Discord’s age verification era is upon us, despite community backlash

Starting Wednesday, Discord, the community messaging platform, will roll out age verification measures to all users.

The rollout comes after the company initially delayed its age verification plans in February due to backlash from users concerned that biometric scans and ID checks could jeopardize their privacy. Those concerns weren’t unfounded; last year, a third-party vendor that works with Discord was breached, potentially exposing the data of 70,000 users’ data, including government ID photos and selfies used for identity verification.

“Age assurance draws strong opinions and skepticism, especially when it involves sharing biometric information or a form of ID,” Discord CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy wrote in a blog post, published Tuesday. “At the same time, age assurance laws are expanding, and since my last post we’ve had to launch age assurance in other regions, including in Brazil and in Texas.”

However, Vishnevskiy says more than 90% of Discord users won’t have to verify their age. He explains that Discord will instead use existing account data to detect “signals,” like account tenure (how long an account has existed), device and activity data, and other usage patterns, to determine whether a user belongs in the adult, teen, or unconfirmed age group.

Discord says that it doesn’t estimate users’ ages based on message content, profile data, or demographic attributes.

“The way a typical 15-year-old uses Discord (including how many communities they’re a part of and how they interact with others) looks different in aggregate from how a typical 30-year-old uses Discord,” the company wrote in a separate, technical blog post, also published Tuesday. “Our [machine learning] model has learned these patterns to predict whether a given account likely belongs to an adult or a teen.”

This doesn’t mean that Discord is collecting new user data. It’s standard for social media companies to retain this kind of data on their customers, even though it might feel unsettling to see it spelled out so overtly.

Because local laws have required Discord to use age assurance technology in certain regions due to local law, the company was able to train its model on reliably confirmed data linking user behavior to age.

If Discord is not confident that a user is an adult, that user can still prove their age without a biometric or ID scan. They can appeal by sharing a credit card or age group data from their Apple App Store or Google Play Store account.

For confirmed adults, nothing about the platform will change. Teens accounts, however, will automatically be blocked from accessing age-restricted servers or channels. Message requests from people who aren’t their friends will go to a separate message requests inbox, and teens will get alerts when accepting friend requests from someone they don’t share mutual friends with.

As governments around the world continue passing age verification requirements in an attempt to protect children online, experts warn that these age checks can create a host of new privacy and security issues. That leaves platforms like Discord with a difficult choice: comply or risk sanctions.