5 ms·

>Discord have belatedly confirmed that they're working with Persona, an identity detection firm backed by a fund directed by Palantir chairman Peter Thiel, as p

by gruez 9mo ago

>Discord have belatedly confirmed that they're working with Persona, an identity detection firm backed by a fund directed by Palantir chairman Peter Thiel, as part of Discord's new global age verification system rollout. >As PCGamer note, Persona's lead investors during two recent rounds of venture capital funding were Founders Fund, who valued them at $1.5 billion in 2021. The Founders Fund was co-founded by Peter Thiel in 2020. >Palantir have, among other things, worked extensively with the USA's Immigration and Customs Enforcement, aka ICE, [...] The article tries to imply that Persona might be sending your ID scans to Palantir or doing other unsavory things with it, because it's linked to Thiel, but is there any evidence for this? For instance, is Thiel known for meddling in the affairs of the companies his fund invests in, or pushing them together for collabs like what Musk does (eg. with x/x.ai/spacex)?

SoftTalker 9mo ago
I think it's prudent to assume that these companies are selling your information to anyone with two nickels to rub together, regardless of which tech celebrities they are linked to.
- reactordev 9mo ago
  This. The data collection is the product, that’s why it’s free.
  - loeber 9mo ago
    But it's not free. Persona is hugely expensive.
    - onetokeoverthe 9mo ago
      [dead]
    - reactordev 9mo ago
      If you want to buy it yourself, it is. Discord is using Persona because it’s backed by Thiel and the “Founders Fund”. They want your data. Discord has investors from multiple venture funds but Tencent is a large contributor. Yes, that Tencent.
      - islandfox100 9mo ago
        I'd like to believe that Tencent has information gathering methods more sophisticated than asking me to send them a picture of my driver's license.
- giancarlostoro 9mo ago
  This is the part that loses me, my understanding was that this was only supposed to scan things offline, not collect any PII. Are they lying about not collecting the face scanned data?
  - mirashii 9mo ago
    There's two paths for verification, and the discussion on them is muddying things. There's k-id, which is the local-only age verification, and then there's a secondary process for places where k-id is indeterminate or their system flags you as possibly still being underage, and requires ID verification. Previously, they handled this escalation path via Zendesk, which was breached revealing all of the messages with IDs. Now, they're trying out Persona for this path.
  - stuaxo 9mo ago
    There is no reason to trust them, and many not to.
  - onetokeoverthe 9mo ago
    [dead]
- dzhiurgis 9mo ago
  Palantir is an integration company. There are plenty of data brokers to scrutinize. i.e. discord itself sells your data.
  - MSM 9mo ago
    > Palantir is an integration company That's not true at all. I worked with Palantir on a project for a prior company and they'd basically do whatever you wanted if you paid them. They had a very heavy data / "AI" presence and this was years ago. They certainly do not just do integrations.
    - crimsoneer 9mo ago
      They don't buy or sell data.
      - Angostura 9mo ago
        They certainly say they don’t. Its a company that I don’t think would have any qualms about lying through its teeth.
  - mirashii 9mo ago
    https://discord.com/privacy https://discord.com/privacy > We don’t sell your personal information. No evidence that they sell your data against their privacy policy has ever come to light, so I think you should probably back that claim with evidence if you think otherwise.
    - kryogen1c 9mo ago
      To play devils advocate (i know nothing about discords use of data), isnt it trivial for any corporate counsel make legal statements like this that are not truthful? For example: we dont sell your data... we freely give it to our sister company with a common owner that sells your data.
      - 9mo ago
SilverElfin 9mo ago
I mean it probably is willing to do unsavory things and that’s the problem. Startups often are pressured by investors to do things to get continued funding in the next round. You’re already taking so much risk, you wouldn’t risk more by being on the bad side of a VC. You have to cooperate with their other portfolio companies - basically all VCs expect this. So yes, merely having Peter Thiel around is a problem. Remember, customers of Discord are facing a huge risk - that their identity could lead to the being detained or deported. Even if the chance is small they can’t take that risk. This Persona company is unfortunately not going to be acceptable to a rational user because of their affiliation.
delaminator 9mo ago
[flagged]
- Devorlon 9mo ago
  Definitely, a Spotify boycott would only be necessary if they ran ads for ICE, but that would be ridiculous... https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/spotify-ice-recruitment-ads/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/spotify-ice-recruitment-ad...
  - delaminator 9mo ago
    Why would you oppose ICE though ? Are you a criminal ? Were you calling for boycotts in 2015 when Obama presented Tom Homan the Presidential Rank Award for Distinguished Executive for his effectiveness in deporting illegal immigrants while serving as the executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations at ICE ?
harimau777 9mo ago
Do we need evidence beyond it being linked to Thiel? Being linked to one of the most evil people in America seems like more than enough to me.
- YetAnotherNick 9mo ago
  He is also linked to ycombinator which owns hacker news. If we are that reductionist, would you say that hacker news sends data to Palantir.
  - shigawire 9mo ago
    Probably does
  - dylan604 9mo ago
    Why would you think it doesn't?
  - harimau777 9mo ago
    One big difference is that Discord literally told people they were going to be using their data for a Theil backed experiment. That's a lot different than the possibility that a company might send your data. That being said, no, it wouldn't particularly surprise me if Y Combinator sends data to Palantir.
    - ggm 9mo ago
      > That being said, no, it wouldn't particularly surprise me if Y Combinator sends data to Palantir. A point I hadn't thought of before. A denial at this point wouldn't mean much because with the API and some sensible pacing anyone can access the information. "Sends" is active. "Is scraped by" is the assumed passive.
    - giancarlostoro 9mo ago
