Discord no longer plans to roll out age verification globally in March and is delaying the launch until the second half of 2026, the company said announced Tuesday.
Discord faced heavy backlash from users earlier this month after it announced that all users would receive a “teen-appropriate experience” by default until they were verified as adults.
The company clarified on Tuesday that 90% of users will not need to verify their age and can continue using Discord as usual, as most do not engage in age-restricted content and the platform’s internal security systems can already determine the age of many adult users. These internal systems work by looking at signals such as how long an account has existed, whether the user has registered a payment method and what type of servers they are located on.
“Let me be honest: we knew this rollout would be controversial,” wrote Discord CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy in the blog post announcing the change. “Any time you introduce anything related to identity and authentication, people will have strong feelings. Rightly so. In retrospect, we should have provided more details about our intentions and how the process works.”
“The way this ended up left a lot of you walking away thinking we need facial scans and ID uploads from everyone just to use Discord,” he continued. “That’s not what’s happening, but the fact that so many people believe it tells us that we have failed in our most fundamental job: explaining clearly what we do and why.”
Discord says people who are part of the 10% of users who do need to verify their age will be given the option to do so. Previously, Discord had stated that users could only verify their age by completing a facial age estimate or submitting proof of identity to Discord’s vendor partners. Now, Discord says that before expanding age verification globally, it plans to introduce additional verification methods, including the option to verify with a credit card.
“If you choose not to verify, exactly the following will happen: you will keep your account, your servers, your friends list, your DMs and voice chat,” Vishnevskiy said in the post. “The only thing that will change is that you will no longer be able to access age-restricted content or change certain default safety settings designed to protect teens. Other than that, there will be no change to your Discord experience.”
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The company also plans to publish information on its website about each authentication vendor and their data practices, and clearly identify which vendor is used. Additionally, it now says it will only work with vendors that perform the age verification process entirely on the user’s device.
The change around suppliers also comes as Discord faced with adversity for listing Persona, which is backed by an investment firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, as one of its partners in age verification. Thiel is chairman and co-founder of Palantir, which has courted controversy for his work US Immigration Enforcement and others federal surveillance programs. Persona has also been criticized by users for its use of third-party data and partnerships with governments. There has been disagreement ever since distanced itself from Persona.
Discord also faced backlash for its plans for age verification because it did revealed Last October, it was revealed that around 70,000 users were able to expose sensitive data, such as photos of their ID, after hackers breached a third-party vendor that used the platform for age-related calls. Discord says it will no longer work with the vendor involved in this breach.
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