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a... friend of mine works for a company which... let's just say, has mac/win/ios/android applications for the clients. the sheer amount of device info even first level support can see on the baseline if the app is running, is baffling.

that data isn't even sold by the company, so it doesn't even collect 'much' of it because there's no incentive. discord is guaranteed to be so, so much worse than that. my point is:

if my friend can 1) tell you are lying when you say you did check your windows updates because he sees your exact goddamn OS build, 2) knows you did not switch browsers as a troubleshooting step and 3) knows you are not at the same location as previously...

...then making a different account on a device you have ever touched, on a network you were ever on, will do nothing to hide who you are.

i want to make this clear: companies like discord will not behave when they get 20k strongly worded letters, simply because of the companies they are involved with.

shit like this is being pushed and lobbied for worldwide. letters to companies do nothing.

my... friend also handles registration which (justified in that company's case) requires ID submission.

if you do keep using discord, upload some fake/template/John Doe/McLovin ID.

in the current age of AI, the ID checking system is dogshit unless fine tuned, the AI is completely useless, the outsourcing replacing the original workers is dumb as bricks, and IF any original staff remained, they are overworked and slip on the checks/no longer give a fuck.

so what you do is either 1) use discord with a fake id 2) take the hit of losing a few (for now) features or 3) jump ship.

if you choose option 3, i have one recommendation i use and trust.

Element is what my IRL friend group jumped ship to. it's similar to discord in that there is a server with rooms for calls and video calls. there are even (limited) plugins, for our use case i just created a few topic-based rooms, plus like five rooms for five different topics of RSS feeds supplied by a bot.

it's open source, fully end to end encrypted, and you can self-host the server.

it's not as streamlined and feature rich as discord. it's a little less convenient. but it does the job and does it well. no leaks. no outages so far.

(i must also recommend Proton and their suite of apps. swiss based and obeying swiss laws, not american. they give you privacy enough that you can mail them fucking cash for a subscription if you don't want to share your credit card info.)

now and in the coming years everyone must understand and remember that convenience is the crack you have been made the addict of, and now that you are, there is a noose being tightened around your neck and hands by the dealer.

you won't leave. it's so easy to use. everyone uses it. it's so convenient. you lose just a little bit if you don't comply, but... it's just a bit more they ask for. for now.

if you are at all fed up with the enshittification of every service and the erosion of your privacy, it's time to become at least a little more tech savvy. to look for alternatives. to verify things yourself. to not rely on AI to feed you information and instead learn and verify the knowledge for yourself to empower yourself, not to please a schooling system. you have to give up a few convenient things.

you can no longer afford to not do those, if you value your privacy. educate yourself. start at the basics. dip your toes into r/privacy. download F-droid. try youtube or its FOSS alternative, Libretube on phones. hell, if you already use it, even starting on gathering knowledge using tiktok is better than nothing, there's a growing subculture of privacy oriented creators even there! Linux is also not that scary at all, and has plenty of gaming support, especially through Steam.