April 29, 2026 • 33 mins
Discord announced it would start scanning users' account data to guess their age and if it couldn't figure out how old you were, it would ask for your government ID or a face scan. Gamers lost it, and within weeks, Discord backed down. But the fight isn't over. Dexter talks with Rin Alajaji of the Electronic Frontier Foundation about why age verification doesn't actually protect kids, how California's new Digital Age Assurance Act means your next laptop might card you before you can turn it on, and why a policy that started with gamers is quietly becoming everyone's problem.
Hit us up: killswitch@kaleidoscope.nyc, or @killswitchpod and @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
Links:
- EFF’s Age Verification and Age Gating: Resource Hub: https://www.eff.org/issues/age-verification
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Discord says it's cracking down on abuse.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Starting next month, the messaging app will require users to
prove their age or be shut out from access to
adult servers.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Earlier this year, Discord announced that it would start analyzing
everyone's account data to figure out how old its users are.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
That's all my gamers out there, what the hell are
we using now?
Speaker 4 (00:30):
The Discord is definitely not on our list of things
to use.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
So if you use Discord, you need to uninstall that
shit right now, because they're about to start spying on
every message you sent. If the platform thought you were underage,
it would ask for ID, and if you didn't give it,
it would kick you off the platform. Welcome to the
fight over age verification.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I think, in practice, Discord and a lot of these
online platforms are seeing age verification as a silver bullet,
the end, all, the all answer to this problem of
young people's safety online. And I mean it's I think
a more complicated problem. As we've seen the technology is
not reliable, It is not accessible or fully privacy protective
(01:13):
at the moment, or accurate to be used at such
a large scale.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Rin Alijaji's the Associate director of State Affairs of the
Electronic Frontier Foundation. She says that even though age verification
rules are put in place to keep children safe online,
the reality what these rules actually do is a lot
more complicated.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I don't disagree with the issue of young people needing
privacy and safety online, but I find it ironic that
now these services are asking you to submit these deeply
personal pieces of information like your ID or your face,
or your credit card information or sometimes their mortgage application
to prove your age.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
In response to legislation. Some apps have had versions of
age verification for a while now, but when Discord tried it,
people got really mad. And at first this might not
make a whole lot of sense because from the outside,
it looks like a bunch of gamer nerds are threatening
to boycott a messaging platform that they've used for over
a decade in some cases, over just an ID check.
(02:16):
I mean, what gives right? And you might be thinking,
but Dexter, I'm not a gamer, I'm not a nerd.
I don't use Discord. Well, here's the thing. If you
want to buy a computer or a phone, or literally
almost anything that has a screen on it, there's a
new law that's about to bring this to you. So
today we'll talk about how a bunch of gamers suddenly
found their way into politics, why age verification might actually
(02:39):
harm kids, and how pretty soon you're gonna get dragged
into this fight, whether you want to be or not.
Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is kill Switch. I'm Dexter Thomas.
Let's get into it.
Speaker 5 (02:59):
I'm all right, I'm.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Goodbye.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
So I feel like most people watching or listening to
this know what Discord is, but just in case broad
strokes here right, It's a chat app. Roughly one hundred
minial people use a daily. They can do text chat,
group messages, you can do voice chat, you can do video,
you can share your screen, and I think most people
know it as oh, this is what gamers use. I
(04:03):
know that's not quite it, but what other uses would
you say people use Discord for.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah, it definitely started in the gaming community and is
still to this day very big for gamers, which the
video game industry is huge. There's millions of people that
game every day. But Discord has then since moved to
things like fandoms, to political discussions. I have friends whose
you know, soccer teams are on Discord. They just you know,
(04:30):
talk to their friends on there.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I know people who their knitting club is entirely on Discord.
I've taught college classes, and the stuff that the college
uses sucks, and so we've used Discord. So I've been
pretty bought into Discord. Honestly, Discord as a platform wasn't
specifically built for kids. It actually requires users to be
at least thirteen years old to sign up. Gamers definitely
(04:55):
use it a lot. But if you can think of
almost any hobby, there's probably a community dedicated to that
topic on Discord. So even though Discord is used by
a bunch of pretty diverse communities, a lot of people
weren't all that familiar with it. Actually, some people's first
impression about Discord is what they got when the lawsuits
started happening. A family in Camden County is suing the
(05:16):
makers of the gaming app Roadblocks, as well as.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
The community app Discord, saying neither do enough to protect
children from sexual predators.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
So in February early February, Discord announced that they will
be rolling out mandatory age verification around the world, with
full implementation in early March. And what that means is
that if Discord had either estimated you to be under eighteen,
or if it doesn't have enough information about you or
(05:44):
your account, you would be automatically put into a teen
appropriate experience. It's what they were calling it, which means
basically any content filters, there would be restrictions on who
can contact you via direct messages, or who can add
you as a friend, if you can or can't speak
on things like stage channels, which are about the spaces
(06:05):
where a lot of community events happen on Discord.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Discord is saying that they want to be able to
verify how old you are as a user. How does
this work?
