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

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

#51

Post by supriyo-biswas »

snerbles wrote: post #41
valenterry wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’ve often talked about in private settings about how running open source OSes and DRM-free setups would likely become illegal in the future. With every passing day this vision seems closer to reality.

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

#52

Post by ethan_smith »

dylan604 wrote: post #2

If it works for video game characters, why not just any random actor? There's going to be plenty of footage available of them in various positions to get around the can't use just one image "security" feature.

The fundamental issue is that these verification models are trained on datasets containing fictional characters and celebrities, so they're essentially being asked to distinguish between inputs that were part of their own training distribution.

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

#53

Post by The-Old-Hacker »

cronin101 wrote: post #33
Culonavirus wrote: post #20

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…

The mess around voter ID is a case in point. A badly-implemented "solution" to a problem that didn't exist.

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

#54

Post by Telemakhos »

progbits wrote: post #46
cedws wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a great first step toward making criticism of the government scary. Porn, hate speech, and other "legal but private/embarrassing" speech are the sharp end of the spear. When it's okay to restrict those, it becomes more easier to restrict political opposition.

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

#55

Post by Hamuko »

jhgg wrote: 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

EU is also gonna require companies to verify ages but there's a white label application that EU member states can use.

https://ageverification.dev/

If I've understood it correctly, Pornhub can't see anything except that you've turned 18 (no names, no date of births, nothing) and your local government can't see that you've signed up for Pornhub using the app.

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

#56

Post by tmtvl »

DecoySalamander wrote: post #43
pmg101 wrote: 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.

Which is weird considering there have been over 10 times the amount of school shootings in the U.S. compared to Europe... including an incident where a gun went off in the backpack of a second grader at an elementary school.

Europe: 4 shootings distributed across 4 countries - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_Eu...>

U.S.: 41 shootings across 19 states - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th...>

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

#57

Post by dylan604 »

ethan_smith wrote: post #52
dylan604 wrote: post #2

If it works for video game characters, why not just any random actor? There's going to be plenty of footage available of them in various positions to get around the can't use just one image "security" feature.

The fundamental issue is that these verification models are trained on datasets containing fictional characters and celebrities, so they're essentially being asked to distinguish between inputs that were part of their own training distribution.

Yet TFA shows the character used to beat the verification is a game character based on the likeness of an actor famous for the role he pays the game character is based. So you’re saying what, that the system isn’t aware it was trained on this person, the training isn’t looking that person is known to the training, or the system just doesn’t work as advertised?

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

#58

Post by dom96 »

jhgg wrote: 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

This really deserves a digital solution. Let me get a government account and generate tokens that websites can ingest to confirm I'm an adult (and other optional details about me).

Having to use passports or poor solutions like face scanning isn't good enough. I guess the reason they don't do this is because they fear the cost, anything governments price up these days seems to be in the billion range. So the politicians who don't understand how cheap it is to build software assume it's way out of their price range.

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

#59

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

pacifika wrote: post #30

Several articles say that Ofcom has said platforms must not host, share, or permit content encouraging the use of VPNs to bypass age checks, adding that parents should be aware of how VPNs can be used to bypass the Act.

That annoys me as the VPN isn't necessarily bypassing the age check, but instead is allowing the person to pretend that they don't live in a country with stupid laws. I mean, Ofcom might as well warn parents about cheap holiday websites that encourage people to bypass the age checks by flying to a sane country.

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

#60

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

maccard wrote: post #37
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denmark does it by sending you to a government-owned website, which then uses two factor authentication and responds back verifying one’s identity. I don’t understand why other countries can’t do the same.

The UK doesn’t have any form of identity that can be used like this. There’s a very very vocal group of people who oppose the idea to the point that it hasn’t gained traction.

I wouldn't describe myself as a very very vocal person, but I'm not a fan of the UK introducing identity cards as it would almost certainly be misused by the government and the data would be leaked as the UK government is utterly incompetent (when it comes to computers).
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