Spyke

Literally every type of age verification ever put into place has been circumvented by children. EVERY SINGLE ONE.

231
piefed.social

When I was little, my mom used to send me to the store with a note that said to sell me cigarettes, and that they were for her. When I started smoking, I used to reuse the notes to get my own smokes. I got my first fake ID at 13 so I could buy beer.

100
i078reply
europe.pub

When I was 13 I could just buy beer, the trick was to make it look like you are helping your parents with groceries. So also pickup stuff like a carton of eggs, potatoes and milk. I never had any issue, but it was a different time and in Europe

65

Yeah, that last bit is key.

In German I think we were drinking in the clubs at that age. No “helping the parents with the eggs and milk” lol

15

My mum did the same thing she stopped when I used the £20 note to buy sweets, that was a lot of sweets back then.

10

I guess its a good thing that the point if this is just to tie a real human to their online presence and protecting kids never actually mattered.

You know, for a given value of "good" being "actually very very bad".

10

Well, obviously an adult, but I admit I'm a little unsure about which one. Hope that helps.

8
lemmy.today

Yeah, because it isn't about that. They don't give a fuck about kids seeing porn. Even when there are age checks, there will be plenty of free porn.

It's all about being able to connect an online post with the author.

132

Then just tick the 'straight to jail' box next to the names that are the 'wrong' color

6
pwxdreply
lemmy.zip

They're doing this age verification on purpose just to spy on adults lol

34
lemmy.world

Don't forget that they are also doing this to desensitize and normalize this for children...

24
lemmy.world

Fascism starts with attacking the minorities. In this case minors are the tool, and reducing their rights to ashes will only enable further progression of fascism. It essentially feeds on discrimination.

7
lemmy.world

Yeah, and get ready for those big platforms selectively leaking user data, sometimes with falsified stuff. Get ready for union leaders suddenly being outed for being into weird shit (often literally), all while they're clueless and disgusted, as part of online smear campaigns. Always said that "cancel culture"/purity testing is a dangerous weapon that can be astroturfed by the enemy, and there's already some precedent for that (most recently the whole Hasan dog thing). Even some leftists are trying really hard to cancel some "annoying" people among them.

9
deczzzreply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

Extremely stupid idea for a law but I don't think the people who are for this did it to sneak in surveillance. I think they are simply too stupid to understand digital tech and internet and how these laws won't work to fix the problems they are trying to solve - namely that a lot of young do too much of the bad internet. The surveillance thing is just a bonus

1

I can second this. It seems to me pretty clearly that these policies are being passed based on genuine concern for the children. They're poorly designed but they come from a good place.

1
lemmy.ca

I can’t wait to email this to my MP

Canada Bill S209 needs to die. It’s bad legislation.

85
Kowowowreply
lemmy.ca

Oh that's a great idea to use politicians to get past age checks assuming of course they don't get butthurt enough to claim it's full on fraud

14

You have to have the word Parody on it somewhere. Then it is not fraud. The thing looks so stupid anyways and has the security feature markings from my id anyways. I am not fooling a human.

5

Not sure what you mean by that.

I’m just writing an email to oppose this, my email is not like the above poster. I am just laying out arguments why this is a bad solution and will not work.

Which is what we’re seeing with kids drawing moustaches and borrowing IDs at will.

2

Politicians don't seem to function this way though. They don't concern themselves with implementation details. People will vote for age verification even if it doesn't work.

3
feddit.uk

I'm in my mid thirties and I'd still buy a mask or something to trick these systems if and when this becomes a thing in my country.

65
lemmy.world

As someone who spent my formative days figuring out how to bypass early digital locks my school was putting in place to "protect us" ... The system loses this game. Every time. You are taking kids with nothing but time, no apparent drawbacks, and everything to gain... And placing them against "good enough" implemented by people who could give two shits about it.

This will continue to lose until they twist the knobs too tight and hit false positive central... And oops now the populace hates it. Control for thee is fine until its for me.

Tale as old as technology itself.

61

It pains me to say I do - hah. The south park movie bit on it was perfect.

3
lemmy.world

Mine was simple, but great. IE was hidden/removed in our typing class, maybe 5th grade. I guessed you could type a www.domain.tld in Word and when you pressed space, got a clickable URL that was still tied to IE. I knew about the URL, but learned it would still open with IE hidden. 🤣🤣

7
prolereply
lemmy.blahaj.zone

I used to go to the "about Microsoft Works" pop up under the "help" drop down in Works (yes I'm old), and then click a URL on there that would open up a functioning IE window.