Speaker 2 (06:14):
So what Discord has said is that initially they would
get information about you based on how you interact on
that platform. If you've been a Discord user for years,
they've garnered all this data about what information you interact with,
who you've talked to, and has estimated sort of where
you may be. Services like YouTube actually rulled similar ways
(06:36):
of age estimation previously, and there were stories all over
the Internet of people being put into brackets where they
weren't just because for example, they enjoy cartoons. So now
if the YouTube has decided they're twelve instead of actually
a fifty year old.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
You're trying to watch some old school Tom and Jerry
or whatever, and it thinks you're twelve exactly.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
So what discord that is that most adults would be
so through this system to be an adult because of
the data that they already have about you. But if
you were estimated to be an adult and were locked
into this teaen appropriate experience, then you would have to
go through a third party vendor and provide either your
government issued ID or go through a face scan that
(07:19):
would then estimate how old you are, which both have
their own sets of problems and have been notoriously reported
to be very unreliable, especially for people of color, for
trans people, for people with disabilities. A lot of these
facial estimation services also require things like a liveness check
(07:39):
where they ask you to move your head or open
your mouth, and those again look a lot different for
people with disabilities or people who may not be able
to do those things.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
So in February, when they announced that they were rolling
out mandatory age verification for users worldwide, the reaction was
pretty immediate.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
What this is insanity.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
So in order to verify that I'm over the age
of thirteen, I have to upload my driver's license or
a scan of my face to Discord.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
While I would love to trust Discord with that information,
I just also I think it's kind of a dangerous precedent.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
No if it sounds like people are all of a
sudden getting mad at it. Nowhere there's some more context
of this. Just a few months before the age verification announcement,
Discord was in the headlines for a very different reason.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Well, this one's exciting. Discord says that seventy thousand users
may have had their government issued IDs compromised. The recent
attack exposed them and the hackers. They claim they've got
nearly two point two million, quite a bit more than
what Discord claims.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
In twenty twenty five, Discord had a major data breach
through a third party customer support system called Zendesk. This
is the vendor that they were using for age verification
in the UK. This breach exposed users phone numbers, IP addresses,
physical addresses, and in some cases billing information. So Discord
coming back just a few months after that hack was
(09:03):
announced and saying, uh, yeah, we're gonna need your government
ID now and maybe even a scanning your face. A
lot of people saw that and said, yeah, that's not
going to happen. And that's aside from the fact that
these tools just don't really work. When Discord tested an
age verification system in the UK last summer, kids figured
out how to get around it almost immediately. One popular
(09:26):
method was taking a screenshot from a video game character,
submitting that is your face and boom, age verification passed.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Their story is all over the internet of different ways
to bypass these services or these age verification mandates. And
four for Media actually just put out an article about
this YouTube video from I think twenty eighteen of a
woman moving her head slowly and it was used I
think for some sort of trading purposes, but people are
now using it as a way to bypass these age verification.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
The outrage online was so massive. Within just a few weeks,
Discord announced that they were pausing the rollout of the
age verification process. But this brings us back to the
question of why Discord would force users all over the
world to submit their identity. Was it just them trying
to cover their backs so they don't get hit with
another child safety lawsuit. Well, in some case Discord actually
(10:19):
had to do this.
Speaker 6 (10:20):
The United Kingdom has begun enforcing an age verification aspect
if it's twenty twenty three Online Safety Act, requiring platforms
to ensure that young users do not have access to
harmful content online.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
The first of its kind Online Safety Act in the
UK now requires apps like Discord to force British users
to submit age verification. So Discord was already doing this
in the UK, as well as in Australia, which now
has a new social media ban.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
The world's first nationwide social media ban four children has
been in effect for a few days now in Australia.
A country's new law bands kids under sixteen from more
than ten platforms, including TikTok and Instagram.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
So one important detail here though Australia's social media band
does not cover Discord, but Discord said that they included
Australian users. Anyway, to go above and beyond in demonstrating
its quote ongoing commitment to team safety. The fact that
Discord was doing more than it really needed to, not
just complying with the UK law, but complying in advance
(11:24):
for countries like Australia, made a lot of people angry.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Gamers probably wanted to see Discord flight back. They wanted
to see Discord not just fold and decide to comply
there and fight for their users. I think in late
stage capitalism you can't really expect a platform to care
about their users more than they care about their bottom
line dollar. But that is the sense I get from
(11:50):
the Discord community and how they perceive the platform and
services values to be.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
After all that backlash, Discord has said that they're moving
the roll out of the age verification process until later
this year, but that initial outrage does seem to have
had an effect on how Discord is going about all
of this.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Another thing that they announced also that they are going
to have stricter requirements for partners that offer things like
facial estimation, including that that process needs to happen on
device and doesn't go like to the third party, which
is a high bar. And the companies that they were
initially going with, PERSONA and Kid, did not.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Meet that bar, so that's interesting. Already the people that
they were comfortable going with had nobody pushed back. They
have now decided, actually, these people weren't good enough. So
gamers have won a battle. It's probably too soon though
to say that they've won the war, but then again,
maybe Discord is just an easy target here. Maybe complying
(12:53):
in advance is inevitable because even if you're not in
the UK or Australia, and even if you're not a
Discord user, there's another law that's about to change what
happens when you first boot up almost any new computer
or any new phone that's after the break. There's a
(13:20):
law that just passed called the Digital Age Assurance Act.
This is in California. Can you talk to me about that?
Speaker 2 (13:29):
AB ten forty three. It did pass last year in
the California legislature and was signed by Governor Newsom last October.
It goes into effect in twenty twenty seven. AB ten
forty three requires all operating systems and app stores to
create age brackets that segment their users based on their ages.
(13:49):
So those brackets are between I think it's like thirteen
and sixteen, sixteen and eighteen, and then eighteen and older,
and users are Once you've opened your new blacktop or
your phone, you're then asked to say what your birth
date is or your age, and then they place you
in that bracket. And then it requires that operating system
(14:11):
or your phone your laptop to collect this information and
send that to every application that asks for your age,
And it requires applications to ask right if they are
deemed not to be used by minors, your watch, your
digital scale, you'll have to tell them how old you are.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
So California's Digital Age Assurance Act requires any operating system.
This means Windows, this means Mac, O West, but even
phone operating systems like iOS and Android. They have to
collect your age when you set up a device and
share that information with apps on request, so developers know
whether they're dealing with a child, a teenager, or an adult.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
A big problem that we see there is what about
families that use one device? What happens there if multiple
people share a device or low income households often don't
have mo multiple devices for people to use. What age
would you then tell the operating system you were?
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Another big issue with this law is that it relies
on self reporting. A kid could type in any birthday
that they want and say that they're over eighteen. But
now with this law, operating systems are required to ask anyway.
If they don't ask, there's consequences. You can be fined
(15:27):
per infraction right.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Up to twenty five hundred dollars per affected child, or
seventy five hundred dollars for intentional violations.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Which is kind of nuts. If there's a family with
two kids and both of them get on the computer
and you did not properly get their age, five thousand
dollars two kids.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Yeah, and there are other concerns about open source and
who is an operating system here. Also they define it
to include things like mobile devices and computers very broadly,
and virtually any digital device that runs a software that
has built in the last three decades would fall into
(16:10):
that category.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
See anything, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
And by virtue of how open source works, people can
change that software. People can tinker with it and make
it their own. And it's still very unclear to people
who's liable there. And imagine you're a software developer, small
shop of for people who started an open source project
and now you're hit with this huge fine for a
(16:35):
small startup. That's a recipe for over censorship and a
chilling effect of people not wanting to get hit with
another fine.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
So, just to clarify here, if someone lies about their
age during the age verification process and the software doesn't
catch that they're lying, that's not covered in the law.
