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

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

#231
post #213

A lot of whining here about how this is an imperfect response to the issue of children being exploited on Discord / using the platform to engage with inappropriate content. Until someone offers up something better, I take these types of initiatives from social media platforms as huge wins. Ignoring the problem will not make it better. We've been ignoring it for about 20 years now, and it's only gotten worse.

Be responsible for your spawn and don't be a weenie about asserting boundaries for them.

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

#232
post #37

I wonder if Discord is legally forced to do that, or if they would rather do it themselves (and collect the data $$$) rather than wait to be imposed a solution they don't own. I feel like age verification will come, there is no way around it (unlike ChatControl and the likes, age verification seems reasonably feasible and has a lot of political traction right now). But I would rather have a privacy-preserving solutio…

There are probably enough regions where it is required or will be required soon, that it makes sense to just get it over with. The Internet is more or less becoming a locked down, controlled and fully observed thing for end users and citizens, so adapting to that world sooner and working within it is just sensible future-proofing. This also lets them more safely target older users with ads, purchase requests, etc. an…

GeoIP this nonsense. Legal liability is solved as a "good-faith effort" and those living in jurisdictions where this doesn't apply (or use a VPN) don't need to be stripped of privacy.

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

#233
post #220

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?

If this happened 15+ years ago, a huge chunk of the userbase likely would've migrated to alternatives, potentially resulting in Discord being replaced and falling into irrelevance. Today, though, no chance that happens. The current generation literally grew up with it, same for most of the other established social media apps. The concept of alternatives largely does not exist for them. And besides, they were probably…

There's also people who have been through enough of these moves and community splits that they're incredibly tired of it all.

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

#234
I set up a forum when I started my site for Linux content creation. Discord had become a black hole for technical know-how on a scale IRC could never dream of, and finding answers to common questions was nigh impossible since the technology has changed and the modern way to solve problem X was never asked in a forum and never indexed by a search engine. Granted, Reddit provided a bit of a stopgap over the last decade, but the solutions in the comments these days are more often than not a confidently incorrect copy-pasta from GPT.

I use Discord for chat and voice calls since that is what I expect from a chat app, but the amount of companies that have built their community / knowledge base / support system around Discord is worrying. You know they can just delete that, right?

I'll continue to use Discord for chat until prompted to put my face in the hole :)

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

#235

The sad thing is that I think many people will en masse pony up their ID or snapshot without a second thought. I'm not sure if enough people will refuse to actually force Discord to back off this decision (unless their idea is to grab as much data as possible at once with the understanding that they are going to back off either way).

Sounds like when Netflix reneged on family accounts.

I cancelled my account in protest, but their financials say they made money on the change (and thus all the execs are happy with it).

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

#236

I deleted my Facebook account in 2011. After finding out how much critical neighborhood information I have been missing, I finally registered a new Facebook account fifteen years later to follow my neighborhood groups. A month later, the account was suspended for supposedly breaking guidelines. I never posted a single message, never reacted to any posts. They then required me to upload a video scan of my face to prov…

Had a similar experience after rejoining a few years ago. My account wasn't suspended for breaking guidelines AFAIK, but rather flagged as a suspicious account that required an upload of my face and driver's license. I think the account still exists in this limbo state because I'd rather not upload all of that to Facebook, and yet still not able to login to request for the account to be deleted.

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

#237
post #213

A lot of whining here about how this is an imperfect response to the issue of children being exploited on Discord / using the platform to engage with inappropriate content. Until someone offers up something better, I take these types of initiatives from social media platforms as huge wins. Ignoring the problem will not make it better. We've been ignoring it for about 20 years now, and it's only gotten worse.

The solution is parents! Stop making your bad parenting my problem!

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

#239
It should go without saying but,

*CANCEL YOUR NITRO SUBSCRIPTION NOW IF YOU'RE PAYING FOR ONE* (for whatever reason)

This was just announced today and a flood of canceled payments within the next 24 hours are the easiest way to send a message. And also tell people on the servers you're on to do the same. It's not like they give you anything of real value for that money.

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

#240

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 clearly _possible_ Is it? I don't think it is. I truly don't believe that there's any possible way to verify someone's age without collecting ID from them.

Well you could have government-run cryptographically signed tokens. They're already in the business of holding ID data (i.e. they don't need to collect it and this wouldn't increase the attack surface).

But assuming it has to be a private solution, you could do the same thing but make it a non-profit. Then at least _new_ services you wish to use don't need to collect your ID.

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