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.
This lazy reporting is hurting the messaging because readers will believe that mandatory age verification was implemented and everything is fine, so new laws will not change anything for the worse. It needs to be clear that age verification laws would change the situation considerably, not be a nothingburger.
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.
The direction of these restrictions is not “optional”
Not really, you'll just be forced to use services from eg google or meta. And pay for them. And share user data.
until it becomes law, like it is (or in the process of becoming) ~everywhere.
that is exactly what everyone is angry about.
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.
It’s important to get facts right.
I literally gain from using their services for communication and voice chat with friends.
“Literally no gain whatsoever” is completely wrong.
I’ve tried Matrix/Element for years. I’m still in some IRC channels. I know what the alternatives are I can confidently say I’m gaining value from the ease in which Discord allows us to voice chat, screen share, and invite less technical people to join.
They are extorting your identity from you and you're somehow OK with that.
...for now ... What stops them from changing this in the future?
Additionally Discord may verify your age based on the collected data without consent.
Then I’ll deal with that situation if it arises.
- There are servers that are labelled adult only because it's simpler to label _everything_ as causing cancer than it is to only label the correct things. I can't join channels for some games because they're "adult"; even though they're not
- There are servers that are getting rid of content because they don't want some automatic system to label them as adult, even though they're not. There's a game server that got rid of it's meme channel, because people could (but don't) post content that some system might see as adult.
So it is a bigger deal than you're making it out to be. It's negatively impacting people and servers that have no interest in having anything adult on them.
the very same rules that have allowed literally every single piece of my data to be 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 work
and why didnt we start with credit cards? instead of facial recognition with peter thiel? (this is a rhetorical question)
Might 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...
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/enforcement/enforcement-by-t...
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).
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.
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.
___ 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.
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.
I also wouldn't be surprised if there were plenty of people only dimly aware of the idea of a VPN who are now sitting up and taking note.
Such as following directions from a YouTube video that instructs them to do sketchy things.
The second option is ignoring the verification request. Goodbye online-gaming-with-strangers on Xbox. (I see this as a positive). Same goes for Ubisoft who aggressively wanted my secret papers to verify my identity.
I've yet to come across anything I want or need outside banking or government use where age verification benefits me, or is so useful/important that I would willingly hand over critical secret documents. I've not even needed to use a VPN for anything. It doesn't mean it won't happen, but when it does, option #1 or #2 is going to cover everything.
Which circles back to the main point here - if I ignore it, then effectively I get identified as a non-adult. How does this protect anybody?
(UK-based, might not be the same everywhere)
The UK's Online Safety Act originally had a proposal that would allow users to purchase an ID code anonymously in cash from a corner store, presenting only ID to the cashier the same way as buying alcohol. This was never implemented, because it's more useful for the government and corporations to link all online usage to a government ID.
Probabilistic verification using behavioral signals and metadata (device age, account age, interaction patterns) doesn't perfectly verify age but massively reduces the privacy trade-off. Most platforms optimize for regulatory compliance, not actual safety.
If it was actually about kids, we'd have done it a long time ago. With more focus on things like porn and gambling (including 'loot box' gambling in games) rather than social media.
[0] "Cypherpunks Uncut." https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xt3hpb
basilikum•1h ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20260308223909/https://www.cnbc....