Discord postpones global launch of age verification system

Discord has postponed the launch of its age verification system at a global level to have more time to prepare alternatives to the verification options already announced, and to provide transparency on service providers and on the operation of automatic age estimation systems.

The online communication platform will maintain the new age verification system in those countries where it is required by law, such as the United Kingdom and Australia, but the global expansion that was initially going to occur in March has finally been postponed to the second half of 2026.

This change responds to the criticism that Discord has received from users. Although they do not change their plans, they have modified the way in which they are going to implement them, since they consider that they have not been clear enough when explaining the verification system.

In a post on his official Discord blog, Technical Director Stanislav Vishnevskiy acknowledges that they already knew that the announcement of this system was going to be “controversial”, but assures that it is necessary to “keep the Discord experience completely unchanged for the vast majority of people and at the same time ensure an age-appropriate experience for everyone.

The proposed system implements a set of default settings for all usersmore restrictive and with a higher level of privacy. Discord will require age verification to change adult user settings and access certain content.

Additionally, you will request age verification to be able to access more channels and have more communication options. That is, the new system seeks to protect adolescent users, between 13 and 17 years old, and will ask adults to confirm that they are of the appropriate age to access other content.

To do this, users will be able to choose the method you prefer to followsuch as a video selfie or an official identification document. A system will also be deployed in the background that will determine if the account belongs to an adult.

In response to complaints from some users who thought that facial scanning and uploading of identity documents would be mandatory, Vishnevskiy assures that this “is not going to happen”, and even points out that “more than 90 percent of users will never need to verify their age to continue using Discord exactly as they do today,” as a result of automated systems.

However, and given that the implementation will continue, the technical director has detailed that they are preparing other options so that users have more alternatives to verify their age, such as a credit cardand that before the global launch they will offer more explanations about the operation of the automated systems and the verification service providers.

They will also include the number of users who have been requested to verify in their transparency reports, although Vishnevskiy clarifies that the age of the users will be private and that not even they will have access to this data. They are also preparing an optional spoiler channel so that heavier topics, not necessarily adult ones, can be covered without having to deal with the age restriction.