There is a lot of misinformation going on about what Discord is doing, Stoat is where i will move if i have to, but for now the plan is to stay there for my community, but we've had to give a LOT of clarifying information because a LOT of people have what is happening wrong.

That is not to say i enjoy what Discord is doing, i have canceled my nitro in protest, but its not the trainwreck people think it is.

Oh, I have seen ALL the information and arguments, or at least most of 'em. And I haven't shut down my discord, just... Eh. Going into *exactly* what bothers me about this would turn into a rant. I just see it as one more sign that I need to be ready to move somewhere else/encouraging other people to move too.

Fair enough, just bugging me how much people are saying one thing and its another. Its still a shitty change, but its not the shitty change they think it is...

FYI, it was/is *exactly* the shitty change I was worried about. https://bsky.app/profile/eurogamer....../3metoj4eu2s2e https://www.pcgamer.com/software/platforms/oh-good-discords-age-verification-rollout-has-ties-to-palantir-co-founder-and-panopticon-architect-peter-thiel/

I don't give a damn if "discord has my face" I post selfies on my server anyway, but Nazis having all my data is not exactly delightful, and that aside, the thing that bothered me most wasn't a change, what bothered me is how the change is a red flag for how Discord is run by bootlickers who WILL fold and hand over data when a government, say the Trump government starting to round up "trannies" for the camps, comes calling. THAT is what worries me most, but that's not new that's just...the world we live in now.

Yeah this is concerning, I've had to point out at people though if you've age verified on VR chat, it's managed by the same company so a lot of people may already have been pulled into this without realizing it.

Yeah. Some of what discord *said* they were doing seemed not too bad, the whole deal with keeping info on your device is a nice work-around to protect privacy and also verify people, but given a bunch of their past behavior AND the main reason they were doing this (pre-complying with fascist bullshit before even getting a legal notice let alone being sued or anything like that) I was worried, and looks like I was right to be worried.

It's really frustrating! I want to talk to friends without anybody else listening in, I want to make silly little crafts and horny little books/crafts, and sometimes sell those, and that's ALL. I don't want to change the world, I don't want to corrupt the youth, I just want to do my own thing in my own little corner, but NOPE, not allowed!

I am primarily on Matrixmessenger kuschelpony:catgirl.cloud and right now setting up a number of rooms for diverse furry and related interests

Most social networking happens on Fedi https://sueden.social/@laberpferd (plus a dedicated kink account if someone wants to know)

Im still on Furnet IRC for nostalgia and to keep with old friends who use specific "phone only" messengers that are inaccessible for me

Will join your IRC next

As I've been doing research on this for over 3 years now, I'll give a summary.

XMPP - Free, open-sourced, easy to host your own servers, is federated out of the box so anybody from any server can DM, Group Chat, or Chatroom Chat with anyone else. Very flexible. Main issue is the client apps for it are incredibly hit or miss as to what features they have or are missing.

Matrix - Free, open-sourced. Incredibly dangerous to host your own servers as you cannot control what content is synced/stored to your server including illegal content. Also difficult to set up servers. If you do self-host, do not allow users to register. Only create spaces/channels. Only allow people you trust to make accounts on your server! Otherwise, it boasts a ton of features that competes with Discord, and people on any federated server can chat with anyone else. User experience is great, just be very careful if you want to self-host!

Stoat - Just like a much earlier form of Discord. Has ability to self-host but as far as I and others know, there's no 'federation' meaning you'd need a separate account per server if you went that way. Stoat will be under the affect of age verification too as it's an EU app.

Telegram - Everybody knows this one, biggest issue is that phone number requirement, and that it outs you as a furry as if anybody else has your phone number in their contact list and installs the app, it will suggest you as a contact.

Zulip - Pretty good all-rounder. People need to self-host. Has federation. Only issue is mobile notifications cost the server owner if there's more than 10 users, or they opt out of getting notifications at all.

Root - Be extremely cautious of this one. It is another Discord-like app, all data is in their servers in a closed ecosystem. There's been major concerns about privacy and data collection. They are rather hostile about NSFW content.

Valour - Known, nobody in my group has studied this one yet

IRCv3 - Good old IRC. There's been improvements to the protocol over the years long after people forgot it existed. Google for IRCv3 and look at the many client and server options available. Want chat history? Look into how "IRC Bouncers" work like ZNC.

NextCloud Talk - Little data on this, missing a lot of features, unclear if it's federated.

Fluxer - No data yet, nobody researched it yet

Mattermost - Limited, no federation, basically like Slack. Doubtful it'll make a good fit, also costs money for most server features.

Guilded - Dead. It's gone. Probably for the best considering the owners of it.

Most likely for me, I'll be using a combo of XMPP, Matrix, and IRCv3

This is fantastic. And has a bunch of stuff I hadn't heard of! Thank you. I may end up with a Matrix server eventually, but I really do wish more people were willing to try out IRC.

Could always do best of both worlds and bridge Matrix/XMPP/IRC or whatever together. Matrix has native bots to bridge to both IRC and XMPP, or you can use a popular bridge bot like MatterBridge. You do you, just giving options out.

I'm pretty sure was stoat that you can just make a account and join servers with the ability to set up profiles. Rather then account per server.

Only on the 'main' company server. Self-Hosted servers are not federated. It's a giant pain going from one self-hosted server to another. If you don't want your data completely in the hands of Stoat's company, it's a real pain to self-host.

They're also in the midst of pulling a Discord as they're looking into Age Verification and doing stuff with user data.

OH JESUS CHRIST. If you happen to have a link to info on that I'd love it, but gods, can anything not suck these days????? GUESS IT'S MY BUDDY'S IRC SERVER FOREVER, CAN'T TRUST ANYBODY I DON'T PERSONALLY KNOW!

All the items I have are screenshots from social media accounts and blogs run by Stoat.

Simply put, Stoat is located in the EU and must comply to UK Age Verification laws. No getting around it.

The only way to avoid this is platforms that encourage self-hosting where accounts aren't managed by a big master server.

Don't provide a single big target for governments to bully around, allow lots and lots of tiny servers where people can self-host and federate.

You're not going to see age verification crap on email for example because anybody can run an email server and work with any other email system.

Systems currently very resistant to big brother are XMPP and Matrix as there's no way to force something on server owners as its a protocol, not a single platform.

Fluxer is currently monolithic but are working towards providing OpenAuth federation without needing your account to be tied to central Fluxer servers.