We used to get up to so much shenanigans in high school computer classes... I remember playing Unreal Tournament over LAN with like half the class without the teacher knowing

4

It was Quake for us 😅 I'm not even that old, it's just the only game that was small enough to store on the shared network without being discovered

2
MimicJarreply
lemmy.world

Even with false positives it won't change anything. It's just a small group of people. It's worth it to "save the children". If "the system" rejects you, then you must be at fault. Maybe we can even sell a "Super ID Check". Just a one time $200 fee and then the system will leave you alone. (For 3 years, then pay the fee again, but renewal is even faster this time.)

4

I'm not saying its going to happen quickly... But filtering in many forms has been tried in the past and they all died similarly. Some vocal group gets inconvenienced by it and then, under scrutiny, the blemishes get paraded out and the project dies a slow ugly death.

The actual reason for the push right now is meta (among others) just want to wash their hands of the responsibility... And that aligns with some tech bros wanting to hoover up peoples ids and resell that info. The whole thing will sour once there's a significant leak that ties risk into that bottom line and nobody will want to carry it.

7
lemmy.ca

How about instead of trying every complicated stupid way to regulate users and especially children ..... you regulate and control companies and corporations instead.

55
4amreply
lemmy.zip

It’s not about the kids. It’s about knowing who is organizing protests, unions, and calling out wage theft, polluters, and whistleblowing illegal activities performed by the government and Epstein class.

It’s about preventing access to online spaces, monetary transactions, and basically letting them erase you from society if you don’t offer them full-throated gratuity and allegiance.

You know, just like ChInAs sOcIaL cReDiT sYsTeM.

As usual here in the West, every accusation is a confession (or at least an idea for later)

63

It’s been that way for ages around the world. The 2000s were full of news stories from places like Russia, with protests about the actions of their government and the treatment of political opposition. Those stories have largely died down, not because Russia changed, but because they clamped down on dissent. The US is just catching up. It wasn’t just Russia either. We’ve seen this globally with most major political activities over the last decade or more. Where once we were getting video of events in real time, now they’ve learned to shut down the internet, censor the digital forums, 'flood the zone'. Where once you could be critical of this government or that, it has become an internet of heavily commercialized influencers. It sucks, man.

Like...Russia, China, India, Iran, Isreal, UK, and a handful of others that I can't remember.

It's happening everywhere and all in slightly different ways but it's not JUST the US. I just tend to remember Russia the best because they are the closest to what seems to be happening in the US at a visual level. The old videos of arrests and protests in Russia almost mirror the modern ICE videos. I suspect it will only get worse.

12
lemmy.world

Or, ya know, make parents take responsibility for their own children and monitor what they are doing online. If you don't want your kids seeing or participating in things online then don't give them unfettered access to smart phones and computers!

20
vorticreply
lemmy.world

I kind fo agree and kind of don't. I agree in that parents should take accountability for their children. That said, social media has been shown to be addictive and kids are frequently ahead of their parents technologically. One thing that could help is an education campaign that teaches parents how to effectively monitor their kid's online activity. Parents need some help figuring out what tools to use and how to use them I think.

9

You are correct and I'm a little upset at myself that I left out the fact that educating parents should be something we put money and effort into as well.

6
lemmy.today

Good point. Kids know too much and get addicted too early. Adult know too little and can’t tell the difference between lies and reality. Everybody consumes way too much porn. That’s it, everybody put their phones in the garbage. No more Internet, everyone gets a landline, rotary dial, call on the other end does’t disconnect if you don’t hang yours up.

-2
lemmy.ml

If they had better things to do they wouldn't be jerkin it. It is not addictive. It is a modern capitalist society issue where the people that create the solution are the ones causing the problem. It is a enviromental issue.

1
lemmy.today

I’m gonna stop you right there because you’re flirting dangerously close to Victorian prudishness with a modern spin. There is absolutely nothing new about non-reproductive sexual behavior and the practice is not limited to humans. We’ve found sexually explicit images in cave paintings, Mesopotamia, a lot in Greece & Rome (including homoerotica), and the Kama Sutra is about 2000yrs old. Humans, including adolescents, have been jerkin’ it for centuries before the invisible hand came along.

