I think it’s actually quite chilling for new self-hosted Discourse sites, because this highlights how the new legal and therefore financial risks of hosting anything that might need age verification anywhere in the world is on individuals that self host, who don’t have the resources of something like Discord to either do age verification securely or risk the chance of a fine or criminal charge. A lot of the new laws aren’t aimed at just nsfw images, but also a range of text content. The Impact of Age Verification Measures Goes Beyond Porn Sites | Electronic Frontier Foundation
I’ve been setting up a self hosted Discourse instance to move my community off of Dreamwidth, which is a member of Netchoice along with Discord in a lot of the recent lawsuits against age verification and we’re seriously reconsidering it because it’s so legally risky. Dreamwidth currently IP blocks users from Tennessee and Mississippi because the laws there impose jail time and ruinous fines for site administrators who don’t impose age verification like what Discord is doing, and it’s technically and financially burdensome for a small company like Dreamwidth to do so. I’ve been trying to find a lawyer to talk to about the legal risks involved in moving my community onto self hosted Discourse, but it’s been hard to find someone who is available and current on all the new legislation, and only following the law in my jurisdiction seems incredibly risky because something like South Carolina’s new law this week extends to any site that may have South Carolina users. My community is for women romance novel writers who are mostly 30+ – things like discussion of erotica, nipple sensitivity after breast cancer reconstruction, sex after menopause, same-sex relationships and romance, and gender affirmation surgery all require age verification in one US jurisdiction or another right now. Ideologically we’re not willing to do the kind of age verification Discord is doing but the legal exposure is way too much right now, so we may just stay with Dreamwidth instead of trying to self host with Discourse. The recent one-line Discourse install was huge for us and it’s so frustrating think that we have the technical and moderation ducks all in a row but the legal landscape is too chilling to risk it.
It compares alternatives to Discord with their features, pros and cons.
The list is hardcoded and Discourse is shown 2nd, which is a good thing if this site gains popularity.
The website is being rebuilt, so I don’t know if the default order will remain the same. I tried running the development version locally with no success (probably because it’s in development, duh).
edit: ah, the site has been rebuilt today. Discourse is no longer emphasized on the front page.
It is still 2nd when we click on “User Base” tho.
