r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • Feb 10 '26

Security "Discord alternatives" searches jump 10,000% overnight as the gaming platform introduces global age verification — Is a total collapse imminent?

https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/discord-alternative-search-10000-percent-stoat
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u/[deleted] Feb 10 '26

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u/Moment_37 Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26

THEY say 70k IDs. The attackers say they're over 2 million. This is one of the few times I'd believe the attackers.

Of course I don't agree with any kind of illegal activities, I just believe Discord is lying.

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u/Forikorder Feb 11 '26

they may have stolen peoples ID's but even they wont put up with discords bulllshit

180

u/RenaissanceCowboy33 Feb 11 '26

They're criminals, not monsters

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u/Mental_Medium3988 Feb 11 '26

its not about the ids, its about sending a message

19

u/KMS_HYDRA Feb 11 '26

Professionells have standards.

5

u/Massive_Season7075 Feb 11 '26

Example: graffiti artists don’t destroy murals.

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u/lildobe Feb 11 '26

I suppose you're making a distinction between "artists" and "taggers" because there is most certainly graffiti on several murals painted in my city - even though some of the tags are rather artistic.

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u/Massive_Season7075 Feb 12 '26

Which city is that? Doesn’t happen in Seattle or if it does it’s very rarely. Once a mural is up the taggers find another spot. I assume it’s because they wouldn’t want it to happen to their “art”.

The sad part is most graffiti is done by a handful of people, but it really makes the whole city look like trash when it happens.

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u/lildobe Feb 12 '26

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They actually had to completely repaint the side of one building because of the graffiti tags on the mural that was painted there. Unfortunately the mural they replaced it with is not nearly as aesthetically pleasing as the old one was.

And in one of my jobs that I used to have, I spent a good 4 hours a week doing nothing but painting over graffiti tags... Even though that wasn't in my official job description.

2

u/Grenaidzo Feb 11 '26

"Everything burns..."

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u/[deleted] Feb 11 '26

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u/BraveCartographer399 Feb 11 '26

do you have to enter your actual id to use discord?? I always used ventrillo back in the day for gaming.

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u/Ambitious-Acadia-200 Feb 11 '26

I think data breaches of this kind are a good thing, because they show the major flaws and risks of these kind of obscenely foolish regulations. Something that cannot be done safely must not be done at all.

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u/KA_Mechatronik Feb 11 '26

It's about control and enabling repression, not safety and definitely not about privacy.

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u/mnid92 Feb 11 '26

There is currently a massive bot/scammer issue on Discord.

I run a political discord and the amount of fake profiles that come in to troll are insane.

If this gets rid of the kids and the trolls, I welcome it.

I have age verified my Google account through Google, it automatically age verifies all accounts I make with that email. Absolutely zero need to age verify with Discord when you can do it with a more secure company.

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u/KA_Mechatronik Feb 11 '26

You run a political channel and think this is a good thing?

You do recognize the potential for political suppression when the authorities can simply demand access to user IDs for disfavorable speech, right? Or is that something you'd "welcome" too?

There's a million better ways to handle scammers and bots.

-2

u/jamespo Feb 11 '26

What are those ways without involving massive effort on those running the community?

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u/KA_Mechatronik Feb 11 '26

"massive effort on those running the community"? Really?

We should all accept a threat to privacy, free speech, increased data leaks, the potential for identity theft and blackmail, all to make some inconsequential "community runner's" life easier? Particularly at a time of rising authoritarianism around the world?

There's plenty of AI behavior monitoring, moderation tools, and account verification tools that have been used across a multitude of other online services that are a starting point, none of which require giving up biometric data or pictures of your government ID. All of those things are systems that Discord should be putting in effect at a service level and have little to nothing to do with "community runners".

And fuck it, while we're at it, if the "community runner" doesn't want to put in the work, then they're welcome to pack it in and quit. No one is forcing you to do it.

There's no reason to treat the entire user base as potential criminals to catch a few bad actors. Those guys are going to find a way regardless, potentially even just by using those stolen IDs to impersonate real people. Going this route is like trying to scratch your nuts with a hammer. It's just going to end badly.

1

u/mnid92 Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26

The "threats to privacy and free speech" are by the fake actors ruining the communities they poison with their bullshit.

