Man... How did yall white Westerners turn out to be the weakest people in the world?
You were supposed to be the bastions of freedom and justice, and the rest of the world begrudgingly admired you for that and were slowly improving to become like you, but ever since 9/11/2001 the rich old people that rule you have been feeding you boogeymen to make you their complacent b*tches and you lay down and crawl along and accept everything without even a whimper.
Now your countries are little different from Russia or China or Dubai etc where the old money cabals run everything, and it's not some third world backhole that was suffering already anyway, but you yourself that are the worst victims of all their laws and wars.
petcat 34 minutes ago [-]
> Now your countries are little different from Russia or China or Dubai
The fact that many independent national newspapers (including this article from CNBC) are openly calling-out the surveillance state and entering the debate into the public conscience should tell everyone that USA (and the West) is very different from Russia or China or Dubai.
USA is not perfect, but at least is has active public discourse. We can openly (and legally) debate these things, and if we convince enough people, then we can change them.
brandon272 30 minutes ago [-]
Active public discourse seems to have not made even a slight dent in the growth of surveillance in the last 25 years.
rabbitlord 54 seconds ago [-]
So you can imagine how much surveillance has expanded in countries without such discourse.
Somehow we have more public “discourse” than ever with less public “debate” than ever. People just yelling rude names at each other and repeating nonsense talking points, while the trajectory of what’s actually happening continues to worsen. I include Congress and the executive branch in this characterization.
mr_toad 1 hours ago [-]
> Man... How did yall white Westerners turn out to be the weakest people in the world?
Slowly, and then suddenly.
The cracks were obvious when digital records made record keeping more practical, and the first electronic payment systems appeared, but once everyone was doing everything online the damn just burst wide open.
kitd 1 hours ago [-]
See also "boiling frogs".
But then I'm replying to @mr_toad so you probably knew that already.
slicktux 49 minutes ago [-]
Your sardonic comment says a lot but does not address the real freedom we have. Which is to NOT use those platforms that require age verification. The more people that don’t use them the more it will hurt the companies that loose a customer base; then maybe their lobbyists will force a change.
minton 8 minutes ago [-]
So you’ll just not use Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, or Android? In other words, you’ll just not use any computers? Seems nonsensical.
mschuster91 20 minutes ago [-]
> Which is to NOT use those platforms that require age verification.
That is getting harder and harder. Platforms that are not susceptible to age verification (yet?) are on their way out - when have you written an email the last time for personal (i.e. non-work, order or customer support related) reasons? A physical letter [1]? The (root) cause is, centralized platforms like Whatsapp are much much more convenient and on top of that network effects apply - when 90% of your social connections use Whatsapp exclusively, it's hard to not use Whatsapp as well.
And then you got digitalization of government services and banking. More and more governments push for the removal of paper forms and require a web service. Banking regulations enforce 2FA, which almost always comes in the form of a phone app. The web services require a browser and an OS, which may require age verification sooner than later (see the recent spat about California's law), and the phone apps are only available for the walled gardens of unrooted, Play Store certified Apple and Android phones - that can and will be forced to verify ages as well.
Hard cash is out as well, many governments have set hard caps on cash transactions due to "anti money laundering" laws, in other countries you need to have a bank account to pay for mandatory things like taxes or public broadcast fees [2], and an increasing number of vendors refuses to accept cash as well due to the associated handling cost and risk of fraud (i.e. employee theft) and robbery.
That last point alone will make it impossible to survive in society without engaging with one or more of the walled gardens.
And mercy be upon you if the US Government decides to put you on one of their black lists. No more banking, even as an European, because everything touches VISA/MC/SWIFT, your cloud accounts (and with it your phone and app stores), all gone, you are now an unperson [3].
This totalitarian agenda has been in the works for far longer than a quarter century. It's not just rich old people either.
We're witnessing the creation of the beast system in real time. The one that is prophesized in the Book of Revelation.
vladms 49 minutes ago [-]
> Now your countries are little different from Russia or China or Dubai etc where the old money cabals run everything
If that's what you strongly believe then "western countries" are definitely quite bad at communication and the others quite good at propaganda.
Having lived in a communist country (years ago) and in the west I know from first hand experience that the difference is huge. No need to believe me, see for yourself if you can, alternatively distrust everybody similarly (Rusia, China and the west) - nobody wants your well-being...
Sad part is that probably the poor (everywhere) are the ones suffering the most from the wars and stupid decisions, it does not matter west/east/south/north. Western countries were a richer which means less poor, but it's not like it's a heaven for everybody either.
coffe2mug 14 minutes ago [-]
Years ago is different to now. Many places in Russia or China, Dubai etc is very livable. Even lots of people are going about their lives normally in Dubai - these days.
China is definitely not so shit like portrayed by western media. At the same time London is also not run by Islamic Extremists as portrayed by perhaps the top media station in USA.
> Sad part is that probably the poor (everywhere) are the on
totally true.
chii 1 hours ago [-]
yep. You are not wrong.
Those who trade freedom for security will obtain neither.
rdevilla 1 hours ago [-]
The west is lost.
boothby 43 minutes ago [-]
It will live on, encoded in the weights of LLMs
NegativeLatency 51 minutes ago [-]
Everyone was just copying the French
caconym_ 1 hours ago [-]
It's almost as if there's nothing special or unspecial about any of these populations. Just transient cultural factors that (in addition to generally being understood in limited hindsight and through rose-tinted glasses) will inevitably erode and dissolve under sustained attack.
