Getting Global Age Assurance Right: What We Got Wrong and What's Changing

I built Discord because I wanted an easier way to hang out with my friends online, the same way I did growing up. That's still true today. When I get off work, I hop on VC with friends, watch one of them spend hours raging at Baby Steps, or jump into Arc Raiders and befriend other players until something hilarious and memorable happens. These moments, the ones you can only get in games, are why Discord exists.

So when we announced our plans for global age assurance and I saw the reaction from our community, I didn't just read it as a CTO. I read it as someone who uses Discord every single day. And I want to talk to you directly about what we're doing, why we're doing it, and what we're changing based on your feedback.

Where We Missed the Mark

Let me be upfront: we knew this rollout was going to be controversial. Any time you introduce something that touches identity and verification, people are going to have strong feelings. Rightfully so. In hindsight, we should have provided more detail about our intentions and how the process works. 

The way this landed, many of you walked away thinking we're requiring face scans and ID uploads from everyone just to use Discord. That's not what's happening, but the fact that so many people believe it tells us we failed at our most basic job: clearly explaining what we're doing and why. That's on us.

On top of that, 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. 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.

Asking you to take our word for it isn't realistic, and we know that. So let me try again, plainly, to explain what we're actually trying to accomplish.

What We're Actually Trying to Do

Our goal is straightforward: keep the Discord experience completely unchanged for the vast majority of people while ensuring an age-appropriate experience for everyone. Over 90% of users will never need to verify their age to continue using Discord exactly as they do today. This is powered in part by our internal safety systems, which can already make an age determination for many adult users without any user action. We'll publish the methodology behind this in a technical blog post before we launch globally.

We know many of you believe the right answer is not to do this at all. We hear you. We also know these changes carry different weight for different communities, and that for some, questions of privacy and identity aren't just preferences but safety concerns shaped by real experience. That's not lost on us, and it directly informs the choices we're making. We also know, from running this platform for more than 10 years, that teens need real safeguards. The number of teenagers on Discord has significantly increased since the pandemic, and they deserve an experience appropriate to their age. At the same time, we believe adults should be able to have a full content experience on Discord. Doing both responsibly means having safeguards that help ensure age-restricted content stays in adult spaces.

But the specific way age assurance works (the verification methods, the compliance requirements) is being shaped by legislation already in effect in the UK and Australia, with Brazil quick to follow, and Europe and multiple US states close behind. By building this ourselves, we can show regulators that it's possible to verify age without collecting identity.

Here's what that looks like in practice:

• For 90%+ of users, nothing changes. Most users never access age-restricted content or change their default safety settings. For those who do, we have an internal system that works to accurately determine your age. Discord already runs safety systems that catch spam rings, prevent raids, and detect coordinated abuse, powered by our rules engine (which we just open sourced as Osprey for other platforms to use). Age determination works the same way, using the same category of account-level signals: how long your account has existed, whether you have a payment method on file, what types of servers you're in, and general patterns of account activity. It does not read your messages, analyze your conversations, or look at the content you post. We know "trust us" isn't enough here, which is why we'll publish the methodology before global launch.   
• If you're among the less than 10% of users who do need to verify, we'll give you options, designed to tell us only your age and never your identity. And if you choose not to verify, here’s exactly what happens: you keep your account, your servers, your friends list, your DMs, and voice chat. The only thing that changes is you won't be able to access age-restricted content or change certain default safety settings designed to protect teens. Nothing else about your Discord experience changes.   

Your age group is private. No other user on Discord can see it.

Being Transparent About Our Partnerships

For a small minority of users who want to access age-restricted content and our internal systems can’t confirm that you’re an adult, we need to offer alternatives. To keep a wall between Discord and your personal information, we partner with third-party vendors who handle verification and only pass back your age group. The idea is simple: we don't want to know who you are. We just need to know whether you're an adult. And it works both ways: a vendor has no way to associate your identity back to your Discord account either. That's by design.

We know many of you are skeptical of how we handle partnerships, and the security incident last year involving our third-party customer service provider only adds to that skepticism. To be clear, we do not use that vendor for age assurance. In fact, we no longer work with them at all, and we've taken the lessons from that incident seriously.

Every vendor we work with goes through a security and privacy review before integration. 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 our core goals with age assurance is to give you options. As part of that, we’ve been evaluating multiple vendors to offer a range of verification options people are comfortable with. One of those evaluations was with Persona, a company used by platforms like Roblox and Reddit. In January, we ran a limited test with Persona in the UK only. After completing the test, we decided not to move forward with them, and consistent with our privacy policy, all data was deleted after completing verification. We’ve set a new bar for any partner offering facial age estimation, including that it must be performed entirely on-device, meaning your biometric data never leaves your phone. Persona did not meet that bar.

For the global launch, we're committing to the following:

• Full transparency on vendors. We will document every verification vendor we work with on our website, including their data handling practices. You shouldn’t have to guess who’s handling your information.
• Real options in the product. We will offer multiple verification vendors and make it clear directly in the product who each vendor is, what method they use, and how they handle your data, so you can make an informed decision about which option you’re most comfortable with.

How This Works Around the World

In countries that have already passed age verification laws, like the UK, Australia, and Brazil, the law may require platforms to use approved methods like facial age estimation or ID checks. These laws do not yet allow us to rely on our own non-identifying systems. We've already rolled out age assurance in the UK and Australia, with a similar Brazilian law going into effect soon. In these regions, any adult who tries to access age-restricted content will need to verify their age through a vendor like k-ID to get access. We're not the only platform navigating this.

For the rest of the world, over 90% of people will continue to use Discord without ever seeing an age verification prompt. For some adults who try to access age-restricted content, if we cannot automatically verify that they are adults, they will be asked to verify their age, but we will provide several verification options so users can choose the one they are most comfortable with. This is the model we hope the rest of the world will adopt as countries pass age verification laws.

What We're Changing Right Now

We heard you, and we want to get this right. So here's what's happening:

We’re delaying our global rollout to the second half of 2026. Where we have legal obligations, we will continue to meet them, but we will only expand globally after we've done the following:

1. Adding more verification options. We already had alternatives in development, including credit card verification. We’ll complete and expand those before scaling globally so you have more options you’re comfortable with.
2. Vendor transparency. We’ll document every verification vendor and their practices on our website, and make it clear in the product who each vendor is. We’ve also set a new requirement: any partner offering facial age estimation must perform it entirely on-device. If they don’t meet that bar, we won’t work with them.
3. A new spoiler channel option. We know many communities use age-restricted channels not for adult content, but for topics people prefer to engage with on their own terms: spoilers, politics, and heavier conversations. We’re building a dedicated spoiler channel option so communities don’t have to age-gate their server just to give members that choice.
4. A technical blog post before global launch. We’ll publish a detailed post explaining how our automatic age determination systems work, including the signal categories and privacy constraints. So you can evaluate our approach for yourselves.
5. Age assurance data in our transparency reports. We’ll include how many users were asked to verify, what methods they used, and how often our automated systems handled it without any user action.

Building Trust

We've made mistakes. I won't pretend we haven't. And I know that being a bigger company now means our mistakes have bigger consequences and erode trust faster. I don't expect one blog post to fix that. Trust is earned through actions over time: shipping the things we promised, owning it when we miss the mark, and giving you real control over your own experience.

But at our core, we build Discord because we love it and use it ourselves. Our motivation is simple: we want to build a great product for ourselves and the communities we’re part of. That doesn’t exempt us from the higher bar that comes with our scale; it motivates us to meet it.

We’re listening. We'll get this right. And when we ship, you'll be able to see for yourselves.

Stan