Discord Postpones Age Verification Rollout After Backlash

Discord, nan celebrated level for gamers to pass online, is postponing its arguable property verification argumentation aft swift backlash from users concerned astir their privacy.

The world rollout of nan strategy is now delayed to nan 2nd half of 2026, Discord’s Chief Technology Officer and co-founder Stanislav Vishnevskiy wrote successful a Tuesday blog post acknowledging that nan institution “missed nan mark.”

“Many of you are worried that this is conscionable different Big Tech institution uncovering caller ways to cod your individual data. That we’re creating a problem to warrant invasive solutions,” Vishnevskiy wrote. “I get that skepticism. It’s earned, not conscionable toward us, but toward nan full tech industry. But that’s not what we’re doing.”

Discord, which says it has much than 200 cardinal progressive users, will proceed to meet circumstantial ineligible obligations it has for property verification of users, nan institution said, but nan world description of property verification will only travel aft it makes changes to nan first argumentation it laid retired successful early February.

The company announced earlier this period that it would rotation retired an property verification argumentation successful March that would see look scanning aliases requests for an ID upload for users it could not find were adults. This drew swift ire from users. Many pointed to a recent information breach of a third-party supplier Discord worked pinch that exposed authorities ID photos of up to 70,000 Discord users.

Vishnevskiy referenced nan information breach successful nan blog post, penning that he understood that incident added to users’ skepticism, but he emphasized nan institution nary longer useful pinch that vendor and has rigorous standards for its partners.

“Every vendor we activity pinch goes done a information and privateness reappraisal earlier integration,” he wrote. “That includes contractual limits connected information use, and strict retention and deletion requirements. Information submitted for property verification is stored only for nan minimum clip necessary, which successful astir cases intends it’s deleted immediately. If a vendor doesn’t pass, we don’t activity pinch them.”

One of nan vendors that didn’t meet nan people was Persona, an personality verification service. Vishnevskiy said Discord ran a constricted trial pinch Persona successful nan United Kingdom only successful January. The institution was not capable to meet Discord’s modular for facial property estimation, Vishnevskiy wrote, which stipulates that nan estimation “must beryllium performed wholly on-device, meaning your biometric information ne'er leaves your phone.”

The institution distanced itself from Persona aft that narration besides became nan taxable of online criticism. Persona is backed by nan task superior patient Founders Fund, which is tally by Palantir Technologies co-founder Peter Thiel. Thiel and Palantir are often criticized for of nan company’s partnerships pinch nan authorities for surveillance purposes, pinch Palantir precocious inking an statement pinch U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to streamline nan process of identifying and deporting group nan agency is targeting.

Rick Song, Persona’s co-founder and CEO, wrote successful a statement posted to LinkedIn that Discord’s claims astir Persona’s capabilities were not accurate, emphasizing that nan institution does connection on-device property verification.

“I’m good if they don’t want to usage us. I’m not okay pinch them publically saying untrue things astir our property assurance technologies to effort to displacement work distant from their ain decisions,” he wrote. “Doing truthful further erodes trust.”

The backlash to nan original argumentation and moreover nan revised type came moreover though Vishnevskiy wrote that for “90%+ of users, thing changes.”

Discord is capable to proactively find nan ages of nan immense mostly of users by looking astatine account-level signals. Those see really agelong nan relationship has existed, whether location is simply a costs method connected file, nan types of servers a personification is successful and wide patterns of relationship activity, Vishnevskiy wrote. He emphasized nan institution does not publication messages, analyse conversations aliases look astatine relationship contented to estimate users ages.

For nan number of users whose ages Discord cannot determine, nan institution is now moving to connection much options beyond look scanning and requesting an ID, including in installments paper verification. The institution is going to “complete and expand” replacement options earlier rolling retired nan caller system.

Users who take not to verify their property will get to support their account, servers, friends list, nonstop messages and sound chat, but will not beryllium capable to entree age-restricted contented aliases alteration definite default information settings designed to protect teens, Vishnevskiy wrote.

Discord promised users it will people a elaborate station explaining really its automatic property determination systems activity and will archive each verification vendor and their practices connected its website.

Huamani writes for nan Associated Press.