I'm glad to see "Peter Thiel-backed" becoming a widely-recognized epithet.
I guess we could all forgive trying to destroy western civilization under the guise of saving it, but drew the line at poor media literacy when it comes to One Piece and Watchmen.<p>(This is a joke in case that wasn't clear)
<i>it's all a fuckin' joke</i>
It was always difficult to get normal people to understand why the tech billionaires are so bad until Thiel gave us that clip of him getting stumped by the "should humanity survive" question.<p>I'm forever grateful to Thiel for that clip, and to Musk for his crippling Twitter addiction. It was pretty impossible to get regular people to understand that folks like Bill Gates or Larry Ellison are skinwalkers when all they ever see about these people is professionally managed public relations content.
> Peter Thiel on Transhumanism and the Future of Humanity<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSp07P8jvYs" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSp07P8jvYs</a>
People aught to be questioning more the future vision of those in positions to shape it. Someone who struggles with such simple questions around humanity while simultaneously building the tools of a surveillance state probably should not be one of the individuals driving our future.<p>It's quite clear that my vision of the future is nothing like theirs.
> It was always difficult to get normal people to understand why the tech billionaires are so bad until Thiel gave us that clip of him getting stumped by the "should humanity survive" question.<p>One "good" thing that came out of that thing.<p>I think main problem is that many people just think of them as "just a normal person but richer". But no. You don't get to that level of power by staying normal.<p>Hell, I remember when people pointed at Bill Gates going "see, you can be billionaire that puts their money to good", and while even before PDFiles got posted he had long history of being a piece of shit, now at least that stopped
The list is getting longer and longer, but a good touchstone is simply net worth. You don't normally get to the top of a foodchain without being an apex predator.
A frustrating aspect of the AI debates has been the number of people who believe people like Sam Altman who say that the immense wealth created by AGI would be distributed to the masses to improve their lives. The notion that the mega wealthy Elon/Sams/Bezos elites are going to willingly give up unprecedented wealth because millions of people have become unemployed and impoverished is so wildly out of step with how those people have behaved their entire lives. Someone who says they have enough billions and want to improve millions of lives don't make it to those positions.<p>The only way that wealth gets shared will be unprecedented government coercion or worse.
Yea, it's puzzling to me that this isn't asked of folks like Altman and Amodei in every interview. Maybe it's because Altman would just start shilling his eye scanning orb and start repeating "WORLD COIN" ad nauseum. Either way, they should be getting pressed on this by all media.
This comment naively believes in zero sum creation of wealth.<p>Wealth is not taken from our consumers and given to Sam Altman. Sam and his company are creating wealth - increasing the pie.<p>Of course it benefits everyone while also benefiting them.<p>Wealth need not be redistributed to improve lives. Just the mere invention of ChatGPT and letting people purchase it and use it is enough to improve people’s lives. Redistribution does not solve any poverty problem other than transfer power.<p>Sam redistributing money will not sustainably change anything about prosperity or poverty.
You're talking about normal technological developments that yes generally follow Econ 101 patterns. But AGI isn't like that. If AGI or something like it comes about it won't be a normal technology. The upside case for investors is that frontier models eliminate millions of jobs and remain controlled by a small group of owners. That's why they are investing sums unprecedented in human history. If all white collar work and an increasing amount of blue collar work is supplanted by AI how do those masses of newly unemployed folks make a living without wealth redistribution?<p>If AI capability plateaus and ends up as a normal technological development then I agree with you that it will mostly work out for the best. But that's not the scenario I'm worried about and plenty of folks in the industry are warning that's not the most likely path at this point.
So far prices have generally gone up, which indicates the pie available is scarcer.<p>I am looking forward to the day where more electricity, electronics, food, and housing are produced thanks to AI; but in the mid-term it feels like an AI bubble pop would do more to bring the price back down.
Claiming that wealth isn't zero sum, and demanding people have faith in the US system of capitalism, is not reassuring.
It's beyond naive. But there are also still people believing Elon Musk is going to put humanity on Mars for keeps and out of altruism.
For sure, I've been rolling my eyes at the Mars colony stuff for probably a decade or more now. I get that it's a fun futuristic thought experiment for nerds but the idea that Elon's going to send up some modern day Mayflower in the near future that builds a thriving settlement is obvious nonsense.