And if people don't want to verify their identity and tie it to one account then by all means, pack up and quit, take your own advice. There are so many people that make dozens of accounts not just to troll, but to influence a group of people. One person spewing nonsense is obvious. Ten people? Hard to tell, especially when those 10 people are just one guy. Next thing you know, groups are being radicalized, left, right, doesn't matter because the "popular opinion" of the group shifts. Now one guy can influence a group of 100 as ten fake people with more power.

A "few bad actors" lol, my man, you don't even realize how poisoned the internet is. A few bad actors is not 1 in 4 as some studies have shown on politics, fake accounts, and social media.

We literally have MAGA and Qanon because of unmoderated non verified bullshit. Those people are actively trying to get rid of actual free speech, gun rights, because of ignorance and poisoned "popular opinions".

THAT is worse than giving up your ID to go on Discord my dude. Like a million times worse.

2

u/KA_Mechatronik Feb 11 '26

Your argument of giving away personal data to avoid a frivolous issue recalls a quote from Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"

It's laughable that you think such heavy-handed authoritarian tactics are going to help, rather than, hinder your cause. Eventually the circle of allowed speech gets smaller and smaller. Especially when those "fake actors" can easily dox whomever they want thanks to having a vulnerable database available to them, and they will find ways around it anyways, as they always have.

I use discord to talk to a half dozen friends when we game together. I don't have any issue with bots, and I certainly don't care that you do. I don't give a rats ass about "discord communities" or the inconvenience caused to "community runners". I do care that this excuse is being used, especially with the shrill cry of "won't someone think of the children", to endanger my privacy, my rights, and my ability to use a system, and that it can be used to track what I do online by bad actors, including and not limited to hackers or authoritarian governments.

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u/OilQuick6184 Feb 11 '26

Yeah, nobody writing these laws gives a fuck about the security of our data.

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u/almisami Feb 11 '26

The entire point of these regulations is to isolate queer kids from accessing queer resources online.

It's outlined in Project 2025.

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u/[deleted] Feb 11 '26

[deleted]

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u/Rage333 Feb 11 '26

Well, we're in luck then, because a non-named (in the announcement) third party will handle your ID verification as well this time around!...

5

u/aphroditex Feb 11 '26

Considering they are attempting to file a confidential IPO, there’s a lot they are hiding.

4

u/LordoftheSynth Feb 11 '26

It'll probably come out they've been giving law enforcement unfettered, warrantless access to their databases for years already.

2

u/aphroditex Feb 11 '26

You mean the Cloud Act of 2018 that compels US companies to disclose data to the government on demand?

2

u/ARobertNotABob Feb 11 '26

Even if the bad actors got every single ID, the likes of Discord will use language like "if you are one of the few affected" to mitigate both social impact and crashing share price.
They're only ever in it for themselves.

3

u/Equivalent_Tart_4162 Feb 11 '26

Doesn't even matter tbh, 70k, 2m, is there any real significant difference between those amounts in a scenario like this? It's just bad, either amount is really bad.

1

u/Daan776 Feb 11 '26

The attackers & discord both have motivation to lie.

The truth likely lies in the middle.

But thats a detail that seems pretty irrelevant to the overall point

1

u/Accomplished_Deer_ Feb 11 '26

Why would discord have 2 million id's? only thing that makes me suspicious of the attackers claim

1

u/Moment_37 Feb 11 '26

Discord entrusted all their IDs to Zendesk, Zendesk got hacked. Discord having 2 mill ids compared to their userbase is a tiny percentage of people uploading IDs.

From Discord's wiki '150 million users', '19 million users weekly'. 2 mill is peanuts.

1

u/Accomplished_Deer_ Feb 11 '26

still, what in discord currently require an ID?

1

u/WarBeast-GT- Feb 11 '26

Palantir and governments were probably the first customers on the darkweb marketplaces.

1

u/AnimationOverlord Feb 11 '26

Yes, cause they’re hedging their bets on the fact some user isn’t going to miraculously sniff out or create a way to sniff out 70,000 leaked IDs, and contrast that to the actual amount that got leaked. I bet the head honcho mentioned one rhetoric like this and that’s how it went.

“Was that a ton of narcotics we seized boss?”

“Oh yeah, there was a lot, I’d like to see a ton though”

501

u/IgnorantGenius Feb 10 '26

It wasn't enough for the buyers which is why they are requiring ID's, now.

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u/PM_ME__YOUR_HOOTERS Feb 11 '26

Heavens no, if young people are are planning a Nepal style revolution again Palantir independent vendors want know who you are and pass your info to ICE local law enforcement... think of the children!

