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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'

#11

Post by p_ing »

daveoc64 wrote: post #5
jjice wrote: 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).

Discord also has a manual review process.

https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/30326565624343...

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

#13

Post by lanfeust6 »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #7

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.

Which would kill social media. The cherry-picked tech giant iterations anyway.

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

#15

Post by hedora »

zevv wrote: post #12

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.

Parents?

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

#16

Post by ChocolateGod »

lanfeust6 wrote: post #13
spacebanana7 wrote: post #7

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.

Which would kill social media. The cherry-picked tech giant iterations anyway.

Exactly, targeting children with their parents credit cards is a profitable business.

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

#17

Post by londons_explore »

zevv wrote: post #12

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.

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.

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

#18

Post by nemomarx »

mezzie2 wrote: post #6
jjice wrote: 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:…

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

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

#19

Post by samlinnfer »

lanfeust6 wrote: post #13
spacebanana7 wrote: post #7

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.

Which would kill social media. The cherry-picked tech giant iterations anyway.

They already have this in China and Korea. Hasn't stopped people from using social media.

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

#20

Post by threeseed »

roenxi wrote: post #4
jjice wrote: 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-rea…

> 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/...

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