Discord delays age verification rollout after privacy backlash

Discord is delaying its age verification rollout after significant backlash from users over privacy fears. While it still plans to implement mandatory age checks for all its users, the popular voice chat and messaging platform has pushed back global rollout to the second half of 2026. In the meantime, it's hoping to alleviate users' concerns by clarifying exactly what they can expect when it does arrive.

Co-founder Stanislav Vishnevskiy addressed misgivings about Discord's age verification system in a blog posted on Tuesday, attempting to reassure worried users.

"In hindsight, we should have provided more detail about our intentions and how the process works," Vishnevskiy wrote. "The way this landed, many of you walked away thinking we're requiring face scans and ID uploads from everyone just to use Discord. That's not what's happening, but the fact that so many people believe it tells us we failed at our most basic job: clearly explaining what we're doing and why…

"Our goal is straightforward: keep the Discord experience completely unchanged for the vast majority of people while ensuring an age-appropriate experience for everyone."

Discord clarifies how age verification will impact users

Earlier this month, Discord announced that all users' accounts would be defaulted to teen safety settings from March, which could only be deactivated once the platform had verified their age. This change was to include adding filters that blur sensitive content unless a user's age has been verified, as well as preventing them from accessing age-restricted spaces. Direct messages from potentially unknown senders would also be sent to a separate inbox, and only age-verified users would be able to speak in stage channels, voice chat rooms featuring a number of speakers while others listen as an audience.

Many Discord users expressed disgruntlement at this announcement, with some even fleeing to alternative platforms. 

Now, in addition to pushing back the teen safety settings global rollout to the latter part of the year, Vishnevskiy has stated that most Discord users' experiences won't actually change much once it does arrive. In the majority of cases, the platform will automatically guess users' ages using available data without requiring them to supply additional information or documentation.

"For 90%+ of users, nothing changes. Most users never access age-restricted content or change their default safety settings," wrote Vishnevskiy (emphasis original). "For those who do, we have an internal system that works to accurately determine your age… [using] account-level signals: how long your account has existed, whether you have a payment method on file, what types of servers you're in, and general patterns of account activity."

Vishnevskiy noted that Discord already uses such signals for other purposes, such as to detect spam, raids, and harassment campaigns.

"If you're among the less than 10% of users who do need to verify, we'll give you options, designed to tell us only your age and never your identity," Vishnevskiy continued (emphasis original). "Your age group is private. No other user on Discord can see it."

If you are among this 10 percent of users and choose not to manually verify your age, Vishnevskiy claims you will be unable to see age-restricted content or change some of Discord's default safety settings, but that "[n]othing else about your Discord experience changes." It is unclear exactly what these default settings might be, or if they're fully encompassed by the restrictions Discord laid out for teen safety settings earlier this month. 

Mashable has reached out to Discord for comment.

Data collection and privacy concerns

Vishnevskiy also acknowledged fears regarding invasive data collection, with many users leery of potentially handing over their personal ID for access to all of Discord's features.

"[M]any of you are worried that this is just another big tech company finding new ways to collect your personal data," he wrote. "That we're creating a problem to justify invasive solutions. I get that skepticism. It's earned, not just toward us, but toward the entire tech industry. But that’s not what we’re doing."

According to Vishnevskiy, Discord will not receive any identifying personal information from users who need to manually verify their age. Instead, it is partnering with third-party age verification companies, who will gather this information and only tell Discord users' age group.

"The idea is simple: we don't want to know who you are," he wrote (emphasis original). "We just need to know whether you're an adult. And it works both ways: a vendor has no way to associate your identity back to your Discord account either. That's by design."

Of course, this still means that users' personal identification will be collected, even if it isn't done directly by Discord itself. Vishnevskiy emphasised that Discord conducts security and privacy reviews of its potential age verification contractors before moving forward with them, including examining their policies on data use and retention. Contractors must also conduct the entire age verification process entirely on users' devices, so that their biometric data doesn't leave it. 

Despite such measures, Discord has already suffered a few security issues with its contractors. After Discord ran a trial with age verification vendor Persona in the UK last month, recent reports claim it shared users' data with other companies and left thousands of files of code exposed to the internet. Discord has since stated that it is no longer partnering with Persona.

Vishnevskiy further addressed a security breach of another third-party vendor last October, which potentially exposed around 70,000 government IDs used to verify Discord users' ages.

"To be clear, we do not use that vendor for age assurance," he wrote. "In fact, we no longer work with them at all, and we've taken the lessons from that incident seriously."

While Discord is aiming to implement age verification globally in the latter half of this year, Vishnevskiy stated that it will not proceed with the rollout unless it first hits several milestones intended to reassure users. These include adding more options for how users can verify their age (such as by supplying credit card information), clearly disclosing which companies it's using to conduct age verification, and releasing age verification system data and statistics in Discord's transparency reports. Discord will also publish a technical blog post explaining how its automatic age verification works.

"[Discord's age determination system] does not read your messages, analyze your conversations, or look at the content you post," wrote Vishnevskiy. "We know 'trust us' isn't enough here, which is why we'll publish the methodology before global launch."

Vishnevskiy further announced that Discord will be adding a new "spoiler channel" feature prior to its age verification global rollout. Currently, many Discord moderators create age-restricted channels to discuss topics that aren't necessarily sexually explicit but may warrant siloing, such as movie spoilers, politics, or other mature subjects. The new spoiler channel option will enable users to continue marking channels as containing mature content without being forced to age-gate the entire server.

Discord's attempts to implement age verification features has been rocky, to say the least. Last July, users discovered that its age verification system rolled out in the UK could be bypassed by using the face of a video game character from Death Stranding. 

Age verification has become a pressing issue across the globe, with multiple governments implementing laws requiring social media platforms to take such measures. VPN use has more than doubled in the UK since its new Online Safety Act came into force, with studies suggesting that such age verification laws are ineffective in keeping minors away from adult material and simultaneously suppress free speech.