Discord needs to fix their under 13 enforcement (Account autodisabling is dumb)
TLDR; Add an age setting when making a discord account and send a warning email when someone has supposedly broken the ToS for being under 13, so they can prove themselves before being punished.
As of yesterday, 3 of my active server members (in a 50k+ member server, 1 of the members happened to be one of my mods) have had their accounts disabled due to being under the age of 13, presumably. As of TODAY I, the COMMUNITY MANAGER of the discord and the game that the discord is for (World//Zero on Roblox) have also had my account disabled under suspicion of being under the age of 13. I know what I say, I have to because I represent the game and am part of a company (RedManta LLC). Thus, I know that I have only ever said jokes such as "I'm part of the 9 year old army bro what do you expect", or "Nah bro I'm totally 4 years old what do you mean" (after being called a boomer, which many in my community seem to find funny). Because of this, I am confused as to why Discord would disable an account when the context is obviously a joke.
Now, the reasoning behind them disabling accounts is quite simple really. They are required to comply with COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) regulations which state that no online service is allowed to collect or track the data of children under the age of 13. Since discord collects your data (in case you didn't know, all the images you've ever seen in the past 30 days is located in a folder on your computer, among other things) that means they can't have users under the age of 13. Fair enough, gotta stay out of legal trouble. What confuses me though, is that THEY COMPLY IN SUCH A STUPID WAY. Most sites that comply have an age setting, which is what I am recommending they add, before a user creates an account. If you were to either intentionally, or accidentally, put your age below 13 Discord can then ban you, either application, ip, or email based, from being allowed to create another account while on that application, ip, or email. This would be MUCH SIMPLER for them, and us the users, as they then have all the potential liability lifted off of them, as they can then argue that they had no proof that any of the users who put >13 were in fact >13, unless they provide reason otherwise.
Which then goes into my final addition. Naturally, adding the age setting won't fix the report system as they'll still autodisable accounts if a reported message has anything to do with being under the age of 13. Thus, I also suggest they add a timer on the disabling. What I mean by this is that when your account is disabled, you are told to go to the support website and fill out a form and provide photo evidence that you are above the age of 13. Why can't the disabling be delayed by lets say a week or so, for example (as it has been a week and my members still haven't been re enabled even after providing sufficient proof), and the user gets sent an email asking for proof. If the user doesn't comply within a week, their account is then disabled and they have to submit the proof anyways. This allows the user to actually defend themselves BEFORE an unjust punishment is issued on a false accusation.
Its honestly sad. I used to love discord, I talk to tons of people on it everyday, and the people I work with and I discussed about wanting to apply for the Discord Verified status once the application is reopen, but now I'm starting to consider not using the platform anymore as they are becoming more and more irresponsible with how they handle situations.
9/3/2020 UPDATE: As of 3 hours ago of me writing this, one of my server members have had their accounts re-activated. I have received an email from discord explaining that my account was re-activated, however upon trying to log in I found that this was not the case. I really don't know how they could've screwed up something so simple, but then again, our accounts were de-activated in the first place so... not much of a surprise there.
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yes say it louder 4 the people in the back. 🙏🏻yall he did not stutter
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yeah its not fare but i make a server that have no age limit BUT i also MAKE a CHANNEL for UNDER 13 YEARS OLD its awsome idea
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I don't think there should be a channel/server for children under 13, as that is not what I'm trying to achieve here. What I'm trying to achieve is Discord modifying their system to be better informants towards their users. I was lucky, as I got a response back within a few days, but only one of my server members got a reply back after a week of spamming and sending angry emails, as opposed to another member who just left the situation as it was and let discord do their thing. We should not have to actively show our frustration and disappointment towards Discord in order for their support to help us "sooner" than they would otherwise. We also should not have to have our accounts immediately disabled after someone falsely reports our account and instead opt for either infractions or a time-based warning (as I suggested in the post). This way, we know if we did something against the ToS instead of randomly finding out without any forewarning as it seems a LOT of people have been having an issue with.
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btw some ppl did a random age so they can do it faster
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