      > One big difference is that Discord literally told people they were going to be using their data for a Theil backed experiment. You got a source for that? Because the only communication I've seen from Discord implies no data is sent when these scans take place, its supposed to all take place locally FIRST is my understanding. The only exception is if the local scan goofs in some way. https://discord.com/press-releases/discord-launches-teen-by-default-settings-globally https://discord.com/press-releases/discord-launches-teen-by-... > Key privacy protections of Discord’s age-assurance approach include: > On-device processing: Video selfies for facial age estimation never leave a user’s device. > Quick deletion: Identity documents submitted to our vendor partners are deleted quickly— in most cases, immediately after age confirmation. > Straightforward age assurance: In most cases, users complete the process once and their Discord experience adapts to their verified age group. Users may be asked to use multiple methods only when more information is needed to assign an age group. > Private status: A user’s age group status cannot be seen by other users.
HillRat 9mo ago
In general, I would expect an identity verification firm that I'm hiring to secure and then physically delete any sensitive records my customers are uploading, unless I explicitly opt-in otherwise. My guess is in this case that Discord is attempting to train its own models for first-pass verification, so this is a training corpus; there's no evidence that Persona's doing anything with Palantir, other than proximity of funding. The broader issue here is that SV VC is starting to feel mildly radioactive when it comes to public opinion; Persona's previous lead fund (up through its Series B) was Index, run by the more conventionally-liberal Neil Rimer, and no one worried about that. The entanglement of Silicon Valley's oligarch class in very extreme politics* at a time of very fraught national political upheaval is making VC money politically-exposed money; if you take FF or Sequioa cash, how certain are you that they won't just get involved in your business, but push you to take specific political or social positions that serve their non-fiscal interests? How certain are your customers that that isn't happening to you? For decades, SV venture capital has been tech money, and generally smart tech money (I don't like Thiel, but the man is absolutely the smartest of the PayPal Mafia set, and his success bears that out). Now, for various reasons (the end of ZIRP, the failure of major tech bets since 2016 or so to pay off, COVID overvaluations), VCs have moved into rent-seeking, particularly on government and military contracts. It's no longer tech money, it's political money, and, compared to traditional prime vendors, it's not clear that it's smart political money. After all, when the political winds turn, possibly as soon as this November, is it a smart strategy to have worked aggressively and incessantly to alienate the party coming into power? For a lot of startups with regulatory, legal, or political exposure risk, getting entangled with that might be more trouble than it's worth. * There is no other term that suits the mix of open white supremacy and anti-democratic policies -- repealing the 19th Amendement, for example! -- that we see emerging from the PayPal Mafia.
- KittenInABox 9mo ago
  I believe the argument will be that the rent seeking will be used to position themselves such that it doesn't matter who is in power, the government will listen to them not the other way around. Admittedly, the fact is, the Epstein Files existed across multiple political parties' justice departments and none of those folks have been investigated or prosecuted...
mullingitover 9mo ago
It doesn't matter if he's known to meddle in the affairs of the companies in which he owns equity stakes. Owning the stake means he could meddle. Peter Thiel's personal brand and Palantir are so toxic and creepy in the eyes of most of the public that you can basically just substitute 'Satan' in any statement involving them, and that's how it looks to regular people. Try it: "The article tries to imply that Persona might be sending your ID scans to [one of Satan's companies] or doing other unsavory things with it, because it's linked to Satan" So for anyone who cares about PR at all, the immediate instinct upon discovering you might be linked them is to reverse course and apologize profusely to your users.
- nozzlegear 9mo ago
  > Peter Thiel's personal brand and Palantir are so toxic and creepy in the eyes of most of the public that you can basically just substitute 'Satan' in any statement involving them, and that's how it looks to regular people. [...] Which is very funny and ironic given Thiel's weird ass personal beliefs.
  - mullingitover 9mo ago
    The irony is not lost on me. Thiel's political activism on the side of people who will immediately give him the Alan Turing treatment the first chance they get is a howler for the ages.
    - reactordev 9mo ago
      Money buys influence.
- rezonant 9mo ago
  Hey, no need to defame Satan.
  - ndsipa_pomu 9mo ago
    Well, one of the two used to be an angel
egorfine 9mo ago
> is there any evidence for this I'm not sure. What I am pretty sure about is that none of those age verifying services are rolled out to protect children. Hence the question: then what for? And the only logical answer to this question is that one: to harvest data.
chatmasta 9mo ago
It’s a pretty safe assumption that any headline prominently featuring “Thiel-“ will not be substantiated by its article body. If we applied this standard of evidence to every pair of entities separated by one or two degrees of common investor, we’d have a whole industry of tainted corporations with dubious motives. (Oh wait…)
exe34 9mo ago
Can he make a profit doing it? If so, then yes, he's probably doing it. You don't become a billionaire by having scruples.
crimsoneer 9mo ago
Mentioning Palantir on the internet right now is like socially acceptable qanon, in that any semblance of critical thinking or evidence is rapidly discarded if it gets in the way of a good story.
- Aeglaecia 9mo ago
  if a companys express purpose is to milk the populace , anything but abject scorn is tacit agreement to being milked
- notanastronaut 9mo ago
  Oh the irony in this comment. A lot of QAnon nonsense is actually credible, now. It's just not pointing as many fingers at the people it lead people to believe.
torlok 9mo ago
All these people are in the same rotten ideological boat. It's safe to assume that, as long as they're not competing for the same pile of money, they're cooperating. If not now, then eventually.

