Discord has announced plans to enforce a new “teen-appropriate” experience by default next month, requiring age verification to access restricted content or change content settings.
In a blog post issued today, Discord said it was enhancing its age-appropriate protections for users worldwide while maintaining “privacy, community and meaningful connection on the platform.”
The move comes just months after Discord admitted that hackers had gained access to images of 70,000 government IDs, uploaded to the servers of a third-party vendor that it had entrusted with the data, following user contact with its Customer Support or Trust & Safety teams.
Discord first began rolling out age verification last year in the United Kingdom and Australia, alongside similar moves by other social media firms prompted by the tightening of local laws. It was at this point that some users realized they were able to trick the live facial estimation software by simply showing it their character in Death Stranding — a loophole that has since been fixed.
Today, Discord said that new and existing users “may be required to engage in an age-verification process” starting in early March, in order to access “age-restricted channels, servers, or commands and select message requests.” This also includes the ability to unblur sensitive content and receive Direct Messages from unknown users.
Users will be able to verify their age by submitting a form of ID to a vendor partner, or by using Discord’s own facial age estimation software. But some users may not be prompted to have their age checked, as Discord will also use an age inference model to automatically assume a user’s age, based on their usage history.
Discord says its age estimation technology boasts “privacy protections” as your video selfie won’t leave your device. As for ID documents uploaded to vendors, these are “deleted quickly — in most cases, immediately after age confirmation,” Discord said.
Speaking to The Verge, Savannah Badalich, Discord’s global head of product policy, said that the company had ceased working with the vendor behind last year’s hack. “We’re not doing biometric scanning [or] facial recognition,” Badalich added. “We’re doing facial estimation. The ID is immediately deleted. We do not keep any information around like your name, the city that you live in, if you used a birth certificate or something else, any of that information.”
After an account has been verified once, no further checks should be needed in future, Discord concluded.
Image credit: Silas Stein/picture alliance via Getty Images
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