> It was always difficult to get normal people to understand why the tech billionaires are so bad<p>This is mostly because normal people are not THINKING usually. It requires some event or insight when they begin to question what they see.<p>There are many ways to go about it, but my own personal favourite one, even though cheesy, is to tell them to watch the old B movie "They Live". Now, the movie is not really grand, has many plot holes, but Roddy made it fun (the kick ass scene with regards to bubblegem); and using glasses to see the thruth is such a powerful meme. People can then begin to question who owns the mass media. Then perhaps they may watch other movies such as Manufacturing consent (is a bit old now and thus dated, and people may find it boring, but I loved Noam's analysis back when his health was in prime condition). It is mostly in the USA where people think the superrich are god-sent. In other parts of the world this worshipping is way less. Or often does not exist; you won't find much love for the average superrich in Denmark or Sweden for instance.
It’s very naive to think this is the interpretation.<p>That humanity should survive is a deeper question than it looks. Ask any transhumanist.
So someone is evil because they answer questions by thinking through them? There are no questions in the universe that can’t be stopped and pondered over. In fact, it’s dangerous to even suggest that, that’s the exact mechanism that propaganda runs on.
Ah yes, the real danger to the world isn’t a powerful man feeling ambivalent about our survival. The real danger is society using that moment as propaganda.<p>This regarding Thiel, a man who most recently tried to make a “Greta Thunberg is the Antichrist” meme stick.
Hesitating to answer a question that may have nuance is not being “ambivalent”. He literally says “there’s multiple questions implicit here” in response to the question asked of him. I genuinely think people like you making sweeping assumptions about others are way more dangerous. People who refuse to critically think or analyze a situation and jump to conclusions.
Question 1: If a human modifies with themselves with enough sci-fi tier technology are they still "Human"? (And therefore if humans "ascend" past their biology, humanity technically wouldn't survive)<p>Question 2: If a person cannot conceive that the 1st question is an interesting question, with multiple nuances, are they basically an idiot?
Not to mention that he and his cohorts had such close ties to Epstein that I find it impossible to imagine he didn't know exactly what was going on. This is someone who's known for building profiles of anyone who mentions him online, not some ambivalent rich guy.
Actually evil, no. Forever changed by their enormous wealth which messes you up mentally in a lots of fun unique ways, changes the nature of every relationship you'll have post wealth, and feeds into your ego and all your latent neurosis further and further alienating you from and believing yourself above your fellow man, yes.<p>Evil is just a shorthand.
That guy has a strong Nazi feel. I'd stay far, far away from anything he creates
A lot of the older folks are also not well versed in their language or whatever you want to call it, so they can’t even connect comprehend these guys are compulsive liars and paranoid man children with no scruples.<p>They just think they are eccentric and by the virtue of their wealth they must be smart upstanding humans with a strong character.
The only non-evil Billionaire I know are the South park creators although they aren't tech Billionaires. I consider everyone else for the most part to not-be-good people.<p>Because south park decided to personally say essentially bad words to paramount using their episodes, the company which gave them a billion dollars.<p>So they took a billion dollars and they were still consistent with how they've been for decades at this point. All of this is truly remarkable in the particular world we live in.
>It was always difficult to get normal people to understand why the tech billionaires are so bad<p>By the "greying out" of your comment, I would assume two things:
First, the difficulty you describe is not on the past.
Second, normies are here in much bigger proportion than a hacker would assume, and they are offended on the behalf of tech billionaires.
Some might even agree with their dystopic vision of the future.
They're not so much offended by it as that they would like to join the billionaire class and believe that those in power may at some point come to review their voting behavior on HN. For instance, YC asked for your HN username on the application form.<p>Of course I don't think they'd stoop so low as to look at the votes on subjects like this but that's the chilling effect for you and technically they have that ability. And they <i>definitely</i> look at the comments.
I don't know. What percentage of HN commenters really have serious aspirations for being a YC founder? 0.01%? 0.001%? Im not sure "What will YC think of me" is really that much of a driver of commenting behavior here.<p>People simp for billionaires all over the web, not just on HN. I've never understood it, and I probably never will. But, there are enough of them and their billionaire-defense commentary pops up everywhere. Not to mention the obvious downvote rings that will hit you if you ever insult one of a few key billionaires with large followings. This is widespread behavior and not about wanting to be a startup founder.
