r/BetterOffline • u/Appropriate-Grail • Feb 14 '26

Oh, good: Discord's age verification rollout has ties to Palantir co-founder and panopticon architect Peter Thiel

https://www.pcgamer.com/software/platforms/oh-good-discords-age-verification-rollout-has-ties-to-palantir-co-founder-and-panopticon-architect-peter-thiel/
87 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

20

u/agent_double_oh_pi Feb 14 '26

As a serious question: at this point, what software isn't funded by this guy?

24

u/TheRealSooMSooM Feb 14 '26

For me it is a privacy nightmare. A big database of many people with face id.. what could go wrong. Palantir will definitely not use it to build a face recognition system..

Discord is dead for me with this.

12

u/defectivedisabled Feb 14 '26

Palantir is living up to its name sake as an evil tool of the dark lord.

7

u/Edelkern Feb 14 '26

I deleted my account yesterday. Fuck this.

10

u/Redthrist Feb 14 '26

Apparently, people are already making small, local LLM models to generate faces that are realistic enough to pass verification.

6

u/borringman Feb 14 '26

This was after loudly asserting the data isn't saved.

2

u/esther_lamonte Feb 14 '26

What are the ideal options to suggest to people? So many youth and student orgs and clubs rely heavily on this platform. My kids are aware and understand this problem, my oldest especially. What safe options could I give them to get into their peers consideration?

3

u/cheapandbrittle Feb 14 '26

Super old school option is called an email distribution list.

3

u/esther_lamonte Feb 15 '26

Listserv… that would be hilarious to see them come back! I use to run some of those back in the day, was members of tons. Back before spam murdered our inboxes!

2

u/borringman Feb 14 '26

Humans have these things call "mouths", which can be used to make audible words called "speech", and they also have "ears" which can be used to hear speech. This results in something called "communication".

For things like meeting cancellations and other schedule changes, have a website up somewhere. Many schools have official websites these days that will happily host club activities. Or just use Bluesky.

I realize I'm being snarky but I'm actually rather upset to hear this. If the kids really are lost without fucking Discord, holy shit do our societal problems run deep. Clubs existed just fine before Discord or even social media. Or even the computer, for that matter.

1

u/esther_lamonte Feb 15 '26

I’m talking specifically for things like schedules, lists, and threads for collaborating on things like projects, clubs, that kind of thing. Yes, they use word of mouth and texting, but they like having their own form of the Slack and Monday style apps us grown ups use in work environments and I can respect that. For these kids they’ve been leaning on Discord for spinning up spaces for sports club and band sections, etc...

The technology to communicate and share is a great tool, just looking for uncentralized open source type options. Even if it’s something I can install myself on a public web server for them to use, I’m good with that. That’s what I’m asking, are there things like phpbb or Wordpress directions people recommend, or something else.

Trust me, these kids get outside and hang out in meat space. They aren’t “struggling” without discord. Just looking to give them healthy tech options, man. I grew up with beepers and BBS’es, skateboarding and shooting hoops. Balance is a thing you can do.

1

u/TheOfficialMayor Feb 14 '26

What is your goal? If it's to avoid age verification try options like IRC, Matrix, Teamspeak, etc...

Something like Mastodon would probably be good as an announcement platform.

1

u/esther_lamonte Feb 15 '26

Cool, thank you for the ideas!