Right. Discord has booted every single Apple user from servers that contain not-safe-for-work (NSFW) content regardless of whether that person is above the age of 18. Expectedly, this has cheesed off quite a lot of Discord's community.
Roll it back. Why has this happened? It's likely to be in accordance with Apple's own rules on nudity in services and apps present on the App Store. A few years ago, Tumblr was pulled from the App Store following concerns that child pornogprahy was being shared through the social media site, so in response, it issued a blanket ban on all adult content to comply with the rules. "There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content. We will leave it to them and focus our efforts on creating the most welcoming environment possible for our community," said CEO Jeff D'Onofrio at the time.
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Yesterday, Discord announced that although NSFW content may be kept hidden in a specific channel within a server, it is now possible that entire servers may be categorised as NSFW. Resultantly, users will need to be 18 years old or above to access these servers on desktop and in browser, but iOS users have been told that they "will be blocked from joining and accessing NSFW servers" irrespective of their age. Discord is aware that a NSFW channel doesn't always mean that the entire server is NSFW, curiously enough, and it advises that those who feel their server should not be considered as such to appeal the decision through the Trust & Safety's support queue.
"Having NSFW channels does not automatically mean, however, that an entire server should be designated NSFW," said the company in a post to its support site. "Servers must be classified as NSFW if the community is organized around NSFW themes or if the majority of the server's content is 18+. Discord will mark servers meeting these criteria as NSFW if they are not appropriately designated."
So, how annoyed are people, on a scale of one to 10? About 8, I'd say. Those who use Apple products for art claim that this is cutting them off from the community who would commission them for work, and others will be booted from the servers that they have literally founded and/or moderate. While it is important to regulate content that could be harmful, this is preventing people from expressing themselves in a safe space, argued former product manager at Tumblr, Matthew Bischoff.
"Apple's regressive stance on sexual content being available on its largest platform is verging on a full-on moral panic, and it's really gross," they said. "Entire businesses and communities have been crushed by it, and it often hurts queer and trans communities most. When we dealt with this at Tumblr, it became my full-time job for weeks to find incredibly complex ways to appease Apple's censors. This happened every time they found a sexy blog they didn't like. It's absurd."
Featured Image Credit: Discord, Photomix via PexelsTopics: News