Discord Pushes Age Checks With AI Facial Scans Despite User Resistance

Do you use Discord? If you read this website, there's a pretty good chance that you do. The massive centralized chat service is extremely popular among young people and gamers, and many open source projects have moved fully to Discord for project discussion, coordination, and updates. Starting today, the company is rolling out age verification for all users despite its February announcement having incited a firestorm of fury from its fanbase.

After the enormous backlash to its announcement back in February, Discord took a step back from its plans and announced changes to said plans, although it's worth mentioning that it never actually said that it wasn't going through with them, only that it was pausing the rollout of age verification. In the time since, many things have happened, including additional breaches of age verification providers as well as the enforcement of Texas Senate Bill 2420, the App Store Accountability Act, which went into effect in June.

So it goes, then, that Discord is launching age assurance for all Discord users. In a blog post announcing the change yesterday—one day before the changes took effect today—Discord says that "the majority of Discord users will not be asked to confirm their age." Indeed, there are many methods that the firm is using to verify users' age, and if you pass any of them, then nothing changes for your account; you're an "adult" and free to use Discord just as you were before.

If you don't have an "age signal" attached to your account, you may be asked to verify. This can be done through a credit card check, facial age estimation, an ID document scan plus a selfie, or an AgeKey, which is basically like a passkey but for your age. Alternatively, you may be able to verify using Google Wallet, Apple's App Store, or the Google Play Store.

Notably, Discord says that it "only ever receives your age signal. Not your name, not your ID, not your face scan." That's encouraging, although it wasn't Discord that was breached in the past. To assuage fears along those lines, Discord says that it is holding vendors accountable by vetting them with privacy and security reviews before they're allowed to process any data from Discord users. Discord describes these as "binding requirements written into [its] agreements with each vendor," and that they apply to third-party partners as well.

I'm a privacy-minded sort. I don't approve of the attempts to de-anonymize the web. However, Discord is a popular place for teens and yes, even kids to gather, despite that the app's own terms of use explicitly forbid anyone under the age of 13. In mixed-age spaces, having this kind of age verification can help limit abuse and exploitation of the service for nefarious means. On the part of Discord, it's sort of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation, and ultimately it's hard to be angry with the firm for complying with legislation that seems to be spreading like wildfire.

If you object to the new Discord policy, there are a lot of Discord alternatives out there, including some that are self-hosted. But really, what you need to be railing against is not Discord itself, but rather the policymakers who institute these laws. If you feel strongly about this topic, I recommend doing some research to learn who supports "real ID" legislation on the internet and why.