You only get in trouble if your software doesn't ask.
So if this law is just mandating to ask how
old someone is and not actually do anything with it, okay,
well it's ineffective. But what's the actual problem here, Well,
(17:09):
a lot of people see this as a foot in
the door for something more nefarious. Once the government has
a law demanding that Apple or Microsoft collect information on
you just in order to turn on your computer or
your phone, the concern is that next they can start
stacking other laws on top of that that really start
monitoring you, making you afraid to speak your mind online,
(17:29):
or even afraid to speak your mind into your own
notes app. And let's just be clear here, most people
aren't even aware of this argument. Most people aren't aware
of these laws. Those of us who are are again
kind of nerds, and a lot of these nerds are
putting pressure on the people who make the software to
fight back. So is anyone doing anything about this? Well? Yeah,
(17:51):
One operating system called Midnight BSD has included in their
terms and conditions that you're just straight up not allowed
to use their software in California, and they explicitly state
that this rule is a protest against that California law.
Say whatever you want, but you can't say that's not
a principal stand. But Midnight BSD is a really niche project,
(18:11):
and it's basically run by one lead developer, and he
can pretty easily make those personal decisions if he wants to.
But what some people are hoping for is someone with
more swayed to actually fight the laws themselves.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
At the end of the day, I think there is
a bottom line of California's a huge state.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yes, Also we're talking about technology and Silicon valleyes here,
Like banning California from using your software, especially when your
software is the thing that makes your computer run, is
kind of nuts.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, And I think California will have to contend with
that fact that these laws will end up pushing certain
companies and certain services out of the state because they
just can't comply with them.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Also, speaking of laws, let's talk about lawsuits. More specifically
a lawsuit that almost everyone's heard of by now, the
big case against Meta and YouTube in California.
Speaker 7 (19:13):
A jury found YouTube and Meta, the parent company of
Instagram and Facebook, liable for designing their platforms to be
addictive for children and teens. Despite knowing it could harm
their mental health. All told, the companies would pay six
million dollars in damages.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
So that lawsuit wasn't about age verification, and to be honest,
getting into what it actually was about is probably an
entirely different episode. But I'll just point this out. When
it comes to asking, Okay, what do we do about
social media platforms other than just hitting in the companies
with a fine that's basically lunch money for them, The
conversation keeps coming back to this age verification thing. The
(19:52):
day before that verdict in California, Meta was ordered by
a New Mexico court to pay three hundred and seventy
five million dollars for child safety violations, and the Attorney
General again brought up age verification as a solution.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
We're going to be asking for changes to the design
features of the platform itself, real age verification, changes to
the algorithm, and independent monitor to oversee those changes, and
fundamentally a demand that they do business differently in New Mexico.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
This line of thinking might be what's motivating Discord to
comply in advance, especially as a response to the lawsuits
that they've already had to face.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
It's a fear of liability. There must be a big
conference room somewhere where all of the legal advisors came
together and said, the only way to make all these
lawsuits go away is to figure out a way to
make sure that there are certain restrictions for people under eighteen.
And I think as it's been rolling out in practice,
(20:52):
they've realized that just because you don't want to face
this huge fine or liability doesn't mean that the answer
is as easy as just require age verification.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
And yet age verification is only becoming more prevalent. Just
back in March, Apple rolled out device level age verification
in the UK. Users who don't confirm that they're eighteen
or older don't just lose access to certain apps or websites,
but Apple will turn on monitoring of their messages, of
their shared photo albums, their airdrop and FaceTime calls, and
(21:24):
similar things are coming to the US starting this summer.
New users in Utah and Louisiana will have their age
information shared with the app store to comply with new
age restriction laws in those states. Again, there's nothing wrong
with letting companies have access to all your data if
that's what you want. What's slowly being lost. Here is
(21:44):
one of the things that makes the Internet what it is,
the right to decide how much information you want to share,
whether that's nothing, everything, or somewhere in between.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
And I think one cornerstone of what the Internet has
stood for, and one piece that EFF has fought for,
is the right to anonymity. And how the right to
anonymity allows you to speak freely online. That is a
nonpartisan issue, that is not something that's politically affiliated. People
of all walks of lives have turned to the Internet
(22:15):
to share their stories and to make community and to
be someone that they might not feel comfortable being in
the analog world, so to speak. You know, you see
people having very open and frank conversations online and that
is precisely because these conversations are not linked to your
government issued ID. It's precisely because you're not worried that
(22:36):
someone's going to know who you are or where you
live and they're going to come and track you down.
And we all also benefit from the information that anonymity
has granted us. Talk about whistleblowers or advocates in governments
where they're not allowed to speak if their government issued
ID was associated with their Discord account or their Twitter account.
(22:57):
They're way less likely to share what they would share, right.
There is a sense of lack of control and privacy
when you have everything that you put out on the
Internet associated it with your government. It should I do,
especially in today's day and age, where speech and political
speech is targeted. I think there's more fear there as well.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
All right, So we've heard a lot about the problems
with age verification laws, but at the end of the day,
do they actually help kids even a little bit? After
the break, I try to play Devil's advocate and immediately
get shut down. Just kind of Devil's advocate here. If
(23:46):
Discord has asked me my age, they've got a feature
which is going to guess how old I am, and
so it might never actually ask me for my ID.
It might be able to figure it out based on
how old my account is or the kinds of messages
that I send. You know, I'm I'm talking about taxes
with my friends. Not a lot of kids talk about
taxes in the stock market or whatever. You're probably okay, right,
(24:07):
So if age verification is even if it's a bit annoying,
who can argue against protecting kids and also anonymity. I'm
not afraid if people know what I think. I say
everything with my chest. What's the big deal here? And
I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm not doing anything illegal.
