Bot verification with an ID is a huge issue and we need a compromise.

Discord bot verification with an ID is a huge issue. There's a couple of reasons:

1. Students (who use discord legally, they're above 13 but below 18) may not even have ID's. This is killing the bot developer scene, as there are a lot of teenagers who had to stop making their extremely good bots just because they didn't have ID.
2. Privacy. Most people who know something about privacy won't send an ID to some company just to be able to create a little bot which maybe will get above 100 servers. I feel extremely sketchy even making photos of my documents, sending them over the internet is even more sketchy. It's peak sketchy if I'm sending it to a random company and not my bank or the government.
3. The process takes way too long. By the time your bot gets verified, the hype for your bot already dies and it gets replaced by other bots on the bot lists. This is a huge issue since no one wants to write TOS, privacy policy and send an ID for every experiment they make just in case it gets popular.
4. Parents of teens who make bots often don't want to go through the process of making a discord account, joining a developer team, then verificating the bot and sending them their ID. It does feel sketchy for every thinking adult.
5. Discord simply does not need my ID to make sure I'm making a legit bot with no bad intentions. They don't need an ID to check if I'm a real person either.

I don't want the verification process to be completly deleted, that would harm the community a lot and discord would get way too much responsibility on their heads. Instead I want it to be a little less strict, which would make for a great compromise:

• ID shouldn't be needed unless a bot has paid features. You're not even making money from the bot, so discord doesn't need your identity.
• Strict verification should unlock the use of intents, not the amount of servers a bot can be in. A bot with all intents and a lot of permissions can cause harm, even when it's verified. A bot without any permissions and just slash commands can't cause any harm. No one can run malicious code without permissions.
• There should be other ways of bot verification available. A great example is you send a dollar to discord and they send it back (to see if you're a real person, isn't that what they want to check?).

Discord bot development is really bottlenecked by the ID verification process. Many good bots died, many good developers gave up, and a lot didn't even start. Discord bots and discord itself would gain a lot from removing ID verification.

Now after saying all the pros of removing ID verification, let's talk about the cons:

• Phone or email verification can be easily exploited. This isn't a huge issue though, there are different ways of verification like sending a dollar and getting it back. It shows that you're a real person.
• People would feel less responsible for what their bot does.

The biggest issue isn't even the fact that you need to use ID, it's what you need to use it for. The 100 server cap makes no sense. I could cause harm on 100 servers, I could cause harm on 10000 servers. Instead we should require ID verification / any other better way of verification on intents, they can cause harm if used improperly. Here's an example:

• My bot is a simple piece of code, where you type for example /length 50 centimeters, and it replies with converted values in inches, feet etc. I can't cause harm with this, I have all intents off and the only permission I use is “use slash commands”. I can't write any malicious code, I don't have enough freedom. I literally have 1 permission. It doesn't have to be strictly verified, a simple look through the code and it's features by a Discord employee is enough.
• Another bot has a whole dashboard, has paid features, has a lot of functions, can change almost anything in the server, uses all intents, it can read messages, it's a moderator etc. And this one has to be strictly verified. It can cause harm, and a lot of harm. It could practically delete all servers it's on.

TLDR: Discord ID verification process for bot verification is harming the bot developer community, the 100 server cap doesn't make sense and intents / permissions should be regulated with verification, not the 100 server cap. Discord should think of another way of bot verification since this one doesn't feel safe, nor is it obtainable by people under 18 (which is bad since discord is 13+)

Please upvote and comment this thread. We have to finally make discord change something. All the other threads about this issue are 4 years old.