> lay down and crawl along and accept everything without even a whimper.
People just want to live their lives. Maybe you think you would be doing differently in their position, but until you've had a chance to prove it, I don't believe you.
lapcat 20 minutes ago [-]
> Man... How did yall white Westerners turn out to be the weakest people in the world? You were supposed to be the bastions of freedom and justice
This is a misunderstanding of American history. From its founding by wealthy white male landowners and slaveowners, the US was by design a plutocracy, enshrined in the Constitution with various anti-democratic (small "d") measures such as separation of powers, the electoral college, the Presidential veto, the unelected Supreme Court with lifetime tenure, and representation of land rather than population in the Senate. Originally, Senators weren't even directly elected. And of course neither women nor Black men had the right to vote.
The only thing that held the plutocracy in check was "all political is local". The US was an agrarian nation, not yet hit by the industrial revolution. The fastest form of communication and tranportation was the horse. What has changed radically in the 20th and 21st centuries is that modern technology allows the ultra-wealthy to organize and conspire (see Epstein and friends, for example) on a national and even international scale. Political election campaigns have always been privately funded—another essential feature of the plutocracy—and now they're obscenely expensive with TV and internet advertising, which further consolidates the power of the ultra-wealthy campaign contributors.
The biggest problem with the US is that we haven't had a political revolution in 250 years. We're still operating under the ancient rules.
Even during the suffering of the Great Depression, it took a "white knight", an ultra-wealthy leader FDR with some sympathy for the lower classes, to provide some relief. And note that the most successful third-party Presidential candidate in recent history was Ross Perot, a billionaire who self-funded TV informercials to spread his message. The game is rigged in favor of big money and has always been so rigged.
broDogNRG 1 hours ago [-]
Would like to point out GenX is middle management age in the US.
It isn't the senile crowd running things anymore. It's 50-60 year old Thiel, Musk, health insurance CEO, crowd.
Professional consumer crowd that's taken the baton and never invented anything of their own. Electric cars and rockets, the internet, and society post-WW2 were originally grandpa's ideas.
NegativeLatency 48 minutes ago [-]
Deregulation of financial markets and glorification of monetary wealth above all else was also their doing? Gen X were kids when Carter and Regan sent us down the path we’re on now.
conductr 53 minutes ago [-]
I think that's the problem, the greatest generation were sort of a moral compass in the US (like it or not, they obv had their own problems - eg. racism). Without them to scold us, it seems we're all too infantile/selfish/greedy and can't even show each other basic respect or do something as simple as stop at a red light. Sure, the internet and social media accelerate it but I think there's also a fundamental loss of parental figures that went out with that generation too.
As a Gen X'er myself I know I grew up respecting the hell out of older people, especially 70+ ages. The past couple of decades as that cohort churns, I can't say the same. It's more of a case by case basis now, many of them seem outright evil in their self-righteousness. They all seem angry and ready to fight in any passing interaction (granted, I live in Texas where most of them are amped on FoxNews, too) and that's not how it used to be. They used to be the friendliest cohort alive, hell when I was maybe 10-14 I even used to volunteer at senior living homes just to hang out and chat with them and can't imagine anyone wanting to do that now.
cucumber3732842 14 minutes ago [-]
The greatest generation and the silent generation spent their entire adult lives vesting power in institutions and they passed this on to the boomers.
Now, after the better part of a century of that running it's course with nearly no pressure to not chart a crap course it's falling apart.
graemep 1 hours ago [-]
Complacency.
The west had a golden age from the fall of the Soviet Union, removing their main rival. It also reinforced its reinforced its belief in the inevitably of progress (the "end of history" nonsense, for example). They cannot now cope with threats or danger.
That said, comparing the west to Russia, China etc. is a gross exaggeration.
999900000999 49 minutes ago [-]
China has much lower crime, cheaper healthcare and is making progress in other aspects.
We’re rapidly regressing into prideful ignorance. People are being encouraged to drink raw milk and fear vaccines.
19 century illnesses are making a resurgence.
Citizens are being indefinitely detained for “looking” like immigrants.
petcat 12 minutes ago [-]
> China has much lower crime, cheaper healthcare and is making progress in other aspects.
China is also a horrifying place to live unless you are content just to participate quietly in society and never put a political sign in your yard or even just talk about the wrong thing with your friend in a private WeChat.
China is also an ancient civilization. Americans view of themselves is highly inflated by the sheer luck of being two oceans away from everyone during both world wars. Save for Pearl Harbor there were no notable attacks on the American homeland. It's easy to be a superpower when the world destroys itself and you step into the breach. Millions of Soviet civilians died on their own homeland. In their own cities. Millions. Most Americans have no idea and can't really comprehend it. Even today a shocking number of Americans don't have a passport and really know nothing about the world beyond their shores. These people are overrepresented in an American Congress that is anti-democratic. People on the coasts, like in New York City are underrepresented in American government. The entire state of New York gets the same amount of senators as flyover states, many of which are welfare states (take more funds than they contribute). This is because in a modern economy what NYC produces is more valuable than what a state with barely any people in the middle of nowhere produces. Yet the middle of nowhere is represented more. It makes no sense.
