Highly recommend wrapping the code to drop into the console in a immediately-invoked function expression; as it stands, it doesn't work in macOS Safari without an IIFE because top-level await is not supported in any version of Safari yet https://caniuse.com/wf-top-level-await.
Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass
191–200 of 494 posts
Re: Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
>remaining customers of a service that is actively hostile against them because that's not how they view it. For most Gen Z users and younger their digital identity already is their identity and they have no problem verifying it because the idea of being anonymous on a social network defeats the purpose of being there in the first place.
Universalising any group is dangerous, but this isn't true for even the least informed young people I know. They grew up being watched. They know what these data harvesting operations are and how dangerous this is. They've got front row seats to the dystopia. The difference is that they can't / couldn't do anything about it. They think the world is broken and that you broke it. They're pissed off. And powerless. Not…
sorry but the source for the wave of discontent is... a new york times op-ed on kids with flip phones? How many of them are there? I think universalizing is appropriate because unlike previous generations there isn't even a meaningful counter-culture. Even the luddites in all likelihood get more traction as a story on Instagram than the actual thing, where do you think they go to get their cottage core fix? I haven't seen a resurgence in self-hosted blogs. The sentence "cottage core is a major trend" is in itself hilarious. Where was it trending?
Looking at the numbers that TikTok or Meta are doing I think you can unequivocally say that the vast majority of young people do not care, at all, the 'luddite teen' is the digital version of, and about as real, as the Gen Z 'trad wife'.
If you're going to a CCC event you're much more likely to see resistance in the form of someone like Cory Doctorow, an actually angry middle aged guy who to my knowledge has not converted to flip phone cottage core to stick it to the man.
Re: Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass
#193Recent and related:
Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46945663 - Feb 2026 (1999 comments)
Discord Alternatives, Ranked - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46949564 - Feb 2026 (456 comments)
Discord faces backlash over age checks after data breach exposed 70k IDs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46951999 - Feb 2026 (21 comments)
Re: Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
They already support ID checks as an alternative to face scanning, if the latter proves to be untenable then it's literally a case of flipping a switch to mandate ID instead.
The long term solution would have to be some kind of integration with a government platform where the platform doesn’t see your ID and the government doesn’t see what you are signing up for. I don’t this will happen in the US but I can see it in more privacy responding countries. Apple and Google may also add some kind of “child flag” parents can enable which tells websites and apps this user is a child and all age c…
I do like the idea of the “this is a child” taint (ok, terrible name but I really think it should be a near-unremovable thing on a platform like Apple’s that’s so locked down/crypto signed etc).
Like, you’d enroll it by adding a DOB and the computer/phone/etc would just intentionally fail all compatible age checks until that date is 18 years in the past. To remove it (e.g. reuse a device for a non-child), an adult would need to show ID in person at Apple.
Government IDs could be used to do completely privacy preserving, basically OpenID Connect but with no identifying property, just an “isEighteenOrMore” property. However, i agree it’ll never happen in the US because “regular” people still don’t know how identity providers can attest without identifying, and thus would never agree to use their government ID to sign into a pornsite. And on top of all that yeah nobody trusts the government, basically in either party, so they’d be convinced the government was secretly keeping a record of which porn sites they use. Which to be fair is not entirely unlikely. Heck, they’d probably even do it by incompetence via logs or something and then have people get blackmailed!
Re: Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass
#195The comments so far assume that Discord / Twitch / Snapchat don't care as entities that people will start bypassing their age verification systems. I believe the rank-and-file think that's the case. I think even the engineers and PMs think that's the case. But that's not the game.
There are many ways in which such a system could be implemented. They could have asked people to use a credit card. Adult entertainment services have been using this as a way to do tacit age verification for a very long time now. Or, they could have made a new zero-knowledge proof system. Or, ideally, they could have told the authorities to get bent.
Tech is hardly the first industry to face significant (justifiable or unjustifiable) government backlash. I am hesitant to use them as examples as they're a net harm, whereas this is about preventing a societal net harm, but the fossil fuel and tobacco industries fought their governments for decades and straight up changed the political system to suit them.
