Discord says they'll use some AI garbage tool. Those are prone to mistakes over a large enough userbase. It will not be a rare occurrence for an adult to be labelled a child until they debase themselves with a scan of their face or a copy of their government ID.

For children - this mandate also still makes the decision on behalf of the parents that a child must submit a scan of their face to a third party. Moving to Persona for age verification involves verification data being sent outside of the user's phone - in direct contradiction to Discord's initial promise of keeping facial scan data solely on the phone. Third parties that we've been given no reason to trust will delete the data without using it for an improper purpose such as creating derivative info from the ID or facial scan itself unrelated to the sole purpose of verifying that an individual is an adult.

While we're at it - is there any legitimate reason why Discord is associating a person's actual or estimated age with their account as opposed to storing a value that states if they are or are not an adult? That sort of granularity seems unrelated to the stated purpose.

1. Given the bad press, they may reverse their decision to do this.

2. If they don't about-face, there's a lot about the implementation that remains to be seen.

Personally, I use discord for things that should be completely unaffected by this. I will not verify my age if there are surprises. I'll leave. If the communities I'm a part of decide to move, I'll support them and move even if I don't run into surprises.

There is absolutely no way we should support giving identifying information to a U.S. company given what's going on right now. The trust is no longer there. If you verify your identity, anything you say on Discord could be used against you if you ever pass through American borders.

Seeing more and more of 'This message is unavailable' - 'Discord requires ID in order to see certain messages'

Pretty much an AI detecting vulgarity and blocking it, although actual racist, vulgarity gets through things like 'here with my gock' to 'troll it' are what I've seen.

So, yes it is a requirement, and yes, they are censoring people and things, and requiring others to have an ID to see the messages as well.

So 'Not mandatory for all accounts' is technically true, but I mean.. you get it, hopefully.

> You will be able to join a Discord with your friends, chat, and do voice without age verification.

No, building a community is a goal for many; this just isn't acceptable.

> So the claim that Discord is making ID verification "mandatory" or that you need it for gaming chats is untrue.

Again, not mandatory but creates more issues than it solves.

Hmm what I talk about with my friends contains a LOT of nsfw so really without it any platform is useless to me.

I know not everyone is so open but in the lgbt space most people are.

A ton of very niche communities are age-restricted and there's no way users in them would doxx themselves, so this is the end of those communities.

This. We've gotten really bad at headline bangin.

> Here's the exact list of what's restricted if you don't verify:

> >Content Filters:

Sound like something people might not want tied to real-world identities.

> >Age-gated Spaces:

So, #politics in my local instance.

> This is false. Age verification is not mandatory for all accounts. You will be able to join a Discord with your friends, chat, and do voice without age verification.

You are correct. For now. But why would they stop there?

Supposedly this is to protect teens. If that's true, why would they continue letting teens chat with anonymous users? What if they get tricked into sharing sensitive images or video of themselves? Surely we need to know everyone's ID to ensure teens aren't unwittingly chatting with a known predator. It's for their safety. But for now that's a bridge too far. For now.

And why should we believe this even has anything to do with protecting teens? That's valuable data. Discord says they're not holding onto it... for now. But Discord is offering quite a lot to users for free. Why let such an obvious revenue source go unmonetized? They're doing this now because they're going public soon. Investors want an ROI and this action is sure to invite some competition. The people leaving want an alternative, so a competitor could get a foothold. Discord needs to stay ahead. And the users Discord keeps after this stunt are going to be the most resilient to leaving - the most exploitable. Surely they wouldn't care if the policy changes in the future.

The sky isn't falling. But the frog is boiling.

So? I'm an adult. I do adult things sometimes. In fact, that's when I'd value anonymity the most!

Let's call this what it is:

1. A way for politicians and the state to track porn habits to US citizens and use that information against them in the future. Blackmail for the future politicians, business leaders, and wealthy to coerce them into doing what those in power want.

2. A way for conservatives to tighten the noose around non-chaste materials and begin to purge them from the internet. And if that works, that's hardly the last thing that will go. Next will be LGBT content, women's rights content, atheist content, pro-labor content, and more. (Or if you're on the other side of the political spectrum, consider that the powers could be used to remove Christian content, 2nd Amendment content, etc. It doesn't really matter what is being removed, just that the mechanisms are in place and that powers can put a lid on the populace.)

We aren't screaming loudly enough.

Do not try to sugar coat this with a pedantic mistake.

This is far worse.

It's a first step down a path the Big Brother state wants.

Yell.

Scream.

Protest.

I wonder if the people who write these articles realize that they are doing more damage to their cause than good? At best, their lies come off as hysteria. As worse, their lies come off as conspiratorial paranoia. Either way, they are outright ignoring that these polices are put into place to address a very real problem with the status quo while failing to communicate what the very real issues with these policies are (nevermind proposing better ways to address the problem).