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Discord's promise to bring age verification worldwide read like a threat to many users of the mega-popular social platform, and the backlash was swift and loud. Today, the company has announced it's delaying the verification rollout to the second half of the year in a self-effacing 1,857-word blog post responding to criticism, penned by its co-founder. But the most important part of the message is this: age verification is still happening, whether you like it or not.
"Let me be upfront: we knew this rollout was going to be controversial," Discord co-founder Stanislav Vishnevskiy wrote in the announcement. "Any time you introduce something that touches identity and verification, people are going to have strong feelings. Rightfully so. In hindsight, we should have provided more detail about our intentions and how the process works."
As Discord has said from the beginning, age verification will only be required for a small number of features, including access to adult content and the ability to speak in "stage" broadcasts. The fact that some users believe age verification will be required by everyone means "we failed at our most basic job," Vishnevskiy said, which is "clearly explaining what we're doing and why."
That idea of "clearly explaining" things seems to be how Discord hopes to mitigate the backlash. Under a header called "what we're changing right now," Vishnevskiy lays out five alterations to the age verification plan that have led to the delayed rollout. But if you look closely, there's only one actual change. There will be an option for spoiler channels, so that servers no longer have a reason to use age gates for similar functions, and there will be additional, as-yet-unspecified new ways to verify your age.
The rest of the changes are simply about "transparency," including breakdowns of the vendors that Discord will work with for age verification services – an especially relevant concern given the data breach at one of those vendors last year. Vishnevskiy also promises "transparency reports" on age verification numbers, and a "technical blog" ahead of launch that explains how the "automatic age determination systems" will work.
"Over 90% of users will never need to verify their age to continue using Discord exactly as they do today. This is powered in part by our internal safety systems, which can already make an age determination for many adult users without any user action," Vishnevskiy added, as if it's an assurance.
I haven't exactly been hiding my cynicism about this announcement so far, but it's really the presentation of this automatic age determination system as some sort of olive branch that really makes me frustrated. Discord tracks "account-level signals" about you, including "how long your account has existed, whether you have a payment method on file, what types of servers you're in, and general patterns of account activity" to determine your age. "It does not read your messages," Vishnevskiy emphasized, "analyze your conversations, or look at the content you post."
On some level, we all know that apps are tracking this kind of data about us, and I can't say that I'm shocked Discord is among them. But presenting that kind of tracking in this way, suggesting that we should accept a lesser form of privacy invasion as an alternative to more aggressive breaches of personal security, is so out of touch that I can barely believe it's been put in front of our eyes.
It's impossible not to feel the finger of enshittification weighing on Discord's scales, particularly as the company is reportedly making preparations for an IPO, after which it would be accountable to shareholders on the stock market. Discord has been a terrific free product for years, but the company's going to have to figure out how to more and more aggressively monetize its users in the years to come in order to keep those shareholders happy.
Vishnevskiy made a point of calling himself a regular Discord user in the blog, and I am too – it's how I've been keeping in touch with my oldest friend group for years. But I can't help but feel the connection between all this, and it's got me trying to find an exit plan from the platform. This age verification rollout proves that Discord is more than willing to pursue changes that are wildly unpopular with its user base, and with that in mind, I can't blame anyone for getting out while the getting is good.