For me it’s because Peter Thiel has been pretty anti-transhumanism etc and he wasn’t stumped by the question he’s repeatedly answered it. Anyone who’s worldview is shaped by clips from tik tok should be downvoted
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> It was always difficult to get normal people to understand why the tech billionaires are so bad until Thiel gave us that clip of him getting stumped by the "should humanity survive" question.<p>He was thinking about convergence. You're probably smart enough to be aware of that, so you're deliberately twisting his words.<p>> folks like Bill Gates or Larry Ellison are skinwalkers<p>On HN a decade ago this would have been moderated into oblivion. The recent manual un-flagging of poolitical posts by the mods (dang has openly discussed this) has changed the site for the worse.
I always explain it to recruiters contacting me from one of his companies.
The (PTB) Peter Theil Be
it is truly amazing how much damage one person is able to do to civilized society<p>if you expand the scope to a handful of adjacent figures, the catastrophe is truly amazing
Maybe a society that can be so damaged by someone because they're incredibly wealthy shouldn't be considered civilized.
yeah, this is what unchecked wealth gives you. yay capitalism.
Thiel is one of the more public faces of what is now known as the "Epstein class" of societal predators. But one of many and certainly not the epicenter.
There is certainly a shadow cabal of these elite billionaire types that avoid all public exposure yet are working very hard to destroy society and profit
Some people are trying to use a different word than "cabal" because of the racial associations and history.<p>Oligarchs/y are among my choices, but I have supplanted that with Epstein Class now, to be more accurate to whom I refer
Yep Epstein class. It’s a great phrase for the billionaire elites who have corrupted our society through their wealth. We need heavy taxes on them now to preserve our democracy.<p>And also, Thiel is literally in the Epstein files. Meeting with Russian officials repeatedly on the island. One is said to be his handler so he may just be an asset tasked with destabilizing America.
I’m hearing this a lot but never with any substance, would you care to elaborate with a hard action or idea with a direct result?
What are you, Thiel’s alt? The guy backed Facebook, built a mass surveillance firm, and talks about democracy as an obstacle. How do you expect people to feel about him?
Direct quote from Peter Thiel:<p>> I no longer believe freedom and democracy are compatible
I think it's a bad trend. It's kind of a meta version of an ad hominem attack. The headline contained no information about why Discord is making the decision, only that there's a bad name associated with the company. The name of the company isn't even mentioned in the headline. This is prioritizing hate over information.
That's fine, if not very good, but the central problem remains (ignoring the capitalist corrupted business culture and its merging with the state behind much of this). We can't centralize our communications without major concessions in significant ways that non-techies seem unaware of until a big news item like this comes out. "What, they're logging my chats, and IP, voice clips, and now they want my ID for 18+ discords?" Yes, absolutely you are being logged and those logs will go places you have no control over. Maybe even to oppress you or your loved ones.<p>Discord's entire value proposition was "Hey just click here, no need to pay for a teamspeak server or do peer-to-peer jank." Deeply personal stuff is said and posted in those spaces. Common communication should not be shared like this and we keep falling back to the "tapped my phone line" problem.<p>The difference between then and now is that for a long time there was no alternative to POTS. You just had to use the phone to call someone. The phone company and whatever government tapping was very hard to get around. But today there are other ways to do near everything if we give up on for-profit centralized services.<p>I think society keeps flirting with federation and other things similar to that but never quite makes the jump. The twitter exodus went back to a new centralized service like Bluesky that will one day be sold to another deep-pocketed buyer with its own agenda, thus creating this problem again. Sure, now with federation or personal servers, the privacy issue goes back to the server operator, but at least that could be someone you trust, or even you. When currently, neither of those options are possible with things like Discord or Bluesky.<p>I'm testing moving my friends and gaming group to self-hosted teamspeak or stout or mumble or something like that. I think we'll lose some convenience, but life isn't all about gains. Sometimes you have to sacrifice things for the greater good. I also really want to start moving away from things like reddit, bluesky, HN, etc to federated services and have dipped my toes there quite a bit, but the population isn't there (yet?).<p>I hope this is a wakeup call that people need, much like the wake-up call the fight against personal encryption was in the 90s. I think we're in a super bad place right now, and its worth discussing the elephant in the room, even to non-techies, and what alternatives there are to the current system. I think people need to get over the convivence of the current system and realize if they want privacy and safety, they may have to migrate to services built with that in mind.
