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Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'

• jjice 2y ago
  Aside from the privacy nightmare, what about someone who is 18 and just doesn't have the traditional adult facial features? Same thing for someone who's 15 and hit puberty early? I can imagine that on the edges, it becomes really hard to discern. If they get it wrong, are you locked out? Do you have to send an image of your ID? So many questions. Not a huge fan of these recent UK changes (looking at the Apple E2E situation as well). I understand what they're going for, but I'm not sure this is the best course of action. What do I know though :shrug:.
  • roenxi 2y ago
    Also, key point in the framing, when was it decided that Discord supposed to be the one enforcing this? A pop-up saying "you really should be 18+" is one thing, but this sounds like a genuine effort to lock out young people. Neither Discord nor a government ratings agency should be taking final responsibility for how children get bought up, that seems like something parents should be responsible for. This is over-reach. Both in the UK and Australia.
    • threeseed 2y ago
      > This is over-reach. Both in the UK and Australia 2/3 of Australians support minimum age restrictions for social media [1] and it was in-particular popular amongst parents. Putting the responsibility solely on parents shows ignorance of the complexities of how children are growing up these days. Many parents have tried to ban social media only for those children to experience ostracisation amongst their peer group leading to poorer educational and social developmental outcomes at a critical time in their live. That's why you need governments and platform owners to be heavily involved. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/04/guardian-essential-poll-facebook-social-media-ban https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/...
      • exe34 2y ago
        that sounds quite puritan. my god says I can't, is one thing. my god says you can't either, is very different. now replace god with parent.
        • monkeywork 2y ago
          You realize that is how EVERY law works right... The person your replying to says the public overall supports the idea/law. If following that law is a deal breaker for you you either need to persuade thos ppl to your view or move
          • exe34 2y ago
            A law to stop people from not going out of their way to include you when you made a choice to be unreachable sounds pretty desperate.
        • jasonfarnon 2y ago
          maybe it's "puritan" or maybe it's a normal view and it looks puritan from where you stand. how do you know which? One bit of evidence is the 2/3 to 1/3 split.
          • exe34 2y ago
            Everybody loves government overreach until the government starts to tell you how to live.
      • DrillShopper 2y ago
        > Putting the responsibility solely on parents shows ignorance of the complexities of how children are growing up these days. Don't have kids if you're unwilling to parent them. "It's hard! :(" is not an argument. "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!"
    • pjc50 2y ago
      It almost certainly is overreach, but locking young people out of porn is hardly a new concern. We have variants of this argument continuously for decades. I'm not sure there is a definitive answer.
    • KaiserPro 2y ago
      When a corner shop sells cigarettes to minors, who's breaking the law? When a TV channel broadcast porn, who gets fined? These are accepted laws that protect kids from "harm", which are relatively uncontroversial. Now, the privacy angle is very much the right question. But as Discord are the one that are going to get fined, they totally need to make sure kids aren't being exposed to shit they shouldn't be seeing until they are old enough. In the same way the corner shop needs to make sure they don't sell booze to 16 year olds. Now, what is the mechanism that Discord should/could use? that's the bigger question. Can government provide fool proof, secure, private and scalable proof of age services? How can private industry do it? (Hint: they wont because its a really good source of profile information for advertising.)
      • EA-3167 2y ago
        Cigarettes are deadly Broadcasting porn isn't an age ID issue, it's public airwaves and they're regulated. These aren't primarily "think of the children" arguments, the former is a major public health issue that's taken decades to begin to address, and the latter is about ownership. I don't think that chat rooms are in the same category as either public airwaves or drugs. Besides what's the realistic outcome here? Under 18's aren't stupid, what would you have done as a kid if Discord was suddenly blocked off? Shrug and not talk to your friends again? Or would you figure out how to bypass the checks, use a different service, or just use IRC? Telegram chats? Something even less moderated and far more open to abuse, because that's what can slip under the radar. So no I don't think this is about protecting kids, I think it's about normalizing the loss of anonymity online.
        • Symbiote 2y ago
          You can swap cigarettes with another age restricted product, like pornography or 18-rated DVDs if you prefer. The UK also has rules on what can be broadcast on TV depending on the time of day.
        • KaiserPro 2y ago
          > These aren't primarily "think of the children" arguments Are you kidding me? v-chip, mary whitehouse, Sex on TV are all the result of "think of the children" moral panics. Its fuck all to do with ownership. > I don't think that chat rooms are in the same category as either public airwaves Discord are making cash from underage kids, in the same way that meta and google are, in the same way that disney and netflix offering kids channels. Look I'm not saying that discord should be banned for kids, but I really do think that there is a better option than the binary "Ban it all"/"fuck it, let them eat porn" Kids need to be able to talk to each other, but they also should be able to do that without being either preyed upon by nonces, extremists, state actors and more likely bored trolls. Its totally possible to provide anonymous age gating, but its almost certainly going to be provided by an adtech company unless we, the community provide something cheaper and better.
    • leotravis10 2y ago
      There's a SCOTUS case in FSC v. Paxton that could very well decide if age verification is enforced in the US as well so sadly this is just the beginning.
  • daveoc64 2y ago
    It says in the article - you can send them a scan or photo of your ID if the face check doesn't work (or if you don't want to do the face scan).
    • p_ing 2y ago
      Discord also has a manual review process. https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/30326565624343-How-to-Verify-Age-Group#h_01JQ4N9Y8E96WFDRN01KC81VTP https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/30326565624343...
    • Eavolution 2y ago
      What if I don't want them to have any personally identifiable information about me in a database?