What has occurred is that the accessibility, volume, and content of pornography has expanded and changed. Where people might have previously spanked it and finished in a few minutes then gone on with their day, now they can delay gratification and spend hours gooning to a never ending supply of whatever form of visual stimulus they want, including content that was never even intended or attempted to be pornographic. The pornography itself is not addictive, the physiological and mental stimulation is. For some, there’s a need to explore and indulge riskier sexual behaviors and fetishes to achieve the rush they got previously. I was pretty excited when I saw my first nudie mag at 8, by the time I was 16 it wasn’t as exciting because by then internet porn had become accessible. But, had nudie mags remained my only option for such content, I would have continued to masturbate to nudie mags.

There’s also nothing inherently wrong with the idea of pornography, voyuerism, group play, sex toys, etc so long as all parties involved consent to the activity they’re engaging in. Humans like sex, they like masturbation, they like watching others perform it. Again, consent of all parties involved is the key factor. Truly understanding how to give and respect consent in what can be a high consequence interaction is why we set hard lines about age of consent and prohibit (or attempt to) minors from such activities, but also know that many are exploring and engaging in such behavior privately or with peers regardless. There’s a healthy, normal aspect to that because it’s human nature, and then there’s the dangerous side because porn of every sort lacks a lesson in consent, is often unrealistic/fantastical/deviant, and often treats the passive partner as an object for the pleasure of the active partner (typically women, but trans, “twink”, animals, and children are also depicted as such).

This is the danger of porn to malleable minds who are responding to the biology of sex drive but do not yet have the confidence/skill/capacity to build healthy relationships where they can build intimacy and eventually engage in sex with a willing, consenting partner. Some end up forgoing the effort to find a partner entirely and meet their need with porn, which is a sad and unhealthy avenue. Other take the lessons of objectification and violate the boundaries of other. And the worst make their most deviant, dangerous, and hurtful fantasies reality. Some would behave like that without having been exposed to porn, but I would argue that porn is having a strong influence on the spread and normalization of truly deviant fetishes, like beast/child/gore/rape.

The commodification of sex is older than capitalism, it was being bartered and traded since… since forever. What capitalism has done is make a normal human behavior a profitable vice. Adults embracing their sexuality, recording it, selling it for other adults to view is not problematic so long as everyone who made it consented to the acts recorded and consents to the recording being put out for consumption by strangers. The internet has created a platform where it’s impossible to tell if those criteria were met before the material became permanently available and globally distributed, as well is a bastion of anonymity that can be accessed by anyone of any age. You can try and put up guardrails but humans are just going to figure out a workaround if they are inclined to do so. Pandora’s box has been opened, and even if there is no money to be made people are going to view, share, and trade porn. If you shut the internet down people would revert to whatever media forms were available to do the same. Even if you magically erased all porn, people, including adolescents, would still masturbate. What might diminish is the frequency and amount of time they spend doing so as well as the cultivation of deviant fetishes and objectifying partners.

The people trying to create a “solution” aren’t doing so because they see that some forms of porn production and consumption is problematic, they see human sexuality as problematic. They’re not trying to steer how porn is produced and consumed into a healthy manner, they treat sexuality outside of their concept of divine purpose as deviant. Plus it’s a “rules for thee not me” attitude, especially when the people pushing it support one of the world’s most infamous and abusive deviants. The human need for sexual stimulation/release is like the human need to eat and drink. Capitalism didn’t invent it, it just exploits necessity.

1
  1. I’m gonna stop you right there because you’re flirting dangerously close to Victorian prudishness with a modern spin. There is absolutely nothing new about non-reproductive sexual behavior and the practice is not limited to humans. We’ve found sexually explicit images in cave paintings, Mesopotamia, a lot in Greece & Rome (including homoerotica), and the Kama Sutra is about 2000yrs old. Humans, including adolescents, have been jerkin’ it for centuries before the invisible hand came along.

