I hate Discord with the intensity of a supernova falling into a black hole. I hate its ungainly profusion of tabs and voice channels. I regret its cybersecurity breaches. I resent that the PRs use it for every virtual press event. I’m furious that I have to download 12 updates whenever I remember to turn it on. I despise the feisty and cloying loading screen trivia and service messages. Show me the “empathy banana” again, you weird little gopher beetle. I’ll put you in the microwave.
I also dislike that Discord now assumes I’m “teen-by-default” and restricts my access appropriately unless I go through some kind of age verification process, though I can understand the rationale, given some of the awful things that have happened via Discord. Already in play across the UK and Australia, this new “age-assured” approach is now being rolled out worldwide to create “a safer and more inclusive experience for users over the age of 13”. Rather unnervingly, Discord’s new age verification system includes an “inference model, a new system that runs in the background to help determine whether an account belongs to an adult, without always requiring users to verify their age.”
The “teen-by-default” strategy follows several major reported incidents of child grooming, sexual abuse and exploitation on Discord. In June 2023, NBC News disclosed 35 cases of adults being charged with “kidnapping, grooming, or sexual assault” that involved Discord, together with 165 cases of prosecution for sharing child sexual exploitation material on the platform.
In March 2024, The Washington Post, Wired, Der Spiegel, and Recorder published an investigation of Discord channel 764, which has been used to orchestrate sexual abuse and murder, with links to police cases worldwide; Discord subsequently removed over 34,000 accounts associated with the group. Last year, a US teenager took Discord to court for allegedly facilitating sexual exploitation.
These incidents aside, Discord are operating amid a climate of increased repression toward sexually explicit or themed material on digital platforms. Last year, payment processors initiated a crackdown on transactions of adult games on Steam and Itch. The crackdown is on-going, with some notable exceptions.
“Beginning with a phased global rollout to new and existing users in early March, users may be required to engage in an age-verification process to change certain settings or access sensitive content,” reads a company update posted today. “This includes age-restricted channels, servers, or commands and select message requests.
Here’s how the platform will work, going forward: “Discord users can choose to use facial age estimation or submit a form of identification to its vendor partners, with more options coming in the future. Additionally, Discord will implement its age inference model, a new system that runs in the background to help determine whether an account belongs to an adult, without always requiring users to verify their age. Some users may be asked to use multiple methods if more information is needed to assign an age group.”
Discord promise that they won’t be infringing on anybody’s privacy, while running any of these systems. In particular, they’re keen to reassure you that other users won’t be able to learn your age, by hacking the workings. They stipulate four “key privacy protections”, as below:
- On-device processing: Video selfies for facial age estimation never leave a user’s device.
- Quick deletion: Identity documents submitted to our vendor partners are deleted quickly— in most cases, immediately after age confirmation.
- Straightforward verification: In most cases, users complete the process once and their Discord experience adapts to their verified age group. Users may be asked to use multiple methods only when more information is needed to assign an age group.
- Private status: A user’s age verification status cannot be seen by other users.
Once you’ve verified your age, you’ll be able to see your assigned age group in your account settings. The platform “prompts users to age-assure only within Discord and currently does not send emails or text messages about its age assurance process or results”. You can also appeal against the result and retry the process.
Beginning early March, Discord will apply new default settings to all users. You’ll need to be “age assured” as an adult to unblur “sensitive content” (or turn the blurring feature off), access age-restricted channels, servers and app commands, or speak on stage in servers. DMs from people you “may not know” will be routed to a separate inbox limited to adult users, and you’ll get warning prompts when such people send you friend requests.
Alongside all this, Discord are recruiting a “Teen Council”, consisting of 10-12 teenagers who can “help ensure Discord understands – not assumes – what teens need, how they build meaningful connections, and what makes them feel safe and supported online.” If I were one of those Teen Council members, I’d probably start by asking how exactly this background “age inference” system works.
