#Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month

239 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

muted fable
mortal socket
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i guess time to find new discord alternative

stone coral
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Time for IRC?

ebon spear
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what do these people have in mind

wicked leaf
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Isn't that just for age restricted channels

lost dew
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This is the "full access" you're missing out on

Screenshot_20260209_161215_Chrome.jpg
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I'd rather they didn't but big whatever honestly

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Might be kind of awkward for server owners/moderators though

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Having to give this stuff to corporations is kinda cringe but I guess it was only a matter of time

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Allegedly the face scan data doesn't leave your device, which is nice if you choose to believe that

muted fable
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Next they will make it so you have to verify that you are above 13

lost dew
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If it actually comes to that, then we can all panic

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Today I'm not too worried about it

tropic mantle
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yea there is already bigger reasons to move away from this platform but ppl only care about the visible stuff like this lol

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it's hard to convince people to move away from a platform everyone uses tho

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even after this it won't be that different

tropic mantle
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somewhat unfortunately with any big corporatized platform it's inevitably going to introduce age verification at some point

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i believe it can be used for good if implemented properly that's why i say somewhat

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(but almost everything that could be good is ruined by implementation)

long ridge
lost dew
long ridge
mortal socket
lost dew
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Meh

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I have better things to do with my time than worrying about things that might be a problem later

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Also that platform you move to might end up having the exact same problem later 🙃

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You can't win if you're overly concerned about things that might happen in the future

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It's also not like they're doing this for no reason, or that it helps them make more money or something. It creates a lot of extra work for them with no real monetary benefit. To me this move feels like a compromise to try to get ahead of future legal pressure on this issue. Lot of places are looking at the impact of social media on teens and asking hard questions, and this is their way of saying "our platform is safe for teens by default so you don't need to worry about us", or "we're self-regulating so you don't need to regulate us"

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Any future escalation of this would likely be the result of actual legal pressure, in which case other platforms will also most likely be affected

night flume
worthy fable
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Well, time to get back to TeamSpeak, I guess

robust cairn
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Can we get to matrix?

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It's much better

cloud path
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So it is just for mature (18+) content? It is not enforcing the minimum age to join Discord, which is 13 iirc?

lost dew
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Correct

night flume
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my understanding was that it will effectively just default to no access to NSFW content without age verification

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I guess the minimum age limit will only be enforced in jurisdictions that require it

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so unless you live in a place that requires age verification by law, or want to consume NSFW content on discord, nothing for you should change.

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the world will not end on March 1

cloud path
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And I am guessing the backlash is centred around tech companies' abuse of privacy and personal data and not the identification itself?

night flume
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well, the main issue is that third-party, for-profit companies are going to be handling highly sensitive data, which is obviously never ideal. and discord in particular had an incident not long ago where one of the services they used for age verification had a significant amount of exactly this kind of highly sensitive data leaked (2 million government IDs / drivers licenses).

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I think it's pretty obvious that they're just trying to do something for the appearance that they're doing something, likely in hopes that it will appease or at least delay more regulation.

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since the wind is pretty clearly blowing that way in many places now

errant pewter
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I don't know why people think this isn't a big deal "oh its just for adult material"
My brother in christ discord is publicly traded now, they need to grow infinitely, that means making progress and that means progressing existing infrastructure

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You think they are just gonna stop here?

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Have fun living with your head in the sand

lost dew
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How does forcing more people to do face scans help them grow infinitely

errant pewter
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because of that palantir money baby. more users using palantir means more money from palantir, more money = more growth = profit

lost dew
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Maybe I'm missing something, what does Palantir have to do with any of this

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Anyway yeah sure things might get worse later

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Worry about it later 🙂

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I can only comment on what's actually happening right now

errant pewter
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but yeah im not really that worried because worst case scenario, I'll just move to another platform

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That's what happened 10 years ago with skype

lost dew
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tbh I probably would just be done with social media at that point

muted fable
night flume
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well, that's even better

muted fable
long ridge
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who set my name as ts

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tf is "yingcun show tiancai"

