Earlier this week, Discord introduced plans to formally roll out age-verification protocols beginning in March. Ostensibly, that is meant to guard youthful customers from inappropriate content material or predatory people. Now, Discord has issued additional clarifications in regards to the new pointers whereas making an attempt to persuade most of its customers that they will not be tremendously affected by the adjustments.
In a prolonged message posted to X, Discord states that the “overwhelming majority of individuals can proceed utilizing Discord precisely as they do right now, with out ever being requested to verify their age.” Based on the corporate, it could verify the age of its grownup customers “utilizing data we have already got.” Customers will solely must show they’re an grownup to succeed in age-restricted servers and channels, or to alter the protection settings on their account.
We’ve seen some questions on our age assurance replace and we need to share extra readability. We all know how vital these adjustments are to our group.
Right here’s what we would like you to know:
‣‣‣ 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗱 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘁𝗲 𝗮… https://t.co/IdjRn06c5A— Discord (@discord) February 10, 2026
Discord additionally shared assurances that facial scans stay on customers’ gadgets, slightly than on Discord’s servers. The corporate states that IDs will solely be used to confirm age earlier than being deleted, and guarantees that “your id is rarely related along with your account.”
Nonetheless, privacy-minded people could also be skeptical after Discord disclosed that 70,000 customers’ authorities IDs have been uncovered throughout a hack on a third-party vendor that was employed to carry out age-verification checks. Cyber Security News studies that that the precise variety of affected customers whose IDs have been stolen could also be as excessive as “5.5 million distinctive customers throughout 8.4 million assist tickets.”
Moreover, Discord notes that its new content material security filters have been applied to “assist cut back publicity to sure classes of probably delicate image-based media, particularly for teenagers.” The Mature Sexual Media Filter and Graphic Media Filter might be used to scan for that content material, however Discord claims their attain would not lengthen to textual content messages, voice, or calls.
Discord examined a few of these options in the UK and Australia final yr. Some customers even tricked the platform’s facial scans by using Dying Stranding 2’s photograph mode. Discord has subsequently claimed that this workaround has now been handled.