Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Discord distances from age verification firm after ties to Peter Thiel surface

kotaku.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 138 posts

Re: Discord distances from age verification firm after ties to Peter Thiel surface

#111

Post by upboundspiral »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #104
xethos wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have that today though - it's called Matrix. While other platforms aren't literally built upon it like Hangouts was in the beforetimes, it allows inter-op with more platforms. Whatsapp, Telegram, Discord, Facebook Messenger, Signal, Google Chat (née Google Hangouts)... and those are just the ones I'm using. The full list includes more [0] We can disagree about what counts as good enough for the mass market in the…

> you can even change which app you want it to be. From a limited set of options. My friends are the mass market. You and I are savvy, tech folks and we know what Matrix is. I've got friends who work as car mechanics, secretaries, teachers, etc. They're not dumb, they can spend the time to figure out which app will work best for them on their computers and phones, but they don't particularly want to spend their time…

I agree that it would take something catastrophic for people to move off of the service they currently use. I disagree however on the premise that the move will be from one proprietary service to another. Us tech savvy people can and should self-host the things we believe can be valuable - now or down the line.

I'm not on mastodon but I've perused some threads and if it brings value to people great - the fact that it was there when twitter imploded means some portion of the population actually moved to it and now uses it. It provided some real value to people.

Re: Discord distances from age verification firm after ties to Peter Thiel surface

#112

Post by uyzstvqs »

randerson wrote: post #93
uyzstvqs wrote: post #45

Can't we just do this age verification locally on-device? Just some WASM to run a small AI model, which scans face+ID. I know it'll be easier to bypass, but that does not matter. We're trying to stop children, not adults with technical skill.

Don't forget teenagers can be extremely skilled technically. Plus they have a lot of time! But you're on the right track. I think of a solution like: 1. Browser does one-time age verification through 3rd party service, without disclosing any details about which sites you'll access. 2. Browser stores your age, signed by that service. 3. When a site requests it the browser passes that signed age over. The site simply h…

It'd be best to create a standard for this using wallet apps. You can obtain an age certificate from any trusted provider (decentralized chain-of-trust similar to TLS CAs), which you can then load into any wallet app of your choice on any OS, and use it with any online service which supports the standard. This should use anonymous, unlinkable(!) proofs, with the only certified data being `is_over_age`.

Though I'd prefer the way proposed by Mark Camilleri Gambin (EU politician). Have parents enable Child Mode during device setup, then expose `isMinor = true` to all websites and apps, require a parental control PIN to disable. This is a much better and cleaner solution. Requiring age verification of all adults gets it backwards.

Re: Discord distances from age verification firm after ties to Peter Thiel surface

#113

Post by uyzstvqs »

phatfish wrote: post #84
jasonvorhe wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about age verification but control and digital id.

Doesn't everyone have a digital ID already? My passport has biometrics, the government knows everything about me already through the tax system which is "digital". All my other interactions with the government are through digital services. What exactly would a digital ID allow a government to do that it can't already? Apart from solve all the issues with having to provide scans of (my already digital) ID documents to…

Digital ID to interact with government services is great. It becomes a problem when they add something like OpenID4VC to it, with the intention of linking it to all your online activity for "age verification". This would create one giant government metadata silo on every individual's online activity.

Re: Discord distances from age verification firm after ties to Peter Thiel surface

#114

Post by wiml »

pnt12 wrote: post #54
uyzstvqs wrote: post #45

Can't we just do this age verification locally on-device? Just some WASM to run a small AI model, which scans face+ID. I know it'll be easier to bypass, but that does not matter. We're trying to stop children, not adults with technical skill.

The browser could also emit the age, which sites could check to block, and parents could manage via parental controls. But that's no fun: can't assure control of the children (bad), monetization (even worse) not share with government (the worst, given the current administration).

Even better, the site could just tell the browser that there's age-sensitive content and the browser could check it. There are already standards for this!

The problem is, it doesn't give a legally-enforced monopoly to any rent seeking data brokers, and it doesn't act as a foot in the door for requiring government-ID attribution of all internet activity everywhere.

Re: Discord distances from age verification firm after ties to Peter Thiel surface

#115

Post by kjkjadksj »

fragmede wrote: post #77
uyzstvqs wrote: post #45

Can't we just do this age verification locally on-device? Just some WASM to run a small AI model, which scans face+ID. I know it'll be easier to bypass, but that does not matter. We're trying to stop children, not adults with technical skill.

children have access to 4chan and ChatGPT. hacking the macOS kernel driver to disable the LED that says the camera is on should be out of the technical realm of children, but, well, it happened and was abused by children against other children.

