Discord’s new age verification requirement sucks

I like Discord as an idea. I don’t all the time like Discord’s insurance policies—most at the moment, its upcoming worldwide age verification requirement. The method sucks.

I perceive the issue. Unfiltered, the web will not be a secure place for youths. Discord is rightfully trying to deal with predators, hazardous content material, and different risks for minors by altering the default person expertise to at least one that’s “teen applicable.”

However Discord will put adults in danger when this coverage rolls out in early March.

To take away stricter filters, age-gating, and decreased entry to Discord options, these of authorized age should enable a facial scan or add authorities ID. However whereas Discord assures full information security and privateness—claiming no video selfies will likely be saved, nor identification documentation held long-term—it already misplaced pictures of 70,000 authorities IDs in October 2025 to hackers, months after first rolling out this coverage to the UK and Australia in April 2025.

Sure, adults can stay on the default teen restrictions to keep away from this hazard. Sure, Discord is seemingly already making an attempt to deal with the issues, although its media crew nonetheless had not responded to me by this text’s press time. On Reddit, Discord workers member u/discord_zorkian stated “the overwhelming majority of individuals won’t ever see age verification,” because the system will as a substitute decide grownup or teen standing by way of utilization patterns—the small print of which stay opaque. (Not regarding from a privateness standpoint in any respect.)

If there’s a miscalibration, then an account proprietor can undergo the formal identification course of. u/discord_zorkian additionally says that Discord will use totally different identification verification companions than the one which had the information breach.

For me, this extra data nonetheless leaves open many questions—and doubts.

Among the many largest: First, everyone knows any firm can undergo information breaches. Bigger and bigger sources have gotten required to correctly safe information, and few companies have the true scale for that.

Second, we don’t know but if age verification will likely be essential to handle a household group—and if household heart settings will stay toothless. Presently, a “youngster” account can terminate the connection to a “mother or father” account, which additionally removes account limitations made by the guardian. Should you’re managing your youngsters’ expertise on Discord, you might not have a alternative about age verification.

Third, I’m additionally not satisfied that these modifications correctly defend minors. Content material has stronger default limitations—filtering and age-gating robotically blur or block delicate messages and channels. Verification of authorized age is required for entry. Nonetheless, contact isn’t as locked down. For customers seemingly unknown to a teen account, Discord will route their direct messages to a separate inbox, and badge buddy requests with a warning. No different filters have been introduced presently, like age restrictions. Discord has additionally but to say any capability for guardians to totally block such requests on behalf of their youngsters.

(And once more, if the connection to a parental account could be voluntarily severed by the teenager, that doesn’t matter a lot anyway.)

I agree Discord ought to take measures to higher defend youngsters on its platform—and admittedly, ought to have finished it a lot sooner than this timeline. However many holes nonetheless appear to exist on this new framework. For instance, how will Discord deal with grownup accounts that reveals a constant behavior of initiating personal contact with teen accounts? How will Discord stability verification and privateness in order that, say, somebody doesn’t create a boatload of “grownup” accounts and promote them—however the “no information stored” coverage is upheld?

Security shouldn’t be a zero-sum sport, a lot much less a spectacularly messy one. However that’s what Discord’s first massive step right here seems like. Shield the adults, expose the kids. Partially safeguard these teenagers, depart their elders weak.

This ain’t it. Not but.