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

bbc.com

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

#2
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:.

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

#4
post #2

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 sit…

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.

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

#5
post #2

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 sit…

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).

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

#6
post #2

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 sit…

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.

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

#8
post #2

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 sit…

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?

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

#9
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.

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

#10

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.

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.

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