Everyone needs to cut ties with those companies. Not just with Persona but any service linked to Peter Thiel, Joe Lonsdale, Palmer Luckey, Elon Musk, David Sacks, etc. The entire MAGA cultist ecosystem.<p>Unfortunately there will be companies that take their money and won’t care. It’ll be up to other companies and consumers to punish them for it. Maybe we need a website that lets you quickly check if you should or shouldn’t use some service based on the investors.
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I am not convinced.<p>Teter Piel (don't want to use the other name) kind of purchased a LOT of influence power via lobbyists. One lobbyist is Sebastian Lurz (also not going to use the real name here; the letter "l" is an in-country humourous take on Lüssel, Lasser and so forth - ex-politicians). The superrich buy influence and worsen the situation for the rest of us. This has to stop. The USA is currently under direct control of them - this also has to stop. I do not buy into Discord's attempt here though - they 100% knew what they were doing. The only reason they respond in this way is because they alienated and scared their user base with their idea to sniff-invade everyone. It was never about protecting kids in the first place - it was to spy.
This refusal to use people’s names comes across as childish and distracts from your intended point.
And it diminishes search accuracy. You can publish a reasonable criticism, but if people don't see it, you're not changing minds.
It's a useful deterrent against defenders (actual or bots) coming and drowning people out
To me it feels pragmatic.<p>I find it more concerning that mass surveillance has come to the point where someone can’t safely express their frankly-not-that-controversial opinions without obfuscating the subject’s name.
So you think that the state has massive surveillance systems (definitely) that it is willing to use maliciously (maybe), but in the age of LLMs is fooled by swapping some letters around? Seems like the threat model is unlikely to line up with reality.
It hasn’t come to that though, you can freely express that persons point with no repercussions outside of maybe not getting a check one day from the person you hate
Remember the good ol' days of the last century when we worried about Big Government spying on us?
The referenced write-up based on the Persona front end code is here:<p><a href="https://vmfunc.re/blog/persona" rel="nofollow">https://vmfunc.re/blog/persona</a><p>I definitely recommend reading this primary source before drawing conclusions about the code as most of the secondary reporting is quite low quality.
Note also there's a direct response from Persona's security team here[1], and a lot of back and forth from Rick on Twitter[2].<p>[1]: <a href="https://withpersona.com/blog/post-incident-review-source-map-exposure-non-production-subdomain" rel="nofollow">https://withpersona.com/blog/post-incident-review-source-map...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://x.com/Persona_IDV/status/2025048195773198385?s=20" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/Persona_IDV/status/2025048195773198385?s=20</a>
Submitted 6 days ago but flagged <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47059129">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47059129</a><p>@dang can this get a second chance?
I read it and, maybe it’s because I’ve spent too much time in fintech, I don’t share most of the concerns.<p>The differences in proclaimed data retention periods is concerning though. The rest is par for the course for KYC/AML.
Good article but the web site gave me eye and ear cancer.<p>Please make it actually readable and don't steal my audio!
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There is more than “unique web design” that cause reading issues with that article. For one the lowercase and as well as arcane keywords and organization. Not mention the autoplay music. I have communicated this to the author and they shrugged it off.
Reading mode doesn't work on Safari for me... I get a paragraph and sod all else.<p>So respectfully, do not make assumptions. And if you want someone to read the content, don't surround it with shite.
That was a great read, very interesting!
Seems to be down for me. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20260220192124/https://vmfunc.re/blog/persona/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20260220192124/https://vmfunc.re...</a>
damn. why did the website stole my audio?
Some of the most interesting authors in tech on the internet have just absolute awful websites. Blinking animations everywhere, weird sounds, "cute" little javascript animations like it's 1999 again.
the last time the website was submitted, over half the comments talked about website design instead of the actual content. we can probably skip doing it again.<p>different people have different tastes. people complain about boring websites, people complain about websites with animations or colors. the only guarantee is that the conversation isnt interesting.<p>if you are on the side that doesnt like music, animations, whatever, i recommend a combination of noscript and using reader mode.
