Discord to start assuming all users are underage unless they prove otherwise
- Reference: 1770669750
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2026/02/09/discord_demands_id_proof_of_age/
- Source link:
Starting with a phased rollout in early March, Discord is going to put all new and existing users into a teen-appropriate experience by default, the company [1]said on Monday. That means communication restrictions, limits on access to age-gated spaces, and content filtering will be switched on by default regardless of a user's actual age - and loosening those settings will generally require proving you're not a minor.
"Rolling out teen-by-default settings globally builds on Discord's existing safety architecture, giving teens strong protections while allowing verified adults flexibility," Discord global head of product policy Savannah Badalich said in the company's announcement. "Nowhere is our safety work more important than when it comes to teen users."
[2]
For adults, regaining access to their chosen Discord spaces may mean handing over a copy of ID to one of the company's age verification vendors, or uploading a video selfie that will be used for age estimation. Unless Discord's background age-inference model decides you're an adult.
[3]
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"Discord will implement its age inference model, a new system that runs in the background to help determine whether an account belongs to an adult, without always requiring users to verify their age," the company said.
[5]OpenAI will try to guess your age before ChatGPT gets spicy
[6]Remote ID verification tech is often biased, bungling, and no good on its own
[7]Study finds radical nutjobs targeting gamers via Discord, Twitch, Steam
[8]Selfie-based authentication raises eyebrows among infosec experts
Discord users worried about handing over their personal information to Discord to prove they're old enough to chat with other adults are right to be worried. As noted above, a third-party customer service provider used by Discord was compromised last October, and attackers accessed images from [9]roughly 70,000 government ID scans that users had submitted as part of age-verification processes.
The language in Monday's announcement is vague about how data related to ID verification is processed and stored, stating that "identity documents submitted to our vendor partners are deleted quickly" without getting specific about who is doing the deletion and how soon. As for video selfies, Discord said that those "never leave a user's device."
Video selfies seem like the better privacy choice based on that explanation, but it's worth pointing out that Discord might ask for multiple forms of identification "if more information is needed to assign an age group."
[10]
Hopefully, you look your age, assuming this latest generation of Discord age-verification algorithms can't be [11]fooled by a video game .
Discord didn't respond to questions for this story. ®
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[1] https://discord.com/press-releases/discord-launches-teen-by-default-settings-globally
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aYpnEh0_fDDBui0S-G_-FQAAAkg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aYpnEh0_fDDBui0S-G_-FQAAAkg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aYpnEh0_fDDBui0S-G_-FQAAAkg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/21/openai_bets_on_age_prediction/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/remote_identity_verification_biased/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/04/gaming_platforms_radical_recruitment/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/08/selfie_authentication_security/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/09/discord_photo_ids_leaked/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aYpnEh0_fDDBui0S-G_-FQAAAkg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/31/banning_vpns_to_protect_kids/
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Hitting them where it hurts would appear to be our only option. If they think my payment for Nitro isn't good enough to prove I'm a grown up and ask me for ID, then an alternative will be found for many communities.
Nitro cancelled. I'm sure the new corporate management is keen to see how many others are doing the same.
Just did after five years.
Hell No
I feel the discordant vibes of my cognitive dissonance manifested by the dispair of sharing my passport with a disreputable donkey.
Re: Hell No
Simple. Perform a spelling and grammar analysis - a good one, not the MS office rubbish - on the text written. That should easily isolate the more, er, mature of us.
We could call the policy something snappy: Can't spell? Can't play!
Won't help protect anyone
All this will do is force any adult flagged by the system to either submit ID or go through their nebulous "age recognition" video selfie, both of which may actually store info if you're in the UK according to [1]their own support page .
"Important: If you're located in the UK, you may be part of an experiment where your information will be processed by an age-assurance vendor, Persona. The information you submit will be temporarily stored for up to 7 days, then deleted. For ID document verification, all details are blurred except your photo and date of birth, so only what's truly needed for age verification is used."
There is no way to opt out of this, or know whether you've been opted in. There's equally no chance to see whether your personal data has actually been deleted, as tens of thousands of users found out last year after data was leaked online showing their IDs hadn't been deleted. Discord doesn't offer other methods of verification allowed under the UK's Online Safety Censorship Act, such as MVNO checks (UK mobile operators have been required for years to place adult web filters on mobile data connections unless users submit ID), Open Banking (theoretically more private as they can simply provide a yes/no to whether the person is of the required age) or credit card checks (a one-off transaction of a small nominal amount that gets refunded, since you must be 18 to get a credit card in the UK).
Those who disagree with the system will find ways around it when these checks inevitably become mandatory to use the service at all, or give up on using it altogether - which I suspect would please governments a lot more than the vague idea of their citizens being "safe".
[1] https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/33362401287959-What-s-Changing-for-UK-and-Australian-Users
Get each user to talk into their mic for 5 seconds.
If its squeaks its a child.
Seriously though, they must have so much metadata to infer my age from voice chats, the channels I'm in, how I type, the way I use Discord itself etc. that they cannot seriously ask me to 'prove' I am not a child.
Whats the upshot? Any swearing gets censored?
If your deeply worried about this, you should cancel your Nitro right now.