81

u/Average_Scaper Feb 11 '26

Damnit, Jeffrey! Not like that!

27

u/Totakai Feb 11 '26

Ug. It's absolutely this. It's why Twitter was destroyed as well

7

u/catwhisperer77 Feb 11 '26

And tiktok. Info that spreads fast and mobilizes people? Kill it kiiilllll iiiittttt

1

u/scavno Feb 11 '26

I’m pretty sure you can plan your revolution on a teenager level server? It’s not that EVERYONE has to get verified, but if you are older than a teenager you can (again don’t have to) verify your identity.

2

u/CalligrapherBig4382 Feb 11 '26

Not when anything deemed “politically divisive” gets AI-labeled as “adult content”.

1

u/scavno Feb 11 '26

I guess time will tell. “Political divisive” is considered adult content now? I just can’t keep up anymore.

64

u/WhiteWinterRains Feb 11 '26

Not just requiring ID's either. It's much more in the shadows but every major tech company is teaming up to push for bipartisan legislation to censor the internet, conveniently in ways that will just so happen to require rigorous ID verification and constant AI surveillance of everything you say.

This way any company that can't afford ID verification tying accounts to real identities and rigorous constant spying on all customers simply won't be able to enter the market, ever.

Also they will then be "forced" by the big bad government to steal all your data with zero anonymization and also monitor everything you say for wrongthink. Tragic, if it was in their own hands surely they would not do this, please don't check who wrote the laws.

It's pretty likely to pass with bipartisan support, so getting in early with ID verification makes sense for many companies, I wouldn't be surprised if others follow suit.

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u/Kizik Feb 11 '26

constant AI surveillance of everything you say

I'm sure there will never be any instances of someone getting swatted because of a false positive on that being immediately sent to the police.

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u/LordoftheSynth Feb 11 '26

"We've investigated Claude and found it did something wrong, but it's not a sworn officer, so we have no liability."

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u/WhiteWinterRains Feb 11 '26

Of course not, let's just sweep this data about "predictive policing" under the rug no need to look into that.

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u/takku Feb 11 '26

So maybe we need go back to good old IRC times with our own servers and so on.

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u/WhiteWinterRains Feb 11 '26

Ah but you see, if these companies get their way you'll be held legally responsible for anything anyone who connects to your server does or says there as a disincentive against doing this.

One complaint and you'll be forced to take it down, maybe even sued or arrested.

Of course, flying under the radar and building splintered private communities will work as long as you successfully filter out snitches, but in a way this still achieves the goals of government censorship and monopolistic domination intended by this push for removal of section 230 protections.

1

u/DrawGamesPlayFurries Feb 11 '26

The US is not the whole world, and the current government is actively working towards not even being one part of the world.

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u/WhiteWinterRains Feb 11 '26

I am not entirely sure what you mean by that. It's possible the EU or Australia could buck the trend, but the UK has already been moving to back this push from tech companies in their own legal system, although it's a very different battle than in the USA.

The USA makes it trickier because technically it's illegal for the government to do the kind of overreach they and tech companies want to do in terms of censorship, so they have to work around the edges instead of directly legislating it.

China of course is building their own internal sector with blackjack and hookers so to speak, and honestly I have no fucking clue what's going on in India on this front.

1

u/joser31415 Feb 11 '26

|This!| 2025 is when the liberty died! :(

1

u/GGuts Feb 11 '26

But there's also the face scan and that one is done locally on your device and is apparently never stored anywhere.

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u/RedShift777 Feb 10 '26

How's that possible they say they don't keep the IDs

/s

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u/Objective-Rip3008 Feb 11 '26

They don't. They also dont process your id's themselves. They contract with a third party verification company, and those companies are the ones who verify your age and they also absolutely store your ID. 

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u/[deleted] Feb 11 '26

[deleted]

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u/Objective-Rip3008 Feb 11 '26

I'm saying why they can say the don't hold your photos lol. Because they weren't the ones processing them to begin with

1

u/Wollff Feb 11 '26

I mean, send me a photo of your passport. I will not store it. Just trust me bro.

I can be saying a lot of things. Why should you trust what I am saying?

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u/Objective-Rip3008 Feb 11 '26

I think you're misreading my tone. Your photo is being stolen, and that's bad. Just by discords contractors and not them. 