Yeah, come on! I'm trying to watch a video and read the article!
Ah man, just tried to submit this with the title "Discord cuts ties with Peter Thiel-backed SaaS once code tied to US spying found" which is slightly better I think, and fits exactly within 80 characters :)<p>I think the whole "after its code was found tied to U.S. surveillance efforts" part is new and wasn't known before, so feels important to have in the title too. Although most of us probably assumed it was true before too.
> once code tied to US spying found<p>New and also should be the big story.<p>"Butcher cuts ties with supplier when steaks found to be human meat" shouldnt be a story about changing suppliers ...
> "after its code was found tied to U.S. surveillance efforts" part is new ... Although most of us probably assumed it was true before too.<p>This makes me feel VERY old.<p>641A: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A</a><p>Retroactive telecom immunity: <a href="https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/10/17" rel="nofollow">https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/10/17</a><p>The government spying on what you do has been old news for 20 years. Snowden should not have been a shocking revelation to any one but it was, and that was 13 years ago.<p>Its less of a "assumed it was true" and more of a "oh look another one, not shocking".
That would have been a better title, I agree.
Is this actually a thing that is true?
For anyone interested, they published the post-mortem of the referenced incident:<p><a href="https://withpersona.com/blog/post-incident-review-source-map-exposure-non-production-subdomain" rel="nofollow">https://withpersona.com/blog/post-incident-review-source-map...</a>
Everyday someone cuts ties with Palentier's Peter Thiel (or the rest of the digital mafia), it's a good day for society as a whole.
the damage is already done though. Discord just burned years of goodwill and trust. Im in a few discord communities and while they aren't moving Im not looking to join any more right now because of this whole thing.
Isn't it a good thing ? It makes clearly marks companies like Persona dangerous and toxic enough to hopefully makes an example that prevents others from working with them.
Can someone explain to me how Discord got so big in the first place, particularly for non-gaming uses?<p>I saw this coming a mile away when folks started ditching slack for Discord - Slack being problematic because a) it was profit-seeking and would use its leverage over your personal data to seek rent and b) it was antithetical to the open web.<p>Discord has the exact same two issues so was obviously not a solution.<p>Why did the internet en masse fall for it again?
Basically dumping - they made an objectively superior product that was completely free to users, funded by investor money without any plans for immediate profitability and long term sustainability.<p>That was all nice for a few years, but it was clear it can't got like this for ever - and here we are.
For how it got so big, after it took over the gaming market initially it's likely network effect in action.<p>Discord is a centralised IM + basic forum with commercial polish.<p>Small communities can't afford site hosting and moderation, FOSS alternatives like Matrix are significantly inferior products. Fandom killed independent wikis, Reddit killed independent forums.<p>If Discord ever goes down, there will be decentralised services competing and advocating freedom until a new centralised service takes all the users for itself, just like Mastodon and Bluesky.
As far as I can tell, Discord doesn't delete history so you can join an older discord and scroll back. 99.99% of slacks that are free lose history after some arbitrary timeframe (used to be 10,000 messages, now I think its 90 days). Plus you can connect Discord to your Steam/Playstation/Xbox account, which gamers like.
> <i>99.99% of slacks that are free lose history after some arbitrary timeframe (used to be 10,000 messages, now I think its 90 days).</i><p>This is <i>exactly</i> the reason cited for several non-gaming discords I'm in.
Slack sold out, changed the deal, and threw every small group under the bus. Most of those people ended up on Discord
> Can someone explain to me how Discord got so big in the first place, particularly for non-gaming uses?<p>It won by simply building a vastly superior product during its growth phase.<p>For gamers, it replaced fragmented, clunky, or paid alternatives (TeamSpeak, Ventrilo, Mumble, Skype) with a frictionless, free app that had excellent voice quality and modern UX.<p>It worked so perfectly for gaming communities that non-gamers inevitably took notice, realizing it was effectively a better, free version of Slack for community building.<p>But that was the user-acquisition era. Now, we're seeing the classic enshittification phase.<p>Every other notification badge is an alert trying to sell you something. I still use it, but the product development focus seems to have entirely shifted to selling $9.99/month "blinky bullshit." I understand they have to monetize eventually, but it's exhausting.<p>Ultimately, it got big because for a few years, it was undeniably the best, cleanest chat client on the market. It was just relentlessly good for the user.<p>Whether it stays good, or follows down the Microsoft path of turning into a full-on ad-distribution network remains to be seen. But right now, despite all the crap sales, it's still pretty good... (=
To answer how it got so big: it didn't start out trying to replace Slack. It just solved an acute pain point for gamers. Skype was becoming increasingly enshittified, and people were floating between TeamSpeak, Ventrilo, and Mumble, none of which were that great. Discord captured the market because it was completely free and had the audio mechanisms in place to make people with shitty mics and background noise tolerable without forcing everyone to use push-to-talk. That’s really it. By the time non-gaming communities were looking for a Slack alternative, they just defaulted to Discord because 90% of their target audience already had the client running in the background.
