Discord is delaying its global age verification rollout

Discord won’t roll out age verification globally on its platform next month as previously announced, and says in a blog post that it’s delaying the launch until the second half of 2026. “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,” writes Discord CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy.

Discord says that before it rolls out age verification globally, it will add more options for users to verify their age (including with a credit card), include documentation of every verification vendor used, add an option for “spoiler channels” in Discord as an alternative to age-gated channels for walling off certain topics, and publish a technical blog post explaining how its age estimation systems work.

In countries where laws currently require the use of verification platforms, like the UK, Australia, and soon Brazil, the post says, “any adult who tries to access age-restricted content will need to verify their age through a vendor like k-ID to get access.”

The delay follows user backlash after Discord announced plans to set accounts to a “teen-appropriate” experience by default unless they could be verified as adults. Discord claims that the plan will only affect about 10 percent of accounts, as most don’t interact with age-restricted content, change default safety settings, or already have their age determined by its internal systems.

The blog post also provided more information on how those internal systems work to estimate age and decide who to potentially prompt for verification:

Some of the criticism stemmed from a data breach at one of Discord’s third-party vendors last year that exposed user info and scanned photo IDs; however, Discord says it works with outside vendors so that it doesn’t associate accounts with identification data, while the vendors can’t associate the data with Discord accounts either. Discord has also said that it has since stopped working with the vendor involved in that data breach.

Users were also concerned about age verification provider Persona, which Discord used to run a “limited test” for age verification in the UK in January. Discord added in Tuesday’s blog post that it plans to offer more transparency on its age verification vendors, stating: “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.” Now, it says Persona did not meet that bar.