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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

#891

Post by miki123211 »

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…

Some of the big weaknesses of running a self-hosted Zulip server for your community are:

- Your server admin can see DMs (or at least metadata, not sure if Zulip does E2E for DMs). The same is true for centralized services in theory, but unless you're a terrorist or a person of interest to a major government, it's extremely unlikely that a Discord employee will have an incentive to spy on your messages specifically. Your admin is likely part of your community and may know you personally, so the temptation is much, much higher.

- If the admin dies and nobody else has the keys to the kingdom, the server can go down at any point, and there's no way for users to reconstitute the network semi-automatically. Discord servers don't just go away unless somebody actively makes them to.

- It's much less secure in practice, it relies on your admin to always be on guard and constantly update their server to prevent vulnerabilities, either in Zulip or in the myriad of other self-hosted services running on it. One guy in his basement that goes on vacation once a year and has family responsibilities is far more likely to make mistakes than a team of trained cybersecurity professionals.

- Many Discord users are in 20+ servers. Anything that doesn't provide a one-click server joining experience (for users who already have an account on a different server) is nowhere near a Discord replacement.

- People want bots (for things like high-fidelity Youtube music streaming on voice channels), and those are mostly Discord-only.

- Anything open source will be worse at phishing and fraud / abuse prevention by definition, as many fraud-prevention approaches rely on the fraudster blindly guessing at what the code and ML models (do you even have ML models for this) are doing.

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

#892

Post by budududuroiu »

cedws wrote: post #615

I understand the frustration towards Discord, especially because this is a global rollout of a policy they're only required to enforce in specific countries, but it's IMO misdirected. They're likely trying to get ahead of the legislation. The way the winds are blowing indicates the Western governments that haven't already passed legislation mandating ID verification soon will. You can move to $ALT_PLATFORM but unless…

Platforms want this because it means they can get rid of the mountains of money they were paying for moderators to keep "child unfriendly" content off their platform

"If your kid is on Discord, and sees something they shouldn't, it's their or your fault, not ours"

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

#894

Post by sibellavia »

hinata08 wrote: post #361

I hope Discord understands the risks they pose to their audience when they open source their IDs again. Discord is used by a bunch of closeted users having pseudos, who wouldn't do the same activities on it if everyone had their names. A part of the Discord users is from countries from which Discord isn't even officially accessible (eg China) or where involvement in LGBT discussions could result to death row (Afghani…

> Discord is used by a bunch of closeted users having pseudos, who wouldn't do the same activities on it if everyone had their names.

Exactly. I am sure they won't share their face or ID and will move somewhere else. Big opportunity for other platforms to stand up and grow their user base.

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

#895

Post by direwolf20 »

lII1lIlI11ll wrote: post #885
jonplackett wrote: post #861

I think Apple / Google need to implement verification on the device - we already accept the device knows who we are. And then social media platforms should be able to have the device confirm the user is over 18 and that’s all they need to know.

This only applies if you take all those "protect the children" initiatives at face value. It seems to me that the actual reasons are different. Governments want to police speech online and be able to arrest people who say things they don't approve of, so they are pushing platforms to collect user's PID. Some also want to discourage people from doing things they don't want them to do but that are politically unfeasibl…

Like the UK, where you can tweet that someone should burn down a hotel full of migrants, and you can be arrested for tweeting that.

Or like Russia, where you can tweet that you don't like the president, and you can be arrested for tweeting that?

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

#896

Post by kristjank »

bramhaag wrote: post #20

What realistic open source alternatives to Discord are there? I'm currently considering moving to one of these with my friend group: - Matrix - Stoat, previously revolt ( https://stoat.chat/ ) - IRC + Mumble - Signal

Matrix has been trivial enough for me to implement with some of my non-technical friends. YMMV

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

#897

Post by alt227 »

miki123211 wrote: post #891
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…

Some of the big weaknesses of running a self-hosted Zulip server for your community are: - Your server admin can see DMs (or at least metadata, not sure if Zulip does E2E for DMs). The same is true for centralized services in theory, but unless you're a terrorist or a person of interest to a major government, it's extremely unlikely that a Discord employee will have an incentive to spy on your messages specifically.…

> it's extremely unlikely that a Discord employee will have an incentive to spy on your messages specifically

No, but history shows some unscrupulous staff members will always snoop, whether its just pure interest or something more nafarious like intent to sell on the black market. This makes the risk of your private data being leaked > 0, which should always be treated as a valid risk.

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

#898

Post by ReptileMan »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #851
spragl wrote: post #810

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…

The EU is working on a actual privacy-preserving initiative [0] that allows owners of ID wallets to verify their age, without their actual age or personal data being transmitted. The standard and reference implementations are open source on GitHub. Yet everybody screams uploading IDs and total government surveillance. [0]: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/sites/spaces/EU...

Dear littlecranky67, as overseer for your digital wallet, I am happy to inform you that the owner of the discord server kinkydwarfporn doesn't know who you are and your privacy is protected.

Signed your friendly EU official.

As long as someone in the chain is able to physically connect the dots it is game over for privacy.

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

#899

Post by selfmodruntime »

ActorNightly wrote: post #204
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.

All social media websites should require id tbh. This is the new public town square - everyone should have a voice, but nobody should escape the consequences of using that voice to peddle bullshit.

I'd never thought I'd see advocates against privacy on HN of all places but here we are.

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

#900

Post by tim333 »

Rooster61 wrote: post #6

The sad thing is that I think many people will en masse pony up their ID or snapshot without a second thought. I'm not sure if enough people will refuse to actually force Discord to back off this decision (unless their idea is to grab as much data as possible at once with the understanding that they are going to back off either way).

I had the same thing with Reddit and let it see my face. It didn't bother me much - I don't really do anything more exciting there than this sort of hn comment. If I wanted to post controversial / illegal stuff I'd make a separate account.
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