That is also why I think it "won" over Slack. Discord solved audio comms for gamers, period. It got so good, that SMB and startups started to migrate for stuff like easy pair-programming, open meetings etc.<p>Discord IMO won because of a killer trio: 1) good comms 2) full history 3) faster UI over bloated Slack.
I've exported any servers that I run as backups and plan to uninstall if I get an age verification prompt personally.
I think they have been steadily losing their years of goodwill and trust over time. Their client is becoming worse and worse every release, introduced ads, etc... Typical enshittification, it could be worse, but Discord already went from being cool to being tolerable. The age verification thing is just another step on the way down.
Discord is a cancer on the open internet anyway.<p>Real time chat? Great. But entire communities, forums, and wikis moving behind the locked walled of Discord has been a disaster for information discovery.<p>Don't replace Discord with a similar alternative. Return to open forums and wikis!
These communities don't owe the world their information, and attention/adverisement economics destroyed the open internet on its own.
You have a point, I've seen a fair share of Github projects where they asked you to join their Discord if you wanted documentation/support/tips etc.
The problem is forum UX on mobile is mediocre, and people have to create an account for each forum. Most people are using mobile devices now, like it or not, so convenience of rich text chat wins out.
Yes. And likewise for all those other walled gardens. I shouldn't need a Facebook or a Twitter account to read what some politician wrote.
I would have agreed 5 years ago, but not this day and age, when AI is raping open source projects and killing platforms like Stack Overflow.<p>We need a safe space from web crawlers and surveillance, and open forums ain't it. (Neither is Discord, but a sufficiently secure alternative might be.)
> Discord just burned years of goodwill and trust.<p>...not here, they never had any. it is good tech, but so is the w80 nuclear warhead, the tiger iv (for its time) and the j-35.
Related: I Verified My LinkedIn Identity. Here's What I Handed Over <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47098245">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47098245</a>
So does this mean Discord is scrapping its new face verification requirement for users, or imply they’re no longer using this 3rd party service (Persona) to do it? The article wasn’t too clear on that.
> So does this mean Discord is scrapping its new face verification requirement for users,<p>No, they’re outsourcing the verification to an external company. Just not this one.<p>Side note: The verification is only if you want to remove content filters, join adult-themed servers and a couple other features. If you only want to chat with your friends and use voice then no verification is required.
probably find out the new identity verification firm is just a shell around the Thiel company
Well, until the upcoming batch of laws goes through classifying discussion of lgbtq people as inherently mature content. This is one half of a two part strategy by the american right to make queer content de facto illegal again without running into first amendment protections. Getting the payment processors banning "mature" content is the other leg of this stool.
Yeah I'm not sure many of the commenters realize that this is the targeted plan. They're already succeeding with over 20 (mostly Republican) states requiring age verification to access pornography.<p>The whole point of this plan is to then gate LGBTQ content behind the age gates, and then criminalize with extremely harsh penalties if teenagers somehow find a way around the age gates.<p>It's a slow process that's taking years and is slowly eroding our 1A rights, which is precisely how we've ended up in this mess to begin with. They didn't start with "Let's dissolve the Department of Education"--they started with "No Child Left Behind" and "mandatory testing in public schools".<p>No doubt they'll also age gate anything around women's health, including birthing and abortion information.<p>Oh, and every last one of these things will be felonies so they can strip away your right to vote in the process.<p>I'm sure at some point user-generated pornography like cam sites will also be outlawed.