(24:28):
What's the big deal with something that will put a
little friction in front of trolls, scammers, thieves, bad people
getting to either meet or kids. What's wrong with that?
Speaker 2 (24:42):
I think if we had proof that that age verification
actually did that, I may say, you know why, you
have a point, But we don't have proof that age
verification can actually protect children. And we see that constant
collection and storing of your information exposes us to my
harms both online and offline. And even when you were
(25:04):
talking about the fact that, like, oh, I send messages
to my friend about taxes. But how creepy is it
that we have come to a point where we have
just felt like it's normal that discord is reading our
messages and knows what we're talking about. That's pretty crazy
to me.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
It comes down to a question that nobody's really solved yet.
Who is actually responsible for protecting kids online?
Speaker 2 (25:30):
We've heard stories from Australia of parents themselves using their
own faces to bypass these gates. For their children to
be able to use social media, and I think that
brings in this big question of where the government sits
in parenting and the ability for parents to choose what
is and is not appropriate for their children. And this
(25:52):
is putting the government squarely in the middle of that
that relationship between a parent and their young person.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
You could say that the Internet is a terrible place
for kids right now, and you'd be partially right. There's
a study out there, the reports that nearly half of
teenagers surveyed say that social media has negative effects on
people their age. That's pretty serious. But social media can
also be a positive for us. I mean, right now,
there are kids learning history, learning languages, learning new art forums,
(26:20):
or finding communities of other kids just like them around
the world. This is stuff that is not going to
happen on encyclopedia dot com. It happens on social media.
Those kids deserve a safe way to interact with the world,
and this can be done. But the key to that
might not be what we're doing right now making laws
(26:40):
that give companies even more information about ourselves, like giving
them our ID or maybe even our face, when they
already have a bunch of information about us. Actually, Rinn
says that part of the way forward might actually be
reducing the information these companies have about us and about kids.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
I'd say it's too pronged really here. First one is
if legislators really wanted to protect people online, young people, adults,
they really need to pass a strong, comprehensive privacy law,
which means that instead of building more surveillance and censorship,
we are targeting and addressing the massive collection and processing
(27:19):
of our personal data, which is the root cause of
all of these problems online, the reason why young people
are fed ads about harmful things, or if a young
person looks at one user who might cover one topic,
then they're now being fed constantly with this information. A
comprehensive federal privacy law would target that, and that's where
(27:40):
we see lawmakers energy and focus would be most helpful
and would have a lasting impact, not just for young
people but adults too, because we all are being used
as data points and ways to make money off of
our information for these companies. And then the second aspect
I think is education. We have to approach that issue
(28:01):
from a more holistic perspective where we talk about education,
where we talk about parents' role in protecting their children.
We really need to invest into a more robust parental
control system for these platforms and for operating systems as well,
and education for how to use them for parents. A
lot of them already exists. There's colleagues at EFF where
(28:24):
parents themselves who use those parental controls, and I think
people really need to invest in learning how those work.
And also, digital literacy in schools is way behind. We
haven't taught young people about social media, you know, the
things that people are pointing out us, the issue behind
discord or behind roadblocks, being predators online. Taking that age
(28:46):
old advice of don't talk to strangers and don't share
information about yourself and just modernizing the advice that young
people are getting about how to engage in the digital
world or on the internet is all so key for us.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
We're also in a stage right now where there's books
being strongly discouraged or pulled out of libraries which are
just about history exactly. This is what happened during slavery,
this is what happened after slavery, Like those things are
being pulled from curriculum. And if the bar is not
appropriate for minors, okay, porn is not appropriate for miners.
(29:25):
Most people aren't going to fight with you on that.
But if you decide that learning about a period of
history is not appropriate for school at all and thus children,
then yeah, you can start blocking whatever you want.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
I love that you made that connection immediately, because they
do use the exact same language that they use in
book bands to implement these age vacation mandates for banning
horn from minor materials. I'll also mention that people will
likely see in different states these bills come into effect
the coming years, where things like Twitter or now x, Facebook,
(30:05):
Instagram all start implementing age gates as well, because that's
what these bills require. Another thing that we also try
to warn against is how these bills define harmful to minors.
They define the concept of harmful to minors to be
so broad that any attorney general can decide, you know,
I don't want anyone under eighteen to read anything about
(30:28):
reproductive rights or access to abortion care. I think that's
harmful of minors. So next thing, you know, Plant Parenthood's
website needs to be under an age gate, or sexual
health education is under an age gate. We are at
this point it is coming to people. It will be
everyone's problem in due time. So I definitely recommend for
(30:50):
people who may not be nerds to join the conversation
because it does impact more than just the people that
care about the Internet, and it's a civil rights issue,
it's a free speech issue, it is an access to
information issue, and we always welcome people to the fight.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Welcoming people to the fight is a really interesting way
to put it, because in this episode, yes, we've called
it a fight, but for a lot of people, I'm
not sure the age verification has ever felt like a
proper fight so until very recently, and I'm speaking stereotypically
broadbrush here. On one side, you had a bunch of
nerds who were talking about civil liberties and computer code,
(31:29):
and on the other side, there's a bunch of politicians
who don't even know how to turn on a computer,
and they're just being fooled by big tech companies who
don't really care what happens. They're just making money off
of all of us. That's not a fight, at least,
it's not a fair fight. It's a bunch of policymakers
making decisions that affect people who don't even really know
what's happening. But now more of us know that this
(31:51):
fight is happening partially because some gamers got big mad
about their little discord chat rooms. This is a good thing,
and after listening to this, maybe you have some opinions
about age verification, and that's also a really good thing.
If you want to know more, we got some links
in the show notes to everything we reference. But whatever
your stance is on all this right now, please do
(32:11):
not leave this fight to the handful of nerds and
the politicians, because we cannot figure all this out without
hearing from everyone. Thank you so much for listening to
kill Switch. You can email us at kill Switch at
Kalaidoscope dot NYC or on Instagram. We're at killswitchpod and
(32:35):
if you like the show, leave us a review. It
helps other people find the show, which helps us keep
doing our thing. Kill Switch is hosted by Me Dexter Thomas.
