Discussion
Online age-verification tools spread across U.S. for child safety, but adults are being surveilled
basilikum: 403 for mehttps://web.archive.org/web/20260308223909/https://www.cnbc....
pickleglitch: Of course they are. That is their purpose.
Aurornis: > Social media company Discord announced plans in February to roll out mandatory age verification globally,Discord’s age verification is optional and only required to disable the image content filter, join adult servers, and a couple other features. I’m not saying it’s a good decision, but I am getting tired of the repeated claim that it’s mandatory to go do age verification to use the service.I don’t plan to do the Discord age verification and neither do most of the people I interact with on Discord. It’s not mandatory.I don’t recommend anyone rush to do the Discord age verification unless you really need to for some reason. Don’t believe all of the lazy articles saying it’s mandatory.
bilekas: The fact that these tools are 'active' centric, i.e : You must perform an action to validate you're NOT a child, these will never protect children. A predator simply needs not to verify anything and appear benign and ironically more anonymous than law abiding people.I'm not saying the inverse is the answer either, just that if anyone without an agenda of surveillance looked at this for a second, the penny would have dropped. So I can only assume that this was the purpose the whole time.
ej31: Age verification doesn't stop determined bad actors, it just builds a database of everyone who cooperated...........
bilekas: Exactly my point.. And all the industry experts who they must have consulted in to write the laws are coincidently invested in personal data harvesting. Who could have foreseen this happening.
BLKNSLVR: Know they sheep, the better to keep them penned.
airstrike: [delayed]
beeforpork: You don't say.
agos: is this the great innovation that the GDPR is stifling in Europe? (sorry for the snark)
voxic11: You know that none of those things actually protect children from predators which is the supposed reason for these changes. So when they inevitably don't work Discord will take the next step of requiring age verification from everyone.
chewbacha: Maybe! But laws like California’s new law and the Texas law both are making it mandatory from a legal compliance point of view.The direction of these restrictions is not “optional”
righthand: It will be when everyone starts leaking from the big players. Age verification will make software development impossible or be impossible to implement without huge investment.
dpoloncsak: Pretty sure in some EU countries it is mandatory now, iirc
trashb: > Discord’s age verification is optional...for now ... What stops them from changing this in the future?Additionally Discord may verify your age based on the collected data without consent.
kristopolous: Sob stories about children are always weaponized for oppression.It was used to bash interracial marriage, gay rights, suppress dissent, attack the first amendment, and now this.Whenever you hear some dramatic story involving kids about how you have to live a little less free, know the tactic.
cultofmetatron: whats incredible to me are how many useful idiots out there STILL fall for it.___ said hamas beaheaded 40 babies and that turned out to be a complete fabrication. That fake info was used in part to justify killing thousands of kids in ____meanwhile the recent strike on Iran resulted in 80 little girls getting killed (with plenty of evidence) and its swept under the rug while we get blasted about the 7 soldiers that died.
hobs: More useful idiots are born every day, most of them never are educated and do not see their past blunders as anything wrong happening, they are completely blind to the real implication of their actions.
john_strinlai: >I don’t plan to do the Discord age verification and neither do most of the people I interact with on Discord.until it becomes law, like it is (or in the process of becoming) ~everywhere.
Aurornis: Okay? Then we’ll deal with that if it happens. If it does happen then other services will have the same requirements.
pixl97: The baby eating machine is busy telling us that it's coming to eat our babies and your best answer is "wait and see"?
john_strinlai: >If it does happen then other services will have the same requirements.that is exactly what everyone is angry about.
Aurornis: And I am too! My comment above was that the claim that Discord’s age verification is mandatory was false.It’s also misleading in the context of this journalism because it makes it look like it’s already done and therefore new laws wouldn’t change anything.
Kapura: no shit, this was obviously the point. the people who said so all along were correct, the people who insisted it wasn't were not speaking in good faith.we, as a society, need to stop taking companies at their word when they say that the obvious harms that are right around the corner are overblown.
vadelfe: The uncomfortable part is that they try to solve a real problem (protecting minors) by requiring universal identification. In practice this means every adult has to prove who they are just to access any part of the internet. Once that infrastructure exists, it’s hard to imagine it not expanding beyond its original purpose.
ByteBlaster: The EU is rolling out the EUDI system this year where citizens can verify their age (>16, >18, >21) without revealing any personal information. This is a solved problem over there.
The agency pointed to existing rules requiring firms to retain personal information only as long as reasonably necessary and to safeguard its confidentiality and integrity.
john_strinlai: >An FTC spokesperson told CNBC that companies must limit how collected information is used. [...] The agency pointed to existing rules requiring firms to retain personal information only as long as reasonably necessary and to safeguard its confidentiality and integrity. the very same rules that have allowed literally every single piece of my data being leaked several separate times, and now i have free credit monitoring instead of privacy? and all of those companies still operate normally, as if nothing ever happened? very neat.>Discord said it is using the additional time this year to add more verification options, including credit cards, more transparency on vendors and technical detail of how age verification will workand why didnt we start with credit cards? instead of facial recognition with peter thiel? (this is a rhetorical question)
clumsysmurf: > now i have free credit monitoringMight not even matter ..."TransUnion and Experian, two of the three major credit bureaus, have started dismissing a larger share of consumer complaints without help since the Trump administration began dismantling the CFPB."https://www.propublica.org/article/credit-report-mistakes-cf...
ArchieScrivener: How much money did the CFPB actually give back to wronged consumers?
PaulKeeble: Some of the accounts being blocked from certain access are themselves 18! You would think Reddit would consider that, but nope it doesn't.
m4ck_: Pre-trump's attempts to eliminate the department, almost $20 billion.https://www.consumerfinance.gov/enforcement/enforcement-by-t...
gibspaulding: And one would hope that the purpose of the CFPB would be to dissuade lenders from wronging consumers in the first place, meaning the net benefit to consumers was likely much higher.
hunter2_: Probably because the transfer of accounts (typically for reasons of better spamming, but in this case for adult access) is possible.However, that makes me wonder what mechanism might "unverify" an account holder's age upon transfer. I suppose it's simply a need to re-verify (take a new photo) upon every login, but then folks could transfer the session cookie to avoid needing the new owner to perform a login (unless a new device ID/fingerprint makes the old cookie useless).
Jeremy1026: Since you don't have to verify every time you use the account, transfer of verified accounts will still be a "problem" though. It's just a CYA to be able to say "we verified this account owner."
DrJokepu: But… You could transfer the account after age verification too. The only way to be sure is to ask for ID every time people use the website / application, then children will be truly finally safe from the horrors of the Internet.
jvuygbbkuurx: The website will only function when webcam is turned on with passport next to your face. Session is immeditely revoked on failure.