  • mezzie2 2y ago
    It's not even edge cases - I was a pretty young looking woman and was mistaken for a minor until I was about 24-25. My mother had her first child (me) at 27 and tells me about how she and my father would get dirty looks because they assumed he was some dirty old man that had impregnated a teenager. (He was 3 years older than her). I think, ironically, the best way to fight this would be to lean on identity politics: There are probably certain races that ping as older or younger. In addition, trans people who were on puberty blockers are in a situation where they might be 'of age' but not necessarily look like an automated system expects them to, and there might be discrepancies between their face as scanned and the face/information that's show on their ID. Discord has a large trans userbase. Nobody cares about privacy, but people make at least some show of caring about transphobia and racism. > So many questions. Do they keep a database of facial scans even though they say they don't? If not, what's to stop one older looking friend (or an older sibling/cousin/parent/etc.) from being the 'face' of everyone in a group of minors? Do they have a reliable way to ensure that a face being scanned isn't AI generated (or filtered) itself? What prevents someone from sending in their parent's/sibling's/a stolen ID? Seems like security theater more than anything else.
    • StefanBatory 2y ago
      I had a colleague, that when going out with her boyfriend, police was called on him as someone believed he is a pedophile. She was 26. She just was that young looking. :/
    • nemomarx 2y ago
      I don't think they make much of a show of caring about trans rights in the UK right about now, unfortunately. In the US you can make a strong case that a big database of faces and IDs could be really dangerous though I think
      • tbrownaw 2y ago
        > In the US you can make a strong case that a big database of faces and IDs could be really dangerous though I think The government already has this from RealID.
  • candiddevmike 2y ago
    The right thing to do here is for Discord to ignore the UK laws and see what happens, IMO. Is there a market for leaked facial scans?
    • doublerabbit 2y ago
      With the UK currently battling Apple, Discord has no chance of not getting a lawsuit. Ofcom is a serious contender in ruling their rules especially where Discord is multi-national that even "normies" know and use. And if they got a slap of "we will let you off this time" they would still have to create some sort of verification service to please the next time. You might as well piss off your consumers, loose them whatever and still hold the centre stage than fight the case for not. Nothing is stopping Ofcom from launching another lawsuit there after. > Is there a market for leaked facial scans? There's a market for everything. Fake driver licenses with fake pictures have been around for decades, that would be no different.
  • 9283409232 2y ago
    Didn't Australia ban porn with women who have A cups under the justification of pedos like them? Edit: This isn't how it played out. See the comment below.
    • threeseed 2y ago
      No it's just nonsense you invented because you were unwilling to do any research. The actual situation was that the board refused classification where an adult was intentionally pretending to be an underage child not that they looked like one.
      • 9283409232 2y ago
        I added an edit to correct myself however this was not something I invented. This story goes back to 09 - 2010. I will confess I didn't do any research to confirm though and that was my bad.
        • neilv 2y ago
          FWIW, I can confirm that user 9283409232 didn't make that up. I heard that multiple reputable places, years ago. And it was believable, given a history of genuine but inept attempts by some to address real societal problems. (As well as given the history of fake attempts to solve problems for political points for "doing something". And also given the history of "won't someone think of the children" disingenuous pretexts often used by others to advance unrelated goals.) Basically, no one is surprised when many governments do something that seems nonsensical. So, accusing someone of making up a story of a government doing something odd in this space might be hasty. I suspect better would be to give a quick check and then "I couldn't find a reference to that; do you have a link?"
          • jofzar 2y ago
            Interestingly I actually heard this in Australia many years ago. I assumed it was real (as an Australian) but the answer is more complicated (with the actual answer being no) https://tysonadams.com/2013/04/23/did-australia-ban-small-breasts-pornography/ https://tysonadams.com/2013/04/23/did-australia-ban-small-br...
  • zehaeva 2y ago
    It's a good thing to think about. I knew a guy in high school who had male pattern baldness that started at 13 or 14. Full blown by the time he was 16. Dude looked like one of the teachers.
    • MisterTea 2y ago
      Same in my drivers ed at 16, guy had a mans face, large stocky build, and thick full beard. I once was talking to a tall pretty woman who turned out to be a 12 year old girl. And I have a friend who for most of his 20's could pass for 13-14 and had a hell of a time getting into bars. This facial thing feel like a loaded attempt to both check a box and get more of that sweet, sweet data to mine. Massive privacy invasion and exploitation of children dressed as security theater.
    • red-iron-pine 2y ago
      i went to school with a guy who had serious facial hair at like 14. dude was rocking 5 oclock shadows by the end of the school day
      • AStonesThrow 2y ago
        Was your school located at 21 Jump Street? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_Jump_Street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_Jump_Street Was it Steve Buscemi toting a skateboard? https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-do-you-do-fellow-kids https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-do-you-do-fellow-kids
      • pezezin 2y ago
        I had a friend who had a serious beard by the age of 15; he would order whisky and cola at the bar, and nobody ever asked him for any kind of ID xD I myself have a mighty beard but took a couple more years to develop...
  • joeyh 2y ago
    Wise (nee Transferwise) requires a passport style photo taken by a webapp for KYC when transferring money. I was recently unable to complete that process over a dozen tries, because the image processing didn't like something about my face. (Photos met all criteria.) On contacting their support, I learned that they refused to use any other process. Also it became apparent that they had outsourced it to some other company and had no insight into the process and so no way to help. Apparently closing one's account will cause an escalation to a team who determines where to send the money, which would presumably put some human flexability back into the process. (In the end I was able to get their web app to work by trying several other devices, one had a camera that for whatever reason satisfied their checks that my face was within the required oval etc.)
    • rlpb 2y ago
      > On contacting their support, I learned that they refused to use any other process. I suspect this won't help you, but I think it's worth noting that the GDPR gives people the right to contest any automated decision-making that was made on a solely algorithmic basis. So this wouldn't be legal in the EU (or the UK).
    • whitehexagon 2y ago
      Hah, indeed, a similar experience here. The desktop option is worse, trying to get a webcam to focus on an ID card took forever. The next step wanted a 3rd party company to do a live webcam session, no thanks! Closed the account. Or at least tried, after a several step nag process, they still keep the email blocked to that account, in case you change your mind... There seems no way to push back against these technologies. Next it will be an AI interview for 'why do you transfer the money?'
  • brundolf 2y ago
    Devil's advocate: couldn't this be better for privacy than other age checks because it doesn't require actual identification?