The current administration is only convincing the world that America is a threat. We live in an age where two oceans offer far less protection than they did when America rose to superpower status. The fact Russian intelligence operatives can so easily infiltrate American political discourse is just one example. Watch any congressional hearing about cyber and you might be forgiven for thinking we have already been invaded. Beating up on third world pariah states impresses no one but the current administration. The United States bombs Iran but blinks at Russia. The administration started a trade war with China then backed off, not one meaningful concession was achieved.
Unless America reverses course fast the decline will only continue. The world will move on. No country is inevitable.
jdkee 12 minutes ago [-]
"Save for Pearl Harbor there were no notable attacks on the American homeland."
September 11, 2001 is why Iran is being attacked a quarter century later.
pear01 9 minutes ago [-]
I meant during the two world wars, which should have been obvious. The idea you think I know what NYC is but forgot about 9/11 says more about you than I.
Iran had nothing to do with 9/11. If that was the point you were attempting you probably live in one of those flyover states.
dwroberts 13 minutes ago [-]
> China has much lower crime, cheaper healthcare and is making progress in other aspects.
It is also a totalitarian regime where criticising the state can get you, and possibly your family, ‘disappeared’
john_strinlai 3 hours ago [-]
>An FTC spokesperson told CNBC that companies must limit how collected information is used. [...] The agency pointed to existing rules requiring firms to retain personal information only as long as reasonably necessary and to safeguard its confidentiality and integrity.
the very same rules that have allowed literally every single piece of my data to be leaked several separate times, and now i have free credit monitoring instead of privacy? and all of those companies still operate normally, as if nothing ever happened? very neat.
>Discord said it is using the additional time this year to add more verification options, including credit cards, more transparency on vendors and technical detail of how age verification will work
and why didnt we start with credit cards? instead of facial recognition with peter thiel? (this is a rhetorical question)
tmaly 2 hours ago [-]
I have gotten several notices of medical data being leaked over the last two years. I thought HIPPA law had very harsh fines for this, but I guess they just look the other way.
SoftTalker 2 hours ago [-]
Seems like if you just disclose and make assurances that "you take security seriously" then it's fine.
john_strinlai 2 hours ago [-]
unfortunately, even if the fine seems harsh, if it is less than the profits generated the fine is an operating expense and not a deterrent.
PaulKeeble 3 hours ago [-]
Some of the accounts being blocked from certain access are themselves 18! You would think Reddit would consider that, but nope it doesn't.
hunter2_ 2 hours ago [-]
Probably because the transfer of accounts (typically for reasons of better spamming, but in this case for adult access) is possible.
However, that makes me wonder what mechanism might "unverify" an account holder's age upon transfer. I suppose it's simply a need to re-verify (take a new photo) upon every login, but then folks could transfer the session cookie to avoid needing the new owner to perform a login (unless a new device ID/fingerprint makes the old cookie useless).
Jeremy1026 2 hours ago [-]
Since you don't have to verify every time you use the account, transfer of verified accounts will still be a "problem" though. It's just a CYA to be able to say "we verified this account owner."
DrJokepu 2 hours ago [-]
But… You could transfer the account after age verification too. The only way to be sure is to ask for ID every time people use the website / application, then children will be truly finally safe from the horrors of the Internet.
jvuygbbkuurx 1 hours ago [-]
The website will only function when webcam is turned on with passport next to your face. Session is immeditely revoked on failure.
> … I suppose it's simply a need to re-verify (take a new photo) upon every login …
Clearly the only foolproof solution is a 3rd-party camera pointed at your face at all times whenever you use a computer.
gowld 1 hours ago [-]
SOTA is age inference: The platform studies your behavior to estimate your age.
clumsysmurf 3 hours ago [-]
> now i have free credit monitoring
Might not even matter ...
"TransUnion and Experian, two of the three major credit bureaus, have started dismissing a larger share of consumer complaints without help since the Trump administration began dismantling the CFPB."
And one would hope that the purpose of the CFPB would be to dissuade lenders from wronging consumers in the first place, meaning the net benefit to consumers was likely much higher.
ArchieScrivener 1 hours ago [-]
Thanks for the numbers!
coffeefirst 1 hours ago [-]
Their mere presence was effective. I know people who had trouble with banks refusing to fix their own screwups and demanding evidence that couldn’t exist.
They changed their tune the second there was an open case on the matter.
bilekas 3 hours ago [-]
The fact that these tools are 'active' centric, i.e : You must perform an action to validate you're NOT a child, these will never protect children. A predator simply needs not to verify anything and appear benign and ironically more anonymous than law abiding people.
I'm not saying the inverse is the answer either, just that if anyone without an agenda of surveillance looked at this for a second, the penny would have dropped. So I can only assume that this was the purpose the whole time.
kristopolous 3 hours ago [-]
Sob stories about children are always weaponized for oppression.
It was used to bash interracial marriage, gay rights, suppress dissent, attack the first amendment, and now this.
Whenever you hear some dramatic story involving kids about how you have to live a little less free, know the tactic.
tt24 1 hours ago [-]
Don’t forget the second amendment.
cultofmetatron 2 hours ago [-]
whats incredible to me are how many useful idiots out there STILL fall for it.