I think it's possible if not probable you are correct, but a lot of this is not as coordinated as you might think. Religious conservatives just think porn is the devil, and more and more, I find non-religious people that view it as such, too, without some wider plot to take rights away from gay people. They're just prudes and they're happy to remove those rights when given the chance. This certainly is the average conservative, it's not a top-down marching order, it's just how they view things.<p>To back this up, you suggest that Bush's <i>Child</i> was part of a larger plan to get rid of education, but this is not an accurate assessment of Bush, Bush was a traditionalist in favor of traditional education, he's not of the Trump ilk, and <i>Child</i> was very much a Bush keystone. The push to eliminate the Dept of Education is 20 years farther down the road and pushed by very different people.<p>I say this because you should know your enemies, viewing everything as part of an elaborate top-down plan often gets you nowhere.
Let me reframe a bit on this one.<p>You are correct that it's not a distinctly organized group, but very loosely organized with people continually carrying the baton forward in the relay race to remove our rights. Each runner is going to be slower or faster than the previous one, but they're still running in the same direction.<p>A cornerstone of NCLB was to expand the funding for Charter Schools across the United States (rather than fund public education). And while these schools are supposed to be non-religious, a small provision of NCLB allowed parents to choose private, religious options if their schools fell behind (which, given the draconian testing expectations, made it pretty easy).<p>So maybe the NCLB Act took the long way around to get where we're at today, but it was still always headed in this direction as soon as it offered private schools as a funded alternative to public school, rather than investing in our public schools with our public funds.<p>On the larger issue of what you're saying, it can be difficult to distill the information down in a way that makes sense when all of it is a very complex web of people and power and ideaologies.<p>At the end of the day, it took 50 years, but they did succeed in getting rid of Roe vs. Wade eventually. The relentless pursuit of this effort which took 50 years of adaptation and pushing as hard as possible in every area without relenting, even when they hadn't succeeded in every direction, is what made this happen.<p>I expect no less from these further pushes now that we're over that hump. Maybe these efforts fail today, but they will continue to push where they can until they figure out ways in which they can succeed.<p>It's quite relentless and those of us whom are on the other side of this definitely need to recognize the threat for what it is. Which, to your statement, makes this so much more dangerous than if it were just a single headed hydra.
I think you're the one not knowing your enemies here. There <i>is</i> a plan to strip queer people of rights, it is already well underway. You cannot possibly have an effective plan of opposition if you don't acknowledge the incredible economic, social, and technological resources that have been spent spreading and nurturing the prejudices that you can now call "uncoordinated." A lot of the individuals furthering these measures do not identify themselves with "a plot," sure, but it doesn't mean they don't have a role in it.
K-id is the vendor they were proposing which did on device processing. They were trying to downplay the initiative by saying all the k-id data stayed on device.<p>This was undermined by the fact they were also trialling a switch to Persona (the vendor in the story), which did not uphold that guarantee. It was horrific optics to be reassuring people that it was ok because you didn’t save data but also be trialling a switch to a vendor which did save data, which I guess is a lot of the reason this vendor switch was cancelled. (Though it does call into question discord’s judgment that they thought this was a good idea).<p>Anyway, Persona was also breached which is how the government links were discovered and also probably a part of this decision. This is not to be confused with the breach in November of 5CA, _another_ vendor they used in the initial UK and Australia roll outs. The fact that two vendors were breached in four months is a good example of why this is a bad idea
what is such a shame is, well, two things: first, that these companies even do this kind of thing at all (i.e., age verification); and second, that it takes the kind of backlash this event has generated for them to cut ties with these companies. Apparently, it is too much to ask for any corporation to even give a damn about who runs or backs another corporation that they want to associate themselves with these days.
