Chat blocking under 16s from KDE

[Christian]

Am Montag, 2. August 2021, 11:58:20 CEST schrieb Jonathan Riddell:

> If KDE is restricting who can take part in our activities, against our
> historical practice, without prior discussion and solely because we are
> reliant on a third party service we should move to a different service.

They can connect via IRC, if they prefer a webchat
https://web.libera.chat/ and https://web.libera.chat/gamja/ are available. 
We  (Libera) do not collect data unless they register an account, in which 
case we only collect the information simply needed to have that account. 
https://libera.chat/privacy

Depending on how the room they want to participate in is bridged, Telegram may 
also work. Usually all rooms should be bridged at least IRC and Matrix, so 
people who can't join via Matrix should be able to join via IRC. However, 
recently some (semi-)official rooms were created without bridging, if that is 
the case here, this should be fixable though. 

As far as the "move to a different service" goes: please not again. Also this 
age restriction is due to local laws (e.g. COPPA) and will most likely affect 
every commercial third party service we use, so unless we want to start self-
host or use something existing that isn't affected (which is a bit limited) 
I doubt there are many options left. Mostly because these services, for user 
convenience, do have to store data, including chat log, which makes them 
subject to these laws.
Right now we do have an option, it is IRC, and it is usable by people who do 
not want their information collected / who do not want to register an account 
/ who can't or don't want to use Matrix for other reasons. 

> Jonathan

Christian