Discord will begin rolling out age verification measures to all users on Wednesday, using account-based age estimation for most accounts and additional checks for users it cannot confidently classify as adults.. The company said more than 90% of users will not need to actively verify their age because Discord will use existing account data to detect signals such as account tenure, device and activity data, and other usage patterns..
The rollout follows a February delay after user backlash over privacy risks tied to biometric scans and ID checks. Last year, a third-party vendor working with Discord was breached, potentially exposing data from 70,000 users, including government ID photos and selfies used for identity verification..
“Age assurance draws strong opinions and skepticism, especially when it involves sharing biometric information or a form of ID,” Discord Chief Technology Officer Stanislav Vishnevskiy wrote in a blog post published Tuesday.. “At the same time, age assurance laws are expanding, and since my last post we’ve had to launch age assurance in other regions, including in Brazil and in Texas,” Vishnevskiy said..
Discord said it does not estimate users’ ages from message content, profile data or demographic attributes. Instead, it places users into adult, teen or unconfirmed age groups based on patterns tied to how accounts are used.. “The way a typical 15-year-old uses Discord, including how many communities they’re a part of and how they interact with others, looks different in aggregate from how a typical 30-year-old uses Discord,” the company said in a separate technical blog post published Tuesday..
“Our machine learning model has learned these patterns to predict whether a given account likely belongs to an adult or a teen,” Discord said.. Discord said it is not collecting new user data for the system. The company said local legal requirements in some regions had already required age assurance tools, allowing it to train its model on confirmed data linking user behavior to age..
Users whom Discord cannot confidently identify as adults will be able to appeal by providing a credit card or age group data from their Apple App Store or Google Play Store account, without using a biometric scan or government ID.. Confirmed adults will see no change to their platform experience.
Teen accounts will be blocked from age-restricted servers or channels, message requests from non-friends will be routed to a separate inbox, and teens will receive alerts when accepting friend requests from users without mutual friends.. Governments in multiple regions are expanding age verification requirements for online services, while experts have warned that such checks can create new privacy and security risks..
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