    • paulryanrogers 2y ago
      Considering the ubiquity of facial recognition tech, I imagine it could very quickly be abused to identify people
  • pdpi 2y ago
    > what about someone who is 18 and just doesn't have the traditional adult facial features? This can be challenging even with humans. My ex got carded when buying alcohol well into her mid thirties, and staff at the schools she taught at mistook her for a student all the time.
    • smegger001 2y ago
      I grew a beard when I was younger because I was tired of being mistaken for a highschooler its quite annoying to have people assume you are 15 when your 20. still regularly carded in my 30s
  • pests 2y ago
    I witnessed the Better Off Ted water fountain skit play out in real life once, it was incredible awkward. I was helping my buddy and his black friend and his wife set up accounts on online casinos in Michigan for the promos/refer-a-friend rewards. Some of the sites require the live video facial verification and we were doing it in a darkly lit space at night. It worked instantly and without issue for my friend and me but oh man, many many attempts later and many additional lights needed to get it to work for his friends.
  • dgan 2y ago
    it doesn't even has to be "un traditional face feature". Hpw are they going to differentiate 18yo from 17y11mo? The latter is not legally adult
• MisterTea 2y ago
  It's interesting how the "features" which many claim IRC is missing turn out to be a huge liability. Adult content is applied via image hosting, video/audio chat, etc. All things IRC lacks.
  • spacebanana7 2y ago
    There is a definitely a textual privilege in media. You can write things in books that would never be allowed to be depicted in video. Even in Game of Thrones, Ramsay's sadism had to be sanitised a little for live action. This is doubly so if your book is historic in some sense. Still find it crazy that Marquis de Sade's stuff is legal.
  • doublerabbit 2y ago
    > All things IRC lacks. IRC gives you all the features of a normal client but you've got to create them yourself which itself is a dark-art that's been squandered by today's gimmicky services. Just because it doesn't have a fancy UI to present the media doesn't mean it can't. Encode to base64 and post in channel. Decode it back to normal format... IRC is excellent for large amounts of stringed text. You could even stream the movie in base64 and have a client that captures the data stream and decodes. The only thing that IRC lacks is a feature to recall conversations where if someone isn't present. But if you're someone who needs that host a bouncer or something. I personally enjoy entering a blank slate.
    • blibble 2y ago
      sending any reasonably sized jpeg as base64 text will take you several minutes with typical server flood protection
      • doublerabbit 2y ago
        You could chunk it, compress it with gzip. Usenet uses yENC. Public servers sure, may have protections in place but your own server and with IRCd's being easy configurable makes it non-trivial.
• spacebanana7 2y ago
  I suspect the endgame of this campaign is to have mandatory ID checks for social media. Police would have access to these upon court orders etc and be able to easily prosecute anyone who posts 'harmful' content online.
  • lanfeust6 2y ago
    Which would kill social media. The cherry-picked tech giant iterations anyway.
    • ChocolateGod 2y ago
      Exactly, targeting children with their parents credit cards is a profitable business.
    • samlinnfer 2y ago
      They already have this in China and Korea. Hasn't stopped people from using social media.
      • lanfeust6 2y ago
        The West isn't China and Korea. They can't opt out of authoritarian-state surveillance and great firewall, whereas we have options more amenable to privacy, even if you want to quibble that they aren't perfect. Also the fact that UK and Australia are kind of backwards on online privacy. That aside, this is targeted. The fediverse and vbulletin forums of old, even reddit, are all social media but will never require facial recognition. If they do, then far worse things are happening to freedom.
        • numpad0 2y ago
          Korea is a democratic Western nation, they host US military bases and fly F-35. Korean made phones are trusted enough that American special forces use it for some parachute jumpings.
• ajsnigrutin 2y ago
  I think regulation could be done better... Let's assign one or ideally two adults to each underage child, who are aware of the childs real age and can intervene and prevent the child from installing discord (and any other social media) in the first place or confiscate the equipment if the child breaks the rules. They could also regulate many other thing in the childs life, not just social network use.
  • jasonlotito 2y ago
    > confiscate the equipment if the child breaks the rules. Even you acknowledge this plan is flawed and that the child can break the rules. And it's not that difficult. After all, confiscating the equipment assumes that they know about the equipment and that they can legally seize the equipment. Third parties are involved, and doing what you suggests would land these adults in prison. I know you thought you were being smart with your suggestion that maybe parents should be parents, but really you just highlighted your ignorance. The goal of these laws are to prevent children from accessing content. If some adults get caught in the crossfire, they don't care. Now, I'm not defending these laws or saying anything about them. What I am saying is that your "suggestion" is flawed from the point of view of those proposing these laws.
    • ajsnigrutin 2y ago
      These are not 20 something college students with jobs and rented apartments, doing stuff without their parents knowing. These are kids younger than 13, they don't have jobs, they live with their parents, no internet/data planes outside of control of their parents, no nothing. The goal of these laws is to get ID checks on social networks for everyone, so the governments know who the "loud ones" (against whatever political cause) are. Using small kids as a reason to do so is a typical modus operandi to achieve that. Yes, those "one or two adults" I meantioned should be the parents, and yes, parents can legally confiscate their kids phones if they're doing something stupid online. They can also check what the kid is doing online. If a 12yo kid (or younger) can somehow obtain money and a phone and keep it hidden from their parents, that kid will also be able to avoid such checks by vpn-ing (or using a proxy) to some non-UK country, where those checks won't be mandatory. This again is solved by the parents actually parenting, again... it's kids younger than 13, at that age, parents can and should have total control of their child.
• zevv 2y ago
  So, what will be the proper technology to apply here? I have no problem with verification of my age (not the date of birth, just the boolean, >18yo), but I do have a problem with sending any party a picture of my face or my passport.
  • hedora 2y ago
    Parents?
  • londons_explore 2y ago
    Maybe someone like apple will make a "verify user looks over 18" neural net model they can run in the secure enclave of iphones, which sends some kind of "age verified by apple" token to websites without disclosing your identity outside your own device? Having said that, I bet such a mechanism will prove easy to fake (if only by pointing the phone at grandad), and therefore be disallowed by governments in short order in favour of something that doesn't protect the user as much.
