There is a LOT of confusion over this and concerns over privacy and effectiveness, so I spent a few hours doing research and analyzing Persona and what everyone has been saying about Age Verification on bsky, Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit. This'll be a thread going over my findings. [[ 1 / 27 ]] - ThreadSky

auros.nexus • 89 days ago

There is a LOT of confusion over this and concerns over privacy and effectiveness, so I spent a few hours doing research and analyzing Persona and what everyone has been saying about Age Verification on bsky, Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit.

This'll be a thread going over my findings.

[[ 1 / 27 ]]

Reposted from VRChat

Introducing Age Verification - a new system designed to increase trust between VRChat users.
youtu.be/odiNjIFUNvw

Comments

tainu.bsky.social•88 days ago

Really appreciate this thread :)
Thanks for the work you put into it ^^

(also appreciate the subtle for real?! Reference 🤭)

mousse.bsky.social•88 days ago

Over where i am at, we can use our banks or our mobile network operators as identity providers and they can verify things such as our age to third parties. I feel kind of uncomfortable sending my ID to a private company operating in a completely different country outside of EU

tsolit.com•88 days ago

I was reading up on the EU eID system yesterday…. Kinda jealous ngl xD

jangxx.com•88 days ago

Sadly it's only cool in theory, in reality I've never actually seen it used anywhere :(

otichoo.bsky.social•88 days ago

Nice read. I think they mentioned in the video that you have to take a picture with yourself and the ID at the same time. Thus they can verify if it's really you.

big.jackal.energy•88 days ago

Look, I get that you want to be optimistic about this…But over and over again, people’s personal info is mishandled, sold off, and used by criminals or corporations to attempt to extract resources from them. Never had any real compensation for stolen data either. Just a “oh, we’re sorry” or two.

big.jackal.energy•88 days ago

What this will likely accomplish is pushing many people away from the space, since they don’t want this persona they’ve built online to be associated with their real name, address, face, etc.

It takes more of the joy and beauty of the internet as a place and roots it back in meatspace.

big.jackal.energy•88 days ago

Mostly just…don’t discount people who dislike the concept of tying IRL personal information with online accounts. It has been a real shit run since it started happening, and some of us remember what the internet was like before Facebook showed up.

dtupper.com•88 days ago

Auros you're so smart

smt.rip•89 days ago

good thread - worth mentioning that people should also be looking at all their subcontractors & those privacy policies (re: my concerns, namely openai & anthropic), i don't believe they're going to steal peoples data or whatever but I do think distrust around those companies is warranted

smt.rip•89 days ago

i know they have the data handling certs, i know they have more private commercial apis etc, but these companies have shown disregard for people's info & privacy before, & the whole "well your privacy is boned already so why even care" is such a copout argument lmao, your privacy is always important

smt.rip•89 days ago

i think id verification is good and important, i think discussions around these companies and how your data is being handled in online blackboxes is also good, and any attempts at like disregarding either of these aspects from people is pretty lame

lovesunday.net•89 days ago

I think this is very sensible reasoning. I understand the implementation of ID verification and believe it's warranted considering the growth of VRChat. Though overall, I just don't feel comfortable with sharing my ID online for a videogame. I suppose I'll be settling for just having the cake! XD

auros.nexus•89 days ago

the solution: manual verification by handing your ID to tupper in person, EZ

although that's fair. i've had to put my identification through different services online in the past so i'm not too bothered by it, especially since these companies know that if they fuck up, its GGs for them

dtupper.com•88 days ago

please god do not do this

smt.rip•89 days ago

yeah i do think realistically these companies wouldn't risk anything because the fallout of it would be just genuinely insane

lovesunday.net•89 days ago

Haha, maybe people who go to the IRL Shelter stuff can get a pass? XD jk. But yes, I've only ID verified once before and it was with AirBnB because I had a financial incentive to do, but even they've had data leaks. Though only hosts were affected I believe? Still, doesn't inspire too much trust.

puppykito.bsky.social•88 days ago

one point i want to bring up is about the fact that, since vrchat is a very lgbtq safe space, where i assume plenty of queer users will want to verify, hate groups might surface and deliberately target these users and vrchat systems to cause a LOT of harm. pupper jus hope nothin icky happens ;w;

auros.nexus•88 days ago

I know that in my specific communities that I go to this won't change much, but I'm very confident that verification-required worlds will be even safer as most people won't risk the ban.
It's easy to get new phone numbers, new debit cards, and such. It's wayyy harder to get a new government ID for-

auros.nexus•88 days ago

verification. I made a post about how I think most instances will turn out to be after this rolls out, but I am afraid that "icky" things will happen.

