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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

• 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