Right, and in June they'll try it again. Small setbafk
><i>Nearly 2,500 accessible files were found sitting on a U.S. government-authorized endpoint, researchers pointed out on X. The files showed Persona conducted facial recognition checks against watchlists and screened users against lists of politically exposed persons.</i><p>><i>Persona performs 269 distinct verification checks, including screening for “adverse media”</i><p>im sure everyone <i>assumed</i> this, but its good to <i>know</i> it.<p>><i>And the information was openly available. “We didn’t even have to write or perform a single exploit, the entire architecture was just on the doorstep,”</i><p>it is kind of scary how often these types of situations are only found out because of wild incompetence. you have to imagine that <i>most</i> similar situations dont suffer from the same incompetence (and thus arent known)<p>><i>“At Discord, protecting the privacy and security of our users is a top priority.</i><p>please, i wish companies would just stop saying this obvious lie. you know that you dont care. we know that you dont care.<p>><i>It’s dystopian that we want people to facedox themselves to everyone to be real online. </i><p>.... says the ceo of the company that you have to send your face ("facedox", if you will) to
Early 2024 if you had speculated about this about Persona's broader goals you would have been called nuts. It has become increasingly obvious though.
For some reason, discord has never asked more from me than a verified email address. No phone number or anything else. Maybe I'm being monitored and they don't want to spook me off the honeypot? Half joking..
Same for me, and my account is almost a decade old. I think it depends a lot where are you from and the kind of activity, as i read stories of people being asked to register a number out of nowhere.
Many servers requires you to have it tho, due to spam protection. I just don't talk on those.
Each discord server can decide whether they only will allow people with a phone number on. When you hit one of those, Discord will ask you for your number.
Those require a phone for you to send messages and interact. It will ask you to 'Verify phone', but you can chose not to and stay on the server as read-only, Discord itself won't bother you about it. I am on a few like that for quite some time.
They sacrificed one, but was it to save the rest? Surely Theil didn't act alone or in a vacuum
They should never even started doing businesses with that labeled figure.<p>Like ring recently, they just try to see it the thing sticks and that pisses me off. They should have that as a starting point.
So what? They'll just outsource it to somewhere else.<p>Only question is who's going to lose the data first, Discord or the subcontractors?
> According to Discord, only a small number of users were part of this test, in which any information submitted could be stored for up to seven days before it would be deleted.<p>Ah yes, we only store it for 7 days. During those 7 days, we pass it to Persona, and who knows how long they keep it!
Discord's previous statement:<p>> "Identity documents submitted to our vendor partners are deleted quickly— in most cases, immediately after age confirmation"<p>So now it's not "immediately" but 7 days? I don't know how anyone can trust any statement from these guys.
The way I read that is Discord would delete your data, but they were taking an intentionally hands off approach to the data broker they subcontracted to identify you.
"I don't know how anyone can trust any statement from these guys."<p>this is the fun part, you can't!
The one thing you can trust is this:<p>If a tech company says something to you, and they don't give you the means to verify it on your own, <i>they are lying to you</i>. Do not trust anything they say, ever.
This name is turning radioactive. Not a bad thing.
discord already had 70k government IDs breached through age verification last year. their fix was handing the next batch to a vendor with 2500 files sitting on a government endpoint.
Who IS still using this verification software?
This does not cure the face scanning nonsense. I deleted and am not going back.
Do not believe them.
These guys need to spend a few million on helping them be cool because its fucking their money up. Zuck was headed in the right direction for a minute there. Thiel and Altman are still too weird for most people. Karp is probably in the middle to me. Tasteless, sauceless, billionaires.
Too fucking late, eat shit Discord. We’re all moving to E2E encrypted platforms.
What's the point of E2E on a chatroom/channel/"""server""" that anyone can join?<p>Yes, I'm making (another) argument in favour of IRC. IRC has optional client-server encryption, and you can set channel modes to only allow encrypted clients access. So that way you at least prevent eavesdropping.
I just nuked it and didn’t replace it. Bloated piece of shit full of misery.<p>We decided to just meet up in person twice a month and play board games instead.
where we definitely will not be moaning about the same thing in 18 months time
There were a few popular Discord channels where moderators would regularly suspend or ban me. They were toxic communities that advocated for doxxing for mundane reasons. The idea that Discord moderators (even worse than Reddit mods) could have access to verified identities from Palantir related databases sounds so atrocious. Who exactly in their right minds thought this was a good idea in the first place?
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> politically exposed persons<p>I do not know what this euphemism means. Is this like the modern trend of calling inmates “justice involved individuals”?
its not some new/modern trend just because you have not seen the term. its been a term for nearly 3 decades.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politically_exposed_person" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politically_exposed_person</a>
Translate: People who are likely to be attacked by (Putin|Orban|Erdogan|Trump) or similar.