Discord age verification

[firecat]

I guess Discord is going to start requiring users to prove they are over a certain age if they want to access certain content.

I mainly use Discord to keep connected to fanfic fandom, most of which has certain content. And I definitely am not going to upload my ID.

Does this affect you? If so, what are you going to do when it goes into effect?

Comments

[sabotabby]

My hope is that people are pissed enough and cancelling Nitro enough that they back down.

I mainly use it for writing groups and shitposting. One server I'm on killed its NSFW channel; everyone else is debating what to do. On some social media, they can figure out how old you are by other means (I would have had to have been eight when I started on Discord, which is not impossible, but the length of time I've had the same account makes it likely that I'm an adult).

I dunno, it's my main social media. If it comes down to it I might give them a fake ID like I did with Facebook.

[firecat]

How did you acquire a fake ID?

[sabotabby]

Photoshop.

[firecat]

That makes sense, thanks!

[amadi]

I'm going to cross the bridge when I come to it, but I might delete my server and move to Slack or another option. I'm mostly worried about the impact of LGBTQ servers that were slapped with an NSFW/adult label just because they mention sexuality, even if there's no explicit content at all. This could cut a lot of kids off from essential community. I hate it.

[firecat]

That would be pretty fucking awful

[anagrrl]

It does affect me! There is no way in hell I would ever upload a photo or ID, so if/when this gets enforced, I'll just leave discord. It'll be a pain, but that's life.

[shanaqui]

Technically, age verification is already in effect for me since I'm in the UK and it hasn't changed a single thing for me so far. I've posted NSFW stuff, chatted as normal, etc etc. I haven't verified. Then again, my wife also refused to verify, and can't see any NSFW images e.g. when I link to fanart. So they're being inconsistent and annoying already and I can't see it getting better when they roll it out to everyone.

Allegedly, some people won't have to verify because Discord is analysing all your posts and guessing your age from it. I'm probably going to try to move personal stuff (the server my wife and I share) to Stoat or similar (assuming they ever get their acts together to be able to send emails like verification emails and password resets promptly) and just use Discord for stuff other people won't move off there (like my free company in FFXIV and stuff like that).

I cancelled my Nitro subscription and am really hoping they back down, though probably gonna move personal stuff to Stoat anyway as the trust's definitely broken.

[firecat]

I didn’t know age verification was already in place in some areas. I’m glad to know there’s an alternative.

[greghousesgf]

ugh, I'm glad I don't use Discord now. What are you supposed to do, show your driver's license to a computer screen or something? I also agree with amadi about possible problems for LGBTQ users.

[firecat]

I don’t know how they’re going to do it. I maybe would be willing to upload a selfie, since there are already pix of me linked to my name on the web. But an ID, no way.

[sraun]

A few things:

It is almost certainly the case that Discord is doing the bare minimum to meet legal requirements. They're part of the group that Dreamwidth is also in that fights these kinds of requirements.

They're claiming that for many/most people they'll be able to establish age good enough to be classified as 'not minors' from your previous postings.

They also claim that the facial age verification is going to live completely on your local machine - your picture is not going to get uploaded to their servers. It will be interesting to see how this works, because if it's not live, it opens the possibility of using artifically-aged photos.

[sraun]

Oh, one other thing - reports from some UK and Australia users (where this is already happening) report that getting around it can be as easy as 'rename a channel with nsfw in the name to something without nsfw'.

[shanaqui]

This is not a universal panacea, unfortunately. My wife was blocked from seeing fanart I posted in a channel called "general" which has no explicit terms in the file name or anything. It's a server with only the two of us in it, no channels marked as NSFW at all.

Age verification always happening solely on your device is a lie that they use to make it sound palatable, as proven by the leak of 70,000 people's government IDs. (Some sources claim much more data was stolen.)

[firecat]

Thanks for the details! I didn’t realize Discord is being legally required to do this. I have more hope now that I know it wasn’t their choice (although I’m not thrilled they are choosing to capitulate).

[silveradept]

I expect it to try and affect me, and if it does, I expect to be able to defeat it without having to give up any information.

[firecat]

\o/

[megpie71]

I'm already affected (Australian in Australia).

One tip I'm going to be passing around all over the place: if, like me, you are an adult who has short arms and who needs glasses to be able to read small print, the trick to getting around Discord's face-based age recognition thing is to skip trying to use the phone version of the app - I tried that, and found that I couldn't physically hold the phone far enough away from my face to enable things, plus I was having trouble reading the instructions in the first place (they need you to take off your glasses in order to use the silly thing). What worked for me, and prevented me from having to give them an opportunity to look at any of my ID, was installing Discord on my tablet, and using that. So if you're having problems on your phone, switch to a different piece of technology, if you can - tablet, laptop computer etc.

[firecat]

Good advice! I never use the phone version of anything if I can help it. 😹

[ladythmpr]

I'm pretty heavily on Discord; it's one of my main contacts with a lot of people and crafting communities. Only one, AFAIK, has a NSFW channel, and there's been talk of deleting the channel or changing the name. I have no intention of giving Discord my Gov't ID. But also, if they are determining age by account creation or usage, I think I've had an account since Discord's beginning, so I might be considered an adult due to that. If they MAKE me verify, though, I am gone. (It's one of the reasons I never had a Facebook account.)

I don't run the servers I'm on, but I know the people who do, and if they move to some other platform, I will follow them.

[firecat]

I hope you don’t have to relocate your internet home

[snippy]

Not affected, because I tried and then gave up on Discord a long time ago. It's just not for me, and then there were the earlier data leaks.

Could comments on AO3 serve a similar purpose? Having discussions in comments used to happen with Disqus. Disqus even had original newsgroup-style communities separate from a commenting function on an existing blog. They eliminated that functionality (and deleted all content) more than 5 years ago, maybe 10.

[firecat]

I don’t see how comments on AO3 could replace the kind of fandom that’s happening on Discord. But I guess we’ll find out. I am not actually super engaged with Discord because I don’t like the interface. But there are a few channels I look at frequently.

[selki]

I mainly use it for 1) virtual conventions (WisCon, WorldCon, Balticon), 2) A virtual book club 3) A few podcast and Twitch fandom discussions -- though some of them are leveraging the new Patreon chat feature.
I don't love the interface and I won't cry if they migrate anywhere else. I'll judge on a case-by-case about whether to follow them.

[fyreharper]

If it asks me for age verification, I expect my first step will be to find out whether this still works:

https://www.tumblr.com/apeacebone/808227123750895616?source=share

If not… I’m not sure. Figure that out when I get there.

[firecat]

Hehehe, I love it

[bibliofile]

Denise (DW cofounder) has addressed this on Bluesky, in a post responding to last week's article on The Verge. What sraun said: Discord is changing in response to legal requirements, not spontaneously starting this because they want to.

Thread:
https://bsky.app/profile/rahaeli.bsky.social/post/3meiroz6nk22w

[firecat]

Thanks, I knew that but I should have included it in my post