___ said hamas beaheaded 40 babies and that turned out to be a complete fabrication. That fake info was used in part to justify killing thousands of kids in ____
meanwhile the recent strike on Iran resulted in 80 little girls getting killed (with plenty of evidence) and its swept under the rug while we get blasted about the 7 soldiers that died.
hobs 2 hours ago [-]
More useful idiots are born every day, most of them never are educated and do not see their past blunders as anything wrong happening, they are completely blind to the real implication of their actions.
cultofmetatron 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ej31 3 hours ago [-]
Age verification doesn't stop determined bad actors, it just builds a database of everyone who cooperated...........
BLKNSLVR 3 hours ago [-]
Know they sheep, the better to keep them penned.
SV_BubbleTime 34 minutes ago [-]
Now do Covid… tracking the non-compliant is surely the smaller task.
bilekas 3 hours ago [-]
Exactly my point.. And all the industry experts who they must have consulted in to write the laws are coincidently invested in personal data harvesting. Who could have foreseen this happening.
dizzy9 2 hours ago [-]
Age verification inherently requires identity verification.
The UK's Online Safety Act originally had a proposal that would allow users to purchase an ID code anonymously in cash from a corner store, presenting only ID to the cashier the same way as buying alcohol. This was never implemented, because it's more useful for the government and corporations to link all online usage to a government ID.
triceratops 52 minutes ago [-]
I didn't know the Online Safety Act had this proposal. Do you have a source?
I've been proposing the same thing on this site for months. IMO anonymous age verification with no record-keeping is the only form of age verification that should exist. No zero knowledge proofs, no centralized government identity provider, nothing.
gowld 1 hours ago [-]
How do you prevent selling those ID codes to kids?
aidenn0 27 minutes ago [-]
The same way you prevented adults buying pornography for kids prior to the web, and the way you prevent adults from buying beer for kids now.
Namely, you don't prevent it (I was 11 when I first saw hardcore pornography, on a VHS tape, at a sleepover party), but it does place a (surmountable) barrier in the way, which will reduce access to some degree. The degree to which that happens depends on a lot of things that are hard to predict. We have culturally normalized access to a lot of things for children, and reversing that will likely take more than just changes to a law.
pickleglitch 1 hours ago [-]
Same way you prevent selling beer to kids. Impose harsh penalties for violators.
2 minutes ago [-]
bluescrn 2 hours ago [-]
The entire point is to de-anonymise adults. Especially in countries that are escalating the policing of online speech.
If it was actually about kids, we'd have done it a long time ago. With more focus on things like porn and gambling (including 'loot box' gambling in games) rather than social media.
ByteBlaster 2 hours ago [-]
The EU is rolling out the EUDI system this year where citizens can verify their age (>16, >18, >21) without revealing any personal information. This is a solved problem over there.
hellojesus 2 hours ago [-]
Doesn't the act of notifying >16 today and >18 tomorrow leak birthdates?
kiicia 1 hours ago [-]
which is nothing in comparison to leaking all of personal information
you can also introduce some jitter like changing age range only once a week/month/year for everyone
travisjungroth 25 minutes ago [-]
Birthday, zip code and gender is enough to uniquely identify most Americans.
gowld 1 hours ago [-]
If you want privacy you need to fuzz the transition. Many platforms support that today. Or you can create a separate account when you graduate.
But also, knowing someone's birthday without trying it to other information greatly reduces the risk of harm.
rdevilla 1 hours ago [-]
It's by design. Pedonazis have been used as the justification for the surveillance apparatus for decades now.
My default reaction to the introduction of any age-verification for any service is the closing account. Goodbye Discord, account closed out of protest.
The second option is ignoring the verification request. Goodbye online-gaming-with-strangers on Xbox. (I see this as a positive). Same goes for Ubisoft who aggressively wanted my secret papers to verify my identity.
I've yet to come across anything I want or need outside banking or government use where age verification benefits me, or is so useful/important that I would willingly hand over critical secret documents. I've not even needed to use a VPN for anything. It doesn't mean it won't happen, but when it does, option #1 or #2 is going to cover everything.
Which circles back to the main point here - if I ignore it, then effectively I get identified as a non-adult. How does this protect anybody?
(UK-based, might not be the same everywhere)
gowld 1 hours ago [-]
What's wrong with being flagged a non-adult? Being a non-adult means you are limited to supervised child-safe spaces. Child-safe doesn't mean "no adults" allowed. It means "monitored and censored"
antonyh 1 hours ago [-]
Aside from the concept of adults masquerading as non-adults, nothing so long as those spaces are moderated fully. I have no problem with skipping the verification, but I do question the moderation of most services.
The problems start when the space become not-for-children and identity validation is mandatory to use them, which will exclude people like me who categorically refuse to hand over personal secrets in order to have access. It does not warrant the inherent risk involved with granting access to personal details unrelated to the service offered. I reckon this will happen when someone decides it's better commercially to make a service adult-only than to moderate non-adult accounts. It's a slippery slope, and a predictable next step once adult have become accustomed to handing over papers for some services to have to do it for many, if not all.
calgoo 35 minutes ago [-]
Well, ad are supposed to be different for children, right? So in theory we would get less ads by being ID'd as a child. Now, this would probably cause a new law where they would allow child ads...
