There is no legitimate reason to impose age verification on users in jurisdictions that do not legally mandated it.
It is a risk to the privacy and safety of all users on the platform - it provides an easier way for pedophiles to identify underage users and provides more doxable information.
Discord has no business making this decision on behalf of jurisdictions that do not legally mandate it.
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ashleyn
One major controversy I recall with VRchat's implementation of age assurance (via Persona) is that they retained identity of who you were after completing the process. Not who exactly, but your identity was hashed so that if the same person attempted to verify again they could tell who it is. This effectively meant one individual can have one validated account per lifetime. If the flakey AI moderation banned you for an emoji combination freshly deemed racist/etc, you effectively lost your only shot at a validated VRchat account forever.
This is an issue with age assurance that goes well beyond just verifying age, and is undoubtedly viewed as a fringe benefit of age assurance for those wishing to deanonymise the internet. There's obvious problems with this beyond just "can't ban evade anymore". Authorities or intelligence can run bulk hashes against sets of IDs to effectively deanonymise all accounts.
The question here is, does Discord do the same thing for any or all of the selected options? Or is identity data full well and truly purged once the outcome is determined - no hashing, nothing retained other than the result?
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peri-cl
> "We're launching this over the course of this week, so it may take a few days to reach your account."
That's obviously not a technical requirement; they're doing this because they expect a large volume of negative publicity, and temporally staggering this rollout means users are less able to coordinate their social-media outrage.
Same logic Reddit used in phasing out the rollout of their controversial login wall. One group says "I can't log in!"; the other says, "huh, it works for me?"
rustcleaner
IRC plus GNU Jami are still freedom respecting zones! I sincerely hope all this age verification crap causes cypherpunk FOSS solutions to grow in popularity.
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CaliforniaKarl
A long time ago, I'd participate in things like CAcert in-person assurance, PGP key-signing, etc.. I think a model like that would've been useful here: An AgeKey issued/signed by two people. I think of it like a decentralized equivalent to someone's parents saying "Yeah, $CHILD is old enough", or to a cashier saying "This person obviously looks old".
axus
There was a brief window where you could submit fake biometrics through a third-party site to verify age on Discord, pretty sure I got the link from hackernews.
That made me feel better that Discord didn't need to store my ID or video of my face, and was only storing the results of some analysis and not the inputs.
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shaoonb
Still required to use a video or ID card in the UK.
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Foskya
I actually like their implementation.
I'm curious if it will be enough for governments, but it is nice that they are trying to persue a path without id checks
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VCFundedGenYer
The feature is still DOA. Most people are moving to other alternatives like Fluxer.
Discord will kill themselves if they continue with this nonsense.
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esafak
I like that the dialog indicates the service provider. Thumbs up for transparency.
Unacceptable.
There is no legitimate reason to impose age verification on users in jurisdictions that do not legally mandated it.
It is a risk to the privacy and safety of all users on the platform - it provides an easier way for pedophiles to identify underage users and provides more doxable information.
Discord has no business making this decision on behalf of jurisdictions that do not legally mandate it.
One major controversy I recall with VRchat's implementation of age assurance (via Persona) is that they retained identity of who you were after completing the process. Not who exactly, but your identity was hashed so that if the same person attempted to verify again they could tell who it is. This effectively meant one individual can have one validated account per lifetime. If the flakey AI moderation banned you for an emoji combination freshly deemed racist/etc, you effectively lost your only shot at a validated VRchat account forever.
This is an issue with age assurance that goes well beyond just verifying age, and is undoubtedly viewed as a fringe benefit of age assurance for those wishing to deanonymise the internet. There's obvious problems with this beyond just "can't ban evade anymore". Authorities or intelligence can run bulk hashes against sets of IDs to effectively deanonymise all accounts.
The question here is, does Discord do the same thing for any or all of the selected options? Or is identity data full well and truly purged once the outcome is determined - no hashing, nothing retained other than the result?
> "We're launching this over the course of this week, so it may take a few days to reach your account."
That's obviously not a technical requirement; they're doing this because they expect a large volume of negative publicity, and temporally staggering this rollout means users are less able to coordinate their social-media outrage.
Same logic Reddit used in phasing out the rollout of their controversial login wall. One group says "I can't log in!"; the other says, "huh, it works for me?"
IRC plus GNU Jami are still freedom respecting zones! I sincerely hope all this age verification crap causes cypherpunk FOSS solutions to grow in popularity.
A long time ago, I'd participate in things like CAcert in-person assurance, PGP key-signing, etc.. I think a model like that would've been useful here: An AgeKey issued/signed by two people. I think of it like a decentralized equivalent to someone's parents saying "Yeah, $CHILD is old enough", or to a cashier saying "This person obviously looks old".
There was a brief window where you could submit fake biometrics through a third-party site to verify age on Discord, pretty sure I got the link from hackernews.
That made me feel better that Discord didn't need to store my ID or video of my face, and was only storing the results of some analysis and not the inputs.
Still required to use a video or ID card in the UK.
I actually like their implementation. I'm curious if it will be enough for governments, but it is nice that they are trying to persue a path without id checks
The feature is still DOA. Most people are moving to other alternatives like Fluxer.
Discord will kill themselves if they continue with this nonsense.
I like that the dialog indicates the service provider. Thumbs up for transparency.