My response: OK

  1. What has occurred is that the accessibility, volume, and content of pornography has expanded and changed. Where people might have previously spanked it and finished in a few minutes then gone on with their day, now they can delay gratification and spend hours gooning to a never ending supply of whatever form of visual stimulus they want, including content that was never even intended or attempted to be pornographic. The pornography itself is not addictive, the physiological and mental stimulation is. For some, there’s a need to explore and indulge riskier sexual behaviors and fetishes to achieve the rush they got previously. I was pretty excited when I saw my first nudie mag at 8, by the time I was 16 it wasn’t as exciting because by then internet porn had become accessible. But, had nudie mags remained my only option for such content, I would have continued to masturbate to nudie mags.

My response:

Like I said, if they had better things to do, they wouldn't be jerking it all day. I'm living example of that. I have many hobbies and goals, personal goals, I would like to achieve, in which I do. And like I go to the restroom and take a huge dump, I deal with my bodily needs. In a capitalist society, you're going to have fetish, you're going to have perversion, because you have commodified the natural world. And like everything, people are always looking for the next thing, even though there's nothing new under the sun. At the root of this, I think this has to do with internal issues that are from external environmental factors. They will never fix the issues, because the issues create the solutions, and those solutions give big tech the power they need to become the fascist techno dictatorship that they've always planned to be. Our children are being preyed upon by psychological masters, & weapons contractors.

  1. There’s also nothing inherently wrong with the idea of pornography, voyuerism, group play, sex toys, etc so long as all parties involved consent to the activity they’re engaging in. Humans like sex, they like masturbation, they like watching others perform it. Again, consent of all parties involved is the key factor. Truly understanding how to give and respect consent in what can be a high consequence interaction is why we set hard lines about age of consent and prohibit (or attempt to) minors from such activities, but also know that many are exploring and engaging in such behavior privately or with peers regardless. There’s a healthy, normal aspect to that because it’s human nature, and then there’s the dangerous side because porn of every sort lacks a lesson in consent, is often unrealistic/fantastical/deviant, and often treats the passive partner as an object for the pleasure of the active partner (typically women, but trans, “twink”, animals, and children are also depicted as such).

My response: True

  1. This is the danger of porn to malleable minds who are responding to the biology of sex drive but do not yet have the confidence/skill/capacity to build healthy relationships where they can build intimacy and eventually engage in sex with a willing, consenting partner. Some end up forgoing the effort to find a partner entirely and meet their need with porn, which is a sad and unhealthy avenue. Other take the lessons of objectification and violate the boundaries of other. And the worst make their most deviant, dangerous, and hurtful fantasies reality. Some would behave like that without having been exposed to porn, but I would argue that porn is having a strong influence on the spread and normalization of truly deviant fetishes, like beast/child/gore/rape.

My response: People need to raise their children and not shelter them.

  1. The commodification of sex is older than capitalism, it was being bartered and traded since… since forever. What capitalism has done is make a normal human behavior a profitable vice. Adults embracing their sexuality, recording it, selling it for other adults to view is not problematic so long as everyone who made it consented to the acts recorded and consents to the recording being put out for consumption by strangers. The internet has created a platform where it’s impossible to tell if those criteria were met before the material became permanently available and globally distributed, as well is a bastion of anonymity that can be accessed by anyone of any age. You can try and put up guardrails but humans are just going to figure out a workaround if they are inclined to do so. Pandora’s box has been opened, and even if there is no money to be made people are going to view, share, and trade porn. If you shut the internet down people would revert to whatever media forms were available to do the same. Even if you magically erased all porn, people, including adolescents, would still masturbate. What might diminish is the frequency and amount of time they spend doing so as well as the cultivation of deviant fetishes and objectifying partners.

My respone:

OMGAWD we are saying the same fucking thing. Instead of being punitive or restrictive, I mean, you gotta be restrictive to some degree. But I'm the type of person that believes additive solutions are the key to normal socialization of youths. You gotta give these little shits something better to do. This fucking country has no third spaces.... if you live in the imperial core. It is a very boring place that's hard to get around. I believe kids should have some structure, just like every organism on the planet, but it shouldn't be dictated by values or interests that other people think you should be into. What I'm saying is, America is a very boring place, with very few options, and everything cost a fortune. It's no wonder kids are on the internet constantly. It's like we built the world of the computer and the car, and we forgot to add in some space for human living. America also has a problem with being over-competitive. In that process of being over-competitive, we become jealous, envious, and vengeful. From the top to the bottom, these toxic behaviors are pervasive. So, when it comes to revenge porn, I mean, I'm just not interested in celebrities, or even the girl next door, or the guy next door, I really just keep to myself when it comes to all that. I prefer a good album to a good song. And a lot of times my favorite bands I don't even know the names of the musicians. When you watch movies, do you care about the story or the actor in it? I mean, even the way movies are made, they are made to be cut after cut, instead of joining film like they do in long scenes from the past. This has to do with attention span. So what I'm saying, it's a cultural issue. I don't think the accelerationism and the restrictive measures of the tech community are going to solve any of our depraved behaviors. Like I said, if these kids had something better to do, they wouldn't be doing what they're doing.

