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

theverge.com

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

#371

Post by duncanscomments »

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #353

I miss the era of Internet forums. They didn’t need to be federated, just simple deployments of MyBB, vBulletin, PHP, Xenforo and so on. I made a lot of friends on those communities growing up, and it inspired me to go into software because I saw how it brought people together. And I still sorely miss the WhatCD forums. While I didn’t make any friends there, it shaped my early experiences with music which still rever…

>And I still sorely miss the WhatCD forums. While I didn’t make any friends there, it shaped my early experiences with music which still reverberates through me today.

Could not relate to this more. Spent my formative years in those forums and they genuinely helped mold many of the tastes and interests that have stuck with me into adulthood. Not to over-romanticize, at the end of the day it was just a forum on a music tracker - but the sense of community and sheer diversity of thread topics made it such an interesting place to peruse.

Discord certainly has its applications. But since it became the defacato community tool, I find it essentially useless. Discussions are ephemeral (from a UX standpoint at least), and much more constrained. Its difficult to lurk and only chime in now and then unless you're regularly online.

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

#372

Post by titaniumtown »

plingbang wrote: post #122

> Teen-by-default settings to roll out globally for all Discord users Does it mean that even people who reside outside jurisdictions touched by the age verification craze will have to deal with all this? > use facial age estimation Surely a kid won't be able to ask someone else to pass the check for them. But let's talk about false positives. If the estimator falsely declares someone an adult, is Discord legally liab…

> Does it mean that even people who reside outside jurisdictions touched by the age verification craze will have to deal with all this?

Yes, it's global

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

#373

Post by grishka »

snohobro wrote: post #253
cheschire wrote: post #228

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…

Ironically, this may be one of the many straws that breaks the proverbial internet camel’s back. We all wax and wane about the old internet, the pre-homogenized, non-corporate, Wild West internet. Perhaps these constant restrictions will finally spur us to create our own spaces again Our own little groups that exist independent of the corpo-sphere. The only reason ‘the way things used to be’ went away was because the…

The fediverse already exists.

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

#374

Post by kyboren »

boca_honey wrote: post #302
drzaiusx11 wrote: post #4

F** that, guess I'm leaving that platform too now...

I think this will be the kneejerk reaction of many, but then you'll have to face the consequences (de facto social isolation) and probably acquiesce. I had the same reaction when platforms started asking for my cellphone number... after some years I just started giving it to them. Now I don't even think about it.

"I used to resist the boot, too. Then I was successfully conditioned by the environment that's been engineered around me. Now I just lick it subconsciously."

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

#375

Post by jimbokun »

alexfromapex wrote: post #274
pibaker wrote: post #209

It is a great irony that the heavy handed push for "protect da kids" is all happening while we learn, day by day, that the richest and most powerful members of our society have no problem hanging out with a convicted child sex trafficker. Rules for thee, free love for me.

People don't realize that all of our problems lately are stemming from lack of truly representative government. Until we find a way to ensure political candidates aren't corrupt and bought off, there will always be corruption, double standards, and lack of accountability from them.

Post Citizens United, that’s going to require a Constitutional amendment.

And the corrupt, bought politicians are the ones who would need to ratify it.

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

#376

Post by asdff »

alexfromapex wrote: post #274
pibaker wrote: post #209

It is a great irony that the heavy handed push for "protect da kids" is all happening while we learn, day by day, that the richest and most powerful members of our society have no problem hanging out with a convicted child sex trafficker. Rules for thee, free love for me.

People don't realize that all of our problems lately are stemming from lack of truly representative government. Until we find a way to ensure political candidates aren't corrupt and bought off, there will always be corruption, double standards, and lack of accountability from them.

>there will always be corruption, double standards, and lack of accountability from them

The hard part is this has been true going all the way back to the stone age ever since we elevated the first person arbitrarily to chief. There has been no model of government developed since that is immune to this. I really don't know how to get around this and it depresses me that we will always be held back by the slimiest who abuse systems.

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

#377

Post by reactordev »

accrual wrote: 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…

Liars…

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

#378

Post by reactordev »

Aurornis wrote: post #200
accrual wrote: 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.

This is corporate cover speak for “we keep all data”

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

#379

Post by Morromist »

marcd35 wrote: post #318
areoform wrote: post #260

There's a special phenomenon that happens as startups grow large. They begin to drift away from the ground truth of their product, their users and how it's used. It's a drift away from users. And a drift towards internal politics. A lot like Rasmussen's drift towards danger, https://risk-engineering.org/concept/Rasmussen-practical-dri... As startups grow beyond a critical threshold, they start to attract a certain ty…

I think this decision is more defensive than "losing touch with their customers." The winds are shifting in other countries that are cracking down on social media use for children. Discord does not want to get caught in the shit storm of legal issues if they fail to comply. This is a proactive measure.

I think this is about "losing touch with their customers" and the need to IPO and make money from the customers.

The thing is, most of discords users are in countries which haven't yet passed laws that ban children from using apps like discord. If they were privacy focused they could do this only where the law requires it, like Australia.

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

#380

Post by johnnyanmac »

snohobro wrote: post #253
cheschire wrote: post #228

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…

Ironically, this may be one of the many straws that breaks the proverbial internet camel’s back. We all wax and wane about the old internet, the pre-homogenized, non-corporate, Wild West internet. Perhaps these constant restrictions will finally spur us to create our own spaces again Our own little groups that exist independent of the corpo-sphere. The only reason ‘the way things used to be’ went away was because the…

I have my small little groups. I've walked away from big sites constantly and this won't be an exception. Definitely going to cancel my Nitro today until/unless they revert this.

But leaving is never free. There's a lot of gaming communities (especially niche subcommunities like emulation, speedrunning, modding, etc) that are mostly on Discord and not anywhere else. Many probably won't move. A lot of tribal knowledge will be lost as it's locked in these communities.

Heck, even some FOSS communities communicate mostly on Discord. I have more faith they will move. But not all.

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