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

theverge.com

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

#941

Post by catify »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #99
accrual wrote: post #23

Here's the October 2025 Discord data breach mentioned at the end of the article: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8jmzd972leo > Discord, a messaging platform popular with gamers, says official ID photos of around 70,000 users have potentially been leaked after a cyber-attack. However, their senior director states in this Verge article: > The ID is immediately deleted. We do not keep any information around like your…

> The ID is immediately deleted. We do not keep any information around like your name, the city that you live in, if you used a birth certificate or something else, any of that information. This is also contradicted by what Discord actually says: > Quick deletion: Identity documents submitted to our vendor partners are deleted quickly— in most cases, immediately after age confirmation. What are the non-most cases?

How can we even confirm that they are actually deleting them. Trust me bro vibe

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

#942

Post by AndroidKitKat »

Bender wrote: post #663
dgxyz wrote: post #325

My social group are moving to a private IRC server already. This is probably the best outcome really. I don't think any of us are under 50. But we have relatives who remember when this would have resulted in some of us being killed. I wish I was sensationalising but I'm not.

For the happy-clicky-emoji types one can put TheLounge [1] or Convos [2] or other web front-ends [3] in front of IRC. They don't scale as well but it would allow for those that don't care for the underlying IRC network. If it does not exist yet there is probably a way to write in a voice chat link handler for Mumble. It's a separate app but very low CPU/memory footprint and maybe that could weed out some low quality…

I set up this exact combo (thelounge + mumble) for my friends last night after this news. It's not a complete 1:1, but I think it'll meet our needs. I'm going on a road trip and as a fun experiment I'm going to try to get Claude to churn on integrating Mumble into thelounge, somehow, to mimic the Discord client. I'd really prefer something other than Jitsi for screen sharing, since I'm a weirdo and don't like the UX of making a 'call' and much rather prefer the 'hop in' style VC like Discord or Mumble.

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

#943

Post by spragl »

zaxioms wrote: post #940
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…

If you wanted to implement this in real life, who plays the role of Alice?

I think that whatever organization that issues your passport, would be a natural choice for setting this up. But it could be some other authority. In a way it is the identity owners and the providers that decide who they will trust as authorities.

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

#944

Post by grub5000 »

nusl wrote: post #837

I hope that this causes enough outrage that Discord starts to lose its effective-monopoly for gamers and other folks. The platform has been getting more and more shitty over time and it isn't healthy for one product to have this much power.

I would guess that there needs to be a clear, cheap, easy to use alternative to discord in order for a large numbers of communities to move over. It probably has to be a single clear alternative as well – multiple will exacerbate the decision cost

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

#945

Post by superkuh »

Aurornis wrote: post #200
accrual wrote: post #23

Here's the October 2025 Discord data breach mentioned at the end of the article: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8jmzd972leo > Discord, a messaging platform popular with gamers, says official ID photos of around 70,000 users have potentially been leaked after a cyber-attack. However, their senior director states in this Verge article: > The ID is immediately deleted. We do not keep any information around like your…

They explained it in their announcement at https://discord.com/press-releases/update-on-security-incide... TL;DR: The IDs were used in age-related appeals. If someone's account was banned for being too young they have to submit an ID as part of the appeal. Appeals take time to process and review. Discord has 200,000,000 users and age verification happens a lot due to the number of young users and different countries.

Uh... EVERYONE with a Discord account has to go through age-related appeals now. That's what the announcement is.

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

#946

Post by erfgh »

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…

Well your solution includes handwritten signatures and everyone being a handwriting expert so that they compare handwritten signatures. I wouldn't call this an elegant solution.

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

#950

Post by eigenspace »

caconym_ wrote: post #546
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'm asking because I hate Matrix and actually want you to convince me: why should I accept the risk of migrating my friend group from Discord to Zulip, which has already "broken the seal" of restricting features behind a monthly fee even for self-hosted users, when I could migrate us to Matrix instead? Matrix seems like the much less risky option. I see that you have a "community" tier that's free and doesn't restric…

I use Zulip every day for the julia programming language (https://julialang.zulipchat.com).

I really like Zulip, and I'd like to migrate my friend-group onto it, but it probably won't happen. I think Zulip is just a bit too heavy-duty for a friend group chatting, and also lacks the visual polish that a lot of people want.

For now, my friends and I mostly just use Signal for group chats, which leaves a lot to be desired, but IMO is still just a better experience for our purposes than Zulip or Matrix.

That said, if you have friends who are keen to try things out, I would definitely recommend at least trying Zulip and see what you like and what you don't. It has a lot of really nice features and things to love.

Having interacted a fair amount with the Zulip devs over the years, and being an open-source product, I believe that they have no plans or intention of trying to fleece or milk self-hosted users or small communities.

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