Discord will require age verification starting next month

[Sympthsical]

I know DU is probably not the audience that spends a lot of time in Discord, but this is a fairly big deal. Discord is a voice/chatroom platform that had initially been used mainly for gaming and then spread into social media. It allows personalized communities to come together on private servers without the same level of public scrutiny that, say, Twitter or Instagram have. You may note that several recent incidents of mass shootings have included Discord chats from the shooters - including the alleged killer of Charlie Kirk.

Some examples of my use for it are gaming, my IRL social circle has our own server, and my nursing cohort has a server. 37% of people aged 18-34 use the platform. It is even more ubiquitous among teens.

The real story here is we may see similar policies rolling out in places like YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram as regulations in places like Australia and the EU begin affecting global corporate policy in this way.

https://www.theverge.com/tech/875309/discord-age-verification-global-roll-out

Users who aren’t verified as adults will not be able to access age-restricted servers and channels, won’t be able to speak in Discord’s livestream-like “stage” channels, and will see content filters for any content Discord detects as graphic or sensitive. They will also get warning prompts for friend requests from potentially unfamiliar users, and DMs from unfamiliar users will be automatically filtered into a separate inbox.

A government ID might still be required for age verification in its global rollout. According to Discord, to remove the new “teen-by-default” changes and limitations, “users can choose to use facial age estimation or submit a form of identification to [Discord’s] vendor partners, with more options coming in the future.”

The first option uses AI to analyze a user’s video selfie, which Discord says never leaves the user’s device. If the age group estimate (teen or adult) from the selfie is incorrect, users can appeal it or verify with a photo of an identity document instead. That document will be verified by a third party vendor, but Discord says the images of those documents “are deleted quickly — in most cases, immediately after age confirmation.”

[leftstreet]

1. The platform that just had the data breach?

Oh surely not!

Welcome to the surveillance state

[Sympthsical]

2. I was reading they may bypass it based on account age

Since my account dates back to 2016, I'd probably be fine.

Wonder if people will start selling their accounts.

They say in the article that the verification data is deleted after verification. My response was, "Uh huh."

[TBF]

3. Give teens a challenge ...

they'll either smash it by altering ID's or they'll go around it and build their own platform.

In our high schools here in TX they outlawed phones. Do you know how long it took students to get into the school's microsoft (where they complete assignments) and start leaving messages for each other? Right, by the end of the first day ... my college student with friends back in hs was laughing when he told me.

Magats are so dumb.