I’ve been a social media hermit for the past 3 years but recently I’ve given up and created a few accounts across different apps again. It’s unreal how strict the requirements are now.
- Give e-mail (ok)
- Give phone number (… eeh, ok)
- Use the new account for a while
- Account suspended, please upload selfie to continue (no thanks xi). There are also some verification promps where you have to record a video and rotate your face left to right
If this isn’t a message to move to indie web I don’t know what is
I had one of these with a new account recently. I forget what platform it was, but it wasn’t anything from Meta. Didn’t need to move your face in any specific way, but it was obviously doing some checks for signs of life so a simple photo wouldn’t work. I found a video of some random dude on YouTube just staring at the camera, and I pointed my camera my computer screen while that played. Difficult, considering they only allowed the front-facing camera to work.
the australian government (i know, slightly different level of security and requirement) does an interesting thing where when you take a photo in their identity app it flashes a bunch of different colours very quickly. i assume it takes several photos with different colours to help ensure that shadows are behaving correctly (perhaps it also helps with adding detail for facial recognition and rejection?)
… kinda unrelated, but i’ve always found it fascinating