43 minutes ago [-]
Nevermark 55 minutes ago [-]
> causing major headaches for social media companies attempting to strike a balance for users between legal compliance and privacy.
I can see how the problem is real. (Not sarcasm.)
In technical terms, "balance" is trivial. Put an air/security gap between information collected for age verification and the dossiers they have on users.
In business terms, conflict. They have relentless incentives and pressures to collect, collate and leverage every bit of information that can increase their return on users. Legal gray and black behaviors are rampant and tolerated where protectable. The number of paths to a creative interpretation of "balance" is unbounded. Right up to the c-suite.
It is sad, but self-aware, if they feel awkward trusting themselves with a mandated database full of tasty information they are not supposed to taste.
iam_circuit 2 hours ago [-]
The real problem with age verification isn't the method (facial recognition vs credit cards) — it's that deterministic verification requires high-value PII and creates honeypots. Credit cards are just identity by proxy with slightly different attack surface.
Probabilistic verification using behavioral signals and metadata (device age, account age, interaction patterns) doesn't perfectly verify age but massively reduces the privacy trade-off. Most platforms optimize for regulatory compliance, not actual safety.
vadelfe 2 hours ago [-]
The uncomfortable part is that they try to solve a real problem (protecting minors) by requiring universal identification. In practice this means every adult has to prove who they are just to access any part of the internet. Once that infrastructure exists, it’s hard to imagine it not expanding beyond its original purpose.
RHSeeger 2 hours ago [-]
Its hard to imagine that it won't launch _already_ expanded beyond it's original purpose. My expectation is that there will be precisely 0 seconds between it and it being abused. The people building it will plan the abuse before it's even launched.
squeefers 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
toby3d 2 hours ago [-]
It's curious why there are no reverse systems where, when accessing an adult resource, you have to prove that you are a child?
MarkusQ 1 hours ago [-]
I've seen some forums (mostly political) where you have to prove that you can act like a child to be welcome. So that's kind of like what you're talking about?
(If anyone is offended by this, don't worry, I'm talking about the other side; I'm sure your side is full of reasonable adults who just get a little carried away sometimes.)
21asdffdsa12 1 hours ago [-]
And you could relatively well determine the age of a person, by looking at the age of his social graph. No kids knows more then 5 adults, except over family groups.. thuse age identification should be viable via social login even without beeing bound to a passport.
pickleglitch 3 hours ago [-]
Of course they are. That is their purpose.
rnxrx 2 hours ago [-]
This is probably fantastic news for the VPN providers. Lots of people who otherwise wouldn't have bothered are now likely incorporating VPN connectivity into their daily routine. This very obviously includes kids.
I also wouldn't be surprised if there were plenty of people only dimly aware of the idea of a VPN who are now sitting up and taking note.
triceratops 42 minutes ago [-]
VPNs only work while there are jurisdictions that don't have age verification laws and services don't ban access from those jurisdictions.
rationalist 2 hours ago [-]
And kids will do very stupid things to get "free" VPN access.
Such as following directions from a YouTube video that instructs them to do sketchy things.
warmjets222 41 minutes ago [-]
I mean, how much longer do you think VPNs will remain legal in the US?
Never provide such information. Forge it if you must
dylkil 40 minutes ago [-]
ZK proofs are the solution to this problem. Its a pity this tech is not taken more seriously. I recently used a product that required proof of country (or rather proof of not from certain countries). It was a very painless experience with https://zkpassport.id/
Kapura 2 hours ago [-]
no shit, this was obviously the point. the people who said so all along were correct, the people who insisted it wasn't were not speaking in good faith.
we, as a society, need to stop taking companies at their word when they say that the obvious harms that are right around the corner are overblown.
beeforpork 3 hours ago [-]
You don't say.
Aurornis 3 hours ago [-]
> 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.
RHSeeger 2 hours ago [-]
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.
vladms 40 minutes ago [-]
> 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.
john_strinlai 3 hours ago [-]
>I don’t plan to do the Discord age verification and neither do most of the people I interact with on Discord.
until it becomes law, like it is (or in the process of becoming) ~everywhere.
Aurornis 2 hours ago [-]
Okay? Then we’ll deal with that if it happens. If it does happen then other services will have the same requirements.
pixl97 2 hours ago [-]
The baby eating machine is busy telling us that it's coming to eat our babies and your best answer is "wait and see"?
Aurornis 2 hours ago [-]
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.
It’s important to get facts right.
john_strinlai 2 hours ago [-]
>If it does happen then other services will have the same requirements.
that is exactly what everyone is angry about.
Aurornis 2 hours ago [-]
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.
chewbacha 3 hours ago [-]
Maybe! But laws like California’s new law and the Texas law both are making it mandatory from a legal compliance point of view.
The direction of these restrictions is not “optional”
righthand 3 hours ago [-]
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.
ajsnigrutin 2 hours ago [-]
> Age verification will make software development impossible or be impossible to implement without huge investment.
Not really, you'll just be forced to use services from eg google or meta. And pay for them. And share user data.
voxic11 3 hours ago [-]
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.
airstrike 3 hours ago [-]
Why, oh why, would you give them the long term benefit of the doubt for literally no gain to you whatsoever?
Aurornis 2 hours ago [-]
> for literally no gain to you whatsoever?
