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Comment by luke727 | Hacker News Reader

The frustration aimed at Discord et al is largely misplaced. I'm sure these companies don't mind gathering extra data about their users, but the primary impetus for age verification is government legislation. Moving to alternative platforms is not a long term solution because it's attacking the problem from the wrong direction.

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Not just government legislation, but also lawsuits. I'm confident that Discord is a hotbed of all kinds of abuse and inappropriate / adult content, a lot targeting younger generations, and most of their resources are spent on that. Age verification doesn't solve that problem per se, but it makes things a bit easier.

The challenge with "protect the children" is not only evildoers targeting them, but targets actively seeking things out. They'll be the first ones looking for ways to circumvent age verification.

It seems to me that also if you succeed in making child-only spaces, those spaces become a magnet for adult abusers. They become an all the more desirable prize for them. Whereas spaces like this - hacker news, that is - don't need any age verification because although it's a safe bet some users are underage here too, the abusers would have to search a long time for them and the seemingly most common manipulation techniques (like pretending to be a child yourself) probably wouldn't work.

That's no reason to just give up. Do we give up on schools because they are attractive to paedophiles?

Children should be safe online and in school or nursery.

We should try our best to protect children online in a similar way that there are age restrictions in the real world like for alcohol and movies. It won't ever be 100% but for parents who care it helps greatly.

For abuse perpetrated by an adult on children we should strive to stop 100% of cases, but unfortunately that is not possible either.

I'm not saying to give up, I'm saying that "for children" spaces online can be counterproductive. Comparing to physical spaces where everyone can see your age and everyone can see what you do, makes no sense.

Open online spaces directed at children are more dangerous for children than the average open online space. Age verification doesn't help at all with that.

I agree that government legislation is part of the equation, but I don't agree that moving to other platforms is not a solution. If Discord were to witness a significant exodus of paying users because of this new verification process, they would probably start fighting the fight themselves.

That said, I don't expect this to happen, switching is very hard for many reasons.

This is it. Governments dont care when the peasants gripe. But hit the corps in the wallet and youll see some actual pressure exerted.

I meant that it's not a solution for users looking to avoid similar intrusions. When alternative platforms get big enough they'll be faced with the same legislative burdens. Of course there are decentralized options, but one of the primary attractions of these centralized services is that everyone's on there.

The point is that the alternative platforms should be small per-community chat servers run by their users. A one-click installation on a $5/mo web host like DO or Vultr or similar. Good luck policing them away.

The problem is that this is too tedious for most people. There's a reason centralization is popular.

If people are actively driven away (as in unable to pass the age check), the incentive becomes stronger.

You act like public opinion has no bearing on politics.

Historical precedent: prohibition.

Alternate future: the big websites start losing billions because people just use the internet less or not at all because it's a hassle with no return, and tax revenue drops. Then the politicians start to worry.

Even in the absence of democracy, public opinion affects politics.

The problem is that public opinion is now very much in favor in general. https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/britons-back-online-safety-acts-...

Yes the same outraged users were totally fine with giving Discord all their personal conversations.

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