    • miki123211 2y ago
      Apple lets you add IDs to your wallet in some jurisdictions. I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually introduce a system-wide age verification service and let developers piggyback on it with safe, privacy-preserving assertions.
  • threeseed 2y ago
    Variation of PassKeys could work well. Especially if it was tightly integrated into the OS so that parents could issue an AgeKey to each of their children which sites would ask for.
  • 1659447091 2y ago
    OIDC4VCI(OpenID for Verifiable Credential Issuance)[0] is what I think has the most promise. My understanding is that an issuer can issue a Credential that asserts the claims (eg, you are over 18) that you make to another entity/website and that entity can verify those claims you present to them (Verifiable Credentials). For example, if we can get banks - who already know our full identity - to become Credential Issuers, then we can use bank provided Credentials (that assert we are over 18) to present to websites and services that require age verification WITHOUT having to give them all of our personal information. As long the site or service trust that Issuer. [0] https://openid.net/specs/openid-4-verifiable-credential-issuance-1_0.html https://openid.net/specs/openid-4-verifiable-credential-issu...
• Hizonner 2y ago
  The ophidian lubricant has entered the chat.
• jimbob45 2y ago
  This is how you lose your comfortable market monopoly like Skype did. Recall that Skype had better P2P tech than Discord did and would still be the market leader if MS had chosen to update anything at all besides the logo bi-yearly.
• x187463 2y ago
  I see a lot of comments here arguing age requirements are overreach and these decisions should be left to the parents. To those presenting such arguments, do you think that applies to other activities as well? What about smoking/drinking/firearms? Pornography? Driving? I haven't researched the topic of social media's effect on young people, but the common sentiment I encounter is that it's generally harmful, or at least capable of harm in a way that is difficult to isolate and manage as a parent. The people closest to this issue, that is parents, school faculty, and those who study the psychology and health of children/teens, seem to be the most alarmed about the effects of social media. If that's true, I can understand the need to, as a society, agree we would like to implement some barrier between kids/teens and the social media companies. How that is practically done seems to be the challenge. Clicking a box that say's, in effect, "I totally promise I am old enough." is completely useless for anything other than a thin legal shield.
  • squigz 2y ago
    The difference is that requiring ID for those activities doesn't generally drastically erode the privacy of other people. Instead of destroying the concept of privacy and anonymity on the Internet... how about we just stop these companies from being as harmful as they are, regardless of your age?
  • bitmasher9 2y ago
    > To those presenting such arguments, do you think that applies to other activities as well? You’re acting like it’s not normal for parents to decide which activities a child can do, cannot do, and must do, and to make these decisions with appropriate ages in mind. I tend to lean towards allowing parents a long leash in their own home and other private places but to regulate behavior in schools and public places.
  • linuxftw 2y ago
    > I see a lot of comments here arguing age requirements are overreach and these decisions should be left to the parents. No you don't. The bulk of the comments at this point in time don't mention things being left to parents at all.
  • 2y ago
• hedora 2y ago
  Like many other people here, I'm wondering what we'll end up having to do at work do deal with this. We don't have the resources to put a full time person on this, and the UK's not a huge market. For unrelated reasons, we already have to implement geoblocking, and we're also intentionally VPN friendly. I suspect most services are that way, so the easy way out is to add "UK" to the same list as North Korea and Iran. Anyway, if enough services implement this that way, I'd expect the UK to start repealing laws like this (or to start seeing China-level adoption of VPN services). That limits the blast radius to services actually based in the UK. Those are already dropping like flies, sadly. I hope the rest of the international tech community applies this sort of pressure. Strength in numbers is about all we have left these days.
  • fny 2y ago
    You'll likely end up paying someone else to do it for you.
    • hedora 2y ago
      I'm reasonably sure we will not. Dealing with an integration like that means not shipping some other feature to the rest of the planet. The marginal gain of accepting UK users is lower than the marginal gain of increasing addressable market everywhere else.
    • YurgenJurgensen 2y ago
      …as will everyone else. The same company. Who will have all that data in one convenient database just waiting to be leaked.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • fkyoureadthedoc 2y ago
    > I suspect most services are that way I don't know actual numbers, but I gave up using VPN by default because in my experience they definitely are not.
• acureau 2y ago
  Maybe the start of a bigger shift to another platform. I'd wager a large portion of the Discord user-base is underage, and they've got nothing but time.
• josefritzishere 2y ago
  This is a privacy nightmare. Mandatory biometrics are pure insanity.
  • switch007 2y ago
    > Mandatory biometrics are pure insanity. Yup someone tell the US government, because visitors can't enter the US without giving biometrics
• miohtama 2y ago
  A book recommendation on the topic: > This is the first book to examine the growth and phenomenon of a securitized and criminalized compliance society which relies increasingly on intelligence-led and predictive technologies to control future risks, crimes, and security threats. It articulates the emergence of a ‘compliance-industrial complex’ that synthesizes regulatory capitalism and surveillance capitalism to impose new regimes of power and control, as well as new forms of subjectivity subservient to the ‘operating system’ of a pre-crime society. https://www.amazon.com/Compliance-Industrial-Complex-Operating-Pre-Crime-Society/dp/3031192230 https://www.amazon.com/Compliance-Industrial-Complex-Operati...
• nyanpasu64 2y ago
  Frankly I'm scared by governments and corporations going "papers, please" for people to be allowed to access the Internet. On top of endangering privacy by tying pseudonymous online interactions to real-life ID and biometrics, attempts to block under-18 people from finding information or interacting online will only amplify how society regards them as not having rights. This will isolate people (especially gay and trans teens) living with abusive parents from finding support networks, and prevent them from learning (by talking to friends in different situations) that being beaten or emotionally put down by parents is abusive and traumatizing. I know all too well that when you grow up you're psychologically wired to assume that the way the parents treated you is normal, and if they harmed you then you deserve to be hurt. I've made friends with and assisted many teens and young adults in unsafe living situations (and talked to people who grew up in fundamentalist religions and cults), and they're dependent on online support networks to recognize and cope with abuse, get advice, and seek help in dangerous situations.
