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Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month

theverge.com

191–200 of 1001 posts

Re: Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month

#191

It's kind of surprising that no-one has really come out with a proper privacy-preserving approach to this yet. It is clearly _possible_; there are reasonable-looking designs for this. But no-one's doing it; they're just collecting photos and IDs, and then leaking them all over the place.

It is only a matter of time before ID verification means the camera is always on watching the face of the person looking at the screen.

Re: Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month

#192
post #23

Here's the October 2025 Discord data breach mentioned at the end of the article: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8jmzd972leo > Discord, a messaging platform popular with gamers, says official ID photos of around 70,000 users have potentially been leaked after a cyber-attack. However, their senior director states in this Verge article: > The ID is immediately deleted. We do not keep any information around like your…

I believe the original finding was that they were not deleting IDs that were involved in disputes.

Re: Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month

#193

Ignoring the implications of this for the moment, let me broach a related (and arguably more important) question: what do you do when you have multiple communities you interact with only on one platform, and suddenly that platform becomes intolerable for a subset of your community?

We start a new app. Opensource Discord, Self-hosted, federated. Serving that subsection that cares about privacy and security. Discord is a good design, and should be replicated rapidly with mutations from competitors galore.

Revolt/stoat has existed for quite a while: https://itsfoss.com/revolt/

Re: Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month

#194

Haven't cared about Discord in a long time. In fact I'm glad they're continuing to shoot themselves in the foot. During the pandemic, I was on a Discord server for folks to socialize and blow off steam about the whole situation. Yes, there were some anti-vaxx wackos, but overall the place was civil and balanced, and I met some interesting people through it. We cracked jokes and it was a little bit of fun in a tough t…

[flagged]

Re: Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month

#195

You’re out of your mind if you think I’m gonna upload ID to use a “shitposting about video games with friends” service.

I have discord for gaming communities, but also for political communities. Pod Save America has a discord with thousands of users talking political things. While I don't mask my identity there, I sure don't want Discord preemptively linking my state ID to my person. Screw that.

If you're worried about government retaliation they can already figure out who you are from what discord has, especially with a justice department that doesn't really even care about looking like they're following the law

Re: Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month

#197
Finally I feel validated complaining for the last decade about the move away from IRC/teamspeak to centralized services. I've been called all kinds of names.

Now those same people are complaining they're gonna have to submit their faces to discord. Which will eventually be used to prosecute or commit fraud. I'm left wondering if "tech enthusiasts" are ever actually correct.

Re: Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month

#198
post #27

Hard no. Reality is that this push is everywhere. Authoritarian governments are cracking down hard on dissent, they're not going to leave huge platforms for communication untouched. We'll need open source decentralized alternatives.

HN: Social media is terrible and ruining kids' mental health.

Also HN: Any attempt to limit access to verified adults is an "authoritarian crackdown" and totally unacceptable.

Re: Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month

#199
post #8

How many people are doing age restricted stuff on Discord (besides the specifically there for adult content and gooning crowd) All of my use is primarily professional and gaming and has no age concerns

Does it matter? The problem is that everyone uses discord for everything. It's not an isolated platform, it's THE platform if you want to have friends.

Re: Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month

#200
post #23

Here's the October 2025 Discord data breach mentioned at the end of the article: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8jmzd972leo > Discord, a messaging platform popular with gamers, says official ID photos of around 70,000 users have potentially been leaked after a cyber-attack. However, their senior director states in this Verge article: > The ID is immediately deleted. We do not keep any information around like your…

They explained it in their announcement at https://discord.com/press-releases/update-on-security-incide...

TL;DR: The IDs were used in age-related appeals. If someone's account was banned for being too young they have to submit an ID as part of the appeal. Appeals take time to process and review.

Discord has 200,000,000 users and age verification happens a lot due to the number of young users and different countries.

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