Discord, the for gamers to communicate online, is postponing its controversial age verification policy after receiving swift backlash from users with concerns about their privacy.
The global rollout of the system is now delayed to the second half of 2026, Discord’s Chief Technology Officer and co-founder Stanislav Vishnevskiy wrote in a Tuesday acknowledging that the company 鈥渕issed the mark.鈥�
鈥淢any of you are worried that this is just another big tech company finding new ways to collect your personal data. That we鈥檙e creating a problem to justify invasive solutions,鈥� Vishnevskiy wrote. 鈥淚 get that skepticism. It鈥檚 earned, not just toward us, but toward the entire tech industry. But that鈥檚 not what we鈥檙e doing.鈥�
Discord, which says it has more than 200 million active users, will continue to meet specific legal obligations it has for age verification of users, the company said, but the global expansion of age verification will only come after it makes changes to the initial policy it laid out in early February.
The earlier this month that it would roll out an age verification policy in March that would include face scanning or requests for an ID upload for users it could not determine were adults. This drew swift ire from users. Many pointed to a of a third-party provider Discord worked with that exposed government ID photos of up to 70,000 Discord users.
Vishnevskiy referenced the security breach in the blog post, writing that he understood that incident added to users’ skepticism, but he emphasized the company no longer works with that vendor and has rigorous standards for its partners.
鈥淓very vendor we work with goes through a security and privacy review before integration,鈥� he wrote. 鈥淭hat 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鈥檚 deleted immediately. If a vendor doesn鈥檛 pass, we don鈥檛 work with them.鈥�
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 鈥渕ust be performed entirely on-device, meaning your biometric data never leaves your phone.鈥�
The company distanced itself from Persona after that relationship also became the . Persona is backed by the venture capital firm , which is run by by 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 to streamline the process of identifying and deporting people the agency is targeting.
The backlash to the original policy and even the revised version came even though Vishnevskiy wrote that for “90%+ of users, nothing changes.鈥�
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 鈥渃omplete and expand鈥� 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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