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.

[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.

[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.

[firecat]

How did you acquire a fake ID?

[firecat]

That would be pretty fucking awful

[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.

[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.

[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'.