with discord rolling out mandatory age verification, I would like to throw it out there that Matrix is a free chat service that you can host yourself or use one of the many public instances of, which apps like Element point to by default.
I've been using it as my primary messenger for like a year now, and six months ago on my self-hosted version I bridged (most of) my discord stuff and have been using matrix as an alternative front for my discord dm's since.
like I can't stress enough that we don't have to put up with this shit. that we absolutely should not put up with this shit.
I really don't think it can be stressed enough how much you absolutely should not trust Discord with this kind of information either, especially if you're in any adult communities. They claim they handle the data safely and don't keep anything they don't need to keep, but they've been caught lying before
they've also been caught handing data over to the police without a warrant or reasonable suspicion. Data that they likely collected by using automated tools to scan random messages and flag them:
The past few years have seen major attacks on sexual content. Porn bans in multiple states, credit card companies forcing online shops to remove completely legal adult content, and now forcing adults to hand over their goddamn ID's just to use services they've had access to for years. At some point we have got to ditch these companies when they pull stunts like this because it just. keeps. escalating.
Free alternatives that work just as well already exist. Don't trust these assholes.