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changed it back

muted fable
fierce nova
# muted fable https://x.com/Pirat_Nation/status/2025028701675786390?s=20

for the crying kids and lesser braincell blessed people - wake fucking up - should legit learn basics and stop living in their small brain dreamworld

Nothing is safe, also never

Same case like always „mimi a feature or the end client user need to make 5 clicks 🤣

for example top10 tech/social/gaming companirs around the world gonna gift you shit their Apps/Games/Stuff for free?
Facebook/Meta, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet inc. - TenCent, Bytedance w/e … Free = paid already anyway with personal data that is way more useful on the market than few euro/dollar kekw

long ridge
clever wadi
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is there a C room on matrix? i just installed element and its damn good.

meager reef
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matrix fucking sucks

lament mauve
muted fable
lament mauve
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lemme just save this here real quick

image.png
night flume
gentle coral
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i already started moving to another platform. fluxer seems like the only alternative thats like discord

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theres already low level servers there too which is nice

ocean kiln
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Yall got ElementX?

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cause i think we are going there

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or IRC idk

night flume
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I don't think we're going anywhere

lost dew
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There's a dozen competing platforms that seem viable on paper but the only thing they really have going for them is that they're not Discord, which is fine if you need to get away from Discord right now but otherwise not a very compelling sales pitch

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Making a competitor is relatively easy, frankly. Chat app is kind of a solved problem at this point. The hard part is getting enough to care about a particular platform for it to actually matter

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If something actually will displace Discord long-term, I suspect it doesn't exist yet

tacit osprey
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Guilded could have been but wasn't

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for the gaming side of things, anyway

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although generally, it still had loads of uber-useful features that i still wish discord would add

rustic scaffold
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good thing cause we going to know whos a creepy incel

muted fable
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but if you verify and someone steals your ID from discord your ID is now being used for illegal activities yaaaay

meager reef
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it's not uncommon that someone has stolen IDs

tacit osprey
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speak for yourself

meager reef
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yeah as i said it's not uncommon that somone has stolen IDs

rustic scaffold
lament mauve
mortal socket
# rustic scaffold they dont store it and roblox doing it too anyway

you dont know what they do and dont
didnt you see the data leak recently that showed the face ID verification company storing all the sensitive info as simple records that were accessed without much effort ? not to mention the company was also mentioned to be sending info to government for some reason

rare glen
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Yeah

gentle coral
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of course its stored

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the data leak is proof

rustic scaffold
mortal socket
robust cairn
night flume
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so I guess it's march now and the apocalypse didn't happen?

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color me surprised

clever wadi
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they delayed it until summer

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(or winter for southern hemisphere people)

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and its actually gotten much worse considering all the bills that have passed and likely will soon pass that are gunning for verification at operating system level instead.
california, colorado, illinois, new york, utah, brazil, australia

errant pewter
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Is there going to be an alternative to this discord?

night flume
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I'm sure there are many alternatives to this discord

lost dew
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It seems like most people are just gonna stay on Discord for the foreseeable future, and there doesn't seem to be any consensus about where to go among the people that really don't want to stay on Discord

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I feel like every person I've talked to about this has mentioned a different platform

errant pewter
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Worst case scenario, I'll just go back to emailing people like I did in the late 2000s and early 2010s

night flume
small spoke
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Until there is a viable alternative, either due to the competitors getting better or discord getting significantly worse, it's gonna take a lot of effort to get communities to move off of discord

robust cairn
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Rip

night flume
small spoke
lost dew
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Even then, the Discord servers will die naturally and new communities will form organically when the time is right, you don't really need to do anything

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But yeah migrating large communities is effectively impossible in practice, even in ideal circumstances. Even getting a small IRL friend group to switch services is a challenge

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Honestly most of Discord's success in that regard just came down to it being in the right place at the right time

clever wadi
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every single discord im in has had an immense drop in activity. im not active here except in one channel so idk about this one

mortal socket
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i think we are just gonna complain for a bit and continue using discord anyways, up untill a point where using even the basic feature will require u selling ur identitiy , which is most likely never going to happen

night flume
unique flare
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it's funny how people notice it on Discord, while age verification is the wet dream of many politicians to be enforced on all social media, including watching youtube, and e.g. EU is one of the places which considers it, although maybe some will love it as it planned to be done via governmental infrastructure "in safe and anonymous way" :X

