[neilv]

Three problems with this:

1. Removes the pain of age verification, encouraging some people to stay in the proprietary walled garden when everyone would be better served by open platforms (and network effects).

2. Provides a pretext for more invasive age verification and identification, because "the privacy-respecting way is too easily circumvented".

3. Encourages people to run arbitrary code from a random Web site in connection with their accounts, which is bad practice, even if this one isn't malware and is fully secure.

[rippeltippel]

Proving that something is possible doesn't mean encouraging it. This was a beautiful work of reverse engineering, that shows how hard it can be to verify personal data without invading privacy. I prefer this awareness to blind trust.

The code was released, therefore it is not arbitrary (problem #3). Should companies react with more invasive techniques (problem #2), users can always move to other platforms (problem #1).

[FMecha]

>users can always move to other platforms (problem #1)

Until the cycle restarts again with new platforms.

Also, I am convinced self-hosting or getting a new platform (including return to traditional forums) to run might as well be bureaucratically harder at this point, given the case of lfgss' shutdown: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42433044

[jen729w]

> everyone would be better served by open platforms

Oh cool, which ones?!

…aaaand there's the problem.

[unethical_ban]

This suggests that the immediate availability of a drop-in replacement today means there is no utility in encouraging that growth.

There are multiple open-source tools that do everything Discord does. There are few-to-none that offer everything Discord does, and certainly none that are centralized, network-effect-capture-ready.

Short term:

* Small group chats with known friends: Signal, whatsapp, IRC, Matrix

* Community chat: Zulip, Rocket.chat

* Community voice: Mumble, Teamspeak

* Video / screen sharing and voice chat: Zoom, BigBlueButton, Jitsi

I've heard about Stoat but haven't read up on it.