Source? I thought the LED was hardwired to the camera power.

Re: Discord distances from age verification firm after ties to Peter Thiel surface

#116

Post by JPKab »

Hikikomori wrote: post #101
JPKab wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Garry is a good person and smearing people over their church is a disgusting thing to do. I am now going to sit here and listen to this talk because I guarantee it's not saying what you think it's saying. And I don't want to listen to it. It's not a topic that interests me. But I guarantee you are completely distorting what was stated in that topic for maximum effect, entirely motivated by left-wing politics.

Going by your comment history any criticism of Thiel and the administration is just left wing politics, but hard to hear you over the sound of drowning yourself with kool-aid. Weird that you seem to support this administration that Thiel is very much associated with but find it offensive when there's a very clear association between Thiel and Garry. He's just going to this specific church to pray or whatever? Paying…

I've been on HN for well over 10 years. I literally volunteered for Obama's 2008 and 2012 campaigns, and my comments in that time period clearly show my politics. I taught free web scraping workshops at the Center for American Progress to journalists back then. None of my policy preferences have changed. What's changed is the frothing at the mouth radicalism and moralizing of the team I used to support.

I'm not religious, and hate religious radicals, but ideologues act identically, just with secular idols. I didn't see that until I watched what the leftist ideologies did to the quality of life in two places I used to live in:

SF and Boulder.

I'm a 2012 Democrat, which makes me a fascist to a 2026 Democrat.

Re: Discord distances from age verification firm after ties to Peter Thiel surface

#117

Post by temp84858696945 »

hinata08 wrote: post #56
rockskon wrote: post #12

"Discord Distances itself from Peter Thiel's Palantir Age Verification Firm" means jack shit if they're still doing business with them. And Discord has approached this in such a monstrously awful way that I don't know what they could possibly say at this point to make me believe them. I fully expect Discord will buddy-buddy right back up with some other Thiel-affiliated company if there is a separation if not go righ…

To do the Simpsons quotes like suggested in the article, Discord picking age verification "third party providers" definitely looks like they park various vans across the street. One of them didn't delete IDs properly and leaked them. Now Peter Thiel's Age verification truck has been parked across the street for 2 weeks. How long does it take to deliver a pizza ? They need to replace it with Flowers By Irene van ? Who…

I get the feeling they do not in fact take age verification seriously and just want to do the low effort solution needed to satisfy various countries laws.

Re: Discord distances from age verification firm after ties to Peter Thiel surface

#118

Post by dgxyz »

jacquesm wrote: post #109
dgxyz wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the environmental campaigning that’s the issue. I am very much aligned with that. In fact I’ve done a fair bit of that myself and you’ll occasionally find me at demonstrations. I think most people are well aligned with that. It’s the deep dive into geopolitics which is now being used to discredit her that is the problem. There’s things you don’t touch with a pole and she’s been all over them. That’s why the…

> She did a lot of damage to the environmental cause getting involved. No she didn't. She pointed out there is hypocrisy on both sides of these arguments. Environmental causes are not immune to being hijacked and there has been plenty of that.

She literally just handed them the weapon they needed to discredit her and the rest of us. Total shit show.

Re: Discord distances from age verification firm after ties to Peter Thiel surface

#119

Post by bigbadfeline »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #104
xethos wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have that today though - it's called Matrix. While other platforms aren't literally built upon it like Hangouts was in the beforetimes, it allows inter-op with more platforms. Whatsapp, Telegram, Discord, Facebook Messenger, Signal, Google Chat (née Google Hangouts)... and those are just the ones I'm using. The full list includes more [0] We can disagree about what counts as good enough for the mass market in the…

> you can even change which app you want it to be. From a limited set of options. My friends are the mass market. You and I are savvy, tech folks and we know what Matrix is. I've got friends who work as car mechanics, secretaries, teachers, etc. They're not dumb, they can spend the time to figure out which app will work best for them on their computers and phones, but they don't particularly want to spend their time…

> For all its faults, Discord is easy, and it's good.

Kind of, but in the past. It isn't good for today's web, otherwise we wouldn't be in this discussion.

Re: Discord distances from age verification firm after ties to Peter Thiel surface

#120

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

uyzstvqs wrote: post #45

Can't we just do this age verification locally on-device? Just some WASM to run a small AI model, which scans face+ID. I know it'll be easier to bypass, but that does not matter. We're trying to stop children, not adults with technical skill.

The problem that then you need hardware attestation and of course they will exclude linux, because why not.
Post reply on HN