Discord, a widely-used communication hub for gamers, has decided to temporarily shelve its contentious age verification policy after facing significant user pushback over privacy worries.
The global implementation of this system is now deferred to the latter half of 2026, as disclosed by Discord’s CTO and co-founder, Stanislav Vishnevskiy, in a blog post on Tuesday. He admitted that the company had “missed the mark” in its approach.
Vishnevskiy addressed user concerns, saying, “Many of you fear we’re just another tech giant finding new ways to gather your personal data, creating problems to justify intrusive solutions. I understand this skepticism, which extends beyond us to the entire tech industry. But that’s not our intent.”
With over 200 million active users, Discord will continue to fulfill its legal obligations regarding age verification. However, the broader implementation of this policy will await revisions to the plan initially unveiled in early February.
Initially, Discord announced a March rollout for an age verification process, which would have included face scans or ID uploads for users whose age couldn’t be easily verified. This proposal faced immediate backlash, especially in light of a recent security breach involving a third-party provider that compromised government ID photos of up to 70,000 users.
In his blog post, Vishnevskiy acknowledged the impact of the security breach on user trust, assuring that Discord no longer collaborates with that vendor and maintains high standards for its partners.
“Every vendor we work with goes through a security and privacy review before integration,” he wrote. “That includes contractual limits on data use, and strict retention and deletion requirements. Information submitted for age verification is stored only for the minimum time necessary, which in most cases means it’s deleted immediately. If a vendor doesn’t pass, we don’t work with them.”
One of the vendors that didn’t meet the mark was Persona, an identity verification service. Vishnevskiy said Discord ran a limited test with Persona in the United Kingdom only in January. The company was not able to meet Discord’s standard for facial age estimation, Vishnevskiy wrote, which stipulates that the estimation “must be performed entirely on-device, meaning your biometric data never leaves your phone.”
The company distanced itself from Persona after that relationship also became the subject of online criticism. Persona is backed by the venture capital firm Founders Fund, which is run by Palantir Technologies co-founder Peter Thiel. Thiel and Palantir are often criticized for of the company’s partnerships with the government for surveillance purposes, with Palantir recently inking an agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to streamline the process of identifying and deporting people the agency is targeting.
Rick Song, Persona’s co-founder and CEO, wrote in a statement posted to LinkedIn that Discord’s claims about Persona’s capabilities were not accurate, emphasizing that the company does offer on-device age verification.
“I’m fine if they don’t want to use us. I’m not okay with them publicly saying untrue things about our age assurance technologies to try to shift responsibility away from their own decisions,” he wrote. “Doing so further erodes trust.”
The backlash to the original policy and even the revised version came even though Vishnevskiy wrote that for “90%+ of users, nothing changes.”
Discord is able to proactively determine the ages of the vast majority of users by looking at account-level signals. Those include how long the account has existed, whether there is a payment method on file, the types of servers a user is in and general patterns of account activity, Vishnevskiy wrote. He emphasized the company does not read messages, analyze conversations or look at account content to estimate users ages.
For the minority of users whose ages Discord cannot determine, the company is now working to offer more options beyond face scanning and requesting an ID, including credit card verification. The company is going to “complete and expand” alternative options before rolling out the new system.
Users who choose not to verify their age will get to keep their account, servers, friends list, direct messages and voice chat, but will not be able to access age-restricted content or change certain default safety settings designed to protect teens, Vishnevskiy wrote.
Discord promised users it will publish a detailed post explaining how its automatic age determination systems work and will document every verification vendor and their practices on its website.
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