  • nicbou 2y ago
    To add to this, some people might be left out because companies are not financially incentivised to verify them. In Germany, immigrants struggle to open a bank account because the banks require documents that they don't have (and that they can hardly get with a bank account). Russian, Iranian and Syrian citizens have a particularly hard time finding a bank that works for them. The most common video document verification system does not support some Indian passports, among others. To banks, leaving these people out is a rational business decision. The same thing will happen to those deemed too risky or too much hassle by the internet's gatekeepers, but at a much bigger scale.
    • extraduder_ire 2y ago
      What is it about some Indian passports? Do they need to have a biometric chip to work? (just checked, and those were introduced in 2024) Banks worldwide regularly refuse service to people who have US citizenship, so I don't think you're far off on that point.
      • 2y ago
• 1970-01-01 2y ago
  thispersondoesnotexist.com Now off ya go, little rascals.
  • Hyperboreanal 2y ago
    [flagged]
• MiddleEndian 2y ago
  Fuck this, need a law to explicitly ban face scanning
  • switch007 2y ago
    It won't happen. The police are using it in meatspace. It will become the norm all over the UK.
• aucisson_masque 2y ago
  They will do just enough so that they comply with the law while kids will be able to easily bypass it. Where there is a will, there is mean and teenager looking for porn... That's a big willpower.
• nubinetwork 2y ago
  The day discord asks me for a picture, is the day I close my account
  • hightrix 2y ago
    I thought the same at first. But I imagine it’d be relatively trivial to generate a fake ID to upload that would suffice.
• gertrunde 2y ago
  I would like to think there there is a solution that can be engineered, in which a service is able to verify that a user is above an appropriate age threshold, while maintaining privacy safeguards, including, where relevant, for the age-protected service not to be privy to the identity of the user, and for the age verification service to not be privy to the nature of the age-protected service being accessed. In this day and age, of crypto, and certificates, and sso, and all that gubbins, it's surely only a matter of deciding that this is a problem that needs solving. (Unless the problem really isn't the age of the user at all, but harvesting information...)
  • paxys 2y ago
    Transferring your age and a way to verify it to any third party is by definition a privacy violation. Doing so in a safe way is literally impossible since I don't want to share that information in the first place.
    • packetlost 2y ago
      I feel like you could, theoretically, have a service that has an ID (as drivers license ID), perhaps operated by your government, that has an API and a notion of an ephemeral identifier that can be used to provide a digital attestation of some property without exposing that property or the exact identity of the person. It would require that the attestation system is trusted by all parties though, which is I think the core problem.
      • brian-armstrong 2y ago
        Wouldn't this require the API provider to know that tbe citizen is connecting to the app? Grindr users might be squeamish about letting the current US admin know about that.
        • mschuster91 2y ago
          ICAO compliant ID cards (aka passports) and many national ID cards already are smartcards with powerful crypto processors. Hand out certificates to porn, gambling or whatever sites, that allow requesting the age of a person from the ID card, have the user touch their ID card with their phone to sign a challenge with its key (and certificate signed by the government), that's it. Government doesn't know what porn site you visited, and porn site only gets the age.
• femiagbabiaka 2y ago
  The U.S., at least, needs a national ID. That, and a verification system for businesses to use, would solve so many of these issues.
• Retr0id 2y ago
  I'm in the UK and discord has asked me to complete this check (but I haven't, yet). I can still use discord just fine, it just won't let me view any media it considers "adult". I am an adult but refuse to let them scan my face as a matter of principle, so I've considered using https://github.com/hacksider/Deep-Live-Cam https://github.com/hacksider/Deep-Live-Cam to "deepfake" myself and perform the verification while wearing a fake face. If it works, I'll write about it.
  • squigz 2y ago
    Why not leave the platform and actually send a message?
    • Retr0id 2y ago
      The platform isn't the problem, it's the legislation.
• weikju 2y ago
  Maybe now open-source projects will get off of Discord for their official chat/support?
• stego-tech 2y ago
  A long, long time ago (within the past ten years), I had to verify my age with a site. They didn't ask for my ID, or my facial scan, but instead asked for my credit card number. They issued a refund to the card of a few cents, and I had to tell them (within 24hr) how much the refund was for, after which point they'd issue a charge to claw it back. They made it clear that debit and gift cards would not be accepted, it must be a credit card. So I grabbed my Visa card, punched in the numbers, checked my banking app to see the +$0.24 refund, entered the value, got validated, and had another -$0.24 charge to claw it back. Voila, I was verified as an adult, because I could prove I had a credit card. The whole point of mandating facial recognition or ID checks isn't to make sure you're an adult, but to keep records of who is consuming those services and tie their identities back to specific profiles. Providers can swear up and down they don't retain that information, but they often use third-parties who may or may not abide by those same requests, especially if the Gov comes knocking with a secret warrant or subpoena. Biometric validation is surveillance, plain and simple.
  • jen729w 2y ago
    > Biometric validation is surveillance, plain and simple. Eh. It's just easier and cheaper. I'll bet Discord has outsourced this to one of those services that ask you for a face scan when you sign up to [some other service].
  • ndriscoll 2y ago
    That was, in fact, what COPA mandated in the US in 1998, and SCOTUS struck it down as too onerous in Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, kicking off the last 20 years of essentially completely unregulated Internet porn commercially available to children with nothing more than clicking an "I'm 18" button. At the time, filtering was seen as a better solution. Nowadays filtering is basically impossible thanks to TLS (with things like DoH and ECH being deployed to lock that down even further), apps that ignore user CAs and use attestation to lock out owner control, cloud CDNs, TLS fingerprinting, and extreme consolidation of social media (e.g. discord being for both minecraft discussions and furry porn).
    • Dylan16807 2y ago
• nixpulvis 2y ago
  Identity verification remains unsolved and likely will remain that way. Any attempts at improvement are authoritarian. And the status quo leave massive room for circumvention. Personally, I grew up in an era before there was any expectation of validation, and enjoyed the anonymity of message boards and forums. But when people are posting blatantly illegal activity online, I can see the appeal for more validation. Just makes me sad.
