Discord will require global age verification through a face scan or ID for full access
Discord has confirmed it will begin rolling out mandatory global age verification in March for both new and existing users. By default, accounts will be placed in a teen appropriate experience unless the user can verify they are an adult. Discord says its age inference model can confirm many adults without extra steps using signals like account tenure, device information, activity data, and aggregated trends across Discord communities, without using private messages or message content.
Users who are not verified as adults will be blocked from age restricted servers and channels and will not be able to speak in livestream style stage channels. Discord will also apply filters to content it detects as graphic or sensitive, show warning prompts for friend requests from unfamiliar users, and route direct messages from unknown contacts into a separate inbox.
Direct messages and unrestricted servers will continue to work, but age restricted areas will stay locked until verification, including servers a user previously had access to, which Discord says will be hidden behind a black screen. The company positions this rollout as part of wider changes responding to international legal and child safety standards. Earlier regional rollouts led to bypass attempts, which Discord says it has addressed, and ongoing improvements are planned. Discord also plans to launch a Teen Council to inform future safety features for younger users.
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- Freemium
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Related news
External links
- Discord Launches Teen-by-Default Settings GloballyDiscord Blog • Official source
- Discord announces age-verification measures to start in MarchUSA TODAY
- Discord will soon require age verification to access adult contentEngadget
- Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month The Verge
- Discord requiring face scan or ID for full accessThe Hill
Comments
i guess my generation (and older ones, too) failed modern-days children and teens. like, genuinely, we failed. we have had to take responsibility, teach 'em media/internet literacy at home + school, create dedicated kid/teen-only places (like educational/game forums, remember?), we (as generation overall) just decided to close our eyes. and now we've got more censorship, pseudo-care for children (most of the time at least, some of the initiatives are cool tho) as an excuse to harvest sensitive data, and a new wave of sex-negativity instead of sex-education. wow. maybe it's unpleasant to hear, but many adults (25+) are at least somewhat responsible for what's happening (including me, ofc.) right now. damn.
Just a half-measure to protect kids that's going to be more annoying for everyone else.
When I ran a Minecraft server the Discord server had 8,000 members and it was a constant struggle to enforce our "Keep it kid-friendly" rule - especially due to a certain rainbow demographic. Everything from casually talking about how many inches they like to asking ages and wanting to go to DMs.
I say give admins a "This person is a predator" button and that person gets a neat sex offender-type badge next to their name.
"certain rainbow demographic" lolz
I'm glad I made an Element account last year. Time to move on.
Gee, screwing up ones own business just to appeal to short term trends, but I thought capitalist with a profit motive always thought logically? s/
This kinda why we need the open source movement, even without a massive monopoly problem, corporations do not always behave in a logical manner, and without competition this gets worse, despite the their extremism the open source movement creates a source of competition where there is none. We need open source!
Finally a reason to ditch the forum-killer platform that host too many online communities! Or just fake the Face Recognition thanks to Garry's Mod...
Honestly I tried my best not to use this platform while gaming with the boys. We're using Steam built-in it works well except a few times where it was buggy. We might host a TeamSpeak server soon to be more between us.
I already moved to TeamSpeak 3, hosting our own community server and it costs nothing ;)
Sadly the alternative Element is a honeypot, can't trust a protocol (Matrix) made by an Israeli company, most likely part of Mossad. Right now I will have to switch to Jami until I find a better alternative.
Please provide receipts. Element is FOSS, E2EE, and self-hostable... seems reasonable they could be dispersing meta-data but discord is doing that in addition to the content
Based on their history, nobody should trust anything made by Israel. If you do... well, good luck.
So do not use any cloud or AI tech. Where do you think most of it is developed?
In all honesty I will whip out my McLovin style ID card, they can't know it is not me tho :P