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.
airstrike 2 hours ago [-]
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.
trashb 2 hours ago [-]
> Discord’s age verification is optional
...for now ... What stops them from changing this in the future?
Additionally Discord may verify your age based on the collected data without consent.
Aurornis 2 hours ago [-]
> ...for now ... What stops them from changing this in the future?
Then I’ll deal with that situation if it arises.
dpoloncsak 2 hours ago [-]
Pretty sure in some EU countries it is mandatory now, iirc
jimmyjazz14 36 minutes ago [-]
Shocked! Shocked I tell you! Could not have seen that coming, nope not even for one second.
throwaway2027 1 hours ago [-]
>put people into mandatory age verification
>most people will not verify their age
>can't be sure they're an adult so treat everyone like children just in case
>wait what? the trojan horse allows them to monitor and surveil them?
I'm shocked. Shocked! Well, not that shocked.
agos 3 hours ago [-]
is this the great innovation that the GDPR is stifling in Europe? (sorry for the snark)
iso1631 1 hours ago [-]
Water is wet.
All for making sites to send a header with restrictions as they apply in law (age rating per location for example -- so a site could send "US:16 US-TX:18 IE:14 GB:18 DE:16" etc), and even categorise as not required in law (category=gambling or category=healthcare)
That gives the browser/app/accessing device the power to display or not display
The second part of this is to empower parents -- let them choose the age rating which can only be changed with a parental code etc. Make this the law on all consumer commercial devices -- i.e phones, macbooks, windows.
This is trivial and worthwhile.
Yes some 15 year old will build something in python in a user session to work around it as they have a general purpose computer, that's a tiny amount of the problem. Solve the 90% problem first.
Rendered at 16:23:27 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
You were supposed to be the bastions of freedom and justice, and the rest of the world begrudgingly admired you for that and were slowly improving to become like you, but ever since 9/11/2001 the rich old people that rule you have been feeding you boogeymen to make you their complacent b*tches and you lay down and crawl along and accept everything without even a whimper.
Now your countries are little different from Russia or China or Dubai etc where the old money cabals run everything, and it's not some third world backhole that was suffering already anyway, but you yourself that are the worst victims of all their laws and wars.
The fact that many independent national newspapers (including this article from CNBC) are openly calling-out the surveillance state and entering the debate into the public conscience should tell everyone that USA (and the West) is very different from Russia or China or Dubai.
USA is not perfect, but at least is has active public discourse. We can openly (and legally) debate these things, and if we convince enough people, then we can change them.
Here's an example just recently:
https://www.npr.org/2026/02/17/nx-s1-5612825/flock-contracts...
It's a constant and ongoing public concern.
Slowly, and then suddenly.
The cracks were obvious when digital records made record keeping more practical, and the first electronic payment systems appeared, but once everyone was doing everything online the damn just burst wide open.
But then I'm replying to @mr_toad so you probably knew that already.
That is getting harder and harder. Platforms that are not susceptible to age verification (yet?) are on their way out - when have you written an email the last time for personal (i.e. non-work, order or customer support related) reasons? A physical letter [1]? The (root) cause is, centralized platforms like Whatsapp are much much more convenient and on top of that network effects apply - when 90% of your social connections use Whatsapp exclusively, it's hard to not use Whatsapp as well.
And then you got digitalization of government services and banking. More and more governments push for the removal of paper forms and require a web service. Banking regulations enforce 2FA, which almost always comes in the form of a phone app. The web services require a browser and an OS, which may require age verification sooner than later (see the recent spat about California's law), and the phone apps are only available for the walled gardens of unrooted, Play Store certified Apple and Android phones - that can and will be forced to verify ages as well.
Hard cash is out as well, many governments have set hard caps on cash transactions due to "anti money laundering" laws, in other countries you need to have a bank account to pay for mandatory things like taxes or public broadcast fees [2], and an increasing number of vendors refuses to accept cash as well due to the associated handling cost and risk of fraud (i.e. employee theft) and robbery.
That last point alone will make it impossible to survive in society without engaging with one or more of the walled gardens.
And mercy be upon you if the US Government decides to put you on one of their black lists. No more banking, even as an European, because everything touches VISA/MC/SWIFT, your cloud accounts (and with it your phone and app stores), all gone, you are now an unperson [3].
[1] Some countries are already shutting down postal services over that, e.g. Denmark: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/21/denmark-postno...
[2] https://www.verbraucherzentrale-niedersachsen.de/themen/rund...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14203
We're witnessing the creation of the beast system in real time. The one that is prophesized in the Book of Revelation.
If that's what you strongly believe then "western countries" are definitely quite bad at communication and the others quite good at propaganda.
Having lived in a communist country (years ago) and in the west I know from first hand experience that the difference is huge. No need to believe me, see for yourself if you can, alternatively distrust everybody similarly (Rusia, China and the west) - nobody wants your well-being...
Sad part is that probably the poor (everywhere) are the ones suffering the most from the wars and stupid decisions, it does not matter west/east/south/north. Western countries were a richer which means less poor, but it's not like it's a heaven for everybody either.
China is definitely not so shit like portrayed by western media. At the same time London is also not run by Islamic Extremists as portrayed by perhaps the top media station in USA.
> Sad part is that probably the poor (everywhere) are the on
totally true.
