If Discord’s age inference model can’t determine a user’s age, a government ID might still be required for age verification in its global rollout. According to Discord, to remove the new “teen-by-default” changes and limitations, “users can choose to use facial age estimation or submit a form of identification to [Discord’s] vendor partners, with more options coming in the future.”
The first option uses AI to analyze a user’s video selfie, which Discord says never leaves the user’s device. If the age group estimate (teen or adult) from the selfie is incorrect, users can appeal it or verify with a photo of an identity document instead. That document will be verified by a third party vendor, but Discord says the images of those documents “are deleted quickly — in most cases, immediately after age confirmation.”
With the new Identity and Facial Scan Requirements, I hope that Discord dies a painful death and people move back to old school forums or at least some open source platform like Element.
i have been considering alternatives for a bit. my use case is pretty casual. i use it primarily for text chat for a family channel, text among a small friend group (less than a dozen), and occasionally voice chat with the same friends when gaming. none of these people want to upload IDs lol.
i need something the tech illiterate family can figure out and install on their tim cook phones for text chat, but will also work for voice/text with my broke android/PC friends to share shitty memes and maybe even short dumb videos. i use linux, so i want it to have a client for that too. so, definitely multi-platform.
obviously would like secure and anonymous.
was considering signal or something defederated like matrix. i don’t really want to self host, but i could for something incredible and perfect. i feel capable of researching this and making my own decision without input, but i like to solicit input and opinions because its probably wise!