Except, why? Or, rather, why not, exactly? Because we don't trust them with our data?
But who do we trust? Who hasn't had a "breach"? We give this stuff out and it gets stolen or sold all the time.
I used to have an app (Well, it was before we called them "apps" so I guess it was a program or maybe just a service.) that was supposed to tell me every time one of my many, many email addresses turned up in some Dark Web fire sale. It was a bit of a concern back then, which must have been a decade ago. Haven't thought about it for years. Certainly haven't had any updates in as long as I can remember. Of course, they might be going to one of those email addresses I never look at any more...
It's not just the security, though, is it? It's the principle. Who are these people to question whether we're old enough to be looking at adult stuff? Why do they get to be the gatekeepers of our maturity? It's the thin line at the end of the wedge. Or the thick end. The something end of something, anyway.
People knew their place then. Or, rather, most people didn't even know the internet was a place. It was all 14.4kb dial-up modems and we were happy! Then in came the Worldwide Web and there went the neighborhood.
I may have got some or indeed all of that wrong. I was there but not there. I certainly wasn't paying attention. I was an incomer to the just-born web in the very early '90s but not a digital native. I strongly suspect some of the people making a big to-do about the good old days were barely born when I arrived in about 1992. A lot of the nostalgia seems to come from a decade later by when the digital fields had already been marked out for redevelopment.
Getting back to Discord and its plan to enforce age verification on all users, except for the users it already can somehow just tell are old enough, although no-one's saying exactly how just yet; if it's not incompetence or the breaking of tradition we're worried about, is it some basic objection to the concept? Should the internet at large be free from mundane concerns like who exactly uses it? Ought it to be a free-for-all where, as the old New Yorker joke has it, "nobody knows your a dog"?
I guess not or we wouldn't all be making such a fuss all the goddam time about Roblox and X and all the other reprobates messing with our kids. We love to give them a hard time about it, don't we? Only it's a bit different when someone tries to do something.
Except, is it? I seem to hear a virtual round of applause every time another government or court passes a law restricting the sale of lockboxes. All that EU legislation concerning digital safety seems to get a lot of praise. Well, some of it does. It depends.
Only it's a bit different when the lawyers and policemen come around peering over our fences into our walled gardens, apparently. It's all well and good for there to be restrictions on who can do what so long as they don't get in the way of those of us who know what we're doing, humming along, minding our own business. Nothing to see here. Move along please, thank you very much.
It's all a bit fuzzy, too, because it's Discord. Do we even like Discord? I mean, we all use it. It's the default now, isn't it? We pretty much have to. But do we want to?
There's a sentiment I've seen that says if Discord thinks it's so special, can do anything it likes and we'll all just have to put up with it, Discord just might have another think coming. Elon thought he could do what he liked with Twitter and look how that worked out! Watch out, Discord! Don't push your luck!
How did that work out for Elon, come to think of it? Didn't he sack 90% of the staff and rebrand the whole thing so the value of what he'd bought vanished overnight? And didn't everyone say the whole thing would fall apart and no-one would be able to fix it because everyone who knew how had been sacked? Wasn't Twitter finished?
Except X is still going and I keep seeing links to it in my news feeds every day just like I used to see links to Twitter. And while there are alternatives, have any of them replaced X/Twitter in the big world outside the tech-insider niche? Doesn't feel like it.
Are we going to have to go through that whole "Alternatives to Discord" phase like we did with Twitter, until eventually one winner emerges, proud possessor of a fairly distant second place to Discord itself, as it carries on as if nothing much happened? Does anyone care enough about Discord to bother?
I belong to... wait, let me count them... thirty-three Discord channels. In a good month I look at two of them. Blaugust, in which I link my posts here and TAGN, where I check what's up with the Fantasy Critic League. Very occasionally I visit one of the others to check some specific gaming announcement I've heard about through other channels but that doesn't happen often.
According to MassivelyOP, Discord has reassured everyone that
"For most adults, age verification won’t be required, as Discord’s age inference model uses account information such as account tenure, device and activity data, and aggregated, high-level patterns across Discord communities."
In other words, if you've been acting like a dog for a while they'll assume you are a dog. And anyway, as some wag in the comments puts it, if you don't live in the EU or the UK, where there are enforceable laws about this sort of thing, you might just find you're an adult automatically, no matter what you've been up to until now.
If you don't pass that test, which is probably being administered by an AI agent, I just bet, you get marked down as a teen. What does that mean?
Oh, that's nice, isn't it? Doesn't affect you personally so you're fine with it. Very socially conscious. Bloody solipsists. You're only one step up from narcissists, you lot.
