Discord admits it's taking gambling sponsors, rushes to fix "extremely popular age assurance update that everyone on Discord was really looking forward to"

Fully aware that everyone hates the new age verification update it's crowbarring in, Discord has doubled down in a post that's come right as the company confirms new gambling ads being served to the users it simply must age-protect.

Discord co-founder and CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy previously apologized for the my-way-or-the-highway positioning of the new age restriction policy. In a September 23 Twitter post, the Discord account, acknowledging that the rollout has seen numerous bugs, writes: "When you launch an extremely popular age assurance update that everyone on Discord was really looking forward to and it has bugs."

The responses to this post, at 5.6 million views by Twitter's metrics, would make a sailor look away. "Are we fuckin serious," replies one user. "No we are so fckin sarcastic," answers the Discord account. It's not helping, folks.

Discord says it's fixed two of the new system's nastiest bugs: one blocking verified adults from accessing age-restricted servers (who could have predicted this), and another seemingly preventing Discord accounts and verification levels from syncing across devices.

This mess has come as Discord users, particularly in the United States, began reporting in-app advertisements for companies like FanDuel, a popular sports prediction market betting app. In a statement to GameSpot, Discord sheepishly acknowledges that it is indeed taking sponsorships for gambling services that are illegal for underage users right as it enacts an immensely unpopular age verification system.

"We’re taking a deliberate, user-first approach to evolving our ads business to add genuine value that connects naturally with our users' sports, gaming and entertainment interests," a Discord spokesperson says.

The company seems to think that this sort of sports betting app, the likes of which have positively parasitized America in the past decade, is fine compared to conventional gambling. "Discord's policies still prohibit ads for traditional real-money gaming, including casinos and sportsbooks," the company adds.

"Daily Fantasy Sports ads, and FanDuel brand ads on Discord are intended for adults, and we are using a range of age signals to help ensure they are age appropriate," Discord says. "We use age group signals to exclude teens from seeing inappropriate ads and to make sure they have the right settings."

An age verification system would certainly help platform targeted advertisement campaigns like this, and a system that failed to let adults access their own servers can surely be trusted to exclude teens from that targeting.

You can opt out of seeing this type of sponsored content in Discord; you'll just have to sift through several layers of settings. Open your account settings, head to "Data & Privacy," then scroll down to sponsored content. Bafflingly, there's a search bar for, as far as I can tell, one item in this field: "Real Money Gaming." (While you're in there, consider turning off all the data-driven personalization gunk, too.)

"If you hide a topic below, then you will see no Sponsored Content from the topic," the in-app tooltip explains. However, it continues, "Discord's Ad Policy will control certain content you see regardless of these selections."

New Discord age verification system and filters will rely on oversight from mix of "AI validation and human review."