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

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

#801

Post by brigandish »

schnable wrote: post #448
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.

It's useful to point out hypocrisy, but are you suggesting we shouldn't try to protect kids because of Jeffrey Epstein?

You might point out how this will protect children and what the trade offs are. You might also address the point that the same people who keep trying to do these "protect the children" attacks on privacy seem to be one or two steps away from people like Epstein. They didn't need to decrypt anyone's communications because they were the recipients - what did they do about it?

It seems many of them continued to "hang out" with him.

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

#802

Post by brigandish »

kmeisthax wrote: post #650
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.

The extremely cynical take: All of this is by design for well-connected billionaire pedophile rings to kill competition from millionaire pedophile rings. The less cynical take: Billionaire pedophilia is just a really dramatic consequence of us building a society that cannot make billionaires accountable for their crimes. There's not much connection between that and the government overreach being done in an attempt to…

> The only way any company can justify the risk of publishing Someone Else's Speech is if that risk is literally zero.

Or, you know, employing customer service agents. The non-employing of such also allowed them to become billionaires so it seems kind of fair.

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

#803

Post by gentleman11 »

rsynnott wrote: post #141

It's kind of surprising that no-one has really come out with a proper privacy-preserving approach to this yet. It is clearly _possible_; there are reasonable-looking designs for this. But no-one's doing it; they're just collecting photos and IDs, and then leaking them all over the place.

They dont want it to be private. They want to profile you and sell your data

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

#804

Post by Mashimo »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #605
throwatdem12311 wrote: post #102

You’re out of your mind if you think I’m gonna upload ID to use a “shitposting about video games with friends” service.

I’m giving it exactly 2 weeks after implementation for most people to just suck it up and upload their IDs. I can’t think of a single “this new thing will break the service, people will mass quit!” thing every working out. Sure, some users left. But super majority, who has already built communities and are depended on it just keep churning. Privacy and all that jazz aren’t that important to an average person. Everyon…

> I’m giving it exactly 2 weeks after implementation for most people to just suck it up and upload their IDs.

I don't most people will even notice, as they are not in age restricted servers or channels.

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

#805

Post by altmanaltman »

EGreg wrote: post #761
tabbott wrote: post #430

I'm biased, as I lead the Zulip project. But I think this is a reasonable place for me to post some thoughts. Given current events in the USA, I can't emphasize enough how worried one should be about the fact that a few companies like Discord, Google (Gmail), and Meta have databases with access to the private conversations of hundreds of millions of people with their closest friends and family members, linked up with…

I've been building a decentralized, open source platform at https://github.com/Qbix/Platform before it was cool. I don't think it's cool even now. I mostly got hate on HN every time I posted about it LOL. I think something about "decentralized" gets some people really riled up (maybe it's the association with crypto / blockchain?) but frankly, it's the ONLY solution to extreme centralization. Someone's got to build a…

You need someone to rework that ecosystem.pdf file if you're serious. You spent a million dollars on this but your ecosystem pdf looks like it was created by a 12-year old trying out slides for the first time.

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

#806

Post by sbinnee »

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…

It sounds like they would like the idea of Worldcoin[1] very much (I want to make sure I am being sarcastic. I hate the idea).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_(blockchain)

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

#807

Post by sbinnee »

diogenes_atx wrote: post #147

To add context to the discussion, it is important to recall that Discord was reported to have recently filed paperwork with the SEC for an IPO [1]. Thus it seems likely that the real reason for the age verification (i.e., user identification) policy is to boost its perceived earnings potential among Wall Street investors. According to this theory, Discord is the new Facebook. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/07/dis…

Thanks for the context

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

#810

Post by spragl »

I have mentioned this before, but age verification can be solved by hash chains. They can prove age without compromising privacy.

It is crazy that the solutions Discord goes for are IDs and selfies. It definitely gives the impression that there are shady ulterior motives.

Hash chains are simple. If they were adopted, Discord would clearly be in bad faith taking the steps that they do now. If you search you will find quite a bit of information. My introduction to hash chains is for for age verification specifically: https://spredehagl.com/2025-07-14/

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