Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

Discord’s age verification is optional and only required to disable the image content filter, join adult servers, and a couple other features. I’m not saying it’s a good decision, but I am getting tired of the repeated claim that it’s mandatory to go do age verification to use the service.

This lazy reporting is hurting the messaging because readers will believe that mandatory age verification was implemented and everything is fine, so new laws will not change anything for the worse. It needs to be clear that age verification laws would change the situation considerably, not be a nothingburger.

I don’t plan to do the Discord age verification and neither do most of the people I interact with on Discord. It’s not mandatory.

I don’t recommend anyone rush to do the Discord age verification unless you really need to for some reason. Don’t believe all of the lazy articles saying it’s mandatory.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#6

Post by john_strinlai » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 1:32 PM UTC

>An FTC spokesperson told CNBC that companies must limit how collected information is used. [...] The agency pointed to existing rules requiring firms to retain personal information only as long as reasonably necessary and to safeguard its confidentiality and integrity.

the very same rules that have allowed literally every single piece of my data to be leaked several separate times, and now i have free credit monitoring instead of privacy? and all of those companies still operate normally, as if nothing ever happened? very neat.

>Discord said it is using the additional time this year to add more verification options, including credit cards, more transparency on vendors and technical detail of how age verification will work

and why didnt we start with credit cards? instead of facial recognition with peter thiel? (this is a rhetorical question)

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#7

Post by bilekas » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 1:34 PM UTC

The fact that these tools are 'active' centric, i.e : You must perform an action to validate you're NOT a child, these will never protect children. A predator simply needs not to verify anything and appear benign and ironically more anonymous than law abiding people.

I'm not saying the inverse is the answer either, just that if anyone without an agenda of surveillance looked at this for a second, the penny would have dropped. So I can only assume that this was the purpose the whole time.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#8

Post by ej31 » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 1:36 PM UTC

bilekas wrote: post #7

The fact that these tools are 'active' centric, i.e : You must perform an action to validate you're NOT a child, these will never protect children. A predator simply needs not to verify anything and appear benign and ironically more anonymous than law abiding people. I'm not saying the inverse is the answer either, just that if anyone without an agenda of surveillance looked at this for a second, the penny would have…

Age verification doesn't stop determined bad actors, it just builds a database of everyone who cooperated...........

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#9

Post by chewbacha » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 1:37 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #5

> Social media company Discord announced plans in February to roll out mandatory age verification globally, Discord’s age verification is optional and only required to disable the image content filter, join adult servers, and a couple other features. I’m not saying it’s a good decision, but I am getting tired of the repeated claim that it’s mandatory to go do age verification to use the service. This lazy reporting i…

Maybe! But laws like California’s new law and the Texas law both are making it mandatory from a legal compliance point of view.

The direction of these restrictions is not “optional”

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#10

Post by BLKNSLVR » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 1:39 PM UTC

ej31 wrote: post #8

bilekas wrote: post #7

The fact that these tools are 'active' centric, i.e : You must perform an action to validate you're NOT a child, these will never protect children. A predator simply needs not to verify anything and appear benign and ironically more anonymous than law abiding people. I'm not saying the inverse is the answer either, just that if anyone without an agenda of surveillance looked at this for a second, the penny would have…

Age verification doesn't stop determined bad actors, it just builds a database of everyone who cooperated...........

Know they sheep, the better to keep them penned.