Discord will restrict your account next month unless you scan ID or face

In a controversial move, Discord today announced that it will restrict all user accounts globally unless users verify their age either by way of face or ID scan.

Discord’s updated privacy approach is “teen-by-default,” the company said in an announcement today. This means that, starting in March, all users on Discord will have their accounts partially restricted to the experience you’d get if you were under the age of 13.

Discord breaks down the restrictions as follows:

• Content Filters: Discord users will need to be age-assured as adults in order to unblur sensitive content or turn off the setting.
• Age-gated Spaces – Only users who are age-assured as adults will be able to access age-restricted channels, servers, and app commands. 
• Message Request Inbox: Direct messages from people a user may not know are routed to a separate inbox by default, and access to modify this setting is limited to age-assured adult users.
• Friend Request Alerts: People will receive warning prompts for friend requests from users they may not know.
• Stage Restrictions: Only age-assured adults may speak on stage in servers.

The only way to get around this would be to verify your age, which Discord says can be accomplished in one of two ways. The first is to “submit a form of identification” to Discord vendors (i.e. scan your physical ID), or to use “facial age estimation.” Discord says that the latter process happens fully on-device, as “video selfies for facial age estimation never leave a user’s device.” For ID scans, Discord says that documents “are deleted quickly.”

“More options” for age verification are apparently coming later, but that’s it for the time being.

This change will start with “a phased global rollout to new and existing users in early March.”

While age verification is becoming more common – YouTube perhaps being one of the biggest examples – Discord’s new approach is certainly one of the most aggressive implementations

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