Why You Probably Won't Have to Verify Your Age With Discord After All

Discord age verification is officially here. As TechCrunch reports, the company will no longer take you at your word when it comes to how old you are, no matter where you happen to be using the app. Only verified adults can use Discord without restrictions; anyone under the age of 18 will be able to continue chatting on the platform, but with certain limitations.

This change didn't come out of nowhere. Discord originally planned to roll out age verification en masse back in March, but the company quickly pivoted following backlash to its February announcement. That initial news lit the internet up with controversy, as it seemed that Discord was asking all users to upload a government ID to use the service as intended. While the company's plans were a bit more nuanced than that, the criticisms did force Discord to adjust how it planned to approach age verification. Now, those rules are officially here, but the vast majority of users likely won't even notice anything has changed.

How Discord's age verification now works

The first step, currently rolling out, is to place all users into an "age group." This entire process happens automatically, and requires zero intervention from users—including uploading IDs or other means of authentication. Discord will lconsider a series of identifiers to determine your age group, including how old your account is and what servers you're a part of. The company says it does not look at messages, calls, or content to make these determinations. Based on this initial analysis, you'll be placed into one of three categories:

• Adult Age Group: Discord has determined you are 18 or older and can use the platform without limits.

• Teen Age Group: Discord has determined you are between 13 and 17 years old. You can continue using Discord with "protections," while adult content and settings are no longer available.

• Unconfirmed: Discord cannot determine your age group, and you now have the same limitations as the Teen Age Group. New accounts also fall under this category until Discord's AI gathers enough data to make a determination.

Discord is adamant that the vast majority of users will not have to verify their ages via anything other than this automatic method—the company says more than 90% of users will not be asked to confirm their age, which suggests Discord is quite confident in its models. If you fall into the latter two categories but you are in fact 18 or older, you can still verify your true age with Discord. Following the backlash to Discord's initial plans, you have a number of options for how to verify yourself, including:

• Credit Cards: Discord uses Stripe to check your credit card number to verify that an adult owns that card. Discord says it never sees your number.

• App Stores: Depending on your platform, you can let Apple or Google Play share your age range with Discord to verify your age. Your birthday isn't shared.

• Google Wallet: Discord can confirm your age using the pass set up in your Google Wallet, which is based on information from your passport.

• AgeKey: An independent age verification tool you can use with other services, not just Discord.

Discord also still allows you to verify your age with either an ID scan or a "facial age estimation" (i.e., uploading a video selfie for an AI to determine your age). Discord says that it only receives your age from these data points: If you choose to scan your ID, the other data it contains is immediately deleted, while the selfie video never leaves your device.

What limits do Teen Age Group accounts have on Discord?

If you aren't 18, your account may face some changes due to this new policy. Discord says messages from non-friends now head to your message requests inbox by default, so you must review each manually. Only adult accounts can turn this setting off. Discord will also send you an alert before you accept a friend request from someone you have no mutuals with.

While using Discord, you won't be able to see "sensitive" images; which images are sensitive is decided by the platform's sensitive content filters. You also won't be able to access age-restricted servers or channels, and you won't be able to run commands with age-restricted bots.

Age verification systems are fallible

While this policy is certainly an improvement over the one presented in Discord's February announcement, it obviously isn't perfect. Discord itself admits that its automated system may get it wrong, meaning that teens may be labeled as adults, or vice versa. Discord may force users 18 years or older to verify their identities when they never needed to before, which will especially sting for users who care deeply about their personal privacy.

But it isn't just privacy-minded individuals who should be concerned. Age verification has been a bit of a disaster for several of the companies that have started rolling it out. Roblox got into hot water after its age verification proved shockingly easy to bypass, letting kids continue to use the platform without limits. Meanwhile, IDscan.net lost over 150 million driver's licenses in a breach this month. Discord doesn't use IDscan.net, and instead relies on Veratad for its ID scan services—but a previous third-party partner, 5CA, was breached last year, exposing ID images.

It's great that Discord has presented some alternative methods of verification, but anyone who chooses to verify via documentation still must send their government ID to a third-party party. Discord says your ID data is deleted once verification is complete, but the whole endeavor requires a lot of trust. All it takes is one weak link in the chain to risk exposing sensitive user records, all in the name of accessing age-restricted features. Yet this appears to be the new norm: More and more states are passing laws requiring age verification for at least some adult content on the web, while countries around the world are beginning to pass social media bans or set limits for minors. It doesn't seem like the unrestricted internet of the past will be around for much longer. Hopefully we don't end up compromising privacy and security in the process of keeping younger users safe.