Discord will begin rolling out age verification measures to all users from Wednesday, the community messaging platform has said. The move follows the company's decision to delay its age verification plans in February after backlash from users concerned that biometric scans and ID checks could jeopardise their privacy.
Discord CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy said in a blog post published Tuesday that age assurance "draws strong opinions and skepticism, especially when it involves sharing biometric information or a form of ID." He added that age assurance laws are expanding and that Discord has had to launch age assurance in other regions, including Brazil and Texas.
Vishnevskiy said more than 90% of Discord users will not have to verify their age. Instead, Discord will use existing account data to detect signals such as account tenure, device and activity data, and other usage patterns to determine whether a user belongs in the adult, teen or unconfirmed age group. The company said it does not estimate users' ages based on message content, profile data or demographic attributes.
In a separate technical blog post, Discord said its machine learning model has learned patterns to predict whether an account likely belongs to an adult or a teen. The company said it is not collecting new user data, and that local laws requiring age assurance in certain regions allowed it to train its model on reliably confirmed data linking user behaviour to age.
Users Discord is not confident are adults can still prove their age without a biometric or ID scan by appealing with a credit card or age group data from their Apple App Store or Google Play Store account. For confirmed adults, nothing about the platform will change. Teen accounts will automatically be blocked from accessing age-restricted servers or channels, message requests from non-friends will go to a separate inbox, and teens will get alerts when accepting friend requests from people they do not share mutual friends with.
Experts have warned that age checks can create new privacy and security issues as governments pass age verification requirements aimed at protecting children online.