FAANG are richer than they ever were. Even Discord can raise more and deploy more capital than most of the tobacco industry at the time. It's also a righteous cause. A cause most people can get behind (see: privacy as a selling point for Apple and the backlash to Ring). But they're not fighting this. They're leaning into it.
Let's take a look at what they're asking from people for a second, the face scan,
If you choose Facial Age Estimation, you’ll be prompted to record a short video selfie of your face. The Facial Age Estimation technology runs entirely on your device in real time when you are performing the verification. That means that facial scans never leave your device, and Discord and vendors never receive it. We only get your age group.
k-id, the age verification provider discord uses doesn't store or send your face to the server. instead, it sends a bunch of metadata about your face and general process details.
Discord is also doing profiling along vectors (presumably behavioral and demographic features) which the author describes as,
after some trial and error, we narrowed the checked part to the prediction arrays, which are outputs, primaryOutputs and raws.
turns out, both outputs and primaryOutputs are generated from raws. basically, the raw numbers are mapped to age outputs, and then the outliers get removed with z-score (once for primaryOutputs and twice for outputs).
Is some or all of this data being turned into features that are being fed to this third-party k-ID? https://www.k-id.com/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattgardner1/2024/06/25/k-id-cl...
https://www.techinasia.com/a16z-lightspeed-bet-singapore-par...
k-ID is (at first glance) extracting fairly similar data from Snapchat, Twitch etc. With ID documents added into the mix, this certainly seems like a very interesting global profiling dataset backstopped with government documentation as ground truth. :)
Re: Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
The long term solution would have to be some kind of integration with a government platform where the platform doesn’t see your ID and the government doesn’t see what you are signing up for. I don’t this will happen in the US but I can see it in more privacy responding countries. Apple and Google may also add some kind of “child flag” parents can enable which tells websites and apps this user is a child and all age c…
I do like the idea of the “this is a child” taint (ok, terrible name but I really think it should be a near-unremovable thing on a platform like Apple’s that’s so locked down/crypto signed etc). Like, you’d enroll it by adding a DOB and the computer/phone/etc would just intentionally fail all compatible age checks until that date is 18 years in the past. To remove it (e.g. reuse a device for a non-child), an adult wo…
When I played an MMOG, if the admins found out that a child was underage, it was customary for them to suspend their account until their 13th birthday. I thought this was a clever policy, but I just can't understand the reverse of authenticating someone's age based on that of their account...
Re: Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass
#197[flagged]
Re: Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass
#198[flagged]
I’ll comply with a police officer because of their threat of violence. I will not comply with online bullshit, because Discord can’t shoot me.
Re: Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
> remaining customers of a service that is actively hostile against them and that they do not like And yet here we all are, still in an uproar every time GitHub goes down. Change is slow, we can't all leave GitHub in a day. Same with Discord users.
I think the Discord situation is a bit different. Getting everyone to switch away from Discord has been hard because getting everyone to spontaneously switch with no clear benefit hasn't worked. They want to just keep using the app and get back into a game with their friend. It's different to lock a door and task users with getting the key to come back in. This is more similar to an MMORPG that kills their audience b…
> getting everyone to spontaneously switch with no clear benefit hasn't worked
Somehow Discord pulled it off. It really didn't have much of an edge over the other chat apps at launch, just was slightly easier to use because it was simpler. A new site launching now could easily have that over Discord.
Re: Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
They already support ID checks as an alternative to face scanning, if the latter proves to be untenable then it's literally a case of flipping a switch to mandate ID instead.
Personal Identity Verification (PIV) and Common Access Card (CAC) credentials used by US government & military via NFC already work on web browsers. States should just move to digital IDs stored on smartphones, with chain of trust up through the secure element...
This is extremely dangerous, and would only work with hardware/software that is nonfree (i.e., not under the user's control, or any attestation could be spoofed).