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

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

#381

Post by tencentshill »

jgaa wrote: post #253

This is never about protecting the children. This is always about government overreach. People are less likely to criticize the government, or even participate in political debate, if their online identities are know by the government. Governments like obedient, scared citizens. The only ethical response to laws like this, is for websites and apps to terminate operations completely in countries that create them. Citi…

The anonymous, unchecked Internet got us where we are today. It was a great experiment in worldwide communication, but has now been converted into a weapon for the same type of authoritarians that previously used traditional media and propaganda channels. AI is only accelerating the possibilities for abuse. Critical thinking skills taught from a young age is the only defense.

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

#382

Post by iamacyborg »

lupusreal wrote: post #329
fc417fc802 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has there been some outbreak of this? Genuinely confused. My impression is that sort of behavior has been decreasing my entire life while access to porn has been increasing.

My impression is that parents are increasingly alarmed at young boys becoming bitter misogynists. Maybe that isn't happening and it's just a moral panic? Or maybe those boys watching lots of pornography and coming to believe that women are whores are two entirely unrelated phenomenons? Media diet shapes what we are, and kids are more impressionable than most. It is therefore natural and reasonable for parents to want…

> My impression is that parents are increasingly alarmed at young boys becoming bitter misogynists

This seems more in line with the increase of mysoginist influencers (Andrew Tate and the like) and less to do with porn. The former of course being the type of content that social media companies are more than happy to proactively promote to children.

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

#383

Post by marcosdumay »

9dev wrote: post #257
jgaa wrote: post #253

This is never about protecting the children. This is always about government overreach. People are less likely to criticize the government, or even participate in political debate, if their online identities are know by the government. Governments like obedient, scared citizens. The only ethical response to laws like this, is for websites and apps to terminate operations completely in countries that create them. Citi…

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.

> treating them as a singular entity

The entities that keep pushing for that stuff tends to be quite centralized.

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

#384

Post by MichaelDickens »

jgaa wrote: post #253

This is never about protecting the children. This is always about government overreach. People are less likely to criticize the government, or even participate in political debate, if their online identities are know by the government. Governments like obedient, scared citizens. The only ethical response to laws like this, is for websites and apps to terminate operations completely in countries that create them. Citi…

> Citizens who elect politicians without respect for human rights and privacy don't really deserve anything nice anyway.

Unfortunately things don't always work out that cleanly:

- Sometimes you vote for the pro-freedom candidate, but your candidate loses. - Sometimes there are only two dominant candidates, and both disrespect human rights. - Sometimes one candidate disrespects human rights in some particular way, but the other candidate has different, bigger problems, so you vote for the lesser of two evils. - Sometimes a candidate says one thing while campaigning, and then when elected does something different.

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

#385

Post by ndriscoll »

dmurray wrote: post #289
redczar wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edited to delete my comment. I was mistaken about who was replying to who. As such my comment was entirely wrong.

What? There's zero suggestion in ndriscoll's comment that he's talking about "extremely violent porn". The most specific he gets is "furry porn", which might be a kink you don't approve of but is not obviously more objectionable than "people having sex".

I was being somewhat flippant while also using a group that's known as a gateway to more deviant behaviors (e.g. libertarianism). I think though that you'll likely not find much success in litigating whether children ought to be able to access porn (and whether porn has anything close to a healthy depiction of relationships/sex. Yes, some healthy material exists. It's extremely rare, especially with commercial websites). e.g. no one thinks children should be able to shop at physical adult stores. It's probably more productive to participate in the "what to do about it" discussion.

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

#386

Post by ndriscoll »

uconnectlol wrote: post #370
ndriscoll wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was, in fact, what COPA mandated in the US in 1998, and SCOTUS struck it down as too onerous in Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, kicking off the last 20 years of essentially completely unregulated Internet porn commercially available to children with nothing more than clicking an "I'm 18" button. At the time, filtering was seen as a better solution. Nowadays filtering is basically impossible thanks to…

lets just skip straight to the logical conclusion, buddy. no amount of "web" or "discord" regulation stops porn consumption. the statistic of "minors viewing porn" wouldn't be affected even slightly, even if all of the regulation in question here were passed to the fullest extent. this is because people can just download and run whatever software they want, and communicate with any party they want. what you want is f…

My complaint was exactly that with modern devices, the owner does not have absolute control over communication on the device, and that's a problem. I think anyone in the open source community or people that believe in democracy would agree that e.g. the owner of a phone or computer should absolutely have the ability to intercept, record, manipulate, and filter all communication that device is doing.

