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

bbc.com

31–40 of 448 posts

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

#31
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…

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.

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.

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

#32
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…

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.

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

#33
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.

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

#34
post #26

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 le…

> 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.

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

#35
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.

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.

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

#36
post #26

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 le…

> 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.

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

#37
post #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:…

[deleted]

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

#38

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.

> 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…

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.

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

#39
post #33

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. A…

[deleted]

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

#40

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.

ultimately, i think the endgame is to require government ID in order to access internet services in general, a la ender's game.
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