NeXT Posterity and Discord age verification

[wmlive]

Looks like the Discord age verification attempt is all other than benevolent in these techno-authoritarian times:

Together with two other researchers, they set out to look into Persona, the San Francisco-based startup that's used by Discord for biometric identity verification – and found a Persona frontend exposed to the open internet on a US government authorized server.
In 2,456 publicly accessible files, the code revealed the extensive surveillance Persona software performs on its users, bundled in an interface that pairs facial recognition with financial reporting – and a parallel implementation that appears designed to serve federal agencies. [...]
Persona Identity, Inc. is a Peter Thiel-backed venture [..]

Source: www.therage.co/persona-age-verification

More info about Persona: thelocalstack.eu/posts/linkedin-identity-verification-privacy and fortune.com/2026/02/24/discord-peter-thiel-backed-persona-identity-verification-breach

Anybody aware of technical solutions to mirror the content of the Discord NeXT Posterity threads into some forum threads, in order to save the accumulated contents from being hidden behind garden walls?

Information wants and needs to be free.

[Rhetorica]

Sadly I have been aware of Discord's incumbent shittiness for a while. I really do want to get us an IRC channel, perhaps on altexxanet, which is a pretty suitable retro community (they even host some NeXT files on their FTP), though channel registration there requires administrative intervention.

Paradoxically, though—I'm not sure we can walk away entirely from Discord just yet. Not because of the data lock-in (though that is a problem too), but because there is a whole generation of younger retro nerds that we can recruit (and have been recruiting) through it—there are at least three fairly active chatters in the NeXT Posterity server that never had accounts on the old forums.

Maybe it's best to maximize—to maintain a nice complement of digital spaces that, combined, reach a wide audience, and to prioritize interop where possible (e.g. a Discord-IRC bridge bot that cross-posts messages.) That way we can keep our culture strong and united without missing out on opportunities to inculcate NeXT-curious people.

In terms of archiving material, as noted, it is indeed an issue; there is no first-party method for data exfiltration (the principles of enshittification tell us this is to be expected until a monopolistic incumbent gets so well established that a government or two demand such features be added.) I will look into downloader bots, though in the mean time, I'll make sure everything significant gets a thread here.

[ZombiePhysicist]

I wonder if can just make a macro that dumps each channel into a "today on discord..." running thread here.