After postponing a planned policy that would have required facial age estimation or ID scans, Discord announced a new approach to age verification that relies on internal signals such as account age, server membership and overall activity levels.
The platform says it will not examine private messages or calls to infer a user’s age, and the resulting age group will not be displayed on profiles or shared with other server members.
Users can see which group they have been placed in via the Account Status section of the User Settings menu. Discord estimates that roughly 90 percent of its audience will be correctly sorted without any further action required.
Those placed in the "Unconfirmed" category will be prompted to verify they are over 18 using methods that may include a credit‑card check, Apple App Store, Google Play Store, Google Wallet, the AgeKey credential service, an ID scan, or a video selfie, depending on regional regulations.
To address privacy concerns, Discord requires any third‑party age‑assurance vendor to permanently delete a user’s data after verification, and any facial age‑estimation technology must run entirely on the user’s device.
Teen‑aged accounts will face three new restrictions: messages from non‑friends will be routed to the message‑requests inbox with a warning before accepting unknown friend requests; access to content flagged as sensitive or restricted to adults—including certain images, servers, channels and bot commands—will be blocked; and full profile details and activity will be visible only to friends and members of smaller servers.
Unconfirmed users will initially be subject to the first two teen restrictions until they complete the verification process.