But if this is the final nail in the coffin for you, then we're ready to welcome you to open platforms like #Matrix. But, expect the exodus to be small and underwhelming.

None of the bullshit Discord pulls matters if your friends are there. The network effect is insidious and underestimated. Anyone can look up the shit Discord gets up to and make a moral choice, but they don't, because their friends are there, and that's _all that matters_.

In Discord's defense, maybe the new rules will curtail some of this behavior. But I don't think age verification will cause a mass exodus that "kills" Discord, because Discord's users have been domesticated.

seirdy.one/posts/2021/0...

Children are constantly being groomed for sexual exploitation on Discord. Several dozen incidents are escalated to Discord's safety team every month - how many aren't caught? These are the latest numbers as of June 2024, the last transparency report. Who knows how bad it is now.

Of course, the real problem on Discord is child sexual exploitation. You should read their transparency reports. Over 7,000 servers were banned for "child safety" reasons between January and June 2024. 100k accounts were banned for distributing CSAM in the same period.

discord.com/safety-trans...

There have always been great reasons to leave Discord, for instance the fact that Discord is a key part of the funnel for the far-right, hate groups, and modern fascists to bring young people into the fold and organize their activities.

www.isdglobal.org/publication/...

One objection I have to this post is that, well, he worked at a defense contractor, so I don't think he should have had to ask "why" he was building something to understand that its purpose was, ultimately, to kill people. That's the only thing defense contractors _do_.

Can your shell do this?

I've also heard promising things about this platform continuing to move towards a more practical open and decentralized model, but feel free to disillusion me on that point.