https://bsky.app/profile/auros.nexus/post/3lbzppuh3332g

auros.nexus•88 days ago

Soon there will be a genuine and viable market for buying 18+ verified accounts, and the use for these accounts will NOT be good.

puppykito.bsky.social•88 days ago

yeah that is a point too, but i meant to say about malicious new users, that try to find and target queer, or poc verified players as to cause damage. If hate groups already had a reason to target lgbt users, now its even more so if they can get their hands on their id, through any means necessary

puppykito.bsky.social•88 days ago

a user called kiwifarms dot net liked this reply. Its almost beautiful if it werent so sad

auros.nexus•88 days ago

Oh yeah I don’t think this’ll be good for new users. Finding the good parts of VRChat are heavily word of mouth based and this change with further separate the experienced players from the new ones and the trolls

goblinmode.brokenbeats.club•89 days ago

Good thread

noosphere.bsky.social•88 days ago

It needs to be clearly communicated what data Persona stores and what are the next steps to get the data deleted after being verified. VRChat needs my date of birth and a hash of the ID /renewal date, that's it. No need for Persona to keep this stuff. My data should be wiped automatically asap.

auros.nexus•88 days ago

Yep, I hope VRChat is open and clarifies exactly what gets stored within Persona and for how long.

Its important to recognize that Persona is designed to allow the controller (VRChat) how the data is stored (if at all)

noosphere.bsky.social•88 days ago

And GDPR is designed to let me delete the data anytime I want :). There is no reason to store my scanned face/ID or whatever is required in the end for more than the time is required to verify my age.

auros.nexus•88 days ago

The only thing that VRChat *actually* needs is a date of birth linking back to a tokenized or hashed representation of your ID (to prevent the same ID from being used multiple times). In theory no PII needs to be stored anywhere and can be deleted after verification.

auros.nexus•88 days ago

I hope VRChat strives for a setup like this (Persona absolutely supports this model)

loukycat.bsky.social•88 days ago

good thread

auros.nexus•89 days ago

I will be clearly outlining the facts, the misinfo, the "maybes" and the "nots".

The VRChat team probably won't be updating people about this until at least next week due to it being a national holiday in the US, so feel free to take this thread as a quick dose of everything we know.

[[ 2 / 27 ]]

auros.nexus•89 days ago

Before I start, I want to let you know this is mainly information I've collected and bounced off a few people, I'm not a lawyer, I'm not telling you what you SHOULD and SHOULDN'T do, but I will say you SHOULD probably wait for VRChat to provide more info before assuming anything.

[[ 3 / 27 ]]

auros.nexus•89 days ago

-= THE ABSOLUTES =-

- VRChat is introducing Age Verification.
- VRChat's verification provider is Persona.
- Persona is an identity verification provider based in San Francisco.
- You will be required to use a government ID to verify your age.

[[ 4 / 27 ]]

auros.nexus•89 days ago

- VRChat will only* be able to see your date of birth (DOB). (More on the asterisk later)
- After verifying, you'll have the option to not show a banner on your public profile that has "Age Verified", an "18+ Verified", or no banner at all.

[[ 5 / 27 ]]

auros.nexus•89 days ago

-= PERSONA =- (for real?!)

I've heard a lot of talk about Persona and many concerns about privacy concerns, but I'll outline what I've found:

The biggest concern of people by far is a data breach occurring on Persona's side, thus revealing their personal data and linking it to VRC.

[[ 6 / 27 ]]

auros.nexus•89 days ago

Persona's data storage for PII (Personally Identifiable Information) is generally dictated by the company/business/service using Persona's services (in our case, VRChat). TLDR, it's up to VRChat how much data either party stores.
(s:1)

[[ 7 / 27 ]] (wysi)

mararizer.net•86 days ago

Good research!

glitter.dog•84 days ago

As somebody who has a very "young" sounding voice, I will enjoy this verification. ;u;

I worked in call centers, and it was constantly a problem, lol.

riarosella.bsky.social•88 days ago

Thank you for the work :)

xiavrc.com•88 days ago

good thread good thread good thread good thread good thread good thread good thread good thread good thread good thread good thread good thread good thread good thread good thread good thread good thread good thread

tadashieto.bsky.social•88 days ago

Preciate ya taking your time to write all this out

tinynannerz.bsky.social•88 days ago

1/27 ☠️☠️☠️

zinnytf.bsky.social•89 days ago

📌

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