26 Reply by Ali

  • Ali
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  • Registered: 2024-12-21
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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

Maarten wrote:

Sweet of you to care Ali.

Contrary to popular belief, I am a deeply caring individual. Alfred and I go back a long, long way and I consider him a close member of my online family, even though we've never actually met face-to-face. I am also very loyal to Serif, and until such time as they openly betray my trust, I shall choose to give their questionable marketing ploys recently the benefit of the doubt. I have taken a lot of flak over the years by trying to be reasonable and fair when others have had nothing but negative things to say and really felt that they had right on their side: I have endured a lot of name-calling! But I am no shrinking violet, and I will continue to bang my own drum, whatever people choose to think of me.

With regard to links: that's all well and good, but having to follow links away from a forum can become distracting, so maybe we'll all need to consider helping Alfred to fund this place in future if enough refugees end up here. There is another forum that has been set up on the back of the Affinity forum closure, and I have joined up there, too: similar concerns about maximum file sizes, etc. are already being expressed there, so I am sure its owner will face the same dilemma if it takes off.

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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

Very bad news about Discord:

Discord customer service data breach leaks user info and scanned photo IDs

The company is emailing users impacted by the breach.

“Welcome to the present moment. Here. Now. The only moment there ever is.”
― Eckhart Tolle

28 Reply by Ali

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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

Why would anybody scan and share a photo ID in a chatroom? All they have is my E-mail address - you don't need anything more than that to sign up. Many forums have data breaches from time to time. It sort of goes with the territory. Look at all the companies that are being hacked these days!

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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

Ali wrote:

Many forums have data breaches from time to time. It sort of goes with the territory.

Maarten wrote:

Looks to me like a storm in a glass of water:

You’re both right, of course. I shouldn’t have said “very bad”.

@Maarten: Just as a point of information, the usual English expression is “a storm in a teacup”.

“Welcome to the present moment. Here. Now. The only moment there ever is.”
― Eckhart Tolle

30 Reply by Ali

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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

That's probably because the English are obsessed with tea!

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  • From: Tamworth Staffs UK
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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

Ali wrote:

I always thought that Serif's sub-divisions on the soon-to-close Affinity forum was odd. I would prefer to see it by product:

Affinity Designer (all platforms, but members to state which platform they are using)
Affinity Photo (all platforms, but members to state which platform they are using)
Affinity Publisher (all platforms, but members to state which platform they are using)
Affinity General & Cross-product

+1  I asked this admin by email for exactly this before I saw this thread.

Most of us spend 90% of our time in one of the three apps. In my case Publisher as I do magazines and books.

The reason Serif did it by platform is their support/.dev teams work like that. I doubt the Serif support wil be monitoring this forum (or the discord for that matter)   SO it makes more sense to me to have the divisions as above.

www.JAmedia.uk, primarily an Affinity Publisher V2 user for books and magazines.
[ Win 11 home | AMD Ryzen 5950X 16 Core CPU ]
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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

R C-R wrote:

Just curious but is there any way to add a like, thumbs up, or similar reaction to someone's post? .

+1  if possible, it saves dozens of posts like this one saying +1

www.JAmedia.uk, primarily an Affinity Publisher V2 user for books and magazines.
[ Win 11 home | AMD Ryzen 5950X 16 Core CPU ]
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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

Ali wrote:

That's probably because the English are obsessed with tea!

Even mentioning tea in a version of a famous song!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnK167TymV0

  • Registered: 2025-10-05
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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

Maarten wrote:
Alfred wrote:

Very bad news about Discord:

Discord customer service data breach leaks user info and scanned photo IDs

The company is emailing users impacted by the breach.

Looks to me like a storm in a glass of water for most:
Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but to me it looks like it's only about people who contacted their 'customer service' (whatever that may mean for Discord)...

Specifically:

The story wrote:

users who had contacted Discord through our Customer Support and/or Trust & Safety teams

Emphasis on "Trust & Safety".

Discord recently began deploying age verification methods to comply with recently enacted laws intended to protect children, but which have resulted in online services mass-collecting personal identification about users in affected jurisdictions to confirm their age.

This particularly affects the UK, where age verification "applies to all new and existing UK accounts" that attempt to access certain types of "Sensitive Media" content, age-restricted channels, or even changing their Message Request settings.

If automated verification fails, the user must "contact Discord's Trust & Safety team to request a manual review".

A breach of Discord's Trust & Safety team likely means access to additional, and potentially sensitive, proof-of-identity documentation that could associate certain user accounts with their real identities, as well as with attempts to access adult content.

  • Registered: 2025-10-05
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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

Separately, I sought out this forum and the CreoFora forums because Discord is blocked by my employer as it's a communications platform they cannot track or restrict, unlike Slack or other similar platforms.

Since the Affinity community is often more reliable at answering questions about the software in a public venue than Affinity's support resources, I'd prefer to have access to similar resources while at work instead of relying on personal devices, which might also violate company policies if found out.

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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

oznogon wrote:

Since the Affinity community is often more reliable at answering questions about the software in a public venue than Affinity's support resources, I'd prefer to have access to similar resources while at work instead of relying on personal devices, which might also violate company policies if found out.

If any personal devices violate company policies, they’ll do so whether found out or not!

On which pedantic note, thanks for joining us here.

“Welcome to the present moment. Here. Now. The only moment there ever is.”
― Eckhart Tolle
  • From: Tamworth Staffs UK
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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

oznogon wrote:

Discord recently began deploying age verification methods to comply with recently enacted laws intended to protect children, but which have resulted in online services mass-collecting personal identification about users in affected jurisdictions to confirm their age.
.

