Discord requiring you to add a phone number **after** the creation of your account

What the FUCK.
I immediately went to settings and, I guess at some point I'd already given these swine my phone number? Went to remove it and I've greeted by this wonderful toast message=
God I wish something was fully suitable as an easy discord replacement 😭 spacebar seems rad if it wasn't super alpha. And as cool as element is, it just doesn't have the same low bar to entry that discord has (not to mention group calls are jank as hell, when they work, and there's no screen share yet tragically)....
- Just change your number to something like 07777777777. That will work for the UK.
  
  It doesn't work for me because it asks for a code ):

They also sell that number, all your chat logs, voice calls and media to AI training companies.
Dont be a loser, dont use discord.
- Source? The only record of data being sold I remember is some 3rd-party that scraped public servers.
  
  Per their privacy policy they collect
  Content you create. This includes any content that you upload to the service. For example, you may write messages or posts (including drafts), send voice messages, create custom emojis, or post other content that you create with features that we develop. You may also upload and share files through the services.
  Thats what they collect(so not the calls apparently my bad). In regards to how they use it, they mention advertisement stuff and the usual vague language of "improve our services" and "personalization". The AI stuff is supposedly opt in, but they collect the data and they are subject to US subpoenas so all bets are off anyways.
- Sadly there are a lot of communities that are only on Discord.
  
  And it's so annoying! Bring back forums!
- I would love to if all of the most helpful specialized communities didn’t all use it.
  I can’t even get my friends or family to use Matrix/Element, let alone the masses.
  Trust me, I want to make the full switch, but if I’m hanging out on my fancy open source server with no one on it, what’s the point?
  I will agree that anything akin to Facebook or Xitter isn’t helping achieve anything, since they don’t provide communication that can’t be found elsewhere (social updates, memes, event invitations, etc), but for communities like this specifically, there’s just not many other places to go.
- having a hard time finding a good alternative for screen sharing in a voice call. recently deleted discord and me and my buddy moved to matrix (element) but the screen sharing is very laggy and it needs a more aggressive mic noise removal. we speedrun a singleplayer game together and use screen sharing for that. steam can do all this but the delay is unacceptable.
  honestly I'm this close to going back to discord 🤏
  
  Im following matrix dev work very closely so im wondering if you have been trying the old call system (jitsi or 1:1 calls) or the new one (element call). the new one should work well for screensharing video but ofcourse you do have some level of compression artifacts. the element-desktop client should have it enabled by default since a few version ago. You can quickly test it out here without an account too https://call.element.io/
  For noise removal it just uses the standard webrtc noise filtering stack afaik which does suck, but i have it disabled and do that kind of audio filtering systemwide on my linux machine with easyeffects.
  
  I don't actually know how good it is but another software that does screen sharing you might try is Jitsi
  
  Matrix sucks
  I don't really know what else to use

Year of Elements/Matrix when?
- I really like using Element, but there are so many issues besides the not so intuitive account system, that deters the average user
- So many niche games servers tho.
  FTL: Faster Than Light - Multiverse (mod community) for example, like there is literally no replacement community.

It's a shame that spacebar and revolt did not really take off so far.
- this is the first time I've heard of spacebar
  
  Yeah, that's the problem - none has. Sadly I also only read about it here in a previous post about discord a few months ago.

It is a trade off vs scammers

This is or was part of their anti-spam/flooding protection. In the server admin dashboard, you can require a phone number on the account or you can disable it and allow users without verified phone numbers to participate.
They do not require this just for a discord account last I checked. It's likely due to whatever discord server you're trying to join.
Same for Twitch. Same for a Microsoft account. It's become the new normal.
- I work in the cybersecurity field and I hate that the official discord server of one of the international orgs I'm involved in requires a phone number to participate. The irony.
  
  I don't think many people know about sim-swap attacks, so they think people knowing their phone number is fine.
  Honestly I wish people would just fucking get rid of phone-number-based OTP anyways. TOTP is where it's at.
- Discord definitely does have phone number verification on selected accounts if it thinks you are doing something suspicious. Just try making a discord account with protonmail and on a VPN and you should get a similar message.
- This is or was part of their anti-spam/flooding protection.
  That's the official explanation. A phone number is a nice way to attach a real world identity to the data (which of course is sold to advertisers/data brokers etc).
  
