Discord to start assuming all users are underage unless they prove otherwise

Although you might be able to wiggle out if its AI age-inference model decides you’re an adult

Don't want Discord to start treating your account like it belongs to an underage kid? Then you'd better be willing to fork over some PII – just months after the company's age verification partner had such data stolen. 

Starting with a phased rollout in early March, Discord is going to put all new and existing users into a teen-appropriate experience by default, the company said on Monday. That means communication restrictions, limits on access to age-gated spaces, and content filtering will be switched on by default regardless of a user's actual age - and loosening those settings will generally require proving you're not a minor.

"Rolling out teen-by-default settings globally builds on Discord's existing safety architecture, giving teens strong protections while allowing verified adults flexibility," Discord global head of product policy Savannah Badalich said in the company's announcement. "Nowhere is our safety work more important than when it comes to teen users." 

For adults, regaining access to their chosen Discord spaces may mean handing over a copy of ID to one of the company's age verification vendors, or uploading a video selfie that will be used for age estimation. Unless Discord's background age-inference model decides you're an adult.

"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," the company said. 

Discord users worried about handing over their personal information to Discord to prove they're old enough to chat with other adults are right to be worried. As noted above, a third-party customer service provider used by Discord was compromised last October, and attackers accessed images from roughly 70,000 government ID scans that users had submitted as part of age-verification processes.

The language in Monday's announcement is vague about how data related to ID verification is processed and stored, stating that "identity documents submitted to our vendor partners are deleted quickly" without getting specific about who is doing the deletion and how soon. As for video selfies, Discord said that those "never leave a user's device." 

Video selfies seem like the better privacy choice based on that explanation, but it's worth pointing out that Discord might ask for multiple forms of identification "if more information is needed to assign an age group." 

Hopefully, you look your age, assuming this latest generation of Discord age-verification algorithms can't be fooled by a video game. 

Discord has been in touch to emphasize that it thinks we were wrong to argue that all users will have to complete age verification processes in order to get full access to the app.

“For most adults, age verification won’t be required, as Discord’s age inference model uses account information such as account tenure, device and activity data, and aggregated, high-level patterns across Discord communities,” a company spokesperson explained.

Even if it’s happening in the background without a user being aware, one could argue that the inference model is still a form of age verification. It could even be argued that a background inference model still relies on a degree of privacy intrusion based on Discord’s own privacy policy, which claims that everything transmitted through its service is encrypted and designed to be kept from being accessed by Discord employees and contractors.

As for those worried its previous user data snafu could be repeated, Discord assured us that that specific third-party vendor “is not being used for age assurance,” and that it’s conducting more frequent audits to ensure the vendors that are handling user PII are doing so properly. ®