Yes, fine, okay, sure. Only I am kind of in favor of age restrictions on the internet, by and large. I mean, I'm in favor of them offline. Aren't you? Don't you think there should be some age limit on when you can drive a car or join the army or get married or vote? And don't you think you ought to have to be able to prove you are the age you say you are before you can do any of those things?
Maybe you don't. Maybe you're that much of a libertarian or an anarchist you think the only rule ought to be no rules.
Probably not. Some of the people I've seen complaining about this seem to have quite firm views on other kinds of rules and restrictions. There are all sorts of things they think people shouldn't be allowed to do or say. They just seem to think rules ought to apply differently on the internet, particularly for people who, you know, belong there.
That does tick me off a little. I removed someone's blog from my RSS feed yesterday after reading a rant about age verification. It was the repeated use of the pejorative "normies" that did it. I'd be very happy to have a filter that caught offensive slurs like that.
I hope this doesn't come over as a rant in the same way. All those rhetorical questions are a rhetorical device (Is that ironic?) designed to dilute the rage. I'm pretty sure there are bigger things to worry about than whether you have to send Discord a selfie. Is it really worth getting worked up over?
I'm not that bothered about it either way. It certainly doesn't feel like any kind of hill to die on. Discord is just an app. If people don't like the terms of use they can just stop using it. I'd guess for most people having "teen" filters would make next to no difference anyway. Or maybe I underestimate how much people swear in Discord channels.
Personally, I propose to do absolutely nothing about it. I'll just carry on as I am. If all the fuss hadn't kicked off I very much doubt I'd even have known anything had happened.
What I do think, though, is that maybe there should be some requirement for all internet users to prove their age at a much more basic, fundamental stage than through individual apps. Something akin to a driving license, perhaps, that could be incorporated into the education system and verified in a much more practical way. In person.
Why the internet should get a pass on it, when so many other aspects of life don't, beats me.
Notes on AI used in this post.
Just the header image, produced at NightCafe using QwenImage SD. The prompt, taken directly from the text, was "Discord and its plan to enforce age verification on all users." To this I added the further instruction "1980s computer gaming magazine cover illustration. Full color, line art."
I can't say I can see the Moebius influence and I don't actually know who Syd Mead is, although the name rings a bell. Looking him up, I probably should have known who he was.
Out of curiosity, I ran the original prompt through the same model again but with the AI "Prompt Magic" that expands on the prompt switched off. That got me the image above, which appears exactly as it was generated. It looks like I cropped it, badly, but I didn't.
Looks like I either need to keep Prompt Magic switched on or write longer, more detailed prompts.
The amusing thing for me was Discord was fairly smug about the whole thing on Monday. When asked about users leaving over the requirement, which was being pitched as universally mandatory at the moment, their PR flack said they expected it but “we’ll find other ways to bring users back.”
ReplyDeleteBy Tuesday they were emphasizing that they would be using AI to track meta data and account activity in order and claiming that most people would not have to provide government issued IDs for them to lose in another security breach.
Just the way it was done seemed like a deliberate attempt to rile up users, so was very dumb. Like you, the penalties for not being verified seem fine. Make me a teen, it sounds like nothing will change for me. The TAGN server, which I see on your list, will remain.
I did, however, cancel my recurring server boost. It turns out you need two boosts for a server to get any benefits, so it wasn't doing me any good. But the fact that this all started is what made me look into that and then cancel. So good work Discord!
Discord really hasn't been making many friends lately. I think it's on the cusp of that stage many services reach after a while, when it starts to morph in its users' perception from some kind of cool status-enhancing choice to an awkwardly embarrassing mainstream, establishment expectation. Some services push through to become actual mainstream standards, others get left for dead as new, cooler alternatives take over.
DeleteClearly, Discord thought they were on the road to utility status. Now they may be having a rethink.
I'm going to do something I've never done before. Re-use a comment that I just posted on Scopique's post about this:
ReplyDelete===
I won’t speak to how or well Discord is handling this, but to the Why.
And in my opinion it isn’t really on Discord so much as it is on payment processors. This is the same issue that caused Steam to ban a bunch of adult games. We see if often over in the pro-AI camp because a lot of image models COULD product nudity so these services have had to put up Age Verfication if they 1) Want to collect Revenue and 2) Don’t want to Censor their product.
In the US, plenty of states already require age verification for any site that has nudity. So yes, PornHub but also much ‘milder’ sites like Playboy. NC is one of these states and in this case it is the government and not the payment processors that are to blame.
So I assume that Discord had 3 options: start censoring content, stop collecting revenue, or put up the Age Gate.