by gruez 9mo ago

SoftTalker 9mo ago

I think it's prudent to assume that these companies are selling your information to anyone with two nickels to rub together, regardless of which tech celebrities they are linked to.

reactordev 9mo ago
This. The data collection is the product, that’s why it’s free.
- loeber 9mo ago
  But it's not free. Persona is hugely expensive.
  - onetokeoverthe 9mo ago
    [dead]
  - reactordev 9mo ago
    If you want to buy it yourself, it is. Discord is using Persona because it’s backed by Thiel and the “Founders Fund”. They want your data. Discord has investors from multiple venture funds but Tencent is a large contributor. Yes, that Tencent.
    - islandfox100 9mo ago
      I'd like to believe that Tencent has information gathering methods more sophisticated than asking me to send them a picture of my driver's license.
giancarlostoro 9mo ago
This is the part that loses me, my understanding was that this was only supposed to scan things offline, not collect any PII. Are they lying about not collecting the face scanned data?
- mirashii 9mo ago
  There's two paths for verification, and the discussion on them is muddying things. There's k-id, which is the local-only age verification, and then there's a secondary process for places where k-id is indeterminate or their system flags you as possibly still being underage, and requires ID verification. Previously, they handled this escalation path via Zendesk, which was breached revealing all of the messages with IDs. Now, they're trying out Persona for this path.
- stuaxo 9mo ago
  There is no reason to trust them, and many not to.
- onetokeoverthe 9mo ago
  [dead]
dzhiurgis 9mo ago
Palantir is an integration company. There are plenty of data brokers to scrutinize. i.e. discord itself sells your data.
- MSM 9mo ago
  > Palantir is an integration company That's not true at all. I worked with Palantir on a project for a prior company and they'd basically do whatever you wanted if you paid them. They had a very heavy data / "AI" presence and this was years ago. They certainly do not just do integrations.
  - crimsoneer 9mo ago
    They don't buy or sell data.
    - Angostura 9mo ago
      They certainly say they don’t. Its a company that I don’t think would have any qualms about lying through its teeth.
- mirashii 9mo ago
  https://discord.com/privacy https://discord.com/privacy > We don’t sell your personal information. No evidence that they sell your data against their privacy policy has ever come to light, so I think you should probably back that claim with evidence if you think otherwise.
  - kryogen1c 9mo ago
    To play devils advocate (i know nothing about discords use of data), isnt it trivial for any corporate counsel make legal statements like this that are not truthful? For example: we dont sell your data... we freely give it to our sister company with a common owner that sells your data.
    - 9mo ago