It's produced by Sena Ozaki, darl luck Potts, and Julian Nutter.
Our theme song is by me and Kyle Murdoch and
Kyle also mixed the show from Kaleidoscope. Our executive producers
are Ozma Lashin, Mangesh Hatikadur, and Kate Osborne from iHeart Our.
(32:58):
Executive producers are between a Norvel and Nikki Etour. Get
you on the next one.
Discord says it's cracking down on abuse.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Starting next month, the messaging app will require users to
prove their age or be shut out from access to
adult servers.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Earlier this year, Discord announced that it would start analyzing
everyone's account data to figure out how old its users are.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
That's all my gamers out there, what the hell are
we using now?
Speaker 4 (00:30):
The Discord is definitely not on our list of things
to use.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
So if you use Discord, you need to uninstall that
shit right now, because they're about to start spying on
every message you sent. If the platform thought you were underage,
it would ask for ID, and if you didn't give it,
it would kick you off the platform. Welcome to the
fight over age verification.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I think, in practice, Discord and a lot of these
online platforms are seeing age verification as a silver bullet,
the end, all, the all answer to this problem of
young people's safety online. And I mean it's I think
a more complicated problem. As we've seen the technology is
not reliable, It is not accessible or fully privacy protective
(01:13):
at the moment, or accurate to be used at such
a large scale.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Rin Alijaji's the Associate director of State Affairs of the
Electronic Frontier Foundation. She says that even though age verification
rules are put in place to keep children safe online,
the reality what these rules actually do is a lot
more complicated.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I don't disagree with the issue of young people needing
privacy and safety online, but I find it ironic that
now these services are asking you to submit these deeply
personal pieces of information like your ID or your face,
or your credit card information or sometimes their mortgage application
to prove your age.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
In response to legislation. Some apps have had versions of
age verification for a while now, but when Discord tried it,
people got really mad. And at first this might not
make a whole lot of sense because from the outside,
it looks like a bunch of gamer nerds are threatening
to boycott a messaging platform that they've used for over
a decade in some cases, over just an ID check.
(02:16):
I mean, what gives right? And you might be thinking,
but Dexter, I'm not a gamer, I'm not a nerd.
I don't use Discord. Well, here's the thing. If you
want to buy a computer or a phone, or literally
almost anything that has a screen on it, there's a
new law that's about to bring this to you. So
today we'll talk about how a bunch of gamers suddenly
found their way into politics, why age verification might actually
(02:39):
harm kids, and how pretty soon you're gonna get dragged
into this fight, whether you want to be or not.
Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is kill Switch. I'm Dexter Thomas.
Let's get into it.
Speaker 5 (02:59):
I'm all right, I'm.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Goodbye.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
So I feel like most people watching or listening to
this know what Discord is, but just in case broad
strokes here right, It's a chat app. Roughly one hundred
minial people use a daily. They can do text chat,
group messages, you can do voice chat, you can do video,
you can share your screen, and I think most people
know it as oh, this is what gamers use. I
(04:03):
know that's not quite it, but what other uses would
you say people use Discord for.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah, it definitely started in the gaming community and is
still to this day very big for gamers, which the
video game industry is huge. There's millions of people that
game every day. But Discord has then since moved to
things like fandoms, to political discussions. I have friends whose
you know, soccer teams are on Discord. They just you know,
(04:30):
talk to their friends on there.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I know people who their knitting club is entirely on Discord.
I've taught college classes, and the stuff that the college
uses sucks, and so we've used Discord. So I've been
pretty bought into Discord. Honestly, Discord as a platform wasn't
specifically built for kids. It actually requires users to be
at least thirteen years old to sign up. Gamers definitely
(04:55):
use it a lot. But if you can think of
almost any hobby, there's probably a community dedicated to that
topic on Discord. So even though Discord is used by
a bunch of pretty diverse communities, a lot of people
weren't all that familiar with it. Actually, some people's first
impression about Discord is what they got when the lawsuits
started happening. A family in Camden County is suing the
(05:16):
makers of the gaming app Roadblocks, as well as.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
The community app Discord, saying neither do enough to protect
children from sexual predators.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
So in February early February, Discord announced that they will
be rolling out mandatory age verification around the world, with
full implementation in early March. And what that means is
that if Discord had either estimated you to be under eighteen,
or if it doesn't have enough information about you or
(05:44):
your account, you would be automatically put into a teen
appropriate experience. It's what they were calling it, which means
basically any content filters, there would be restrictions on who
can contact you via direct messages, or who can add
you as a friend, if you can or can't speak
on things like stage channels, which are about the spaces
(06:05):
where a lot of community events happen on Discord.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Discord is saying that they want to be able to
verify how old you are as a user. How does
this work?
