Breaking News: Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month (Verge)

I get the feeling this will just kill Discord and within a few year people will migrate to a new platform that has way less rules.

That's been a consistent cycle throughout the Internet's brief history.

What’s the alternative?

Nah, I meant simple party voice chat. It was convenient for that.

Good ol ventrillo

Discord has already started leaking the average user’s verification ID videos

My 13 year old came in to tell me this. I said well sorry youll have to find a different source for naked anime girls.

I don't care either way on this. I think the only people raging are the groomers.

You only have to verify to exit teen mode, and thats lnly required for....

When You Must Verify Your Age:

Accessing Restricted Areas: To view servers or channels designated for adults.

Viewing Sensitive Content: To unblur images or media flagged by Discord's filters.

Changing Security Settings: To disable default "teen" settings, such as Message Request filters.

Using Specific Features: To speak in Stage channels. 


So yea anyone upset they have to verify to look at adult content is a fricking creep.

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So yea anyone upset they have to verify to look at adult content is a fricking creep.

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yeah, i can see that point of view and agree to some extent. however, major corporations have been known to have pretty significant data leaks. that can't be glossed over.


eta: a Discord staffer cleared some things up in a Reddit thread. he's the quote:

https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/1r05vkj/discord_will_require_a_face_scan_or_id_for_full/

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Tl;dr: The vast majority of adults will never have to interact with our age assurance systems and their experience won't change, because we know Discord and how people use it, so we're designing to respect privacy and deliver a safer experience while minimizing friction for adults.

Hey folks –

I’ve been on Discord since very early 2016 and actually joined the company in 2017. Safety is one of my areas, so today’s announcement on our blog is something I’ve been pretty involved with. I’ve always cared about Discord's approach to privacy (E2EE for A/V was another of my projects here), so I figured I’d add some more context to today's news.

I can say confidently that the vast majority of people will never see age verification. I say this because we launched age assurance in the UK and Australia in 2025, and we have some pretty good data on this now. The idea here is that we can pre-identify most adults based on what we already know (not including your messages!), and that looks to get us pretty far here. No face scans, no IDs, for the vast majority of adults.

And if you are one of the smaller subset of folks that we can't definitively pre-identify, then still, you only have to do it if you're accessing age-restricted servers or channels, or changing certain settings. That's really not most users. (Altho... might be more Redditors, tbh.)

Last, I know that there is concern about privacy and data leaks. That's a real concern. The selfie system is built purely client-side, it never leaves your device, and we did that intentionally. That'll work for a bunch of users who aren't pre-identified as adults. But if you do end up in the ID bucket, then yeah, you're right that has some risk. We're doing what we can to minimize this by working with our range of partners (who are different partners than the data leak you read about), and if it's any help, we learned a lot internally from the last issue. But I get if that doesn't necessarily inspire more confidence.

Anyway, we’ll be sharing more next month as we get closer to the global roll out about the system, including the technology behind it in March. I honestly wouldn't be happy if we didn't build something good and I am excited about what we’re launching, but please let us know what you think when we share more details.

And I really appreciate everybody's feedback here today. We’re definitely reading it!

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That’s because most gamers don’t have kids. I’ve got three and I’m thrilled with the protections.

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Not saying I disagree with your statement but I was wondering how true this is since this isn't the 80s/90s anymore. Ai replied:

Approximately 48% of gamers are parents, with over three-quarters of U.S. households containing at least one gamer. Gaming is a common family activity, as 72%–74% of parent gamers play with their children, and 57% of parents with children under 18 play with them at least weekly. The average age of a gamer is 33, highlighting a large population of gaming parents.

Generational Breakdown of Age of a Gamer(US):
Gen Z (11–26): 28%
Millennials (27–42): 25%
Gen X (43–58): 18%
Boomers (59–77): 18%

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Gen Z (11–26): 28%
Millennials (27–42): 25%
Gen X (43–58): 18%
Boomers (59–77): 18%

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Mobile games don’t count. Stop taking those into account and it’s like 45% millennial, 30% Gen Z, 20% Gen X and 5% Boomers