  1. The people trying to create a “solution” aren’t doing so because they see that some forms of porn production and consumption is problematic, they see human sexuality as problematic. They’re not trying to steer how porn is produced and consumed into a healthy manner, they treat sexuality outside of their concept of divine purpose as deviant. Plus it’s a “rules for thee not me” attitude, especially when the people pushing it support one of the world’s most infamous and abusive deviants. The human need for sexual stimulation/release is like the human need to eat and drink. Capitalism didn’t invent it, it just exploits necessity.

My respone:

Yeah some people just get off by being in charge and eatin mcdonalds. Boy oh boy you are verbose. "divine purpose as deviant" Also I see it not as divine nor deviant

2
Zagorathreply
quokk.au

I agree, letting parents do their job of parenting is the best way to deal with this. But the problem is that that's very difficult, and they currently lack adequate tools.

The best method would be to make sure operating systems support parental controls that parents can set, and require websites to respect those settings (and browsers to support an API passthrough of the OS setting). That way there's no need to do any age verification that sends sensitive data like ID or faces to third-parties with sketchy privacy policies.

Unfortunately, when moves were actually taken to implement this kind of solution, reactionaries pushed back and made sure it didn't happen.

3
azuthreply
sh.itjust.works

Which move are you referring to? Because most of them include far more than that.

2
Zagorathreply
quokk.au

Some guy put a PR in to the Linux kernal and to systemd, IIRC. The community pushback was huge, despite it literally just being a field users could fill in themselves if they wanted.

I'm not sure if he ended up succeeding. IIRC last time I checked it was in systemd but not Linux, but that could have changed and I could be misremembering.

1

I think it was accepted in systemd. There was no commit in the kernel because such things are really don't belong in the kernel.

But the law it was a response too is horrible. If any 'app', regardless of it including any unsafe content (or content at all really) must ask for this information from the OS. Otherwise the developer and/or controller (which can be whoever installed the app) is liable for thousands of dollars.

This only makes sense if you think the only 'apps' that exist are ones written by FAANG.

3
knatschusreply
discuss.tchncs.de

Combine both and demand parental controls for devices and services. The isp is paid for by an adult that's the only age check websites should need. Parents should have easily accessible tools to mark a os or browser as used by a minor.

3

who gives a fuck I want my freedom of speech, trains and a liviable wage with a billionare on my plate

1

Utah is trying. They claim they want to hold websites liable for Utahians who use VPNs to bypass ID checks. I don't think that's going to work, mostly because I have a lot of questions about how that could possible be enforced. But it's funny to think about.

7

And who's payroll campaign donations are the politicians that are pushing these policy coming from?

5

People act as if it was a bug and not a feature. This was intended. After people sufficiently make fun of the current solution that everyone knows how easily it is broken, the next step is requiring both ID and face scan and comparing photo on ID with face scan. Congrats, privacy is removed completely. Every poster is now tied with real life identity.

42
lemmy.ca

We should get all of our advice from little kids. They have not yet been bound by knowing what is or isn't possible. The meek shall inherit the earth.

29
lemmy.world

We should get all of our advice from little kids.

These articles tend to lean on click-baity "One Neat Trick" headlines, while disguising the more practical hit-or-miss reality of facial recognition software. Sometimes you can outsmart the computer. Sometimes it just fouls the system and fails out. Sometimes the system works exactly as intended.

Little kids experiment around the edges of a system until they get bored or frustrated. In the aggregate, they can be very clever just through the number of permutations they try. Individually, your 12-year-old isn't going to Hack The Internet reliably.

6

Today in: "Just let the parents parent."

It's good to see a reminder that depending on the majority of parents to act in absence of real, tangible regulation is doomed to be a failure.