Again, not defending how they’re handling it or how secure they are or anything of that nature, just the WHY of it.
Also I feel like this is a great time to offer my services generating realistic pics of middle aged people who don’t exist, but who can be used for age verification.
That’s the funniest part of this. I have to upload a selfie? I could upload a selfie of anyone, couldn’t I? Use an AI generator to put a date on it or something and bam, done.
===
I do think it could be helpful if there were some kind of universal "I am an adult" certificate or something that you could get, but that would be anonymized somehow. Maybe a non-fungible token! Bring those back! But having to do this ONCE and then having some kind of thingie you could provide to any site that requires age verification, seems better than having to do it over and over across different sites and services.
Hmm. I haven't seen a post from Scopique in a while... looks as if either he changed something or I broke a link. Just re-added him to Feedly and I'll re-add him to the blog roll after this. Hold on a sec while I read the post.... which is a very calm, rational, un-ranty examination of why this is not something he wants. Also the start of the inevitable "Alternatives to Discord" discussion I was taking about!
DeleteThe thing is, all services on the web ought to be age-certified. It's just a historical peculiarity that they aren't, yet. Anyone who expected that to go on forever clearly hasn't been outdoors much. I work in a bookshop and even there we have annual, mandatory training concerning age-related checks we legally must make for certain purchases. When I do the weekly shop, if I put a packet of Ibuprofen in the basket and go through the self-checkout, I have to wait for a member of staff to come over and see if I look over 25 - the age you have to be to buy them is 18 but a visual check requires that leeway. If you are 18 and look it, you need to produce I.D.
This is just normal life and not even normal modern life. It was like this, albeit to a slightly lesser degree, when I was at school. Many, many things require an age check before you can do them or have them. The internet just needs to catch up to reality.
Age verification seems like a general 'good' for sites that might mix old and young, and where the wrong content seen by the young 'uns might cause harm.
ReplyDeleteMy concern is having my age 'mis-labelled' and then not having transparent way to fix it. My Xbox Live account is over 20 years old now- shouldn't that be enough? My email address was assigned by my ISP to me over 30 years ago- is that not good enough?
But I doubt very much that Discord can harvest either of those data sources, so what will it use? And if it calls me a 'teenager' out of some sort of protective default behaviour, what hoops do I have to go through to get my actual 62 year old age registered?
And will it keep coming back and repeatedly de-aging me. I have no insight into their verification method because their whole mechanism is 'proprietary' or whatever their excuse is. So what is to stop it from re-evaluating my age every few months forcing me to prove yet again that I'm old enough to hear cuss words?
I can imagine all of these things, and don't want to play these sorts of games at my advanced age.
I'm not so sure about that. Yes, it's annoying to have to resubmit information but if your activity alters maybe it's appropriate. The thing about offline age verification is that once you get a few years past the cut-off, anyone can see you're old enough just by looking at you. But for a few years, especially if you're one of those baby-faced twenty-somethings, you have to bring out I.D. every time. And people get annoyed about it but what's the alternative? Just take everyone's word for it?
DeleteThe more I think about it, the more obvious it is to me that we need a straightforward, government-issued Internet Age ID of some kind, the way we have a National Insurance Number over here. That's issues to you at birth and stays with you for life. Just give something similar but just for the internet.
Personal opinion: Elon Musk's empire will die with Elon Musk. It is an empire built purely upon Elon's personal charisma --such as it is-- and as such the empire will fall apart without Elon present.
ReplyDeleteUnless, of course, Elon wants to upload his brainwaves into a server farm, allowing him to live forever. I'm pretty sure that's what Zuckerberg and Sam Altman want. That old line about giving someone power and we'll see what they're made of? Yeah, it applies to all sorts of Finance and Tech moguls, but Tech moguls in particular.
Still, I think Discord's whole modus operandi is to basically replace Skype (and Teams, if we're honest), but by requiring uploads of government-issued IDs (or equivalent) for just getting onto their platform as an adult.... Nah. I'm good. I don't trust any corporation enough to upload that data, particularly given that corporations weigh the risk/reward about IT Security as a matter of "How much of a financial hit am I willing to risk by tightening security versus loosening it?" If Discord decides they're happy to do the bare minimum with customers' data, thinking they can just pay out enough money to make people shut up when a data breach happens, they're basically inviting hackers in.
Elon's good for a few years yet, I think, although he never looks very healthy these days. All the billionaires want to live forever but I think the current crop were born too soon. Maybe one day they'll be able to upload but I think we're a long way from that still.
