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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

#81

Post by soulofmischief »

silisili wrote: post #24
userbinator wrote: post #21

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've been hired and have hired people through the Discord community. It's no different than Hacker News in this respect, where I've done the same. Professionalism is orthogonal, though I will agree that ephemeral chats have serious drawbacks for project-oriented communities.

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

#82

Post by npteljes »

Yeul wrote: post #22
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 Netherlands has this system but it is ripe for abuse. We still have a few Christ clowns and there's a big fascist party at the moment. How about we don't make lists of people visiting porn sites? How about we accept that children are part of society and not try to put them in little cages like songbirds?

Children are part of society, but adults need to have their space to do their adult things, some of which are actually hurting children. The "little cages" are actually supposed to aid a healthy mental development.

But whatever age-verification solution I have seen so far sucked, really badly. And I can't believe people promote something like a government based age check. People need their privacy.

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

#83

Post by Barrin92 »

Yeul wrote: post #22
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 Netherlands has this system but it is ripe for abuse. We still have a few Christ clowns and there's a big fascist party at the moment. How about we don't make lists of people visiting porn sites? How about we accept that children are part of society and not try to put them in little cages like songbirds?

>How about we accept that children are part of society and not try to put them in little cages like songbirds?

It's the correct idea but the way it should be done is by coming to a democratic consensus that helicopter parenting is bad, not by attempting to hobble the infrastructure of government. If only for the practical reason that it'll simply be outsourced and privatized. In US states where the police can't scan license plates, there's a private industry doing that and then selling the data back to the police. The same result but now you pay a premium.

Lee Kuan Yew was fond of making this point. Weak "horizontal" administrations will creep in ways that are more opaque and without checks than strong "vertical" ones.

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

#84

Post by vidarh »

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…

It's even worse now: A lot of places now accept PDF's of things like bank statements, since so many people don't get paper copies any more.

It's not that it was hard to fake before if you wanted to, but when you can just get a real PDF as a starting point, and edit it slightly it's just theatre.

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

#85

Post by vidarh »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #66
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

Why should the govt provide a way to verify? They should fine companies that violate. Companies will figure how to comply because they don't want to be fined.

The problem is that said companies have no interest in doing more than the barest minimum to keep the details safe.

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

#86

Post by immibis »

dom96 wrote: post #58
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 politici…

Problem: the millisecond this system is rolled out, personal data will be attached to it, not least because I'm just going to generate unlimited 18+ tokens and sell them for $10 apiece

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

#87

Post by immibis »

Telemakhos wrote: post #54
progbits wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hate speech is only "legal but embarrassing" in the USA. Almost everywhere else it's illegal.

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

#88

Post by DaSHacka »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #66
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

Why should the govt provide a way to verify? They should fine companies that violate. Companies will figure how to comply because they don't want to be fined.

Because then you get situations like OP and that happened with Tea?

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

#89

Post by immibis »

Retr0id wrote: post #67
hhh wrote: post #5

I think the way discords setup works is reasonable. It’s an on-device model that only submits the outcome of the scan to the platform. I hope they just improve that performance, rather than see this and back out of it entirely and require ID checks.

On-device models are excellent for privacy, but they are fundamentally broken from a security perspective. Preventing people from spoofing the results would involve locking them out of their own devices, via DRM.

You're treating this as a computer security problem when it's actually a political problem. It doesn't have to work to be mandated. It doesn't even have to work, for everyone to get a pat on the back and a raise for implementing it. Keeping minors away from porn isn't the point, the point is more like to scare people about being surveilled so they voluntarily won't watch it.

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

#90

Post by immibis »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #59
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.

Yes? I expect that "take a weekend to France to bypass age verification" and "subscribe to NordVPN to bypass age verification" are both legal while "take a weekend to France to see the Eiffel tower" and "use NordVPN to increase your security" are both legal.

Did you never wonder why VPN ads don't really list any actual use cases, yet they're wildly popular? If you know what you need it for, the ad doesn't have to tell you - just has to tell you which company to give your money to.

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