1d ago

Brits can get around Discord's age verification thanks to Death Stranding's photo mode, bypassing the measure introduced with the UK's Online Safety Act. We tried it and it works—thanks, Kojima

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Technology @lemmy.world

Interstellar_1 @lemmy.blahaj.zone

1d ago

Brits can get around Discord's age verification thanks to Death Stranding's photo mode, bypassing the measure introduced with the UK's Online Safety Act. We tried it and it works—thanks, Kojima

www.pcgamer.com /hardware/brits-can-get-around-discords-age-verification-thanks-to-death-strandings-photo-mode-bypassing-the-measure-introduced-with-the-uks-online-safety-act-we-tried-it-and-it-works-thanks-kojima/

Not The Onion @lemmy.world

ByteOnBikes @discuss.online

2d ago

Brits can get around Discord's age verification thanks to Death Stranding's photo mode, bypassing the measure introduced with the UK's Online Safety Act. We tried it and it works—thanks, Kojima

14 comments

Alright, this is just silly.

Send them your dick pics. Either you are old enough or they are storing illegal material.
- I now challenge somebody from the UK to put googly eyes on their dick and make it pass.
  
  Ah, the south park approach. It's genius

The first thing I thought when I heard about this facial recognition to verify age was now easy would be to trick the system with a game with photo mode. And for what I just read, it's really that easy.
The fun thing is that, since they claim to not save the pictures, they can't prove that you verified with a videogame... Unless they retire the claim, admit that they save the pictures and get in huge trouble with the data privacy laws.
Sigh... all this trouble to make an age verification system when the state could simply issue digital certs including simply your adult status (meaning you are not underage) that could be used in every website and that would not leak any personal data. And it would really work, as the authority issuing the cert is the state (which already knows your age) it could be automatically trusted on the internet and would keep your data safe.
- A state-issued cert used pervasively across all interactions on the internet and uniquely tied to a particular individual?
  Some exec at Google just creamed his pants.
  
  Could make it so it's possible to create an unique certificate for each site, though most people probably wouldn't bother
  
  A state-issued cert used pervasively across all interactions on the internet and uniquely tied to a particular individual?
  If the cert only includes a single data, whioh is if the user is or not underage, without any identification other than that, i'm not sure what can you do with it. No name, no data of any kind... just a true/false statement indicating if the user (without a name or any other identification) has reached the legal age.

But it introduces barriers. It's much more of a faff to do this than just use your own face, and they'll probably remove the feature now people have made it public and force you to upload an identity document.
This is all terrible for privacy, and for the decentralised nature of the internet. For years it's been being chipped away at, but now entire parts of the internet are going to be locked behind a few age verification services, and entirely inaccessible for under 18s or privacy conscious people. This is really bad for information freedom.
- What we're seeing in US states with these kinds of stupid laws, is massive increases in traffic to porn sites based overseas that have no obligation to follow the age verification law, and the state has no mechanism to compel them to do so. So all they're doing is hurting American companies AND increasing the probability that residents of their state (including teens) will visit sketchy ass sites with sketchy ass content, sketchy ass viruses and the ability to chat with sketchy ass creepballs.
  We've also seen massive increases in VPN and Tor usage, as well as a massive increase in searches for information about VPN technology. I actually consider that a huge positive. Knock yourselves out Republicans.
  Of course, these laws aren't about effectively accomplishing anything other than virtue signaling to Christofacists. At least in the US. IDK what's going on in the UK.