Discord announces age verification system to roll out in march

[Noctosphere]

Discord announced on February 9 that they will implement an age verification system, which will require users to either scan their face, or scan a governmental ID.
Friendly reminder that back in october, a massive breach occured in discord where 70 000 users had their data leaked.
Source

 

[Bladexdsl]

just when you thought discord couldn't get any more worse. what do they think it is a fucking hook up app?!

 

[Daggot]

Teamspeak my beloved. I always knew Discord would go the way of Skype.

 

[DinohScene]

And thus the death of another platform has been ushered in.
See you all on the next one!

 

[SylverReZ]

Now people can go back to forums and not have to live with imposed restrictions on their freedoms. There's no good platform like Skype anymore, neither is TeamSpeak any better. Discord killed what made communities open.

 

[lightwo]

I hope that's going to push some communities away from exclusively using Discord.

On the flip side, it would be a tragedy if people at large accepted the measures as beneficial for child safety while blissfully ignoring their own privacy and safety. I can't wait to be surrounded by people who assume the worst out of anyone who doesn't comply with this bullshit...

 

[Noctosphere]

I hope that's going to push some communities away from exclusively using Discord.

On the flip side, it would be a tragedy if people at large accepted the measures as beneficial for child safety while blissfully ignoring their own privacy and safety. I can't wait to be surrounded by people who assume the worst out of anyone who doesn't comply with this bullshit...

Protecting children should NOT be Discord's responsibility. It should be the parent's to watch what their child are doing on internet and not let them roam mindlessly online.

 

[SDA]

As soon as I heard about this, I instinctively made two middle fingers. Yes, because Discord deserves them.

 

[Blythe93]

It's a shame to see how bloated Discord became over the years and age verification thingy is yet another unnecessary feature it needs. I understand the reasons behind it but still...

 

[SylverReZ]

Protecting children should NOT be Discord's responsibility. It should be the parent's to watch what their child are doing on internet and not let them roam mindlessly online.

If I was a parent of my own child, I would wait until they reached adulthood to use the internet, because it's not safe. Restrictions from social media companies do more harm than good; they're not babysitters, and there's going to be ways to circumvent them, no matter how effective they are.

 

[IceBlazeWinters]

this is all about control and nothing about "protecting the children"

BUT discord is already suffering over this

so many people have canceled nitro that it broke the system and now there's issues with the system processing cancellations

 

[Ondrashek06]

Now people can go back to forums and not have to live with imposed restrictions on their freedoms. There's no good platform like Skype anymore, neither is TeamSpeak any better. Discord killed what made communities open.

If only... It would be *amazing* if we went back to actual forums, but this same thing happened with Roblox and NOTHING happened besides a lot of whining - almost no one stopped using the platform and went to something like Polytoria instead.

 

[ZeroT21]

Discord itself is optional

 

[Noctosphere]

this is all about control and nothing about "protecting the children"

BUT discord is already suffering over this

so many people have canceled nitro that it broke the system and now there's issues with the system processing cancellations

There are two ways to crash a system
Either you crash Steam because your game is way too popular
Or what you just said
"We are not the same"

 

[Armadillo]

Discord won't turn back from this, this is just rolling out what they put in the UK worldwide, Discord is just getting ahead of the regulations coming in other countries. Everyone is following their orders and running the same script and apparently all deciding at the same time we need age verification.

It won't get pushed back, at least judging from here (UK) and Australia, "think of the children" to slip surveillance in the back door is popular. Parents are a big voting group and they want the government to parent their children, using the wealth of parental controls is too much effort for them.

 

[Ondrashek06]

Discord won't turn back from this, this is just rolling out what they put in the UK worldwide, Discord is just getting ahead of the regulations coming in other countries. Everyone is following their orders and running the same script and apparently all deciding at the same time we need age verification.

It won't get pushed back, at least judging from here (UK) and Australia, "think of the children" to slip surveillance in the back door is popular. Parents are a big voting group and they want the government to parent their children, using the wealth of parental controls is too much effort for them.

Exactly, this is the inconvenient truth. They've already made up their minds about it, and no amount of backlash will likely get them to change or revert it.

 

[Noctosphere]

Exactly, this is the inconvenient truth. They've already made up their minds about it, and no amount of backlash will likely get them to change or revert it.

The only thing that could actually reverse this/change this, is if governments realise how their laws make no sense. In Quebec, I heard of a way that could keep the privacy of everybody as well as "confirning the aduthood" of an individual.
Basically, it's going to a place where they sell alcohol, gambling, cigs, etc. anything they might ask for an ID to confirm your age. You go there and they give you a QR code (not linked to you in any ways), that basically says "this person is an adult in this country" and could be used to subscribe on any plateform that requires age verification.
Of course, this can be bypassed with "that adult friend of the group", but let's face it, alcohol and cigs is also bypassed the same way. At this point, again, it's up to the parents to do their job.

 

[Marc_LFD]

They're always on about "protecting the children," but they never actually protect children. It's to spy and abuse people's privacy.

Post automatically merged: Feb 10, 2026

Discord won't turn back from this, this is just rolling out what they put in the UK worldwide, Discord is just getting ahead of the regulations coming in other countries. Everyone is following their orders and running the same script and apparently all deciding at the same time we need age verification.

It won't get pushed back, at least judging from here (UK) and Australia, "think of the children" to slip surveillance in the back door is popular. Parents are a big voting group and they want the government to parent their children, using the wealth of parental controls is too much effort for them.

Exactly.

I'm not giving social media websites or p0rn websites my ID or credit card info, just avoid or completely delete the account. F Discord for this bs.

 

[lightwo]

Discord won't turn back from this, this is just rolling out what they put in the UK worldwide, Discord is just getting ahead of the regulations coming in other countries. Everyone is following their orders and running the same script and apparently all deciding at the same time we need age verification.

It won't get pushed back, at least judging from here (UK) and Australia, "think of the children" to slip surveillance in the back door is popular. Parents are a big voting group and they want the government to parent their children, using the wealth of parental controls is too much effort for them.

In other words, governments are benefiting from the idiocy of today's parents. Either that, or both the governments and the parents are too stupid to realise the greater implications, and agree because the summarised version sounds good.

Honestly, what entity wouldn't benefit from this? The society is broken on so many levels that fucking people over is almost always successfully spun into something the majority agrees to.

It's relatively easy to protest a scummy product or service where the effects only span across a niche user base, but this is something so major that many puppet politicians from all around the world are fulfilling orders to enforce this everywhere. It effects all walks of life, and the "user base" of "the entire fucking planet" is way too broad to collectively protest against this.


But on the bright side, the only news here is that a major chat platform decided to take the easy way out and roll out age verification everywhere instead of adding more regions to the list. There's no word on other services doing the same. At this point, let's all hope that it isn't the start of a domino effect (or accelerates the age verification hell).

 

[DragonMals]

I was going to submit this exact news, but someone already beat me to it. I still think this is outlandish, but I'll wait until I see on the app on what they personally mean by this. If this is something that impacts my experience for someone who doesn't even engage in 18+ content or anything like that, then I don't even know what to do at this point. There's no viable alternatives, and I'm not escaping to the Matrix, Signal, or any of that other BS. People are mentioning Skype like it's alive again but the whole ass company literally shut down not too long ago. Now it's Teams, and Teams aren't gaming oriented anymore. We're starting to succumb to a new internet life where everything has to be surveillance, and even as someone who uses the services that people like, it's still sickening to see that they just want MORE of our information. Don't they already had enough? I still have a feeling that it's all cause of AI and whatnot.