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Users claim Discord's age verification can be tricked with video game characters

thepinknews.com

41–50 of 193 posts

Re: Users claim Discord's age verification can be tricked with video game characters

#41

Age verification should be made on OS or firmware level when buying a device. And not by sending your passport scan to random companies with dubious data collection practices. A law must mandate that an "adult" version of OS (or device) may be sold only to adult users. It is not difficult for Microsoft/Apple to implement this yet they do not want to for some reason. This would allow more reliable age verification, wi…

Oh god no. We need to absolutely stop making OSs more restrictive than they already are. There are better solutions.

The California legislature is already working on forcing operating systems to attest the age of the user at the account level. See the recent gut-and-amend of AB1043 [0], which was a privacy bill [1] just a few months ago:

> This bill would require, among other things related to age verification on the internet, a covered manufacturer to provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder, as defined, to indicate the birth date, age, or both, of the user of that device for the sole purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s age bracket to applications available in a covered application store and to provide a developer, as defined, who has requested a signal with respect to a particular user with a digital signal via a real-time application programming interface regarding whether a user is in any of several age brackets, as prescribed. The bill would define “covered manufacturer” to mean a person who is a manufacturer of a device, an operating system for a device, or a covered application store. The bill would require a developer to request a signal with respect to a particular user from a covered manufacturer when that user requests to download an application.

> This bill would punish noncompliance with a civil penalty to be enforced by the Attorney General, as prescribed.

[0] https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB1043/2025 [1] https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB1043/id/3134744

If you want to know more about this lovely bait-and-switch tactic used by the Golden State's legislature, see here: https://californiaglobe.com/uncategorized/gut-and-amend-bill...

Re: Users claim Discord's age verification can be tricked with video game characters

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bank has an API endpoint that (basically) returns your name and age (in this use case). It can return more for signing electronic docs etc. and is basically your digital ID. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BankID Need to buy "toys", vape products, alcohol... anything adult online? There's a 3rd party web app (you rightfully don't trust) as an age check in the shopping cart / user account of any of these adult shops,…

As a Brit that relocated to Norway a decade ago, trust me when I say you cannot fathom the lack of organization around identity that the UK (somewhat intentionally) has. (It’s constantly used for political Godwin’s-law fear-mongering) There is no centralized ID number, the closest is your social security number but this is basically only outbound for PAYE tax and haphazardly correlated to your pension payments in lat…

B-but... if we have an ID card the "government" will be able to track us! /s It does annoy me how much people get away with scaremongering, I just read a comment of someone who's against digital payments because "then the government will be able to work out how much tax you owe"????

Re: Users claim Discord's age verification can be tricked with video game characters

#43
post #27

[flagged]

The idea that some countries have managed to block children from accessing adult content is laughable. But are there countries that have banned guns? A quick Wikipedia check shows that, in 2025, more people were killed in school shootings in Europe than in the U.S.

Re: Users claim Discord's age verification can be tricked with video game characters

#44

Ironic that this comes at a time when AI-generated pictures are getting better and better. Personally, I will never use Discord and they just gave me another reason not to.

If this story reflects poorly on anyone, it's on Britain, not Discord.

Re: Users claim Discord's age verification can be tricked with video game characters

#45
post #4

> government passes law that requires companies to age verify users > said government provides no way to actually verify a human's age > hilarity ensues

That's exactly what pisses me off about it. The government could have at least devised a technical solution to verify the age of people privately. Data breaches happen all the time, do they just not care about the consequences when millions of peoples' porn watching habits are inevitably leaked?

Re: Users claim Discord's age verification can be tricked with video game characters

#46
post #45
post #4

> government passes law that requires companies to age verify users > said government provides no way to actually verify a human's age > hilarity ensues

That's exactly what pisses me off about it. The government could have at least devised a technical solution to verify the age of people privately. Data breaches happen all the time, do they just not care about the consequences when millions of peoples' porn watching habits are inevitably leaked?

Because that's their goal. Make you scared about using things that are even legal but private/embarrassing.

Re: Users claim Discord's age verification can be tricked with video game characters

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you point to the source of the on-device model? Moreso for curiosity.

No, but I can tell you that the moment you open the browser console, it stops scanning and marks the scan as failed. The vendor is https://www.k-id.com in Discord's case

That just seems like a standard anti-tampering measure, I don't think it necessarily means the model is local or anything

Re: Users claim Discord's age verification can be tricked with video game characters

#48

Ironic that this comes at a time when AI-generated pictures are getting better and better. Personally, I will never use Discord and they just gave me another reason not to.

Maybe I'm old. Well, no, I am relatively old. Either way, when I see a person or business advertise a Discord link, I immediately think of either as immature. I miss the days of forums, and wish something like them could thrive again instead of rather private, but importantly ephemeral chats.

> I miss the days of forums, and wish something like them could thrive again instead of rather private, but importantly ephemeral chats.

Open source projects have long had ephemeral chats, private to the people in the chat at that moment - it just used to be called IRC.

Re: Users claim Discord's age verification can be tricked with video game characters

#49
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but I can tell you that the moment you open the browser console, it stops scanning and marks the scan as failed. The vendor is https://www.k-id.com in Discord's case

That just seems like a standard anti-tampering measure, I don't think it necessarily means the model is local or anything

https://www.k-id.com/post/adapting-discord-for-the-uk-online... says that:-

> Identity documents are deleted after a user’s age group is confirmed, and the video selfies used for facial age estimation never leaves their device.

Re: Users claim Discord's age verification can be tricked with video game characters

#50
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bank has an API endpoint that (basically) returns your name and age (in this use case). It can return more for signing electronic docs etc. and is basically your digital ID. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BankID Need to buy "toys", vape products, alcohol... anything adult online? There's a 3rd party web app (you rightfully don't trust) as an age check in the shopping cart / user account of any of these adult shops,…

Identity shouldn’t be tied to a private institution that requires you to have a bank account to login. Two of the well-used solutions to identity in the U.S. are login.gov (government-managed) and id.me (private, but used by government). Basically to get setup, at some point you have to have physical presence to get an actual government-approved physical ID, which can still be a barrier to some, but it doesn’t requir…

> Just don’t implement your own like Discourse and Tea.app.

FWIW discord did not implement their own (sensibly), but since the british government does not provide this service it basically mandates possibly dodgy middlemen.

My understanding is that discord uses (contracted?) https://www.k-id.com/

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