SilverElfin 9mo ago

I mean it probably is willing to do unsavory things and that’s the problem. Startups often are pressured by investors to do things to get continued funding in the next round. You’re already taking so much risk, you wouldn’t risk more by being on the bad side of a VC. You have to cooperate with their other portfolio companies - basically all VCs expect this. So yes, merely having Peter Thiel around is a problem. Remember, customers of Discord are facing a huge risk - that their identity could lead to the being detained or deported. Even if the chance is small they can’t take that risk. This Persona company is unfortunately not going to be acceptable to a rational user because of their affiliation.

delaminator 9mo ago

[flagged]

Devorlon 9mo ago
Definitely, a Spotify boycott would only be necessary if they ran ads for ICE, but that would be ridiculous... https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/spotify-ice-recruitment-ads/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/spotify-ice-recruitment-ad...
- delaminator 9mo ago
  Why would you oppose ICE though ? Are you a criminal ? Were you calling for boycotts in 2015 when Obama presented Tom Homan the Presidential Rank Award for Distinguished Executive for his effectiveness in deporting illegal immigrants while serving as the executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations at ICE ?

harimau777 9mo ago

Do we need evidence beyond it being linked to Thiel? Being linked to one of the most evil people in America seems like more than enough to me.

YetAnotherNick 9mo ago
He is also linked to ycombinator which owns hacker news. If we are that reductionist, would you say that hacker news sends data to Palantir.
- shigawire 9mo ago
  Probably does
- dylan604 9mo ago
  Why would you think it doesn't?
- harimau777 9mo ago
  One big difference is that Discord literally told people they were going to be using their data for a Theil backed experiment. That's a lot different than the possibility that a company might send your data. That being said, no, it wouldn't particularly surprise me if Y Combinator sends data to Palantir.
  - ggm 9mo ago
    > That being said, no, it wouldn't particularly surprise me if Y Combinator sends data to Palantir. A point I hadn't thought of before. A denial at this point wouldn't mean much because with the API and some sensible pacing anyone can access the information. "Sends" is active. "Is scraped by" is the assumed passive.
  - giancarlostoro 9mo ago
    > One big difference is that Discord literally told people they were going to be using their data for a Theil backed experiment. You got a source for that? Because the only communication I've seen from Discord implies no data is sent when these scans take place, its supposed to all take place locally FIRST is my understanding. The only exception is if the local scan goofs in some way. https://discord.com/press-releases/discord-launches-teen-by-default-settings-globally https://discord.com/press-releases/discord-launches-teen-by-... > Key privacy protections of Discord’s age-assurance approach include: > On-device processing: Video selfies for facial age estimation never leave a user’s device. > Quick deletion: Identity documents submitted to our vendor partners are deleted quickly— in most cases, immediately after age confirmation. > Straightforward age assurance: In most cases, users complete the process once and their Discord experience adapts to their verified age group. Users may be asked to use multiple methods only when more information is needed to assign an age group. > Private status: A user’s age group status cannot be seen by other users.

