That was.... bad, but it wasn't a moral decision it was kind of just market forces. The market means that no one can run a taxi company anymore, you're just kind of all employees of uber or whoever your local monopoly is. Not great, and arguably the way they got there should have been under more scrutiny but it was more or less pure market forces.
What is happening now is not market forces. What is happening now is rich people telling the government to institute legislation that hands power to rich people. Whether it's Elon Musk's public funded, privatized space programme or Thiel's public mandated, private enforced age-gating. All of this is corrupt. There's not really another word for it.
>As PCGamer note, Persona's lead investors during two recent rounds of venture capital funding were Founders Fund, who valued them at $1.5 billion in 2021. The Founders Fund was co-founded by Peter Thiel in 2020.
>Palantir have, among other things, worked extensively with the USA's Immigration and Customs Enforcement, aka ICE, [...]
The article tries to imply that Persona might be sending your ID scans to Palantir or doing other unsavory things with it, because it's linked to Thiel, but is there any evidence for this? For instance, is Thiel known for meddling in the affairs of the companies his fund invests in, or pushing them together for collabs like what Musk does (eg. with x/x.ai/spacex)?
They are not friendly.
First market forces incentivize consolidation (which imo killed off the vibrant early internet...), then a few players got really powerful.
Once you have that much money and power, and given the inevitable corruptability of politicians, it makes sense to try and use that money to try and manipulate market rules in your favor.
The evolution of the internet has been an in-vitro demonstration of capitalism failure modes and as somebody who liked the internet, that's very unfortunate.
I don't think it's responsible to blame any specific person or company, but I certainly can't excuse the Googles, Apples, Samsungs, Facebooks etc of the world. They manufactured a culture driven by putting as many devices in front of as many people as possible, using them as much as possible, while knowing as much about them as possible to monetize their attention. The careless disregard for how that affected the developing brains of two generations of people now is irresponsible and ugly.
It seems like no one is asking the real question here, which isn't why Roblox/Discord et al need to verify the age of their users. We should be asking how in the fuck there are so many children with unsupervised access to devices that this is a real problem.
The UK's NHS is already quite close with Palantir: https://www.palantir.com/uk/
"ad-hominem is ugly and wrong, like you"
Remember, customers of Discord are facing a huge risk - that their identity could lead to the being detained or deported. Even if the chance is small they can’t take that risk. This Persona company is unfortunately not going to be acceptable to a rational user because of their affiliation.
Peter Thiel's personal brand and Palantir are so toxic and creepy in the eyes of most of the public that you can basically just substitute 'Satan' in any statement involving them, and that's how it looks to regular people. Try it:
"The article tries to imply that Persona might be sending your ID scans to [one of Satan's companies] or doing other unsavory things with it, because it's linked to Satan"
So for anyone who cares about PR at all, the immediate instinct upon discovering you might be linked them is to reverse course and apologize profusely to your users.
I'm not sure. What I am pretty sure about is that none of those age verifying services are rolled out to protect children. Hence the question: then what for? And the only logical answer to this question is that one: to harvest data.
These guys are just making it up as they go. Very comforting approach to personal data... /s
I find it impossible to believe that age verification services are rolled out for what they say they are.
Which is very funny and ironic given Thiel's weird ass personal beliefs.
Point to any such activity under the Democratic rule where federal government was specifically requesting data on in individuals that are simply critical of them if you wanna prove me wrong.
Previously, they handled this escalation path via Zendesk, which was breached revealing all of the messages with IDs.
Now, they're trying out Persona for this path.
> We don’t sell your personal information.
No evidence that they sell your data against their privacy policy has ever come to light, so I think you should probably back that claim with evidence if you think otherwise.
Hint, it's optional.
(And while I'm not saying for eg PG is personally an anti privacy guy, it's impossible not to hold YC leadership accountable for aiding these cos, or at least looking away.)
That's not true at all. I worked with Palantir on a project for a prior company and they'd basically do whatever you wanted if you paid them. They had a very heavy data / "AI" presence and this was years ago. They certainly do not just do integrations.
However, HN isn’t asking for our ids yet.
Do you know Lyft and meta has links to Peter thiel?
That being said, no, it wouldn't particularly surprise me if Y Combinator sends data to Palantir.
To do what, exactly? This is public money being spent. Why are you so eager to be ignorant of it?
> from massive multinational.
Let's be honest: "Health company buys software from US defense monopolist."
> They also work with Google, Azure and AWS
Yes, and you and I can also buy those products and use them, do you use any of palantirs products in your daily life?