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as for the age verification 13+ or whateveryourcountryis+ (16 in Poland according to Discord ToS), they do it since forever

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I have impression they actually try to make it less obtrusive now, but as they talk about the existence of mechanisms, people get angry

muted fable
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this is far less circumventable than face scans and it also means your dont provide your ID to a third party

unique flare
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that's an opinion, my opinion on how should it work - ISPs should be forced to provide no-brainer options for locking services for the parents' kids on the level of ISP, there should be no any other form of age verification

lament mauve
clever wadi
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parents should just parent their kids and ppl should just chill. kids are still living autonomous beings that are going to do what they wanna do regardless if its restricted or not. all these age restriction laws hurt everyone

lost dew
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Especially now that cellular data and public wifi are pretty ubiquitous

lost dew
unique flare
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there are apps for that on phones, parents work brains do that

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she verification is the worst idea of them all

lost dew
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And I'm sure no kid has ever found a workaround for those either

unique flare
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parenting is the solution

unique flare
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again, parenting

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also formally this isn't to ban kids from anywhere

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to "protect" them, so your argument is stupid

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regime ideas

lost dew
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I honestly don't even know what you're talking about anymore

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I don't really like any of this, for the record

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But it's easy to say "just parent your kids" and a lot harder to actually solve these problems

unique flare
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breaking the Internet for everyone isn't a solution

lost dew
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I don't disagree

meager reef
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well here's the thing you as a parent must be capable of protecting your child from danger

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blocking at the local network does work

lucid parcel
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We're leaving the internet to big corporations by participating in their nonsense and getting more tech-illiterate day by day, yet we're complaining.

It went from an information and self-expression highway to a highway bombed with advertisements with the only goal being to gain profits.

The modern internet is the tower to Babel and I'm glad when it finally has collapsed - not sure how far I'll go with it, though.

/e: What does my statement have to do with it all?

By granting and supporting capitalist monopolies to gain control even over the most niche corner of the internet we're self-restricting our freedom.

lean peak
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Im building my own Discord Freedom of expression

robust cairn
meager reef
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also: it is not that hard to block sites you don't want your kids to be seeing

lucid parcel
# meager reef also: it is not that hard to block sites you don't want your kids to be seeing

Its part of taking responsibility for your kids. And as a parent, you should be able to provide that.

And even if we'd argue that not everyones tech-savvy: in the day and age of information where digital presence plays an important role in most peoples lives, you should be educated enough in that field if you choose to have children, otherwise maybe question your ability to have kids in the first place, as harsh as it might sound.

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I don't think outsourcing responsibility is the way to go here.

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Because that also means we put other people into a position of power over certain aspects of our lives, and at least I do not want that.

night flume
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none of you have been kids, right?

lucid parcel
# night flume none of you have been kids, right?

I have, and I had a mother that was uneducated in terms of digital life and computers. Wasn't exactly the best case scenario back then, but I don't blame her, because back then computers and the internet weren't as far spread.

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Doesn't mean that in 2026 parents couldn't inform themselves on how to block certain platforms on their kids devices - especially in regards to those parents using such devices themselves.

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What happens in the outside world, those parents just have not as much control over. But thats nothing anyone would demand from them, life happens.

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Point is I don't want any third parties having control over the accessibility of content and demanding further personal information for it, especially with a bogus argument of protecting children.

night flume
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the science is pretty clear that children need protecting here. and leaving it to the parents to control everything their child does at all times famously has never worked and will never work.

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it's an incredibly naïve take

lucid parcel
night flume
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it's not even possible most of the times

lucid parcel
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Its possible at home if you set up your network accordingly. At least for the most part.

night flume
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your kid is gonna spend a very large part of its day not at home

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like, I'm not even a parent myself, yet I've been a kid, and I fully understand how futile that is

lucid parcel
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Thats what I said: thats not where parents could have control over, never has been.

