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Comment by losvedir | Hacker News Reader

What's actually happening? From the commentary here on HN I thought everyone was going to have to upload an ID or something. I use a Discord server to chat with some old high school friends, and wasn't wanting to upload my ID to them. But this update[0] from Discord says they're not requiring everyone to, and that "the vast majority of people can continue using Discord exactly as they do today, without ever being asked to confirm their age." So I'm assuming I won't have to, after all. Do we know who will, when, or why?

[0] https://discord.com/safety/how-discord-is-building-safer-exp...

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They have a ML model based on shrug emoji that decides if you’re in the automatically approved bucket, the face verification bucket or the ID verification bucket. If face verification fails or you’re in the high risk bucket you’ll need to send them ID to access adult content, i.e. any channels manually set to nsfw, anything their classifier deems nsfw and anything in servers deemed nsfw. Discord would like to imply that most users are in the automatically verified bucket and only like porn is flagged nsfw, but it’s entirely in their control to tighten these screws when they reckon that the controversy is over (and they’ve already been trialling more mandatory ID verification on UK users, before starting the global rollout)

My guess would be that for most people they already have a pretty good idea if you are an adult. Like my account was created years and years ago not long after it was released so unless I was under 8 when I did so the odds are pretty good I am at least 18. But to further my guess of why they are not bugging you is because they are not YET bugging you. By that I mean then want to make it seem like they only want to "save the children". That, in a lot of cases they basically already know you must be over 18. But in my opinion that is only to lessen the blow and not annoy everyone at once. Many escape ID requirements and continue to use the app and if all goes well not enough people push back or quit and a high enough number of people continue to use the app that it makes other people either use the user hostile app or not easily connect and communicate to a large community. But also in my opinion once people calm down and move on they will continue to push more demand for user ID. It will be a slow push but knowing who you are is too valuable. There will be excuses as to why they need it and eventually there will be a reason why you a user of over a decade will also need to prove you are who you are.

One positive note I am actually old man wrinkly balls. I have been there for the rise and fall of many sites. Maybe it will happen for discord as well only time will tell. Cheers

Age verification is required for age limited servers and channels. The vast majority are not age limited and will remain available without verification. As has happened in the past, more of the remaining channels will turn off age limiting as it becomes more invasive, in favor of moderation and tweaked community standards (no more porn in #shitpost). I'd expect the remaining bits will leave, with most of the members not wanting it to be linked to their real id.

Australia recently locked under 16s out of social media and it seems like the social media companies used heuristics to determine if accounts were owned by under 16s... so I assume Discord will do something similar.

I'm in Australia and have not been prompted to verify my identity for any service (I'm assuming that one of the heuristics is average age of "friends" but I have no idea).

This new ID policy is to get into servers tagged NSFW, like OF creator communities. The new policy says by default, you can't get into those servers without uploading IDs.

So, for the vast majority of servers, like your high school friends, local Pokemon Go servers, work alumni, etc, they'll still work fine without an ID upload.

Unless the AI based on shrug emoji decides these channels contain NSFW content

Discord has an age estimating tool that seems to work well.

So it's likely that almost nothing will change and this is a huge nothing burger.

Besides, if underage mode just means I can't see nsfw marked channels that's... Entirely fine.

I don't think any of us are going to be able to get enough of a sample size to know if their age estimation tool is working well or not. You can know the age of your real life friends, but beyond that it's just going to be self report.

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