I discovered that when I went for a look, and declined to do the age verification.

Partly because the system is insecure, and also because it isn't really needed.

The UK laws were aimed at porn sites, not community support forums. This further indicates discord is not a suitable home for an Affinity community group. Unless all the A-Photo users are all doing hard core porn images? :-)

www.JAmedia.uk, primarily an Affinity Publisher V2 user for books and magazines.
[ Win 11 home | AMD Ryzen 5950X 16 Core CPU ]
[128GB Ram | NVIDIA 3080TI 2GB | MB ASUS ProArt B550| ]

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38 Reply by JAmedia (edited by JAmedia 2025-10-06 18:14:25)

  • From: Tamworth Staffs UK
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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

Maarten wrote:
JAmedia wrote:

I discovered that when I went for a look, and declined to do the age verification.

Looks like Discord is different per country than. I'm in The Netherlands and never had to do any age verification. But I have discord for a longer time, so maybe existing users don't need to verify.

It is for new and current users I assume in the UK

Therefore, you need a tor Browser  https://www.torproject.org/download

NOTE if you are in the UK then I can't advise you to use the Tor browser to get round all the UK's age verification checks, which it does do.

www.JAmedia.uk, primarily an Affinity Publisher V2 user for books and magazines.
[ Win 11 home | AMD Ryzen 5950X 16 Core CPU ]
[128GB Ram | NVIDIA 3080TI 2GB | MB ASUS ProArt B550| ]

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  • Registered: 2025-10-03
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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

From time to time I look out at the discord chat. Do you, like me, feel an immediate sense of nausea?

40 Reply by PaoloT (edited by PaoloT 2025-10-06 17:48:50)

  • Registered: 2025-10-03
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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

Maarten wrote:

I'm in The Netherlands and never had to do any age verification.

The same here in Italy. No verification. This means that I may be a kid exposed to horrific visions. But I suspect the real ones in danger in that place are on the opposite side of the age spectrum…

Paolo

  • Registered: 2025-10-05
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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

I wonder if the name for Discord was supposed to be Discourse?

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.6 
Affinity Designer 2.6.0 | Affinity Photo 2.6.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.6.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.
  • Registered: 2025-10-02
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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

Bad_Wolf wrote:

...when we are stuck...

You'll never be stuck, I'm stuck.

Affinity Photo user with a Canon camera

43 Reply by stuck (edited by stuck 2025-10-06 19:33:37)

  • Registered: 2025-10-02
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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

JAmedia wrote:

It is for new and current users I assume in the UK...

I'm in the UK and I'd never been anywhere near Discord until I followed the invite link from the Affinity forum.  There was no age verification when I joined.

I then deleted my account about 10 mins later.

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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

stuck wrote:
Bad_Wolf wrote:

...when we are stuck...

You'll never be stuck, I'm stuck.

https://punster.me/images/rotfl.gif

“Welcome to the present moment. Here. Now. The only moment there ever is.”
― Eckhart Tolle

45 Reply by paleolith (edited by paleolith 2025-10-07 12:26:08)

  • From: Tallahassee, Florida, US
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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

Such careful planning. Serif's "Contact us" page says "For questions, reporting bugs and requesting features please post on our forums." And yes of course it leads to the forum where we can't post.

The support form does work ... and the ack email says "talk with other Affinity users on our support forum."

Edward

I see the brevity of truth.

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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

Welcome, Edward! Thanks for joining my merry little band. And thanks for your astute observations about Serif’s/Canva’s “careful planning”.

“Welcome to the present moment. Here. Now. The only moment there ever is.”
― Eckhart Tolle

47 Reply by PaulEC (edited by PaulEC 2025-10-07 14:29:39)

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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

Talking of "careful planning", I noticed several people on the Affinity Forum, complaining that they were unable to purchase an Affinity licence, including a couple whose seven day free trial had finished. I would have thought that, with a bit of planning, the Affinity trial period (for v2) could have been extended until the "great announcement", when, presumably, the Affinity software will be available again.

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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

PaulEC wrote:

Talking of "careful planning", I noticed several people on the Affinity Forum, complaining that they were unable to purchase an Affinity licence, including a couple whose seven day free trial had finished. I would have thought that, with a bit of planning, the Affinity trial period (for v2) could have been extended until the "great announcement", when, presumably, the Affinity software will be available again.


Totally agree!  Whatever this "great announcement" is going to be it seems extremely short-sighted to actively prevent would-be new adopters of the software from actually buying and using it!

Long-time user of Serif products - I think PagePlus 5 was where it started for me.
Moved to Affinity with release of version 1 for Windows, now have version 2 Universal Licence, so all three apps on Win 11 and iPad.
Computer: Win 11 (latest release), i7 14700 CPU, NVidia RTX 4060 and Intel UHD 770 GPUs, 32GB RAM, 1TB NVMe System Drive, a further c.7TB of additional storage.

49 Reply by Ali

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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

On FB they are telling people using the trial to contact support - provision is being made for their trial periods to be extended.

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Re: Affinity Support is moving to Discord

Ali wrote:

On FB they are telling people using the trial to contact support - provision is being made for their trial periods to be extended.

That's good, as it would suggest there will be something there after the extended period that has some resemblance to the V2 Affinity?

www.JAmedia.uk, primarily an Affinity Publisher V2 user for books and magazines.
[ Win 11 home | AMD Ryzen 5950X 16 Core CPU ]
[128GB Ram | NVIDIA 3080TI 2GB | MB ASUS ProArt B550| ]

JAmedia's Website