I would recommend Signal and maybe Tox (protocol, has several clients).

Signal is a nonprofit. They make it a point not to collect your data. Just the phone number. Military folks seem to like them.

Tox is not a centralized entity at all, anarchists seem to like it. Multiple Tox clients exist and use a common protocol and network. Messaging happens via peer-to-peer, lookups make use of servers. For messaging to occur, both communicating parties have to be online, so don't expect much convenience.

As someone who looks significantly younger than they are, I'm curious as to how this will work.

Welp. As soon as this gets put in place I'm out

Hmmm. So how long before another AI is able to generate a good enough face to fool the age verification AI (or can it already)? Interesting three-legged race there.

If you have a discord account, they already know who you are. If you tried to get an account anonymously, they'd ban you and demand a phone number.

I never used discord because it was never possible to do so securely. Friends dont let friends use discord.

Use matrix or something better.

Oh shit, I gotta finish looking for that bot that will copy my discord channels and their content (pictures, links) to my matrix

If something like this happens, I'm setting up a Matrix room as something on the side for if people who work on the same project I do want out of this garbage.

if that happens to me and discord wants me to send selfies to my self,Am going to Matrix and maybe use my discord alt to take to my friends who dont wanna use matrix.

bye bye!