"The information you submit will be temporarily stored for up to 7 days..."
Image credit: Discord / Rock Paper Shotgun
Discord have belatedly confirmed that they're working with Persona, an identity detection firm backed by a fund directed by Palantir chairman Peter Thiel, as part of Discord's new global age verification system rollout. The collaboration is described as an "experiment" involving people in the UK specifically, whereby Persona will store user information on their servers for up to seven days.
Always good when your personal data forms part of an "experiment", isn't it? Never mind that Discord assured us earlier that "identity documents submitted to our vendors are deleted quickly--in most cases, immediately after age confirmation." Discord haven't yet said what the "experiment" is supposed to explore or prove. I'm sure it's fine, though. It's not like Thiel joints have a track record of working with any bloodthirsty snoops.
Following the announcement of Discord's new age verification policy - already in force in the UK and Australia, with a global rollout beginning in early March - social media users shared screengrabs of prompts to consent to Persona collecting their data over the weekend. Discord then sought to calm the flames by updating their site FAQ with the below disclaimer:
"If you're located in the UK, you may be part of an experiment where your information will be processed by an age-assurance vendor, Persona. The information you submit will be temporarily stored for up to 7 days, then deleted. For ID document verification, all details are blurred except your photo and date of birth, so only what's truly needed for age verification is used."
Many Discord users were already hopping mad about the new "age assurance" system, which involves face scan videos and a machine learning model, and the revelation of Persona's involvement only made them madder, with critical coverage appearing in Kotaku, Eurogamer and cheery RPS fanzine PCGamer. The FAQ disclaimer has now vanished (here's an older version preserved by the Wayback Machine).
As PCGamer note, Persona's lead investors during two recent rounds of venture capital funding were Founders Fund, who valued them at $1.5 billion in 2021. The Founders Fund was co-founded by Peter Thiel in 2020. Aside from being a well-heeled Doomsday cultist and frequent Epstein correspondent, Peter Thiel is one of the moneymen behind omni-payment platform Paypal and, more recently, Palantir, a godawful work of Saruman fan fiction that specialises in using AI for government and military surveillance.
Palantir have, among other things, worked extensively with the USA's Immigration and Customs Enforcement, aka ICE, to track undocumented migrants, amid allegations of human rights breaches that include the recent killing of an ICU nurse. The UK government have commissioned Palantir to make a patient database for the NHS, despite much opposition from doctors. I know children aren't responsible for the sins of their parents, but it doesn't seem wholly irrelevant here that Palantir's UK division is headed by Oswald Mosley's grandson.
All told, I would prefer not to participate in any identity verification "experiment" bearing Thiel's fingerprints, particularly not one that uses machine learning to check your identity in the background. And this is before we get into Discord's recent history of privacy breaches involving third parties.
Remind everyone, which party was blocking this support for as long as possible, with a hole lot of media circus and scaremongering?
Also, I would highly urge you to consider the fact that you are defending pdf files running the government. You really don't want to go down the road of political arguments and out yourself as one.
And if you are gonna make the argument that people are brainwashed to think its left vs right, then you are automatically in favor of an authoritarian ruling class because people can't be trusted to make the right choice.
A point I hadn't thought of before. A denial at this point wouldn't mean much because with the API and some sensible pacing anyone can access the information.
"Sends" is active. "Is scraped by" is the assumed passive.
Should we never do business with anyone who was convicted of a crime?
You got a source for that? Because the only communication I've seen from Discord implies no data is sent when these scans take place, its supposed to all take place locally FIRST is my understanding. The only exception is if the local scan goofs in some way.
https://discord.com/press-releases/discord-launches-teen-by-...
> Key privacy protections of Discord’s age-assurance approach include:
> On-device processing: Video selfies for facial age estimation never leave a user’s device.
> Quick deletion: Identity documents submitted to our vendor partners are deleted quickly— in most cases, immediately after age confirmation.
> Straightforward age assurance: In most cases, users complete the process once and their Discord experience adapts to their verified age group. Users may be asked to use multiple methods only when more information is needed to assign an age group.
> Private status: A user’s age group status cannot be seen by other users.
And how exactly is the NHS making use of it? What problems is it solving for them? What new capabilities do they have now that they've deployed it?
> who is ignorant of anything?
B2B is as generic of a label as you can get.
> The only exception is if the local scan goofs in some way.
Basically this, if it fails or if you wish to escalate past that, then there's a path that would hit Persona (or, would have, they've since ended their relationship with Persona. Previously, you'd open a ticket in Zendesk, which is where data was breached from before).
https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/30326565624343...