Speaker 2 (06:14):
So what Discord has said is that initially they would
get information about you based on how you interact on
that platform. If you've been a Discord user for years,
they've garnered all this data about what information you interact with,
who you've talked to, and has estimated sort of where
you may be. Services like YouTube actually rulled similar ways
(06:36):
of age estimation previously, and there were stories all over
the Internet of people being put into brackets where they
weren't just because for example, they enjoy cartoons. So now
if the YouTube has decided they're twelve instead of actually
a fifty year old.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
You're trying to watch some old school Tom and Jerry
or whatever, and it thinks you're twelve exactly.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
So what discord that is that most adults would be
so through this system to be an adult because of
the data that they already have about you. But if
you were estimated to be an adult and were locked
into this teaen appropriate experience, then you would have to
go through a third party vendor and provide either your
government issued ID or go through a face scan that
(07:19):
would then estimate how old you are, which both have
their own sets of problems and have been notoriously reported
to be very unreliable, especially for people of color, for
trans people, for people with disabilities. A lot of these
facial estimation services also require things like a liveness check
(07:39):
where they ask you to move your head or open
your mouth, and those again look a lot different for
people with disabilities or people who may not be able
to do those things.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
So in February, when they announced that they were rolling
out mandatory age verification for users worldwide, the reaction was
pretty immediate.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
What this is insanity.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
So in order to verify that I'm over the age
of thirteen, I have to upload my driver's license or
a scan of my face to Discord.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
While I would love to trust Discord with that information,
I just also I think it's kind of a dangerous precedent.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
No if it sounds like people are all of a
sudden getting mad at it. Nowhere there's some more context
of this. Just a few months before the age verification announcement,
Discord was in the headlines for a very different reason.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Well, this one's exciting. Discord says that seventy thousand users
may have had their government issued IDs compromised. The recent
attack exposed them and the hackers. They claim they've got
nearly two point two million, quite a bit more than
what Discord claims.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
In twenty twenty five, Discord had a major data breach
through a third party customer support system called Zendesk. This
is the vendor that they were using for age verification
in the UK. This breach exposed users phone numbers, IP addresses,
physical addresses, and in some cases billing information. So Discord
coming back just a few months after that hack was
(09:03):
announced and saying, uh, yeah, we're gonna need your government
ID now and maybe even a scanning your face. A
lot of people saw that and said, yeah, that's not
going to happen. And that's aside from the fact that
these tools just don't really work. When Discord tested an
age verification system in the UK last summer, kids figured
out how to get around it almost immediately. One popular
(09:26):
method was taking a screenshot from a video game character,
submitting that is your face and boom, age verification passed.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Their story is all over the internet of different ways
to bypass these services or these age verification mandates. And
four for Media actually just put out an article about
this YouTube video from I think twenty eighteen of a
woman moving her head slowly and it was used I
think for some sort of trading purposes, but people are
now using it as a way to bypass these age verification.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
The outrage online was so massive. Within just a few weeks,
Discord announced that they were pausing the rollout of the
age verification process. But this brings us back to the
question of why Discord would force users all over the
world to submit their identity. Was it just them trying
to cover their backs so they don't get hit with
another child safety lawsuit. Well, in some case Discord actually
(10:19):
had to do this.
Speaker 6 (10:20):
The United Kingdom has begun enforcing an age verification aspect
if it's twenty twenty three Online Safety Act, requiring platforms
to ensure that young users do not have access to
harmful content online.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
The first of its kind Online Safety Act in the
UK now requires apps like Discord to force British users
to submit age verification. So Discord was already doing this
in the UK, as well as in Australia, which now
has a new social media ban.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
The world's first nationwide social media ban four children has
been in effect for a few days now in Australia.
A country's new law bands kids under sixteen from more
than ten platforms, including TikTok and Instagram.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
So one important detail here though Australia's social media band
does not cover Discord, but Discord said that they included
Australian users. Anyway, to go above and beyond in demonstrating
its quote ongoing commitment to team safety. The fact that
Discord was doing more than it really needed to, not
just complying with the UK law, but complying in advance
(11:24):
for countries like Australia, made a lot of people angry.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Gamers probably wanted to see Discord flight back. They wanted
to see Discord not just fold and decide to comply
there and fight for their users. I think in late
stage capitalism you can't really expect a platform to care
about their users more than they care about their bottom
line dollar. But that is the sense I get from
(11:50):
the Discord community and how they perceive the platform and
services values to be.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
After all that backlash, Discord has said that they're moving
the roll out of the age verification process until later
this year, but that initial outrage does seem to have
had an effect on how Discord is going about all
of this.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Another thing that they announced also that they are going
to have stricter requirements for partners that offer things like
facial estimation, including that that process needs to happen on
device and doesn't go like to the third party, which
is a high bar. And the companies that they were
initially going with, PERSONA and Kid, did not.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Meet that bar, so that's interesting. Already the people that
they were comfortable going with had nobody pushed back. They
have now decided, actually, these people weren't good enough. So
gamers have won a battle. It's probably too soon though
to say that they've won the war, but then again,
maybe Discord is just an easy target here. Maybe complying
(12:53):
in advance is inevitable because even if you're not in
the UK or Australia, and even if you're not a
Discord user, there's another law that's about to change what
happens when you first boot up almost any new computer
or any new phone that's after the break. There's a
(13:20):
law that just passed called the Digital Age Assurance Act.
This is in California. Can you talk to me about that?
Speaker 2 (13:29):
AB ten forty three. It did pass last year in
the California legislature and was signed by Governor Newsom last October.
It goes into effect in twenty twenty seven. AB ten
forty three requires all operating systems and app stores to
create age brackets that segment their users based on their ages.
(13:49):
So those brackets are between I think it's like thirteen
and sixteen, sixteen and eighteen, and then eighteen and older,
and users are Once you've opened your new blacktop or
your phone, you're then asked to say what your birth
date is or your age, and then they place you
in that bracket. And then it requires that operating system
(14:11):
or your phone your laptop to collect this information and
send that to every application that asks for your age,
And it requires applications to ask right if they are
deemed not to be used by minors, your watch, your
digital scale, you'll have to tell them how old you are.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
So California's Digital Age Assurance Act requires any operating system.
This means Windows, this means Mac, O West, but even
phone operating systems like iOS and Android. They have to
collect your age when you set up a device and
share that information with apps on request, so developers know
whether they're dealing with a child, a teenager, or an adult.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
A big problem that we see there is what about
families that use one device? What happens there if multiple
people share a device or low income households often don't
have mo multiple devices for people to use. What age
would you then tell the operating system you were?
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Another big issue with this law is that it relies
on self reporting. A kid could type in any birthday
that they want and say that they're over eighteen. But
now with this law, operating systems are required to ask anyway.
If they don't ask, there's consequences. You can be fined
(15:27):
per infraction right.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Up to twenty five hundred dollars per affected child, or
seventy five hundred dollars for intentional violations.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Which is kind of nuts. If there's a family with
two kids and both of them get on the computer
and you did not properly get their age, five thousand
dollars two kids.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Yeah, and there are other concerns about open source and
who is an operating system here. Also they define it
to include things like mobile devices and computers very broadly,
and virtually any digital device that runs a software that
has built in the last three decades would fall into
(16:10):
that category.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
See anything, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
And by virtue of how open source works, people can
change that software. People can tinker with it and make
it their own. And it's still very unclear to people
who's liable there. And imagine you're a software developer, small
shop of for people who started an open source project
and now you're hit with this huge fine for a
(16:35):
small startup. That's a recipe for over censorship and a
chilling effect of people not wanting to get hit with
another fine.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
So, just to clarify here, if someone lies about their
age during the age verification process and the software doesn't
catch that they're lying, that's not covered in the law.