DeleteI worry that if people were able to live forever, they'd never learn from experience and develop wisdom. Billionaires already have an overinflated ego as it is, and that they can do no wrong, but giving them immortality (when nobody else has it) is a recipe for disaster as a species.
DeleteI remember when Discord became all the rage and my guild abandoned its proprietary website in order to do everything on a Discord server instead. I wasn't a fan at the time. I've since got used to it and use it a lot, but to be honest if the service becomes too crappy and we all move on to something else, I won't be sad either.
ReplyDeleteI was kind of annoyed when the age verification thing for UK residents came in effect a few months ago but it hasn't affected me too much in practice. Indeed, for most purposes I'm fine with being considered a teen. The most annoying thing has been that some image hosting services have just decided that it's safer to just not show anything to unknown visitors from the UK, so I often have to turn my VPN on just to look at someone's random screenshot.
Bluesky locked DMs behind age verification and I went through with it there because they had a way of doing it by charging my credit card a penny or something. Whatever. I do dislike how invasive many of these newer methods seem. I'm of the opinion that you should never put anything too sensitive or personal online so I really don't want to share e.g. my passport, which is tied to my right to live in this country. I've also avoided putting my face online for many years now and again, don't want to start for some random company.
So far, literally the only impact the UK age verification has had on us is that Mrs Bhagpuss can't buy certain crafting items from Amazon because they include blades. I verified my Amazon account well before the legislation so I just buy them for her. Of course she could verify her account but for the once or twice a year it comes up it hardly seems worth it.
DeleteOther than that, the anticipated flood of requests from services I use to prove my age just haven't appeared. Some of them probably just use the fact that I have a credit card registered to pay for them as proof and the others may not be age-sensitive. As I said, though, it would al be a lot easier if there was one universally recognized, government issued age certification. It's not like you don't already need to prove your age to get a passport or a driving license. Let's have one for using the internet, too.
I don't care about Discord personally, but all of this is a wedge.
ReplyDeleteStep 1: Protect the Children legislation, setting up "common sense" age-restriction barriers.
Step 2: Broaden the definitions of what constitutes age-restricted material.
Step 3: "Papers, please" and/or Social Credit System.
There's a gap between Step 2 and 3, but it is never as large as you think. Just mark how quickly LGBTQ+ Discord servers become age-restricted or marked as NSFW, because the subject itself is now "inappropriate" or controversial. It feels like less than a year went by that everyone was talking about banning gender affirming care for minors, and now multiple states (in the US) have banned it for adults. There is a playbook (Project 2025) being followed, and page 5 says "Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders." What is "it"? Pornography. How is that defined? I'll know it when I see... 'manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology [...]'" Well, there you go.
You're probably right that no one is going to die on the hills of Discord. But the Panopticon comes for us all, even if you have nothing (for now) to hide.
A lot of the perceived problems stem not from the verification issue but a much deeper societal disagreement on what kinds of behaviors are or aren't acceptable either at specific ages or at any age. Anything to do with sexuality, and now gender identity, seems to bring an extreme reaction in many people but there are plenty of other triggers, too, like gambling or drugs.
DeleteWhether or not these activities are deemed legal is an issue for governments but whatever those authorities decide, it seems unreasonable to imagine the internet should be exempt from whatever laws are drawn up. If you can't do something offline, why would you expect to be able to do it online? The internet isn't a sovereign state, able to draw up its own laws.
I agree that the "What about the children?" argument is self-serving and spurious but age restrictions for specific activities are very well-established in almost all cultures. It's the idea that the internet should somehow be exempt from that stands out as unrealistic. All the dangers you describe can and will come from authoritarian regimes but the current move towards age verification is most likely being driven by the EU, which has been very uncomfortable with the lack of control it has over the internet for a while now and the EU is widely seen as a bulwark against authoritarianism these days. I think we're going to see a tightening up of web freedoms coming from both ends of the political spectrum and also from all points between. The wild days are over.
"If you can't do something offline, why would you expect to be able to do it online?"
DeleteIt's the reverse, man. Do I have to show an ID to have a conversation with a friend in my own home, on the street, in the public square? What about with a stranger?
This ends the same way it always has: the marginalized get pushed back into the margins. Except it's worse now, because if you are not online, you are isolated, cut off from the broader culture, economy, humanity. All for what? Because maybe there are three unsupervised kids in a trench coat within earshot?
The "wild" days are indeed over. Today it's PornHub and Discord, tomorrow it's your ISP and cell phone carrier, and next week anything you say to anyone can and will be used against you, forever. And, of course, somehow zero children were saved from the priests and politicians and billionaires.
Accurate.
Delete-- 7rlsy