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from the I've-got-a-Bad-Thieling-About-This dept.
Ten days ago, the social chat app Discord announced that it would launch “teen-by-default” settings for its global audience. As part of this update, all new and existing users worldwide will have a teen-appropriate experience, with updated communication settings, restricted access to age-gated spaces, and content filtering that preserves privacy and meaningful connections, the platform said.
This, of course, means that to use Discord the way you are used to, you’ll have to let it scan your face, and the internet wasn’t happy. Many communities quickly announced their move to other platforms. Others, like the security researcher Celeste, who goes by the handle vmfunc, were convinced there would be a workaround.
Together with two other researchers, they set out to look into Persona, the San Francisco-based startup that’s used by Discord for biometric identity verification – and found a Persona frontend exposed to the open internet on a US government authorized server.
More at The Rage
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday February 21, @04:24PM (2 children)
Explain the assumption that this:
leads to this:
Who is this "you" and what is this "way you are used to"? Ain't me and I wonder who they mean. The more I think about it the less I like who they seem to be talking about.
What we're seeing and arguing about is NOT an age verification thing its a culture war between "discord is for dick pics and cheese pizza" vs "discord is easier to use IRC with lotsa integrations for legit and legal organizations"
I am on exactly 14 discord servers and all of them operate below "teen" level and other than some occasional swear words when something breaks they'd all be K12 suitable. If discord enforces teen rules I will be pretty happy with my user experience. There's three I'm on for specific games where people have a beer or twenty while playing and then use swear words in chat when they run into a bug or whatever, but they're mostly kid-friendly (In the legal sense of kid friendly, not the Democrats in the Epstein files sense of being kid friendly). There's I believe three that are paying clients; why businessmen think Discord is acceptable for business use is semi mystifying I'm guessing the problem is the price Slack wants to charge for the (minimal) value they get. Theres a couple programming language discords that are fairly well behaved and a couple "youtube channel communities" all good boys who dindu nuffin wrong and are well behaved and polite and any k12 member would not experience anything inappropriate.
No one can seem to explain what the downside is for 99% of the population if predators, cheese pizza traders, and dick pic sharers have an ID attached to their weenies or the pictures they're sharing of lil' weenies. I'm perfectly OK with life being more difficult for that type of person.
There's no privacy implication if my three clients have a picture of my face; I video conference with their IT droids on a regular basis already, they have the EIN for my LLC when they pay my invoices and send me my annual 1099. One ACH transfers directly into my checking account.
I don't want to get into doc dropping type stuff but whatever WTF I'm on the Adafruit discord merely as a customer. If "they" get access to my face or photo ID I'm not overly concerned because "they" already have my CC info and shipping address and purchase history LOL.
Should a company trying to monetize a free service be allowed to ostracize the worst elements of society whom are not making them profits, even if those elements rank high politically on the progressive stack? Yeah, I'm OK with that.
You'll note a censorship in legacy media where they very carefully avoid any mention of exactly whom will be affected and exactly what activities they are performing that will be affected. And then you start noticing things about the legacy media and politicians doing the complaining...
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 21, @05:25PM
> other than some occasional swear words when something breaks they'd all be K12 suitable.
Apparently you've never ridden on a K-12 bus...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 22, @01:33AM
C'mon. We weren't born yesterday. We know how this goes. The official policy sounds sorta reasonable, but the in-practice enforcement is anything but. The stuff actually harmful to children like grooming will somehow manage to evade the rules. ID checks will get imposed on random users with no apparent interaction with adult content (or simply by policy changed to be required for everyone in the future). Censored content will extend to cover more and more things that are perfectly teen-appropriate but disliked by people in power like protests and queer content and Adafruit because their overzealous censors linked "fruit" => "fruity" => "gay" (okay, probably not that specific case, but there will be moderation decisions that stupid).