19

Good, good -- teach the children that authority is bullshit. This kind of thing is more effective than book learnin'.

16

Is it legal to “verify” my age to be a minor? Would less of my information be collected?

…not that any of it is accurate anyway.

13
feddit.org

Blame to all who made such stupid software and then called it "age check"

12
Scrollonereply
feddit.it

It's not age check. It's 1984-style government invasion of privacy.

21

Oh no. All that's left now that the age veifications are bypassed are the extensive public surveillance. Better leave that running.

11

Oh it was a long time ago, but not so long ago that it's suspicious.

6
lemmy.world

We want your children to be safer online so we forced them to self-identify with biometric data? Isn’t that part of what caused this in the first place?

Privacy, security, and regulation is the answer here, not more surveillance capitalism. But that’s anathema to the business models of every social media company so instead we get this ham-fisted attempt at jamming the square peg of “digital advertising surveillance” into the round hole of “protecting children”. The mechanical action damages everything involved.

This system is specifically and very effectively designed to monitor, analyze, addict, and sell people, and this “solution” just ends up being more engineering to that end. Asking it to selectively age-gate content is like inventing a global network for information transfer and then becoming outraged when it’s used for file sharing. Copy is an intrinsic operation of digital data, and exploitation is an intrinsic operation of social media. We’re asking it to do the opposite of what it’s created to do.

Parents should be in charge of filtering content for their children, and the government should be in charge of using the collective power of the people to regulate companies that exploit them instead of serving them. Asking social media companies to do it is backing the wolf truck up to the chicken coop while the guy hired to protect the chickens tells you “The wolves will protect the chickens from other predators!”

10

No, all the danger to children comes from satanic pedophiles cold-messaging strangers from trailer parks in hell. Billionaires can always be trusted with sensitive data and photos of children. Parents also notoriously never do anything bad to their children.

2

I guess now we must ban pens and markers because children might draw fake mustaches and bypass age verification.

So long humble pen. We will miss you.

9
lemmy.world

As I understand it, most adult content producers aren't actually interested in having minors using their sites. It seems like the easiest thing to do would be to have them add some "Adult Material" flag in their metadata, and let consumers respond as they wish to that tag - whether that's done through browser settings, router nannyware, or whatever.

Is there a technical reason this isn't what's being pushed for? I'm sure there's lobbying and "optics" reasons for not doing this, but is there any practical reason for not pursuing this, or something like it?

7
lemmy.world

We already have multiple solutions for blocking children from websites that parents don't want them to access and the companies providing those situations maintain their own databases of different types of content tagged so that parents can have some control over what is blocked and what is not. This stuff has existed since the 90s it's nothing new. It requires parents taking the initiative though and really when we get down to it this is another, "but think of the children, " sort of situation where they are using child safety as cover for making it easier to collect biometric data of people online.

18
DireTechreply
sh.itjust.works

The hell are you talking about? Yes there are blocklists for adult domains, but that doesn’t actually block adult content since it leaves stuff like YouTube open. If you think there isn’t full on sex on there then you’ll be surprised.

The only thing that functions right now is whitelisting and it is super annoying since so many apps open a web container inside the app. All this id verification is nonsense, but providing an actually filtered internet is still nigh impossible for parents who aren’t tech savvy.

0
lemmy.world

Pretty easy solution to that, don't let your kid have access to youtube without observing what they are watching. If a parent isn't willing to learn how to setup parental controls and/or web filtering and take the time to observe what their child is consuming then it shouldn't be shoved onto the government and made a problem for everyone else.

4

Yeah that’s a nice idea but so is parents being able to provide food and shelter for their children. However, most counties in the world have social services because we recognize what should happen and what actually happens don’t always overlap and we don’t want to starve kids for their parents failings.

Once you accept some parents either won’t or in many cases can’t, the question is what you value more: the kids in those situations or the companies profiting off the parents failures.

Plus YouTube is an easy example. There are thousands of other websites that have much worse. Making the websites themselves responsible for flagging the domain puts the onus on those most likely to have the technical know how rather than those more likely to be ignorant.

1
lemmy.world

There's always an analog loop to curb censorship. It's just a waste of money.

6

Not for the people pushing for this Orwellian shit.

Most people will just comply, and "most people" is who they want to spy on and control.

