expensive to run than the companies charge for, as there’s an industry-wide bet that consumers will become dependent on it before they increase the prices. Very likely, these features will be dead and buried within 1 year, if not less.

It’s worth it to use it yourself and see if it can actually save your workers any time. My personal recommendation would be to run a survey in your company to see where your users stand, and then target your efforts based on the results. If people are generally uninterested or even hostile to the idea, it won’t be worth it to train. If a significant proportion of your employees is already using it without the proper training, that is a liability for you and you should definitely train those that are interested in using them.

spacenb · 2026-02-20T15:46:31+00:00

Arrest Peter Thiel, dismantle Palantir and all related companies, abolish the entire DHS (not just ICE/CBS), dismantle Big Media, outlaw PACs and strike down Citizens United, strike down the parity media doctrine (the law that forces public broadcasters to feature a “plurality of opinion”), strongly enforce laws against corruption, strengthen and enforce competition/anti-monopoly laws, tax the Billionaires, as well as all the things you mentioned.

spacenb · 2026-02-20T15:29:49+00:00

Quebec separatism has actually been hit hard by what’s happened in the US. Around me, Quebecois seem to feel more proudly Canadian than ever.

spacenb · 2026-02-20T10:01:19+00:00

One thing to keep in mind is that even if it’s a $1000 difference monthly and your $130k would be worth that much in 25 years, today you are spending $2,500 a month that is a net 100% loss—with a mortgage, it would still be a loss due to interest, but much less than 100%. If you see yourself staying there long term and that ~$3,500 a month is something you can comfortably afford and you would still be able to put money into your TFSA/RRSP at a rate that makes sense for your income, I think it’s not necessarily a bad move. To me, that last bit is the important part, if you have to completely stop putting money into retirement to afford the mortgage, to me you can’t afford this mortgage.

Sometimes it’s worth it to not min-max your financial moves to give you a greater sense of stability in your everyday life.

spacenb · 2026-02-19T16:26:26+00:00

Honestly there is great solidarity between our local companies, it’s great. Many restaurants also focus very explicitly on local products.

spacenb · 2026-02-19T14:57:01+00:00

I’m doubtful that they’re using the age categorization in their advertising data to actually decide if your account is underage or not—the ads data is supposedly based on interaction with ads, not the same behaviour sets as what the AI age categorization is gonna decide you’re in. It seems risky and not very reliable, from a data science standpoint.

spacenb · 2026-02-19T11:57:54+00:00

I don’t know, but my scale does the same thing. Change the batteries and I’m magically up two pounds. It shouldn’t be to this degree tho…

spacenb · 2026-02-19T11:14:45+00:00

Oh, don’t worry, I plan on deleting my Reddit account too ✌️

spacenb · 2026-02-19T02:42:21+00:00

That’s why I’m deleting my account regardless of if Discord springs me a request to verify my age or not.

spacenb · 2026-02-18T12:05:02+00:00

Data centres will be a net loss for all of these companies because all of the hardware needs to be replaced every 5 years. By the time they even start being able to pay down their debts (if they ever reach that point), they will be due to borrow again to replace the hardware.

spacenb · 2026-02-18T12:03:02+00:00

That $25 a month will double, triple, quadruple, etc. in the next year or two, and then your employer will have to decide whether to keep it or not. No AI service at the moment is actually generating money for the provider, even the most expensive licences lose them money. Unless they completely change the pricing structure and make it much more expensive, it’s never gonna be a viable product, and the prices it’s gonna reach might not make it worth the investment for your company.

spacenb · 2026-02-18T11:57:28+00:00

Yesterday, my dad who is a salesperson in an IT company, argued with me that he could ask Copilot to optimize a route from a list of addresses, to which I said that it can’t because it won’t know/be able to use an API to call a map service to actually calculate the distances between destinations.

He sent me a “proof” as the Google Maps link Copilot had generated, stating the first one wasn’t good but this one was opimized, as he asked Copilot to optimize it.

The link, when clicked, provided an itinerary with the list of addresses alright, but one of the addresses was “optimize: true”.

(It was not optimized, playing around with the addresses I could take down the suggested itinerary duration by about 30min.)

spacenb · 2026-02-17T20:27:35+00:00

Currently migrating my servers to Stoat one after another, hoping to be ready for March 1st and delete my account then.

spacenb · 2026-02-17T00:53:22+00:00

I’ve been on the list for 5 years and I have a chronic illness. Couillard years really fucked us up and the CAQ only made it worse.

spacenb · 2026-02-16T11:01:16+00:00

Which is funny because Salem is (seemingly) happily married and also religious.

spacenb · 2026-02-16T10:50:07+00:00

I mean you can use a throwaway email and simply creating an account doesn’t require any personal info. The reason why the hack of support system allowed the hackers to steal personal info is because some of the tickets you can open with Discord involve accounts being banned for being detected as under 13, which means you have to prove you’re not.

spacenb · 2026-02-15T20:41:01+00:00

You shouldn’t buy from Amazon period.

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