Age verification, but not for us

Discord wants to verify ages of all people via LLM analyzing chats. Close to 10% of people are not verified correctly and have to do a face scan or ID scan, using third parties. In UK the law required it and in the same year, data of millions of people, including 70.000 IDs became leaked and because Discord liked it, they rolled out the verification world wide. After backlash they decided now to delay it for 3 months (because they think people will forget about it).

Now Apple seems to follow age verification world wide (maybe other approaches), while Google requires similar data for the developer-registration (if they want to publish apps outside of Google Play Store).

If that goes on, all big tech companies will implement such invasive idiotic censorship thing. But I also have good news: this does not apply to free software. Freedom feels awesome. It’s so “funny” that all this nonsense will be rolled out just a short time after I left all these systems completely behind. And they give me good arguments to promote Linux to internet-people, friends and family.

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Sometimes this kind of verification effectively or in practice won’t work in the open source world because it requires you to run some *****y app before you even get started.

I wonder if the Army would adopt it for enlistments and the draft?

It would help prevent Barry McGuire’s lyric:

“You’re old enough to kill but not for votin’“

Of course back then the voting age was 21. At least it would keep 17 year olds out.

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