> Social media company Discord announced plans in February to roll out mandatory age verification globally,
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.
You're downplaying it in the same way that others are overplaying it.
- 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.
> It's negatively impacting people and servers that have no interest in having anything adult on them.
So who should police that? I am in certain communities that try to be stricter on moderation (which I love!) but it's hard work, lots of people trying to be at the edge of rules (with normal things like swearing, insults, etc.).
Whoever labels adult only and does not care is not wishing to put the effort to police that it actually is not.
Personally I do generally mind much more annoying, aggressive, stupid posters (in various channels), than the fact that I am not allowed to post some stupid adult-looking meme.
I don't have the right answers. I don't know that there _is_ a right answer.
> Whoever labels adult only and does not care is not wishing to put the effort to police that it actually is not.
Or they're unwilling to risk the consequences of making a mistake.
> the fact that I am not allowed to post some stupid adult-looking meme.
But, in my example, you don't lose the ability to post some stupid adult-looking meme. You lose the ability to post ANY meme. Because the risk of someone posting something over the line is that the entire server is suddenly adult only. And for something like a game server, that's can be a catastrophic change; it can destroy the community.
Is being able post memes that important? No, probably not. But giving up the entire ability to do something fun, that doesn't cause any real harm, because someone might do something stupid... and the response to that will be a full nuclear destruction of your community. Yeah, that part sucks.
No? I’m against age verification too. Please re-read my comment above for why the Discord example with wrong information is counterproductive to arguments against age verification.
And I am too! My comment above was that the claim that Discord’s age verification is mandatory was false.
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 will be when everyone starts leaking from the big players. Age verification will make software development impossible or be impossible to implement without huge investment.
Just because it's not openly shared does not mean that there aren't large databases of everything from working refresh keys to entire profiles indexed out there for the large services. Most data leaks and breaches don't get reported, or acknowledged, or are downplayed in their potential effect (but weirdly, also given more weight than they deserve since it becomes pointless to have so much data that doesn't add anything new to, say, a profile of a person)
You know that none of those things actually protect children from predators which is the supposed reason for these changes. So when they inevitably don't work Discord will take the next step of requiring age verification from everyone.
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.
You will gain nothing relative to the status quo today. You're giving up your identity in order to just... stay the same. This is a textbook definition of no upside.
They are extorting your identity from you and you're somehow OK with that.
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.