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

#387

Post by ndriscoll »

iamacyborg wrote: post #382
lupusreal wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression is that parents are increasingly alarmed at young boys becoming bitter misogynists. Maybe that isn't happening and it's just a moral panic? Or maybe those boys watching lots of pornography and coming to believe that women are whores are two entirely unrelated phenomenons? Media diet shapes what we are, and kids are more impressionable than most. It is therefore natural and reasonable for parents to want…

> My impression is that parents are increasingly alarmed at young boys becoming bitter misogynists This seems more in line with the increase of mysoginist influencers (Andrew Tate and the like) and less to do with porn. The former of course being the type of content that social media companies are more than happy to proactively promote to children.

I'm not particularly familiar with Tate or his story, but wasn't he literally arrested for human trafficking in connection with a porn site that he ran? And that site was part of the start of his "Internet" career? And part of his shtick is bragging about being an "Internet pimp" and running said site?

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

#388

Post by thewebguyd »

Marsymars wrote: post #136
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…

> 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? My gut feel here mostly has to do with how I view the activity overall. Smoking I see as a social ill that both adults and children would be better…

> My gut feel here mostly has to do with how I view the activity overall. Smoking I see as a social ill that both adults and children would be better off without, so I don't particularly mind an ID check that inconveniences adults, and that can be opted-out from by simply not smoking. (Social media I see as pretty akin to smoking.)

The big difference for me is, the person looking at my ID at the gas station isn't storing all the data on it in some database, which may or may not be properly secured.

If age verification can be done ephemerally, then I think it's largely a non-issue. But of course it won't, you'll have to submit some combo of personal info + a photo or face scan, and that information will be stored by any number of third parties, probably permanently, only to end up in the next data breach.

There's also an issue of anonymity, which is increasingly under attack on the web. Even in the gas station example, while I'm not truly anonymous when I buy alcohol, the gas station attendant likely isn't going to remember me or my name, and it's certainly not being stored along side an entire customer profile.

For services on the web, we need a similar level of privacy with the age verification, otherwise it's not just age verification it's identity verification as well (and by extension, the tying of all of your activity on that service directly to you) which I do have a big problem with.

If we want age verification online, we have to have a way to do it ephemerally and psuedo-anonymously.

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

#389

Post by whitehexagon »

joeyh wrote: post #76
jjice wrote: post #2

Aside from the privacy nightmare, what about someone who is 18 and just doesn't have the traditional adult facial features? Same thing for someone who's 15 and hit puberty early? I can imagine that on the edges, it becomes really hard to discern. If they get it wrong, are you locked out? Do you have to send an image of your ID? So many questions. Not a huge fan of these recent UK changes (looking at the Apple E2E sit…

Wise (nee Transferwise) requires a passport style photo taken by a webapp for KYC when transferring money. I was recently unable to complete that process over a dozen tries, because the image processing didn't like something about my face. (Photos met all criteria.) On contacting their support, I learned that they refused to use any other process. Also it became apparent that they had outsourced it to some other comp…

Hah, indeed, a similar experience here. The desktop option is worse, trying to get a webcam to focus on an ID card took forever. The next step wanted a 3rd party company to do a live webcam session, no thanks! Closed the account. Or at least tried, after a several step nag process, they still keep the email blocked to that account, in case you change your mind...

There seems no way to push back against these technologies. Next it will be an AI interview for 'why do you transfer the money?'

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

#390

Post by Ajedi32 »

redserk wrote: post #341
shortrounddev2 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point here is to prevent impressionable children from growing up watching videos of women being treated like objects, so that they don't grow up to view women as objects

If the states banning porn weren’t generally the same states restricting medical care for women, I’d say you have a point, but that’s simply not the case. “Protecting women” is the sales pitch, not the objective.

Noncentral fallacy. Nobody's against "medical care for women" except where they believe it overlaps with "legalized murder of children", and it's extremely disingenuous for you to ignore that and act like "medical care" is the part they're against.
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