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Key takeaways
- In March, Discord will set an age lock for all users to a "teen-appropriate experience."
- Many users will be required to complete an age verification check.
- These users will be required to upload a video selfie or official ID.
On Monday, Discord announced a new age verification protocol that will roll out to all users in March. By default, the app will age-lock all accounts to a "teen-appropriate experience," requiring proof of age to access the full experience.
Unverified accounts will be blocked from servers or channels with age restrictions, unable to speak in livestream "Stage" channels, and unable to respond to DMs from certain users. It also won't let you change certain settings and will blur age-restricted content throughout the app.
Also: 70,000 government IDs were exposed in a Discord breach - could yours be next?
So, how do you prove your age to Discord? You have a few different options, including uploading a video selfie or an official government ID. If you're skeptical about uploading a selfie (or your government ID) to Discord, your concerns are warranted.
Why the backlash?
Just last year, the app announced that around 70,000 ID photos were leaked in a cyberattack involving its previous age verification vendor.
While Discord itself wasn't a victim of the attack, the vendor lost personal information, DM history, and partial credit card details in the breach, prompting Discord to cease business with the firm.
Discord's response
Discord says its new third-party vendor handling age verification is much more secure, of course, highlighting that video selfies are fully processed on-device without the need to upload anything to the internet. With regards to government IDs, it says they are "deleted quickly - in most cases, immediately after age confirmation."
But "deleted quickly" is little assurance to anyone who knows how the internet works. Despite claims of security, data breaches continue across even the biggest platforms in tech, and each time, users are assured that it won't happen again. In response to Discord's age verification requirements, many users are furious and actively seeking new platforms to migrate to.
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Still, it's possible most users won't have to jump through any of these hoops if its "age inference model" can automatically verify your age. Discord says the model runs in the background and uses an algorithm to determine a user's age based on factors such as which servers they belong to, their behavior, and their account age.
In a thread on the official Discord Reddit, a reply from an official Discord staff member, u/discord_zorkian, stated that "the vast majority of people will never see age verification." The claim is that, following the rollout of age-assurance checks in the UK and Australia in 2025, the app is very good at pre-identifying most adults based on their behavior.
Alternatives to consider
Going further, even if the app can't auto-verify you and you choose not to complete the process, you may still not be affected if you don't belong to certain age-restricted channels or servers.
While there's no direct replacement for Discord at the moment, users across various online forums have suggested decentralized services like Matrix and Stoat Chat, as well as Slack, for their similar interfaces and ease of communication.
Discord's global rollout of age verification is scheduled for early March 2026, with no specific date yet set. It's likely there will be in-app notifications on the process in the coming weeks.
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