Discord announced on Monday that it’s rolling out age verification on its platform globally starting next month, when it will automatically set all users’ accounts to a “teen-appropriate” experience unless they demonstrate that they’re adults.

Users who aren’t verified as adults will not be able to access age-restricted servers and channels, won’t be able to speak in Discord’s livestream-like “stage” channels, and will see content filters for any content Discord detects as graphic or sensitive. They will also get warning prompts for friend requests from potentially unfamiliar users, and DMs from unfamiliar users will be automatically filtered into a separate inbox.

Direct messages and servers that are not age-restricted will continue to function normally, but users won’t be able to send messages or view content in an age-restricted server until they complete the age check process, even if it’s a server they were part of before age verification rolled out. Savannah Badalich, Discord’s global head of product policy, said in an interview with The Verge that those servers will be “obfuscated” with a black screen until the user verifies they’re an adult. Users also won’t be able to join any new age-restricted servers without verifying their age.

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  • 2 months

    Badalich also says after the October data breach, Discord “immediately stopped doing any sort of age verification flows with that vendor” and is now using a different third-party vendor.

    Oh thanks, it’s fixed

    The ID is immediately deleted. We do not keep any information around like your name, the city that you live in, if you used a birth certificate or something else, any of that information.

    Suure

    • Oh yeah it’s totally deleted from that one server! Of course all information is kept for “quality and training purposes” and to hand over to palantir and whoever is willing to pay.

      • 2 months

        Now what sort of unethical corporate greed machine would do that?

        . . . All of them?

        Oh. Oh dear.

          • 2 months

            I usually just roll my eyes when I see that corpospeak, but now I’m going to translate it as “payday.” Thanks!

      • And for advertising so that they can bucket you accordingly.

        Gotta juice the B2B spigot for the upcoming IPO

        • Of course, but they also derive demographic information from all the texts, links, communities you interact with.

          Now they’ll have verifiable racial characteristics to target you with customized ads that look like you. It’s definitely more effective.

          It’s a horrible company that preys on youth.

      • 2 months

        Well, you need to understand, Palantir needs a library for their facial recognition software. What if those young people refused to take advantage of the smartphone biometrics? Don’t they know it is for their security??? /s

    • If this was true, then they would have no problem with agreeing to paying us $50 mil each in the event of a data breach, since it could never happen, right?