  • Mountain_Skies 2y ago
    Which makes one wonder how much of the illegal activities are by people who really are interested in engaging in that illegal activity and how much of it is from those who see it as a means to destroy anonymity online.
• rkagerer 2y ago
  Of all the terrible, dumb-headed ideas. I would not want my kids scanning their face into who-knows-what third party's service. I already decline this technology when finance companies want to use it for eg. KYC verification ("Sorry, I don't own a smartphone compatible with your tool. If you want my business you'll have to find another way. Happy to provide a notarized declaration if you'd like" has worked in the past).
  • Hyperboreanal 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • sReinwald 2y ago
      This response is a textbook example of a manipulative false dichotomy that poisons legitimate discourse about child safety online. Presenting the only options as either "scan your child's biometric data into opaque systems" or "let your child be groomed and/or get addicted to porn" is intellectually dishonest and deliberately inflammatory. It's a rhetorical trap designed to shame parents with valid privacy concerns into compliance. Privacy rights and child protection are not mutually exclusive. Numerous approaches exist that don't require harvesting biometric data from minors, from improved content filtering and educational initiatives to parental controls and account verification methods that don't rely on facial scanning. Corporations are simply implementing the most convenient (for them) solution that technically satisfies regulatory requirements while creating new data streams they can potentially monetize. What's actually happening here is deeply troubling: we're normalizing the idea that children must surrender their biometric data as the price of digital participation. This creates permanent digital identifiers that could follow them throughout their lives, with their data stored in systems with questionable security, unclear retention policies, and potential for future misuse. Weaponizing the fear of child exploitation to silence legitimate concerns about corporate overreach isn't just manipulative - it's morally reprehensible. Framing opposition to biometric surveillance as being pro-exploitation deliberately poisons the well against anyone who questions these systems. We can and must develop approaches that protect children without surrendering their fundamental privacy rights. Pretending these are our only two options isn't just wrong - it actively undermines the nuanced conversation we should be having about both child safety and digital rights.
• Havoc 2y ago
  The march towards digital dystopia continues
• wvenable 2y ago
  It seems likely that this will be defeated by AI generated video.
• jillyboel 2y ago
  That's just creepy.
• voidfunc 2y ago
  Yea, I'm not doing that. What alternatives are their for 10-20 person gaming groups that want voice chat and streaming?
  • lambertsimnel 2y ago
    There's a comparison table of messengers here: https://eylenburg.github.io/im_comparison.htm https://eylenburg.github.io/im_comparison.htm Note the list of "messengers that are relevant but did not make it on the list" in case none of the messengers in the comparison meets your requirements. Even that isn't exhaustive, but there are lots of options.
• curtisszmania 2y ago
  [dead]
• xphos 2y ago
  I don't think the problem is that young people are finding porn on the internet. There is a problem, though, and it has to deal with psychological warfare on attention Formats like shorts or news feeds to you algorithmically with zero lag are the problem. It makes for the zombification of decision making. Endless content breaks people down precisely because it's endless. I think if you add age verification but don't root out the endless nature, you will not really help any young person or adult. When you look at people with unhealthy content addiction, it is always a case of excess and not necessarily type of content. There are pedophiles but honestly, we have had that throughout all time, with and without the internet. But the endless feeding of the next video robs people of the ability to stop by mentally addiciting them to see just one more. And because content is not really infinite, endless feeds invariably will feed people with porn, eating disorders, and other "crap" in quantities that slowly erode people.
  • Hyperboreanal 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • timewizard 2y ago
      > 2 straight generations of porn addicts Different types of pornography have different dangers and all of it has been broadly available since before the internet. > And then you have shit like watchpeopledie.tv. I think there's a broad gulf between these activities and I don't think they impact the brain in the same way as pornography. This type of violence can be found in movies and video games which also clearly predate the internet. > Children should have been banned from the internet a decade ago I'd rather pornography be banned. > I'm completely willing to give up some privacy to make it happen. Why? It should be incumbent on the people profiting from this activity to police it not on me to give up constitutional rights to protect their margins.
      • Hyperboreanal 2y ago
        >Different types of pornography have different dangers and all of it has been broadly available since before the internet. A child couldn't get hardcore porn as easily as they can now, one google search away. Or just on their reddit/X feed. >This type of violence can be found in movies and video games Yeah but those aren't real. Videos of real death and violence being available to kids is worse than video games where fake characters die. >I'd rather pornography be banned. Adults are free to fuck themselves up, kids are not. We don't say "well I'd rather alcohol be banned" when it comes to kids not being allowed alcohol. >Why? Because I'd rather live in a society with less privacy than a degenerate society full of mentally ill shutins that don't have sex. >to protect their margins. Fuck margins, I care about the overall wellbeing of society.
• switch007 2y ago
  This will definitely just apply to social media and the situation won't be abused by other companies even if they have no legal requirement, absolutely not, no sir.
• gloosx 2y ago
  Regulators would never comprehend internet. They are making it look like they have no idea that on the internet you can: move to another country without visa in 2 minutes, change your face, voice, fingerprints to whatever you like. Get any passport, any document you want to mock any KYC or impersonate anyone without a trace, all within 10$ range. Sure, companies have no option but to implement funny policies like these, and I'm sure any kid is much smarter than the government, so he will feel good circumventing it.
• KennyBlanken 2y ago
  It's worth noting that Matt Navarra, the sole source of "this is part of a bigger shift", is an ex member of the UK government who worked in the PM's office and worked for the BBC. This story is a tempest in a teacup. The administration found someone to spread this nonsense so every later goes "well that was inevitable, the BBC predicted it would be." Yeah, and bank robbers can predict that a bank is going to have less cash after a certain day. This obsession the British have with kids online is so tiresome. You want to stop child sexual assault? Maybe do something about your royalty flying to island getaways organized by a human trafficker and ultra-high-end pimp for underage kids? Or do something about your clergy diddling kids? Maybe the reason the UK government thinks this is such a big issue is because these legislators and officials are so surrounded by people who do it...because politicians are right there next to clergy in terms of this stuff.
