replacing discord (and gushing about IRC)

Replacing Discord (and Gushing About IRC)average IRC interaction On August 26th, 2020, I created my first Discord account. I honestly loved Discord back then, it was an excellent way to chat with friends while the COVID pandemic was at its prime (man, crazy times those were XD)! Unfortunately, over time Discord lost its luster; the app's sleek simplicity eventually gave way to the usual suspects, notably advertisements (on mobile too!) and AI integration that literally no one asked for (they did shut the bot down, but who's to say they won't try something like this again?). These changes were annoying, but they were at least tolerable, so I continued to use Discord. On February 9th, 2026, Discord announced they were rolling out facial-scan based age verfication. Although I do agree that kids below a certain age shouldn't be allowed on the platform, this is definitely not the way to go about restricting access. I will say that there may not be a foolproof way of verifying one's age…