You only get in trouble if your software doesn't ask.
So if this law is just mandating to ask how
old someone is and not actually do anything with it, okay,
well it's ineffective. But what's the actual problem here, Well,
(17:09):
a lot of people see this as a foot in
the door for something more nefarious. Once the government has
a law demanding that Apple or Microsoft collect information on
you just in order to turn on your computer or
your phone, the concern is that next they can start
stacking other laws on top of that that really start
monitoring you, making you afraid to speak your mind online,
(17:29):
or even afraid to speak your mind into your own
notes app. And let's just be clear here, most people
aren't even aware of this argument. Most people aren't aware
of these laws. Those of us who are are again
kind of nerds, and a lot of these nerds are
putting pressure on the people who make the software to
fight back. So is anyone doing anything about this? Well? Yeah,
(17:51):
One operating system called Midnight BSD has included in their
terms and conditions that you're just straight up not allowed
to use their software in California, and they explicitly state
that this rule is a protest against that California law.
Say whatever you want, but you can't say that's not
a principal stand. But Midnight BSD is a really niche project,
(18:11):
and it's basically run by one lead developer, and he
can pretty easily make those personal decisions if he wants to.
But what some people are hoping for is someone with
more swayed to actually fight the laws themselves.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
At the end of the day, I think there is
a bottom line of California's a huge state.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yes, Also we're talking about technology and Silicon valleyes here,
Like banning California from using your software, especially when your
software is the thing that makes your computer run, is
kind of nuts.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, And I think California will have to contend with
that fact that these laws will end up pushing certain
companies and certain services out of the state because they
just can't comply with them.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Also, speaking of laws, let's talk about lawsuits. More specifically
a lawsuit that almost everyone's heard of by now, the
big case against Meta and YouTube in California.
Speaker 7 (19:13):
A jury found YouTube and Meta, the parent company of
Instagram and Facebook, liable for designing their platforms to be
addictive for children and teens. Despite knowing it could harm
their mental health. All told, the companies would pay six
million dollars in damages.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
So that lawsuit wasn't about age verification, and to be honest,
getting into what it actually was about is probably an
entirely different episode. But I'll just point this out. When
it comes to asking, Okay, what do we do about
social media platforms other than just hitting in the companies
with a fine that's basically lunch money for them, The
conversation keeps coming back to this age verification thing. The
(19:52):
day before that verdict in California, Meta was ordered by
a New Mexico court to pay three hundred and seventy
five million dollars for child safety violations, and the Attorney
General again brought up age verification as a solution.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
We're going to be asking for changes to the design
features of the platform itself, real age verification, changes to
the algorithm, and independent monitor to oversee those changes, and
fundamentally a demand that they do business differently in New Mexico.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
This line of thinking might be what's motivating Discord to
comply in advance, especially as a response to the lawsuits
that they've already had to face.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
It's a fear of liability. There must be a big
conference room somewhere where all of the legal advisors came
together and said, the only way to make all these
lawsuits go away is to figure out a way to
make sure that there are certain restrictions for people under eighteen.
And I think as it's been rolling out in practice,
(20:52):
they've realized that just because you don't want to face
this huge fine or liability doesn't mean that the answer
is as easy as just require age verification.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
And yet age verification is only becoming more prevalent. Just
back in March, Apple rolled out device level age verification
in the UK. Users who don't confirm that they're eighteen
or older don't just lose access to certain apps or websites,
but Apple will turn on monitoring of their messages, of
their shared photo albums, their airdrop and FaceTime calls, and
(21:24):
similar things are coming to the US starting this summer.
New users in Utah and Louisiana will have their age
information shared with the app store to comply with new
age restriction laws in those states. Again, there's nothing wrong
with letting companies have access to all your data if
that's what you want. What's slowly being lost. Here is
(21:44):
one of the things that makes the Internet what it is,
the right to decide how much information you want to share,
whether that's nothing, everything, or somewhere in between.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
And I think one cornerstone of what the Internet has
stood for, and one piece that EFF has fought for,
is the right to anonymity. And how the right to
anonymity allows you to speak freely online. That is a
nonpartisan issue, that is not something that's politically affiliated. People
of all walks of lives have turned to the Internet
(22:15):
to share their stories and to make community and to
be someone that they might not feel comfortable being in
the analog world, so to speak. You know, you see
people having very open and frank conversations online and that
is precisely because these conversations are not linked to your
government issued ID. It's precisely because you're not worried that
(22:36):
someone's going to know who you are or where you
live and they're going to come and track you down.
And we all also benefit from the information that anonymity
has granted us. Talk about whistleblowers or advocates in governments
where they're not allowed to speak if their government issued
ID was associated with their Discord account or their Twitter account.
(22:57):
They're way less likely to share what they would share, right.
There is a sense of lack of control and privacy
when you have everything that you put out on the
Internet associated it with your government. It should I do,
especially in today's day and age, where speech and political
speech is targeted. I think there's more fear there as well.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
All right, So we've heard a lot about the problems
with age verification laws, but at the end of the day,
do they actually help kids even a little bit? After
the break, I try to play Devil's advocate and immediately
get shut down. Just kind of Devil's advocate here. If
(23:46):
Discord has asked me my age, they've got a feature
which is going to guess how old I am, and
so it might never actually ask me for my ID.
It might be able to figure it out based on
how old my account is or the kinds of messages
that I send. You know, I'm I'm talking about taxes
with my friends. Not a lot of kids talk about
taxes in the stock market or whatever. You're probably okay, right,
(24:07):
So if age verification is even if it's a bit annoying,
who can argue against protecting kids and also anonymity. I'm
not afraid if people know what I think. I say
everything with my chest. What's the big deal here? And
I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm not doing anything illegal.
(24:28):
What's the big deal with something that will put a
little friction in front of trolls, scammers, thieves, bad people
getting to either meet or kids. What's wrong with that?