• distalx 2y ago
  This feels more like spying on everyone than making the internet safe for kids. Big companies and the government are already tracking what we do online. This just seems like a further reduction of our privacy on the internet. Parents need to be more involved in what their kids do online, just like in real life. Grounding them isn't enough. We wouldn't let them wander into dangerous places, so we shouldn't let them wander online without adult supervision. Also, parents need to prepare for having tough conversations, like what pornography or gambling is. Online companies need to really work to make their sites safe for everyone. They should act like they own a mall. If they let bad stuff in (like pornography, scams, gambling), it hurts their reputation, and people will leave. Instead of banning everything, because some people take pleasure in those activities, maybe there should be separate online spaces for adults who want that kind of content, like how cities have specific areas for adult businesses. This way, it would be easier to restrict children's access to some hardcore stuff. If we all put some effort into figuring out easy and privacy-friendly solutions to safeguard kids, we can rely on simple principles. For example, if you want to sell toys to kids, you shouldn't sell adult toys under the same roof (same domain) or have posters that can affect young minds.
  • sph 2y ago
    > This feels more like spying on everyone than making the internet safe for kids. That’s always been the point. “Protecting children online” is the trojan horse against privacy, and apart from a few of us nerds, everyone is very much in favour of these laws. The fight for privacy is pretty much lost against such a weapon.
    • distalx 2y ago
      I hear you on the 'Trojan horse,' but I'm still hopeful! We can vote with our money and maybe even crowdfund platforms that truly respect our privacy and time. We already have paid, privacy-friendly options for things like email and messaging, perhaps a Discord altrenative isn't too far fetched!
• littlestymaar 2y ago
  Now we have a good use-case for diffusion-based image generation: bypass these insanely privacy-invasive requirements.
• Pikamander2 2y ago
  Relevant news article from yesterday: https://www.wired.com/story/new-jersey-sues-discord/ https://www.wired.com/story/new-jersey-sues-discord/ > Platkin says there were two catalysts for the investigation. One is personal: A few years ago, a family friend came to Platkin, astonished that his 10-year-old son was able to sign up for Discord, despite the platform forbidding children under 13 from registering. > The second was the mass-shooting in Buffalo, in neighboring New York. The perpetrator used Discord as his personal diary in the lead-up to the attack. In other words, this is yet another attack on privacy in the name of "protecting the children".
• azalemeth 2y ago
  How do we fight back against this? I don't want my face scanned on a smartphone to use goods and services. Kyc checks for banks are bad enough. I miss the internet of the early 2000s.
  • lambertsimnel 2y ago
    I don't think there are any easy answers to the question of how to respond to this but you might consider: - voting with your feet - contacting your elected representatives - contacting media outlets - becoming a member or donor of civil liberties campaigns - listening to people who don't yet get it and trying to ensure that they can switch to your view without losing face
  • izzydata 2y ago
    This is probably difficult, but if everyone collectively didn't use services that had such egregious requirements it would likely die quickly. The companies being requires to do such things would have to start pushing back against government policies that are killing their business. Considering everyone currently and without a second thought lets Apple scan their face just for the convenience of unlocking their phone I think this is a lost cause.
• jgaa 2y ago
  This is never about protecting the children. This is always about government overreach. People are less likely to criticize the government, or even participate in political debate, if their online identities are know by the government. Governments like obedient, scared citizens. The only ethical response to laws like this, is for websites and apps to terminate operations completely in countries that create them. Citizens who elect politicians without respect for human rights and privacy don't really deserve anything nice anyway.
  • 9dev 2y ago
    That’s a very strange take on governments, treating them as a singular entity. A government that deserves that name is first and foremost and elected set of representatives of the constituents, and thus like citizens that vote for them again, act in their interests. If the government is not working like that, you have an administrative problem, not a societal one. A state is its population.
    • graemep 2y ago
      I would say it is a realistic take, and yours is idealistic.
      • 9dev 2y ago
        It isn’t realistic, it’s pessimistic. If the government, the system, is your opponent, there is no other outcome than subversion, everything is futile anyway. That leaves no room for democratic participation, for any kind of peaceful change, if you’re being earnest with it. And that seems very cynical and ideologically driven to me. There’s a lot of room for improvement that doesn’t involve tearing everything down because it’s beyond the pale anyway; it isn’t.
        • graemep 2y ago
          I am not advocating tearing everything down, as that will make things worse, especially if done violently. > That leaves no room for democratic participation I think there is very limited room for democratic participation and it has become far to difficult to change anything. If I vote and I do not care which of the parties that have a chance of winning wins because their policies are so similar it does not matter, where is my democratic participation? Even if the parties are different and I do not like the policies of either, what is the value of my vote? I think things will improve in the long term when there is sufficient pushback, but it will take a long time.
• gurumeditations 2y ago
  They’re using the databases to go after illegal immigrants right now. Soon it’ll be using the porn databases to go after Gay people. They’re trying to use the healthcare databases to go after Trans people. All this verification is nothing but a way to commit genocide against minorities. Porn is so far down on the list of harmful things. There’s no pearl clutching over alcohol and other drugs like Americans have with porn. Nation of pansies.
  • gappi 2y ago
    [flagged]
• 5- 2y ago
  why wouldn't an identity/age verification scheme that blinds both sides work? e.g. a site wants to have some proof of identity. it generates a token and sends the user with it to a government service. the service verifies the user's identity, signs the token and sends the user back. now the site knows that the government service has verified the identity (and relevant characteristics, like age threshold), but doesn't know the identity. the government service obviously knows the user but doesn't know the online account tied to the identity. this can be further separated by using a middleman authentication provider, so that even the site identity itself doesn't reach the government. am i missing something obvious why that wouldn't work?
  • xnacly 2y ago
    It wont work because gov has no interest in not knowing which service the user is trying to authenticate themself to, it is in its interest to connect these informations. We see exactly these attempts every 2-4 years in the eu parliament.