Those who trade freedom for security will obtain neither.
> lay down and crawl along and accept everything without even a whimper.
People just want to live their lives. Maybe you think you would be doing differently in their position, but until you've had a chance to prove it, I don't believe you.
This is a misunderstanding of American history. From its founding by wealthy white male landowners and slaveowners, the US was by design a plutocracy, enshrined in the Constitution with various anti-democratic (small "d") measures such as separation of powers, the electoral college, the Presidential veto, the unelected Supreme Court with lifetime tenure, and representation of land rather than population in the Senate. Originally, Senators weren't even directly elected. And of course neither women nor Black men had the right to vote.
The only thing that held the plutocracy in check was "all political is local". The US was an agrarian nation, not yet hit by the industrial revolution. The fastest form of communication and tranportation was the horse. What has changed radically in the 20th and 21st centuries is that modern technology allows the ultra-wealthy to organize and conspire (see Epstein and friends, for example) on a national and even international scale. Political election campaigns have always been privately funded—another essential feature of the plutocracy—and now they're obscenely expensive with TV and internet advertising, which further consolidates the power of the ultra-wealthy campaign contributors.
The biggest problem with the US is that we haven't had a political revolution in 250 years. We're still operating under the ancient rules.
Even during the suffering of the Great Depression, it took a "white knight", an ultra-wealthy leader FDR with some sympathy for the lower classes, to provide some relief. And note that the most successful third-party Presidential candidate in recent history was Ross Perot, a billionaire who self-funded TV informercials to spread his message. The game is rigged in favor of big money and has always been so rigged.
It isn't the senile crowd running things anymore. It's 50-60 year old Thiel, Musk, health insurance CEO, crowd.
Professional consumer crowd that's taken the baton and never invented anything of their own. Electric cars and rockets, the internet, and society post-WW2 were originally grandpa's ideas.
As a Gen X'er myself I know I grew up respecting the hell out of older people, especially 70+ ages. The past couple of decades as that cohort churns, I can't say the same. It's more of a case by case basis now, many of them seem outright evil in their self-righteousness. They all seem angry and ready to fight in any passing interaction (granted, I live in Texas where most of them are amped on FoxNews, too) and that's not how it used to be. They used to be the friendliest cohort alive, hell when I was maybe 10-14 I even used to volunteer at senior living homes just to hang out and chat with them and can't imagine anyone wanting to do that now.
Now, after the better part of a century of that running it's course with nearly no pressure to not chart a crap course it's falling apart.
The west had a golden age from the fall of the Soviet Union, removing their main rival. It also reinforced its reinforced its belief in the inevitably of progress (the "end of history" nonsense, for example). They cannot now cope with threats or danger.
That said, comparing the west to Russia, China etc. is a gross exaggeration.
We’re rapidly regressing into prideful ignorance. People are being encouraged to drink raw milk and fear vaccines.
19 century illnesses are making a resurgence.
Citizens are being indefinitely detained for “looking” like immigrants.
China is also a horrifying place to live unless you are content just to participate quietly in society and never put a political sign in your yard or even just talk about the wrong thing with your friend in a private WeChat.
https://reclaimthenet.org/china-man-chair-interrogation-soci...
The current administration is only convincing the world that America is a threat. We live in an age where two oceans offer far less protection than they did when America rose to superpower status. The fact Russian intelligence operatives can so easily infiltrate American political discourse is just one example. Watch any congressional hearing about cyber and you might be forgiven for thinking we have already been invaded. Beating up on third world pariah states impresses no one but the current administration. The United States bombs Iran but blinks at Russia. The administration started a trade war with China then backed off, not one meaningful concession was achieved.
Unless America reverses course fast the decline will only continue. The world will move on. No country is inevitable.
September 11, 2001 is why Iran is being attacked a quarter century later.
Iran had nothing to do with 9/11. If that was the point you were attempting you probably live in one of those flyover states.
It is also a totalitarian regime where criticising the state can get you, and possibly your family, ‘disappeared’
the very same rules that have allowed literally every single piece of my data to be leaked several separate times, and now i have free credit monitoring instead of privacy? and all of those companies still operate normally, as if nothing ever happened? very neat.
>Discord said it is using the additional time this year to add more verification options, including credit cards, more transparency on vendors and technical detail of how age verification will work
and why didnt we start with credit cards? instead of facial recognition with peter thiel? (this is a rhetorical question)
However, that makes me wonder what mechanism might "unverify" an account holder's age upon transfer. I suppose it's simply a need to re-verify (take a new photo) upon every login, but then folks could transfer the session cookie to avoid needing the new owner to perform a login (unless a new device ID/fingerprint makes the old cookie useless).
https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1549829/1
https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1555753/1
Clearly the only foolproof solution is a 3rd-party camera pointed at your face at all times whenever you use a computer.
Might not even matter ...
"TransUnion and Experian, two of the three major credit bureaus, have started dismissing a larger share of consumer complaints without help since the Trump administration began dismantling the CFPB."
https://www.propublica.org/article/credit-report-mistakes-cf...
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/enforcement/enforcement-by-t...
They changed their tune the second there was an open case on the matter.
I'm not saying the inverse is the answer either, just that if anyone without an agenda of surveillance looked at this for a second, the penny would have dropped. So I can only assume that this was the purpose the whole time.