  Again - which isn't required. You don't have to supply your phone number.
- They do not require this just for a discord account last I checked. It’s likely due to whatever discord server you’re trying to join.
  This has changed, it gives you this popup whenever you make a new account, even if you haven't joined any servers. I tried making an account for my brother a few months ago, and I saw this as well.
- It's because your data is orders of magnitude more valuable if it has enough information to identify you as a person.
  They can't sell it to data brokers for a lot of money if those data brokers can't find any information to link that data with their existing profiles.
  Surveillance capitalism 101, companies obtain the most value by enabling other corporations to spy on every detail of your life.
  If you can't use a service anonymously, without it being linked to your actual person, then you can either be okay with living with the panopticon, or don't use the service.
  Discord has been slowing rolling this out over the years. It started being offered as a "spam protection" feature and eventually it'll be a requirement to have an account.
  They depend on the masses of people who will trade all of their privacy in exchange for not having to learn how to use VoIP software, video streaming software or IM software.

discord's been doing this for a while, it's really scummy
other companies that do this (that I've found):
twitter (even before muskrat bought it)
facebook
probably a lot more

Which is the reason I don’t have a discord account. I just can’t be bothered.
- I get discord mail sometimes telling me I have to log on urgently as accounts get deleted after a few years of inactivity.

for me it wanted one after i added too many friends at once
it some agressive anti spam "ai" that more or less randomly decides if it wants a phone number or not

Can we just go back to irc already?
- If we had ircv3 specs that included reactions. etc we might be. I rolled a small group of IRC servers with a few selfhost people a year back and it was quite fun. Tbh IRC itself is still alive and well, it's just not user friendly enough to get non-tech people over easily

Stop using trash service
- What are some alternatives for discord??
  
  Spacebar.chat (or github here) is meant to be a drop-in replacement with support for discord bots, but it has been super alpha the few times I've tried it. Haven't checked in for a few months though!
  (Edit: yeah I just checked and spacebar is still very much a work in progress. Looks extremely promising though!! It seems there are devs posting updates on the main spacebar instance, which is cool)
  Rocket.chat also has a self hostable option, but I don't recall that one being super great either.
  
  Matrix is the main one I think
  
  Team speak but that shit wont fly with Genz
  It does the job though.
  If group is private ie people you actually know, then just use signal it works fine enough

There was a server I poked around in once that required members to provide phone number just to join. Seems very unethical considering all the bad things that can happen from identity theft or stalking.... it's not like mods are employees for Discord. They're just random mofos. Why would I trust a stranger on the Internet of all places?
- The server owners can’t see your phone number. Discord allows you to set a minimum verification level for users in your server. The lowest is simply having a verified email on their account. The highest is a verified email, a few minutes old (so no brand new accounts), been in the server for a few minutes, and a verified phone number. It’s just a bot prevention thing, because spammers/scammers are a big issue on large Discord servers. Especially early in Discord’s history, it was a big issue where bots would raid a server and just totally shut it down with spam links. So Discord started allowing server owners to set minimum verification levels before users could interact and send messages.
- The server owners cannot see your phone number. It's just a way to keep bots and assholes out most of the time.

Just after Elon Musk’s twitter (𝕏) made it a norm~

What’s really annoying as well, is that if you try to remove your phone number from your account, your account will get blocked for “suspicious activity”, after doing the required captchas it will get unlocked but your phone number is still there, trying to remove it again will just lock your account again, how is that legal?
- Because legal people get the protection of the law, shiti organics are there to be abused by legal people.
- For what it's worth I literally just removed my phone number from my account after reading your comment and it did it no problem. Haven't gotten any suspicious account alerts yet but if I get one I'll come back and update.

Say the word!

I created an account without a phone number. What really anoys me is there focus on IP addresses. They apparently don't realize IPs rotate.

I hope Mozilla launches the Firefox Relay phone masking soon...
- Oo looks cool
  https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mask-your-phone-number-relay-phone-masking

Yikes, hopefully this one stays in beta.
- It has been this way for some years.
  
  I set up two accounts last month without phone number. A lot of people seem to forget that the web app and email signup still exists, there is no reason to ever download the app.
- It’s already live for me, seems to be a gradual global rollout.

The reason I don't have a Google account.

I needed my for some kind of organized event, it took them a week to take my account out of the spam filter, where they put me without event saying a word. By then it was too late, I made the fucking account and gave them my number for nothing else than troubles.

I mean, if you're using Discord, then you're probably not the kind of person to be bothered by this anyway.

I got locked out of my old discord account because I didn't have a phone at the time

Seriously, you're complaining now? The privacy apps have been blocking Discord for many years.
- The privacy apps have been blocking Discord for many years.
  The what?
  
  Things like Privacy Badger block Discord.

This might be because you're on vpn. Try a public wifi at school, library, coffee shop or something.
- YMMV . Created my account using vpn , basicly never used it while not connected to it , not once I've gotten phone verification prompt
  Dunno exact conditions for it to show up , kinda paranoid about it
  
  I remember creating one on vpn as well. But I notice a lot of accounts nowadays don't like vpn. Like Google or any social media won't let you