    • 5- 2y ago
      i suspect it's a matter of how you sell the idea of this service to the governments. i agree that the usual overreach will stand in the way, but i feel (perhaps wrongly) that the idea hasn't been pitched in earnest.
  • crowbahr 2y ago
    You mean like the DiD w3 spec? https://www.w3.org/TR/did-1.0/ https://www.w3.org/TR/did-1.0/ It's not _double_ blinded but it allows end users control over information shared and has proof of ownership built into it.
  • throwaway290 2y ago
    it works (ZKP, DID) and some countries do it (https://www.forbes.com.au/news/innovation/why-the-future-of-australias-digital-identity-system-is-self-sovereign/ https://www.forbes.com.au/news/innovation/why-the-future-of-..., Germany too allegedly)
• account-5 2y ago
  Nope. There's better ways to check your over 18; credit cards have been mentioned above. If a platform I'm using attempts this, with no other option, I'll delete my account and data on that platform. VPNs are really a requirement for UK residents now.
• mrbigbob 2y ago
  I am getting sick and tired of the thinly veiled excuse of "we need to strip away more of your privacy in order to protect the childen" we all know they are doing it because they want to surveil/track you more easily. and for those that think they are actually doing this to protect the children and you are concerned about what your children sees online this might sound a bit harsh but why dont you actually parent. Stop giving your kids unlimited access you tablets/computers etc. back in my day there was the option of having a single computer for the child in a public room that could not be moved. you could create whitelist only sites nowadays very easily even for laymens. i understand it is a bit harder nowdays because more parents are both working to support the family but i rather not loose what little privacy we have left as a society because its requires more work for you to parent
  • jasonlotito 2y ago
    The fact that you think that anything you suggested would prevent or hinder a child from seeing things you don't want them to see online, or that it would affect a child's ability to be affected by what is online is indicative of the bigger problem. To put it into terms you might understand, you are storing your passwords in plaintext and the traffic isn't encrypted. Basically, you're ignorant. This isn't to say that the laws that the majority put into place are good. I'm not speaking on that. You are, in this situation, that layman, who cannot solve the problem you are claiming you want to solve.
    • mrbigbob 2y ago
      you could never solve the problem of completely preventing a child or anyone from that matter from doing something if they are determined enough and you are naive in thinking so. should we remove all forms of encryption because pedophiles/terrorists use it? if a child is determined to see naughty things online theyll just find a website that doesnt care about facial recognition laws while our privacy is still stripped away even more. So we lose more privacy as a society and kids still see what they desire just taking them a few minutes/ at most hours longer. once again being a parent and paying attention to what your child is doing online or just talking to them about it. you choose to be a parent and that does require work to do a good job at it
• rchaud 2y ago
  I'm on several UK-based soccer message boards and none of this seems to be required there. The forums are running on Xenforo or PhpBB, self-hosted by the admin. Some of those forums have thousands of user accounts registered. Is Discord considered to be different as it's a centralized aggregator platform like Reddit, vs a standalone thing like a message board?
  • yeahitsgreat12 2y ago
    I haven't read the article. They aren't coming for Evoweb next are they? The UK is looking screwed man... something bad is cooking there...
• karaterobot 2y ago
  > The social media company requires users to take a selfie video on their phone and uses AI to estimate the person's age. What I did not see in this article was anything about how AI can tell a 13 year old from a 12.9 year old with confidence. This seems unlikely to me. I agree with the article's implication that websites will now want a scan of everyone's faces forever. Their insistence that they won't store the face scans is like one those cute lies that kids tell, and adults aren't fooled by. Either you're outright lying, or you're using the loophole of not storing the image, but rather storing a set of numbers, drived from the image, which act as a unique fingerprint. Or, you're sending it to a third party for storage. Or something like that. But you're definitely keeping track of everyone's faces, don't try to pull a fast one on me young lady, I've been around the block before.
• nixpulvis 2y ago
  Discord is a walled garden. Sucks how popular it is for communities which used to be free and indexable on the web.
• lenerdenator 2y ago
  This is gong to do a real number on YouTube drama documentary channels. Where are you gonna get your content if the lolcows can't creep on minors on Discord anymore? I mean, in theory, they could find ways to circumvent it, but if they were that smart, they wouldn't be the subject of YouTube drama documentaries.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• uconnectlol 2y ago
  discord is shit, poorly designed software, with all the most obnoxious poor security decisions (like requiring phone calls), with poor political decisions on top as well as spying. probably one of the worst pieces of software to ever exist. all it has is momentum. it's like pop music where a million people make bands and one wins the fame lottery. it's primarily a windows program and they can't even make a proper windows gui but embed a website, so clicking on anything is like a link instead of focusing into it. for instance if you middle click someone's name it opens it in a browser. fuck off. pressing alt+f4 closes discord instead of sending it to the tray (despite being a tray program). it's always updating something and then it just says "logging in" instead of saying what it's doing. it gets stuck indefinitely if you log in on a slow connection or you unplug lan while it's logging in or doing whatever it's doing at any given moment. absolutely the most frustrating crap to use. it has a billion options for stupid "hardcore" gamers (i am, too, but i don't need it) with special needs while not being a basic quality application that conforms to any UI standard. they openly spy on you, not even trying to hide it. instead of real software, it's a stupid fucking social media "community", so you can't just use it as a MECHANISM NOT POLICY program, instead every time you do something like log into a different account you have to check whether this is morally correct or will somehow harm their "community". like say i want to work on my blockchain, who are dumb enough to use discord as their main communication platform. i obviously then would want one account for that, then another - completely separate (but perhaps with the same phone number to make it logistically easier which SHOULDNT EVEN BE A THING, this is the internet) - account for playing games (often during work), i can't just log into these simultaneously, i have to go check what their policy is on that. literally, my first thought is that like typical incompetent american software devs, they will think i'm trying to scam people or some other kind of "abuse". and of course, they appear to have conceded to partially implement this "feature" (by undoing their nonsense about forensically attempting to forbid this)
• budmichstelk 2y ago
  [dead]