Discord pushes back global age verification rollout amid criticism,
promises transparency
[February 25, 2026] By
KAITLYN HUAMANI
Discord, the popular platform for gamers to communicate online, is
postponing its controversial age verification policy after receiving
swift backlash from users with concerns about their privacy.
The global rollout of the system is now delayed to the second half of
2026, Discord's Chief Technology Officer and co-founder Stanislav
Vishnevskiy wrote in a Tuesday blog post acknowledging that the company
“missed the mark.”
“Many of you are worried that this is just another big tech company
finding new ways to collect your personal data. That we’re creating a
problem to justify invasive solutions,” Vishnevskiy wrote. “I get that
skepticism. It’s earned, not just toward us, but toward the entire tech
industry. But that’s not what we’re doing.”
Discord, which says it has more than 200 million active users, will
continue to meet specific legal obligations it has for age verification
of users, the company said, but the global expansion of age verification
will only come after it makes changes to the initial policy it laid out
in early February.
The company announced earlier this month that it would roll out an age
verification policy in March that would include face scanning or
requests for an ID upload for users it could not determine were adults.
This drew swift ire from users. Many pointed to a recent security breach
of a third-party provider Discord worked with that exposed government ID
photos of up to 70,000 Discord users.
Vishnevskiy referenced the security breach in the blog post, writing
that he understood that incident added to users' skepticism, but he
emphasized the company no longer works with that vendor and has rigorous
standards for its partners.
“Every vendor we work with goes through a security and privacy review
before integration,” he wrote. “That includes contractual limits on data
use, and strict retention and deletion requirements. Information
submitted for age verification is stored only for the minimum time
necessary, which in most cases means it’s deleted immediately. If a
vendor doesn’t pass, we don’t work with them.”
One of the vendors that didn't meet the mark was Persona, an identity
verification service. Vishnevskiy said Discord ran a limited test with
Persona in the United Kingdom only in January. The company was not able
to meet Discord's standard for facial age estimation, Vishnevskiy wrote,
which stipulates that the estimation “must be performed entirely
on-device, meaning your biometric data never leaves your phone.”
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A Discord display stands at the company's booth at the Game
Developers Conference 2023, in San Francisco, March 22, 2023. (AP
Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
 The company distanced itself from
Persona after that relationship also became the subject of online
criticism. Persona is backed by the venture capital firm Founders
Fund, which is run by by Palantir Technologies co-founder Peter
Thiel. Thiel and Palantir are often criticized for of the company's
partnerships with the government for surveillance purposes, with
Palantir recently inking an agreement with U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement to streamline the process of identifying and
deporting people the agency is targeting.
The backlash to the original policy and even the revised version
came even though Vishnevskiy wrote that for "90%+ of users, nothing
changes.”
Discord is able to proactively determine the ages of the vast
majority of users by looking at account-level signals. Those include
how long the account has existed, whether there is a payment method
on file, the types of servers a user is in and general patterns of
account activity, Vishnevskiy wrote. He emphasized the company does
not read messages, analyze conversations or look at account content
to estimate users ages.
For the minority of users whose ages Discord cannot determine, the
company is now working to offer more options beyond face scanning
and requesting an ID, including credit card verification. The
company is going to “complete and expand” alternative options before
rolling out the new system.
Users who choose not to verify their age will get to keep their
account, servers, friends list, direct messages and voice chat, but
will not be able to access age-restricted content or change certain
default safety settings designed to protect teens, Vishnevskiy
wrote.
Discord promised users it will publish a detailed post explaining
how its automatic age determination systems work and will document
every verification vendor and their practices on its website.
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