5
quokk.au

Anyone know the best way to fool these age verification tools? I've got some Discord servers with channels that are marked as NSFW mainly out of an abundance of caution, despite mainly just being open to rude language. And others where it's just slightly spicy memes.

I am old enough, I just don't want to give my real face or ID to Discord or their chosen third parties. I don't trust them. Have tried pointing OBS at videos of people staring straight at the screen, but those don't quite seem to work.

3
lemmy.zip

Don't use discord? Problem solved.

And I really am serious. We need to move away from platforms we have no control over and contribute to the problem.

4
quackreply
lemmy.zip

We probably shouldn't be using Discord but you've got to meet people where they're at. Telling someone to just drop a service when all of their connections are there is unhelpful at best.

5
lemmy.zip

What else are you supposed to tell them? Its like an abusive relationship, do we just tell them "oh well" you get something out of it so just stay in it?

1

I mean if you want to help someone in an abusive relationship, telling them to just leave doesn't really work there either, and for a lot of the same reasons. But you can support them in other ways until they're able to do what's necessary to leave.

4
lemmy.world

We probably shouldn’t be using Discord

It's a useful tool for a variety of organizational goals. Why should we have to leave? They're the ones that suck.

0

Ultimately Discord is a corporate-owned social media platform, and like all corporate-owned social media platforms their best interests rarely intersect with the best interests of their users. Centralised systems like Discord always end up with a power imbalance between the users and the administrators, and if you break their rules they have it within their power to just vapourise your community without a second thought. Your organisation or community only exists for as long as you toe their line.

2

losing complete control to a corporation

Getting forced off of a community forum every time a business gobbles up the rights to the software is a loss of control.

2
Zagorathreply
quokk.au

Thanks, but that is a thoroughly unhelpful piece of advice.

4
lemmy.zip

So keep fighting the corporate entity and keep making things worse by supporting them?

I don't know what else to tell you. You have no control, so you get what you deserve by continuing to use it. And when you continue to use it, it keeps other people thinking they need to use it, and the pain continues. Its a classic it hurts when I do this, so the answer is "stop doing that".

Do you really need discord to be your chat server?

So to actually offer advice if you are determined to have a discord like experience: you could try Fluxer and if they implement the same restrictions you could try self hosting it.

Editing to add: Fluxer.app as the url.

1
Zagorathreply
quokk.au

I've already moved my gaming group to Matrix. But, and this might shock you, not every server I'm a member of consists entirely of myself and my close friends.

2
nyanreply
lemmy.cafe

Well, there's always the ancient method that teens used to get their hands on alcohol when I was that age: pay someone who's down on their luck for ten minutes of their time.

3
Zagorathreply
quokk.au

That feels kinda gross and exploitative. Because it's not like alcohol. This is something I very well could do myself, but refuse to do on principle, because I don't want to hand over personal data like that. Paying someone else to hand over their data feels gross.

3

Fair. Two wrongs don't make a right. (And to be honest? If it were me, I'd actually just drop out of those channels. I'm used to venues on the Internet being easy-come-easy-go.)

1
Comet79reply
lemmy.world

DM the mods to fix channels. If they refuse, you'll have to leave. Don't give Discord any info. A community I was in moved to an alternative and it's still there, right after Discord announced it would implement ID registrations.

2

Don’t give Discord any info

That's the idea. I'm hoping people have an idea of some method to bypass it that actually works. Maybe a particular video or game that still works well. Giving them useless data.

Fwiw, they don't do the age verification themselves. They contract it out to a third party. And as much as I trust neither entity very far, I do trust that the third party probably isn't handing over that data to Discord. I'm more worried about the third-party being hacked/leaking data, which has already happened.

0

we need to go back to the tried and true method of a calendar field to prove age. i know that kept me out of all the dirty sites back when i was born in 1979 through 84.

3

Age checks are common and seen as easy to complete. About half of children (53%) say they have recently been asked to verify their age, most often when setting up new accounts. According to children, the following methods were described as easy: uploading a government ID document (88%), facial age estimation (89%) and using a third-party app (88%).

Wow, they are really teaching children to upload their government ID to random internet websites who ask for it. Identity theft heaven.

11

They could've just bloody made social media safe for everyone, instead of making us jump through all these hoops.

Of course with porn it's a bit more complicated, being exposed to it at too young of an age has proven negative effects.

2