Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift' • Hacker News Board

Re: Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'

#271

Post by megous » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 10:24 AM UTC

x187463 wrote: post #26

I see a lot of comments here arguing age requirements are overreach and these decisions should be left to the parents. To those presenting such arguments, do you think that applies to other activities as well? What about smoking/drinking/firearms? Pornography? Driving? I haven't researched the topic of social media's effect on young people, but the common sentiment I encounter is that it's generally harmful, or at le…

Clicking a box gives person a chance to decide whether they want to enter a website or not, without getting exposed to it immediately. It's not useless.

It also povides no useful information to the website operator, which is good. If the info is useful, it will be logged.

If it is logged, well, I've seen what morally derailed hightech state will do with any and all data they can get hold off. They'll put it all in a giant AI lottery machine to generate and "justify" targets for their genocide, to kill and burn entire families at once. It's happening now elsewhere in the world.

What should be scary to everyone is that it's being justified or at best ignored by supposedly morally "normal" western states (like mine) which are not engaged directly in such behavior, yet.

I do not trust "elites", who are able to ignore or justify this being done elsewhere, with making traceable any of my behavioral data directly to me, by forced provision of identity to services that don't need any for their function.

Re: Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'

#272

Post by 9dev » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 10:26 AM UTC

graemep wrote: post #269

9dev wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a very strange take on governments, treating them as a singular entity. A government that deserves that name is first and foremost and elected set of representatives of the constituents, and thus like citizens that vote for them again, act in their interests. If the government is not working like that, you have an administrative problem, not a societal one. A state is its population.

I would say it is a realistic take, and yours is idealistic.

It isn’t realistic, it’s pessimistic. If the government, the system, is your opponent, there is no other outcome than subversion, everything is futile anyway. That leaves no room for democratic participation, for any kind of peaceful change, if you’re being earnest with it. And that seems very cynical and ideologically driven to me. There’s a lot of room for improvement that doesn’t involve tearing everything down because it’s beyond the pale anyway; it isn’t.

Re: Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'

#273

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 10:31 AM UTC

mvdtnz wrote: post #152

doublerabbit wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could chunk it, compress it with gzip. Usenet uses yENC. Public servers sure, may have protections in place but your own server and with IRCd's being easy configurable makes it non-trivial.

And this is somehow better than a "gimmicky" service which handles images natively? Interesting.

[deleted]

Re: Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'

#274

Post by gappi » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 10:32 AM UTC

gurumeditations wrote: post #265

They’re using the databases to go after illegal immigrants right now. Soon it’ll be using the porn databases to go after Gay people. They’re trying to use the healthcare databases to go after Trans people. All this verification is nothing but a way to commit genocide against minorities. Porn is so far down on the list of harmful things. There’s no pearl clutching over alcohol and other drugs like Americans have with…

[flagged]

Re: Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'

#275

Post by sensanaty » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 10:38 AM UTC

like_any_other wrote: post #53

woodrowbarlow wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ultimately, i think the endgame is to require government ID in order to access internet services in general, a la ender's game.

Many countries (including in the EU) already required ID to use a SIM card: https://forestvpn.com/blog/news/countries-sim-card-registrat... Funnily enough, when the Philippines did this, it was decried as a violation of human rights [1]. But usually, media are so silent on such things I'd call them complicit. One already cannot so much as rent a hotel room anywhere in the EU without showing government ID. [1] https:/…

I'm in NL and had my wallet fall out of my pocket once at one of the bigger train stations. I realized within ~5 minutes, and basically as soon as I realized got a call from an anonymous number. It was the police, who had found my wallet with my ID in it and were calling me to inform me about it. Luckily I was still at the station and could just meet them and got my wallet back.

I couldn't help but feel extremely creeped out, and my girlfriend still to this day doesn't understand why I felt uneasy about it. "But you got your wallet back!", she says. "Of course the police know your number!". Having 0 privacy has been completely normalized, and I'm afraid we're far too late to do anything about it.

Re: Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'

#276

Post by Joker_vD » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 10:38 AM UTC

zoklet-enjoyer wrote: post #194

chatmasta wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is card verification a lesser form of surveillance? And there’s a good chance your card issuer (or your bank, one hop away from it) has your biometrics anyway. I don’t like either of them… (And why does YouTube ask me to verify my age when I’m logged into a Google account I created in 2004?)