HillRat 9mo ago

In general, I would expect an identity verification firm that I'm hiring to secure and then physically delete any sensitive records my customers are uploading, unless I explicitly opt-in otherwise. My guess is in this case that Discord is attempting to train its own models for first-pass verification, so this is a training corpus; there's no evidence that Persona's doing anything with Palantir, other than proximity of funding. The broader issue here is that SV VC is starting to feel mildly radioactive when it comes to public opinion; Persona's previous lead fund (up through its Series B) was Index, run by the more conventionally-liberal Neil Rimer, and no one worried about that. The entanglement of Silicon Valley's oligarch class in very extreme politics* at a time of very fraught national political upheaval is making VC money politically-exposed money; if you take FF or Sequioa cash, how certain are you that they won't just get involved in your business, but push you to take specific political or social positions that serve their non-fiscal interests? How certain are your customers that that isn't happening to you? For decades, SV venture capital has been tech money, and generally smart tech money (I don't like Thiel, but the man is absolutely the smartest of the PayPal Mafia set, and his success bears that out). Now, for various reasons (the end of ZIRP, the failure of major tech bets since 2016 or so to pay off, COVID overvaluations), VCs have moved into rent-seeking, particularly on government and military contracts. It's no longer tech money, it's political money, and, compared to traditional prime vendors, it's not clear that it's smart political money. After all, when the political winds turn, possibly as soon as this November, is it a smart strategy to have worked aggressively and incessantly to alienate the party coming into power? For a lot of startups with regulatory, legal, or political exposure risk, getting entangled with that might be more trouble than it's worth. * There is no other term that suits the mix of open white supremacy and anti-democratic policies -- repealing the 19th Amendement, for example! -- that we see emerging from the PayPal Mafia.

KittenInABox 9mo ago
I believe the argument will be that the rent seeking will be used to position themselves such that it doesn't matter who is in power, the government will listen to them not the other way around. Admittedly, the fact is, the Epstein Files existed across multiple political parties' justice departments and none of those folks have been investigated or prosecuted...

mullingitover 9mo ago

It doesn't matter if he's known to meddle in the affairs of the companies in which he owns equity stakes. Owning the stake means he could meddle. Peter Thiel's personal brand and Palantir are so toxic and creepy in the eyes of most of the public that you can basically just substitute 'Satan' in any statement involving them, and that's how it looks to regular people. Try it: "The article tries to imply that Persona might be sending your ID scans to [one of Satan's companies] or doing other unsavory things with it, because it's linked to Satan" So for anyone who cares about PR at all, the immediate instinct upon discovering you might be linked them is to reverse course and apologize profusely to your users.

nozzlegear 9mo ago
> Peter Thiel's personal brand and Palantir are so toxic and creepy in the eyes of most of the public that you can basically just substitute 'Satan' in any statement involving them, and that's how it looks to regular people. [...] Which is very funny and ironic given Thiel's weird ass personal beliefs.
- mullingitover 9mo ago
  The irony is not lost on me. Thiel's political activism on the side of people who will immediately give him the Alan Turing treatment the first chance they get is a howler for the ages.
  - reactordev 9mo ago
    Money buys influence.
rezonant 9mo ago
Hey, no need to defame Satan.
- ndsipa_pomu 9mo ago
  Well, one of the two used to be an angel

egorfine 9mo ago

> is there any evidence for this I'm not sure. What I am pretty sure about is that none of those age verifying services are rolled out to protect children. Hence the question: then what for? And the only logical answer to this question is that one: to harvest data.

chatmasta 9mo ago

It’s a pretty safe assumption that any headline prominently featuring “Thiel-“ will not be substantiated by its article body. If we applied this standard of evidence to every pair of entities separated by one or two degrees of common investor, we’d have a whole industry of tainted corporations with dubious motives. (Oh wait…)

exe34 9mo ago

Can he make a profit doing it? If so, then yes, he's probably doing it. You don't become a billionaire by having scruples.

crimsoneer 9mo ago

Mentioning Palantir on the internet right now is like socially acceptable qanon, in that any semblance of critical thinking or evidence is rapidly discarded if it gets in the way of a good story.

Aeglaecia 9mo ago
if a companys express purpose is to milk the populace , anything but abject scorn is tacit agreement to being milked
notanastronaut 9mo ago
Oh the irony in this comment. A lot of QAnon nonsense is actually credible, now. It's just not pointing as many fingers at the people it lead people to believe.

torlok 9mo ago

All these people are in the same rotten ideological boat. It's safe to assume that, as long as they're not competing for the same pile of money, they're cooperating. If not now, then eventually.