But one of the big things I hear about this is they don’t want the ‘government to know’, you know the people who you get your passport through and driving license.
Government having it, doesn't link it to things though. If I wanted age restricted products in a shop, they just take a quick look at it (or at least used to, I must have gotten old at some point
), that's it. No link to say X used his id or passport in Y place. If every shop took a photocopy of it and said trust me bro, I get rid of it, people would think it's madness, but online, it's fine. Yoti take my ID for battle.net, so now that account is 100% confirmed not to be a bot account (one of the reasons meta is funding a lot of this) and suddenly X online handle belongs to Y and can be linked to this ID. Now I go and do PSN or Xbox and oh look at that, suddenly Yoti can definitely say "All three accounts are 100% the same person and not a bot" and that info can easily be passed to whoever. Persona, same deal.
Of course they all say "nah boss, we store nothing, we know nothing", while Yoti is fined for excessive data retention, along with saying they "may" keep your id for training if they decide it's fake (of course Yoti are judge, jury and executioner on that) and Persona shares with selected partners and iirc specifically says the "photo" is deleted, not all data associated with it. People are right to be concerned about this possibility, even outside data leaks.
It's also very strange, how out of the big players, the only ones using account age (not a forbidden method), is Apple, a company that has generally been pro-privacy. While every one else goes, yeah boss, 20 year old account, talk to our partner, that's of course Yoti most of the time. Nothing to question there.
If it's just about "keeping children safe", and not tracking, why can't I use the data already held in an anonymous way? This aint my wheel house, so there may be flaws, but just for example. Using a public/private key pair, why can't the government provide a anonymous token system? Say for example, I log into to where my passport is held, press a big button that gives me a token that says "over 18", and an expiry date, say a few min, like a 2fa code. Grab it, feed to to where ever, they check its timestamp is valid, it's over 18 and can check the signature is not broken with the public key. Government can only see I generated a token, site only gets the token. Anyone can verify the token for themselves and make sure it contains no more.
Doesn't open you up to another leak (government already has it anyway), doesn't go through dodgy third parties, you can verify yourself what the token has in it. Has to be a way do something like that, I wouldn't be happy about it, we already have a wealth of parental controls, I don't think we should all jump through hoops because people like Ian Russell can't live with his failure and wants to blame everyone else, but I could live with it, it would be better than the crap we have now.
And yes, whilst I think the whole thing is nuts, if you have adults talking about sexual stuff etc knowingly or unknowingly to a minor then it is.
Chat is moderated, blizzard record voice chat and log chat. Inappropriate chat is actionable if reported, same way it's handled offline, not no one can speak until you id yourself.
It's also only "adult" sometimes:
Xbox, you can still talk to your friends, only public chat is blocked. So Jimmy can't talk to you in public, where people can report it for being inappropriate, but Jimmy can add you as a friend, slide into your dms, and whisper sweet nothings to you out of the public eye. Amazing.
Discord. Not an adult activity there. Verification is only for nsfw channels, free to speak to any one, receive messages and use voice chat.
Forums like this, not an adult activity, moderation is sufficient.
Reddit, same deal.
Messaging apps, like whatapps and telegram, not only is it suddenly not "adult content" and you are free to use public channels, be invited anywhere and so on, messaging apps get a specific carve out for the upcoming social media ban.
Make it make sense.
Also they aren’t asking for photo id specifically. Mobile or credit card works but weird you don’t have the option.
I have the options, they are just not open for me. I don't have a credit card and phone number verification, from what I've read when looking, allegedly uses the adult content filter setting. I'm not on contract, but no contract pay monthly. Turning off the filter on those tends to be either credit card or verify with our partner (oh look, it's Yoti again), with the exception of 3 and o2 (I'm on Asda), where you can go in store and do it. I say allegedly, as I've seen some people saying it worked despite having it on and others saying no, despite it being off.
