By Nelson Schneider - 02/14/26 at 03:18 PM CT
Discord has been the biggest name in gamer chat and communications for a while now, supplanting old-school players like Mumble and Ventrillo through its alleged ease-of-use and plethora of added features. The MJ Crew doesn’t have a lot of first-hand experience with Discord, though, as we’ve stuck with Steam’s build-in text and voice chat features, and, aside from the occasional glitch, have found our favorite digital distribution platform’s added-value features have been “good enough” for our purposes.
And that turns out to have been a great decision, as Discord announced recently that they will be going above and beyond the call of corruption in complying with the United Kingdom’s overweening “THINK OF THE CHILDRED” online ID laws, and will start requiring an ID check or AI-powered facial scan from users – even those outside of the U.K. – in order to continue accessing Discord channels for adults. What “for adults” means is quite vague, and could range from porn-based discussion channels to any channel in which cussing might happen. But either way, Discord wants us to effectively dox ourselves in order to continue to use their enshittified service. This news coming hot on the heels of a report that Discord accidentally leaked scans of 70,000 photo IDs uploaded by U.K. residents makes the prospect of this authoritarian BS applying to non-Britons even less of an appealing proposition.
Of course, Discord is in full ass-covering mode, insisting that most users won’t even notice the new system, and that they won’t actually retain any ID information, and that it will all be handled by one of a handful of dubious third-parties – who also claim that they won’t retain any compromising data – but who are these outfits to insist that we can trust them in the first place?
The MJ Crew lives in Nebraska, a stupidly Red State that has passed its own dictatorial ID laws for accessing porn sites, ironically causing problems for only the biggest players like Pornhub, who are pressured to comply, while plenty of other sites continue to thumb their noses at these laws and their Orwellian levels of overreach. Discord, as the biggest player in online chat, will likely find itself in the same position as Pornhub, and will most likely see a massive exodus of users who value their anonymity heading to other, less regulated platforms. This is already starting to happen.
At least Valve and Steam still seem to be on the side of users, so, in the end, the MJ Crew’s decision to simply use the built-in chat software instead of seeking out a more feature-rich third-party alternative saved us a bunch of aggravation, as the features we value most are simplicity and privacy.