It was used to bash interracial marriage, gay rights, suppress dissent, attack the first amendment, and now this.
Whenever you hear some dramatic story involving kids about how you have to live a little less free, know the tactic.
___ said hamas beaheaded 40 babies and that turned out to be a complete fabrication. That fake info was used in part to justify killing thousands of kids in ____
meanwhile the recent strike on Iran resulted in 80 little girls getting killed (with plenty of evidence) and its swept under the rug while we get blasted about the 7 soldiers that died.
The UK's Online Safety Act originally had a proposal that would allow users to purchase an ID code anonymously in cash from a corner store, presenting only ID to the cashier the same way as buying alcohol. This was never implemented, because it's more useful for the government and corporations to link all online usage to a government ID.
I've been proposing the same thing on this site for months. IMO anonymous age verification with no record-keeping is the only form of age verification that should exist. No zero knowledge proofs, no centralized government identity provider, nothing.
Namely, you don't prevent it (I was 11 when I first saw hardcore pornography, on a VHS tape, at a sleepover party), but it does place a (surmountable) barrier in the way, which will reduce access to some degree. The degree to which that happens depends on a lot of things that are hard to predict. We have culturally normalized access to a lot of things for children, and reversing that will likely take more than just changes to a law.
If it was actually about kids, we'd have done it a long time ago. With more focus on things like porn and gambling (including 'loot box' gambling in games) rather than social media.
you can also introduce some jitter like changing age range only once a week/month/year for everyone
But also, knowing someone's birthday without trying it to other information greatly reduces the risk of harm.
[0] "Cypherpunks Uncut." https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xt3hpb
The second option is ignoring the verification request. Goodbye online-gaming-with-strangers on Xbox. (I see this as a positive). Same goes for Ubisoft who aggressively wanted my secret papers to verify my identity.
I've yet to come across anything I want or need outside banking or government use where age verification benefits me, or is so useful/important that I would willingly hand over critical secret documents. I've not even needed to use a VPN for anything. It doesn't mean it won't happen, but when it does, option #1 or #2 is going to cover everything.
Which circles back to the main point here - if I ignore it, then effectively I get identified as a non-adult. How does this protect anybody?
(UK-based, might not be the same everywhere)
The problems start when the space become not-for-children and identity validation is mandatory to use them, which will exclude people like me who categorically refuse to hand over personal secrets in order to have access. It does not warrant the inherent risk involved with granting access to personal details unrelated to the service offered. I reckon this will happen when someone decides it's better commercially to make a service adult-only than to moderate non-adult accounts. It's a slippery slope, and a predictable next step once adult have become accustomed to handing over papers for some services to have to do it for many, if not all.
I can see how the problem is real. (Not sarcasm.)
In technical terms, "balance" is trivial. Put an air/security gap between information collected for age verification and the dossiers they have on users.
In business terms, conflict. They have relentless incentives and pressures to collect, collate and leverage every bit of information that can increase their return on users. Legal gray and black behaviors are rampant and tolerated where protectable. The number of paths to a creative interpretation of "balance" is unbounded. Right up to the c-suite.
It is sad, but self-aware, if they feel awkward trusting themselves with a mandated database full of tasty information they are not supposed to taste.
Probabilistic verification using behavioral signals and metadata (device age, account age, interaction patterns) doesn't perfectly verify age but massively reduces the privacy trade-off. Most platforms optimize for regulatory compliance, not actual safety.
(If anyone is offended by this, don't worry, I'm talking about the other side; I'm sure your side is full of reasonable adults who just get a little carried away sometimes.)
I also wouldn't be surprised if there were plenty of people only dimly aware of the idea of a VPN who are now sitting up and taking note.
Such as following directions from a YouTube video that instructs them to do sketchy things.
https://web.archive.org/web/20260308223909/https://www.cnbc....
we, as a society, need to stop taking companies at their word when they say that the obvious harms that are right around the corner are overblown.
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.
- 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.
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.
until it becomes law, like it is (or in the process of becoming) ~everywhere.
It’s important to get facts right.
that is exactly what everyone is angry about.
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.
The direction of these restrictions is not “optional”
Not really, you'll just be forced to use services from eg google or meta. And pay for them. And share user data.
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.
They are extorting your identity from you and you're somehow OK with that.
...for now ... What stops them from changing this in the future?
Additionally Discord may verify your age based on the collected data without consent.
Then I’ll deal with that situation if it arises.
>most people will not verify their age
>can't be sure they're an adult so treat everyone like children just in case
>wait what? the trojan horse allows them to monitor and surveil them?
I'm shocked. Shocked! Well, not that shocked.
All for making sites to send a header with restrictions as they apply in law (age rating per location for example -- so a site could send "US:16 US-TX:18 IE:14 GB:18 DE:16" etc), and even categorise as not required in law (category=gambling or category=healthcare)
That gives the browser/app/accessing device the power to display or not display
The second part of this is to empower parents -- let them choose the age rating which can only be changed with a parental code etc. Make this the law on all consumer commercial devices -- i.e phones, macbooks, windows.
This is trivial and worthwhile.
Yes some 15 year old will build something in python in a user session to work around it as they have a general purpose computer, that's a tiny amount of the problem. Solve the 90% problem first.