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If you're fine with third parties, even entire monopolies, having control over how and when you access information with the bogus argument of protecting children, its your beer, but don't demand it from everyone else.

night flume
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the science is pretty clear that social media use is incredibly harmful to kids. something needs to be done to protect them. why is it the parents' job to protect their kids from being exploited by trillion-dollar companies. if you ask me, it should simply be illegal for companies to have ruining kids' health as a business model.

lucid parcel
night flume
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the real problem here is that governments require compliance yet they don't provide a mechanism for companies to comply.

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it's your politicians that are forcing companies to build their own solutions, which requires them to handle that kind of data.

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the obvious answer is that the government, which already has all that data, needs to provide a service through which companies can comply.

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but they don't

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so here we are

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I'm sure discord would love nothing more than to not have to pay some third party to handle highly sensitive user data that has massive potential for negative PR. but your government is giving them no choice.

lucid parcel
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I think the biggest issue for me, or one of the biggest issues next to privacy, is the nostalgic factor. The nostalgia for a time where the internet was considered the Wild West and wasn't as regulated and in control of single entities.

Of course back then it wasn't always the best place to hang out for a 12 year old like I was, but the mainline internet was way more anarchist.

night flume
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that time and place is gone and will never come back

lucid parcel
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"Mainline internet", "corporate web", call it whatever you want.

night flume
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scale is the problem. and the internet isn't gonna go back to the size it was in 1999

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there's too much money to be made

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the old internet was good because it wasn't making money

lucid parcel
night flume
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it was over when the money moved in

meager reef
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In my case I spent quite a time home

meager reef
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as a 13 year old your competition is now jeffrey epstein

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ok well diddy because jeffrey epstein is laying low

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still

robust cairn
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Btw it's also incredible harmful to adults

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Or phones in general

lucid parcel
meager reef
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i'm not 13 but this is how it is today

lost dew
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Respectfully, what on earth are you even talking about

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And more importantly what does that have to do with the rest of the conversation

copper knot
hazy kayak
lucid parcel
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And if giving away responsibility and allegedly being relieved from it in your every day life is your best argument for letting companies get away with such practices, maybe overthink your standards and priorities.

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There will sooner or later be ways to bypass age verification as happens with almost every restriction governments and companies pressure us into, especially digitally.

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And kids will sooner or later know how to.

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They then just have to fire up the TOR network and follow a guide.

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I'm not even that much effected by it all, because I'm fine with creeping through IRCs, gopher and gemini. I just think of all the Average Joes here.

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Blue-Collar people who in the best case scenario know how to use adblock.

unique flare
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🤦🏻‍♂️

lucid parcel
# unique flare 🤦🏻‍♂️

A passive aggressive face-palm doesn't really add to the conversation, but obviously you're above it. /e: Ig the face-palm was targeted at my comments to it, since they were the last.

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Automated reviews can and will be bypassed/exploited sooner or later.

lavish kernel
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I give it one month before all that gets leaked and sell to scammers. Is going to be wild!

meager reef
lost dew
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That's really not an answer, I still have no idea why you brought that up lol. But if you don't feel like explaining yourself then that's fine with me, the question was more rhetorical anyway

meager reef
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ok so

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13 year olds today compete for the girl classmate not with their classmates but the very own lawmakers that push for this

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how are we going to groom children now if we can't talk to them!

lost dew
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You're still being weirdly vague about what your actual point is. If you're just trying to say "some people in the government don't want to ban kids from social media", that was an extremely bizarre and roundabout way to get to what you were actually trying to say there. But also some governments literally are doing that, so... yeah

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Anyway it seems we've gotten way off topic lol

meager reef
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banning kids from social media is catastrophic because errm... erm what do you mean we can't groom children into whatever the fuck we shove them through their feed?

cloud path
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Respectfully, your point is hard to get

meager reef
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i was this close to say something very obscene

unique flare
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indeed, impossible to get your point

lost dew
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Obviously no one can tell where you're trying to go with this. If you have something relevant to say then just get to the point. I'm not gonna engage with this anymore

north lanceBOT
robust cairn
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Or are you against that

rocky plover
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He wants the kids to have social media in a quantum superposition

meager reef
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actually let's go further

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no more social media

rocky plover
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Bruh what's in Spy's cigarette

robust cairn
meager reef
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media... that is social

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#boom