Discord have belatedly confirmed that they're working with Persona, an identity detection firm backed by a fund directed by Palantir chairman Peter Thiel.
Following the announcement of Discord’s new age verification policy - already in force in the UK and Australia, with a global rollout beginning in early March - social media users shared screengrabs of prompts to consent to Persona collecting their data over the weekend.
As I understood the above text from the article, two things are happening that Persona is involved in:
The implementation of a age verification system, that may or may not be required for all servers.
Users are being asked about consent on mining their data, that may be kept for up to a week.
It sounds to me that these are two separate things currently happening, even if the data from #2 might be used in the execution of #1 when verification is required. However, if this is the case, I don’t think it’s the only purpose of collecting the data (the same way I don’t believe whatever purpose Palantir is being marketed for is the sole reason for collecting data in it).
If I read the article correctly, even if only some servers require age verification Persona still seems to ask for consent to mine your data. Considering how jaded most people are when it comes to cookie prompts, it would be understandable if kids just clicked yes on this consent screen to continue chatting with their friends, unaware that they just gave away their current and future data to this Palantir-linked company, even if they haven’t shared (or will ever need to share) their ID.
An ID verification scheme will always be broken by design due to the sensitive information that is shared and needs to be (cough) securely processed by some company, but at least it’s a more explicit decision and action of multiple steps required by you.
Allowing continous data mining, however, is just a simple click and something you will have forgotten about in a few hours or days.
For me this looks like Persona is only responsible for age verification. Unless you’re asked to verify your age you’re not sharing any data with them or consenting to hand them any data Discord mayhave.
As I understood the above text from the article, two things are happening that Persona is involved in:
The implementation of a age verification system, that may or may not be required for all servers.
Users are being asked about consent on mining their data, that may be kept for up to a week.
It sounds to me that these are two separate things currently happening, even if the data from #2 might be used in the execution of #1 when verification is required. However, if this is the case, I don’t think it’s the only purpose of collecting the data (the same way I don’t believe whatever purpose Palantir is being marketed for is the sole reason for collecting data in it).
If I read the article correctly, even if only some servers require age verification Persona still seems to ask for consent to mine your data. Considering how jaded most people are when it comes to cookie prompts, it would be understandable if kids just clicked yes on this consent screen to continue chatting with their friends, unaware that they just gave away their current and future data to this Palantir-linked company, even if they haven’t shared (or will ever need to share) their ID.
An ID verification scheme will always be broken by design due to the sensitive information that is shared and needs to be (cough) securely processed by some company, but at least it’s a more explicit decision and action of multiple steps required by you.
Allowing continous data mining, however, is just a simple click and something you will have forgotten about in a few hours or days.
For me this looks like Persona is only responsible for age verification. Unless you’re asked to verify your age you’re not sharing any data with them or consenting to hand them any data Discord mayhave.
Yeah, I looked at the screenshots again and it looks like it is only in the age verification flow Persona is asking for consent to collect data.