VaM 1.x Discord to require face/ID verification starting in March

[Algorithm1248]

Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month

Age verification for all.

www.theverge.com

How do we want to move forward? Consolidate everything in the hub forums? Spin up our own Matrix server?

 

[murn]

I doubt this will change anything with VAM and discord. Having another ID-ing mode changes nothing and there are a lot of sites that you need to submit your ID to also. Just don't use it if you're worried about something.

 

[AshAuryn]

The team is aware and we will keep an eye on how things progress.

 

[atani]

Having another ID-ing mode changes nothing and there are a lot of sites that you need to submit your ID to also. Just don't use it if you're worried about something.

Well, it does for many people.
I don't know about your experience, but I've only ever submitted my ID information (online) to official home government websites, not third-parties like Discord who already have a history of data breaches.
To me this may mean the end of the road for me in Discord for NSFW servers, I am simply not willing to share my ID info to an untrustworthy service.

 

[Tomblack]

Fuck this dystopian timeline.

 

[hazmhox]

Fuck this dystopian timeline.

I honestly think it's not that of a bad thing. People are going completely nuts online ( death threats, pedo content, illegal content and all that sort of crap ), and parents are not even checking what their kids do online. So all and all, the root idea is not that stupid. On the other hand, I fully agree with Atani. That sort of identification data should be handled by public authorities (ie the gov.) which would be ( technically ) secured and limited to public authorities access.

The simple fact that this data is handle by a third-party is an immediate nope for me.

I'm not saying that public infrastructure would be fail-proof, as even public systems have been breached. But public authorities have to be transparent and are limited to what they can do with the data.
Random ass third party selected by Discord's company is on the other hand, a recipe for being for disaster, and being harassed on a daily basis because your data goes every fucking where to stupid scammers/random companies. I'm already barely using my phone because of the amount of scam/telemarketing I receive on a daily basis haha.

Honestly I can live without Discord, and on top of that, there are self hosted alternatives that you can try. That's not like Discord is not becoming more and more invasive with its Nitro and quests and popup bullshit since a year and a half.

 

[MacGruber]

The thing is that a German government ID (Personalausweis) has the electronic ability to confirm that your age is over a set limit, like here in this case probably confirming you are 18+, without giving the site any additional data. I'm not sure, but I think it may be a EU-wide thing? They DON'T need your age, your actual birth date, your name, your address, your ID number, biometric data of your face, etc. All that is really needed is a YES/NO whether you are old enough. There is a government API for it, just needs to be implemented by the website. But instead they do weird AI-guesstimates, face recognition and whatever. Because confirmed info is of course worth a LOT to advertisers

 

[hazmhox]

The thing is that a German government ID (Personalausweis) has the electronic ability to confirm that your age is over a set limit

Definitely not the case in France, if you don't renew to the new one which started to be issued in 2021 or 2022.
But it's a physical chip... even tho there's a QR code on it, I highly doubt there's any API any third party ( like Discord ) could access to use that information. There is the gouv.fr plateform but you can't request access to it if you're not a "public" entity. And it's probably a good thing because the data you can gather with that API access is way more critical than simply a "yes this person is of legal age".

And if it exists, I can't find any information on the gov website/google. Everytime I fall back to the gouv plateform which says you can't access it as a private company.

That being said, that would be nice to have that sort of API and enforce a EU regulation that would force any company to rely on it instead of going through third parties. The recent massive leak of bank information speaks for itself... as long as we let third party handle datas... you can't trust sharing any information.