I’ve been in the Second Life Discord server for some time now, since I was granted access as an Alpha tester for the mobile app. I was very pleased when they finally made the server public recently. To be able to post any messages in the server you now have to link your Discord account with a Second Life avatar account. I’d say that’s fair enough, it provides a layer of accountability that is reasonable.
That is of course until yesterday someone posted:
I verified with an alt
Which reveals a big flaw in that idea.
So what was the Labs solution? They added the requirement to “Verify Phone”, which is what I was presented with this morning if I wished to post in any Channel in the Discord mobile app.
While I understand they want to protect the server and themselves from misbehaving members, I think the mobile requirement is a step too far. I think this step may put people off participating. Including myself.
Of course the Lab knows my real life identity, but I don’t think people should have to hand over a phone number to be able to use a Discord server. A well known blogger has the same requirement on their server and I just didn’t join on the grounds of that.
What makes this more of a joke is that today getting a phone number is almost as easy as creating an alt avatar account. Unfortunately Google Voice that offer free numbers aren’t available in the UK and equivalent services are paid for. Adding another security layer, that’s easily bypassed, seems unnecessarily futile and could negatively impact Resident engagement.
Addition:
First reader comment received directly minutes after publishing:
they tell how much they value being anonymous and then they did that. Pissed me off big time
Second reader comment via Bluesky:
Great… I just joined the server a couple of days ago and now this happens – and I feel like leaving the server again. I honestly don’t want to add my phone number for verification
Third response received directly:
Just saw this – and just left the server. lol
From Bluesky:
I was able to chat 4 hours ;D – than they activated phone verification…. SOOORRYYYYY
Another comment via Bluesky puts a slightly different spin on the topic:
It’s more of a moderation used in and by big server all over discord.
This is to verify the account holder is human and not a throw away account used for trolling/spamming sure the system is not perfect but stops 97%-99% of unwanted behaviour.
Anyway discord doesn’t share this number with third parties
While this might explain things a little, the Lab should make this detail clear in the server description or rules text.
But the discussion continues some time later:
The official Second Life Discord server is so great that I quickly left it. I have no desire to talk to uneducated people who comment on topics they know nothing about. I don’t usually dehumanize, but what’s there is a zoo.