Discord's age checks are back - and they're landing here too, law or no law

Here's the part that matters most: Discord's new age verification isn't limited to the countries where a law forces it. The company is rolling it out globally, so it's reaching every clan server, school group and Friday-night squad in our region too.

Quick recap. Back in February, Discord announced that every account would get a "teen-appropriate experience" by default - sensitive content blurred, age-gated channels locked - and that the way out was sending a photo of your ID or a video of your face to a third-party verification service. The backlash was loud and fully deserved, and Discord put the whole thing on hold.

Now it's back, and to be fair, it's a different version. Co-founder and CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy calls it the most privacy-preserving approach they could build, and he admits it's "rightfully" controversial. According to the company, more than 90% of users won't have to do anything, because a model estimates who's an adult from signals like account age, the servers you're in and the games you play. Anyone it can't confidently place as an adult gets new options: a credit card check, verification through Apple Pay, Google Play or Google Wallet, or AgeKey, which Discord says doesn't share personal data. ID scans and face videos stay on the list, but they're no longer the only door.

That's a real step forward. I still have two problems with it.

First, the payment-based options sound simpler than they are for a lot of people here. Plenty of players, especially younger adults, pay for everything with a debit card from their bank or with prepaid top-ups, and never set up a credit card, Apple Pay or Google Wallet. For them, those routes only help if the right card and account are already in place - otherwise it's AgeKey or back to the ID photo.

Second, "a model decides from your behaviour" is exactly the sort of thing that tends to misfire. Someone who's been on Discord for eight years but mostly just sits in voice chat on a couple of small servers could easily get flagged as a teenager. We don't yet know how often that happens or how fast an appeal gets resolved.

One side note, because it's been doing the rounds: reports say FanDuel ads showed up on Discord. Discord describes this as a limited test in the United States, says its policies still ban ads for casinos and sportsbooks, and says it uses age signals to keep these ads away from teens. There's also an opt-out under Settings > Data and Privacy > Sponsored Content > "Real Money Gaming". So players in our region won't be seeing betting ads because of this. It's still a slightly awkward pairing next to a big push on protecting minors, but it's a US ad experiment, not a change that lands here.

My take: if you're an adult and Discord asks you to verify, try the Apple Pay, Google or AgeKey options first before you hand over a photo of your ID. And if you run a community server here, it's worth telling your members what's coming before half of them suddenly find their channels locked.

Image: Brian Wong / CC BY-SA 2.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gaming_PC-Setup_-_Astaroth-_The_Completed_System.jpg