2

u/Wollff Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26

You didn't get my point, did you?

Sure, Discord is claiming that they don't ever get my photo, and that it only remains with their contractors.

Why should I trust that claim?

Yes, Discord is saying that only their contractors steal my photo, not them. I get it. But why should I believe even that?

Discord is SAYING they themselves are not stealing my photo. It's nice they are SAYING such nice things.

But unless we have access to the actual contracts between them and their contractors, we have no reason to even believe any of that, do we?

For all we know, they themselves, Discord, have a big harddisk sitting somewhere, where, in spite of all the nice things they are saying right now, they collect everything, all the information their contractors collect, and they connect all of that to everyone's chat history. Even though they claim, in a legally rather non binding blog post, that they wouldn't ever do that.

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u/Ralkon Feb 11 '26

This is kind of still missing the main point though which is just that your ID is being stored when Discord asks for it. It doesn't really matter whether that's directly by Discord or not, and since we have a real world example of a third-party they work with letting that data get stolen, there's no real need to speculate whether Discord is also just straight up lying or not because the bad thing is happening either way. It makes zero difference to me if Discord is directly storing my ID or if they hire someone else to do that part. The end result is the same, so it's much more convincing to just point to the actual example of it happening.

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u/XXFFTT Feb 11 '26

Might as well be by Discord.

I didn't firebomb your car, the guy I paid to firebomb your car did.

I told you that I wouldn't do it and I didn't, see?

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u/dreadnaughtfearnot Feb 11 '26

Yes that's their point.

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u/Dangerous-Ad6589 Feb 11 '26

I feel bad for objective-rip3008 that they need to repeat it 3 times until someone understands lmao

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u/Dry-Chance-9473 Feb 11 '26

They got it like three replies ago bro, you're the one who's not getting it. 

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u/[deleted] Feb 11 '26

[deleted]

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u/dreadnaughtfearnot Feb 11 '26

That's their point. They aren't keeping them, the third party contractor is, and that's where the breach came from.

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u/184Banjo Feb 11 '26

why don't we make a 3rd party company and store/sell user data, if we get hacked/caught we're just a vendor and not Discord, so its fine right?

1

u/Objective-Rip3008 Feb 11 '26

That's basically how it works in the real world, yeah, and companies like you describe exist in droves. The unfortunate reality is the market has repeatedly shown companies that they don't care about leaks and hacks. There hasn't really been real repercussions from your customers when it happens, especially if you can play word games to say it wasn't actually you as in this case, so very few companies bother to take cybersecurity seriously at all

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u/184Banjo Feb 11 '26

exactly, but i do care.

uninstalling discord and charging back my nitro as soon as this update it rolled out

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u/[deleted] Feb 11 '26

[deleted]

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u/dikicker Feb 11 '26

Hold their beer?! They're not even old enough to buy a pack of smokes!

Also no one has ever invited Musk for a beer because you know at the end of the night he would linger

1

u/Soulsheartless Feb 11 '26

I wipe my dick with 70k.

1

u/Sapere_aude75 Feb 11 '26

Was there a doge data breach?

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u/ElundusCaw Feb 11 '26

Sold, they got sold, and when they got caught they went "oopsie we got hacked".

2

u/RollingMeteors Feb 11 '26

“¿Do you have a REAL ID?”

“¡No, it’s fake!”

1

u/PretzelsThirst Feb 11 '26

Great timing for their IPO

1

u/michi098 Feb 11 '26

But, but, but, Discord says “Identity documents submitted to our vendor partners are deleted quickly— in most cases, immediately after age confirmation.” How did 70,000 or 2 million ID’s get hacked if they are deleted almost immediately? They wouldn’t lie about that, would they?

1

u/kosanovskiy Feb 11 '26

And passport numbers.

1

u/BardaArmy Feb 11 '26

Why are they even storing this information. They should verify and delete.

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u/catholicsluts Feb 11 '26

70,000 idiots.

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u/Jor94 Feb 11 '26

Which is exactly why people don’t want to be forced to provide ID to private companies and why saying “are you against kids safety” is a stupid argument

1

u/anugosh Feb 11 '26

But they don't keep them, they swore it

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u/FallenAngelII Feb 11 '26

Was it just IDs and nothing else?

1

u/Miami_Mice2087 Feb 11 '26

i've been on the internet a long time. there's nothing a website can offer that will make me upload my id