Why/how would my bank have my biometrics?

Don't know about the US, but over here the last couple of years it has been a big wave of "enable biometrics sign-in! Totes safe, your face is the best ID, just click this checkbox, please, we would really like you to use it, pretty please" in the bank apps. No idea why they pushed it so hard, and it seems to have largely subsided now.

Re: Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'

#277

Post by aaaja » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 10:39 AM UTC

stavros wrote: post #263

Loic wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose you do not have children. I am open-minded, mid 40's. The level of violence in porn you can get access to with just one click, has no comparison with what I could get access to as a kid (basically nothing). With the net, you get access in one click to the worse and the best. It is a lot of work as a parent to educate the kids about that. As kids, teenager and even as 20 something, if we wanted to do some ex…

Sure, but if the goal is to minimise access to violence, why did the GP say "they can access porn" instead of "they can access violence"? I doubt the two are synonymous.

They're not synonymous but a vast amount of pornography available online constitutes violence against women.

The commercial sex trade, including both porn and prostitution, is a multi-billion dollar industry that seeks to normalize extreme acts and promotes the dehumanisation of women and girls.

Re: Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'

#278

Post by distalx » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 10:43 AM UTC

sph wrote: post #247

distalx wrote: post #237

This feels more like spying on everyone than making the internet safe for kids. Big companies and the government are already tracking what we do online. This just seems like a further reduction of our privacy on the internet. Parents need to be more involved in what their kids do online, just like in real life. Grounding them isn't enough. We wouldn't let them wander into dangerous places, so we shouldn't let them wa…

> This feels more like spying on everyone than making the internet safe for kids. That’s always been the point. “Protecting children online” is the trojan horse against privacy, and apart from a few of us nerds, everyone is very much in favour of these laws. The fight for privacy is pretty much lost against such a weapon.

I hear you on the 'Trojan horse,' but I'm still hopeful! We can vote with our money and maybe even crowdfund platforms that truly respect our privacy and time. We already have paid, privacy-friendly options for things like email and messaging, perhaps a Discord altrenative isn't too far fetched!

Re: Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'

#279

Post by rapind » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 10:50 AM UTC

iteria wrote: post #264

rapind wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a peer / social issue at play as well though. If you believe that smart phones are disastrous for kids (I happen to think so), and don't allow your 13yo daughter to have one, you are pretty much forcing her to be the odd one out. Maybe that's OK for some parents, but you can't deny that this cost exists. Preventing your son from playing certain video games that all of his friends enjoy also has a social cost.…

So does being vegetarian or vegan. So does being not the dominant culture in any aspect of life. That's a decision for parents to make and honestly "they'll be left out" is such a crap parenting take. Especially since it's a bunch of parents together who don't want their kid to have access thinking this together. If they actually talked to each each or just made a stand so people could see, we wouldn't even have this…

> I don't know when parenting happened by social committee, but I don't believe in it.

It's always been the case. We've just become so individualistic, at least in some western cultures, that we rail against it. There's even an old saying "It takes a village to raise a child".

Re: Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'

#280

Post by that_guy_iain » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 10:50 AM UTC

stego-tech wrote: post #164

A long, long time ago (within the past ten years), I had to verify my age with a site. They didn't ask for my ID, or my facial scan, but instead asked for my credit card number. They issued a refund to the card of a few cents, and I had to tell them (within 24hr) how much the refund was for, after which point they'd issue a charge to claw it back. They made it clear that debit and gift cards would not be accepted, it…

1. Your old credit card solution needs a credit card. So you exclude out the poor, bad credit, etc.

2. Parents will help kids bypass checks like that.

3. It can be bypassed by a half-smart 13-year-old who can access an app on a phone that will give them the card details and be able to see transactions.

Any verification that doesn't actually verify you via proper means is easy to fake. Hell, we can fake passport/id photos easy enough so now we have to jump on calls with the passport and move it around.

The days of the wild west of the internet are long gone. It's time to realise that it's so important that it deserves the same level of verification we give to in person activities. Someone seeing you and/or your id. It's the only thing that has the best chances of not being bypassed with ease.