Speaker 2 (24:42):
I think if we had proof that that age verification
actually did that, I may say, you know why, you
have a point, But we don't have proof that age
verification can actually protect children. And we see that constant
collection and storing of your information exposes us to my
harms both online and offline. And even when you were
(25:04):
talking about the fact that, like, oh, I send messages
to my friend about taxes. But how creepy is it
that we have come to a point where we have
just felt like it's normal that discord is reading our
messages and knows what we're talking about. That's pretty crazy
to me.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
It comes down to a question that nobody's really solved yet.
Who is actually responsible for protecting kids online?
Speaker 2 (25:30):
We've heard stories from Australia of parents themselves using their
own faces to bypass these gates. For their children to
be able to use social media, and I think that
brings in this big question of where the government sits
in parenting and the ability for parents to choose what
is and is not appropriate for their children. And this
(25:52):
is putting the government squarely in the middle of that
that relationship between a parent and their young person.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
You could say that the Internet is a terrible place
for kids right now, and you'd be partially right. There's
a study out there, the reports that nearly half of
teenagers surveyed say that social media has negative effects on
people their age. That's pretty serious. But social media can
also be a positive for us. I mean, right now,
there are kids learning history, learning languages, learning new art forums,
(26:20):
or finding communities of other kids just like them around
the world. This is stuff that is not going to
happen on encyclopedia dot com. It happens on social media.
Those kids deserve a safe way to interact with the world,
and this can be done. But the key to that
might not be what we're doing right now making laws
(26:40):
that give companies even more information about ourselves, like giving
them our ID or maybe even our face, when they
already have a bunch of information about us. Actually, Rinn
says that part of the way forward might actually be
reducing the information these companies have about us and about kids.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
I'd say it's too pronged really here. First one is
if legislators really wanted to protect people online, young people, adults,
they really need to pass a strong, comprehensive privacy law,
which means that instead of building more surveillance and censorship,
we are targeting and addressing the massive collection and processing
(27:19):
of our personal data, which is the root cause of
all of these problems online, the reason why young people
are fed ads about harmful things, or if a young
person looks at one user who might cover one topic,
then they're now being fed constantly with this information. A
comprehensive federal privacy law would target that, and that's where
(27:40):
we see lawmakers energy and focus would be most helpful
and would have a lasting impact, not just for young
people but adults too, because we all are being used
as data points and ways to make money off of
our information for these companies. And then the second aspect
I think is education. We have to approach that issue
(28:01):
from a more holistic perspective where we talk about education,
where we talk about parents' role in protecting their children.
We really need to invest into a more robust parental
control system for these platforms and for operating systems as well,
and education for how to use them for parents. A
lot of them already exists. There's colleagues at EFF where
(28:24):
parents themselves who use those parental controls, and I think
people really need to invest in learning how those work.
And also, digital literacy in schools is way behind. We
haven't taught young people about social media, you know, the
things that people are pointing out us, the issue behind
discord or behind roadblocks, being predators online. Taking that age
(28:46):
old advice of don't talk to strangers and don't share
information about yourself and just modernizing the advice that young
people are getting about how to engage in the digital
world or on the internet is all so key for us.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
We're also in a stage right now where there's books
being strongly discouraged or pulled out of libraries which are
just about history exactly. This is what happened during slavery,
this is what happened after slavery, Like those things are
being pulled from curriculum. And if the bar is not
appropriate for minors, okay, porn is not appropriate for miners.
(29:25):
Most people aren't going to fight with you on that.
But if you decide that learning about a period of
history is not appropriate for school at all and thus children,
then yeah, you can start blocking whatever you want.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
I love that you made that connection immediately, because they
do use the exact same language that they use in
book bands to implement these age vacation mandates for banning
horn from minor materials. I'll also mention that people will
likely see in different states these bills come into effect
the coming years, where things like Twitter or now x, Facebook,
(30:05):
Instagram all start implementing age gates as well, because that's
what these bills require. Another thing that we also try
to warn against is how these bills define harmful to minors.
They define the concept of harmful to minors to be
so broad that any attorney general can decide, you know,
I don't want anyone under eighteen to read anything about
(30:28):
reproductive rights or access to abortion care. I think that's
harmful of minors. So next thing, you know, Plant Parenthood's
website needs to be under an age gate, or sexual
health education is under an age gate. We are at
this point it is coming to people. It will be
everyone's problem in due time. So I definitely recommend for
(30:50):
people who may not be nerds to join the conversation
because it does impact more than just the people that
care about the Internet, and it's a civil rights issue,
it's a free speech issue, it is an access to
information issue, and we always welcome people to the fight.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Welcoming people to the fight is a really interesting way
to put it, because in this episode, yes, we've called
it a fight, but for a lot of people, I'm
not sure the age verification has ever felt like a
proper fight so until very recently, and I'm speaking stereotypically
broadbrush here. On one side, you had a bunch of
nerds who were talking about civil liberties and computer code,
(31:29):
and on the other side, there's a bunch of politicians
who don't even know how to turn on a computer,
and they're just being fooled by big tech companies who
don't really care what happens. They're just making money off
of all of us. That's not a fight, at least,
it's not a fair fight. It's a bunch of policymakers
making decisions that affect people who don't even really know
what's happening. But now more of us know that this
(31:51):
fight is happening partially because some gamers got big mad
about their little discord chat rooms. This is a good thing,
and after listening to this, maybe you have some opinions
about age verification, and that's also a really good thing.
If you want to know more, we got some links
in the show notes to everything we reference. But whatever
your stance is on all this right now, please do
(32:11):
not leave this fight to the handful of nerds and
the politicians, because we cannot figure all this out without
hearing from everyone. Thank you so much for listening to
kill Switch. You can email us at kill Switch at
Kalaidoscope dot NYC or on Instagram. We're at killswitchpod and
(32:35):
if you like the show, leave us a review. It
helps other people find the show, which helps us keep
doing our thing. Kill Switch is hosted by Me Dexter Thomas.
It's produced by Sena Ozaki, darl luck Potts, and Julian Nutter.
Our theme song is by me and Kyle Murdoch and
Kyle also mixed the show from Kaleidoscope. Our executive producers
are Ozma Lashin, Mangesh Hatikadur, and Kate Osborne from iHeart Our.
(32:58):
Executive producers are between a Norvel and Nikki Etour. Get
you on the next one.
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