- Discord says it’s rolling out age verification checks globally starting in March
- The decision has sparked outrage from many disappointed Discord users
- A third-party vendor used by Discord was hacked in October 2025
Discord has announced that it is rolling out age verification checks globally starting in March, and the decision has sparked a wave of online anger not seen since Disney+ suspended Jimmy Kimmel.
The messaging app casually announced that “teen-by-default settings” will roll out “globally to all Discord users” in early March. This means that both new and existing users will need to complete an age rating check – using a video selfie – or submit an ID to Discord’s partners in order to use many parts of the platform.
These include access to age-restricted channels, servers or commands, and removing obfuscation of sensitive content or disabling this setting. If you don’t complete Discord’s age verification, you also won’t be able to access a separate message inbox to DMs from people you may not know or talk on stage on servers.
The controversy centers on the security of these age checks, especially given that Discord recently had to admit in October 2025 that “an unauthorized party compromised one of our third-party vendors”.
Discord’s assurances about its age checks haven’t exactly instilled much confidence in many users. If you get your age estimated by video selfie, Discord promises it will never leave your device. However, it also adds that “some users may be asked to use multiple methods if more information is needed to assign an age group,” and if your age group estimate is incorrect, you’ll need to appeal it or confirm it with an ID instead.
On that front, Discord says that “identity documents submitted to our vendor partners are deleted quickly – in most cases immediately after age verification”. And the company says it no longer works with the third-party vendor affected by that leak last year.
Still, none of this has done much to assuage the concerns of many Discord users, who say they’re already on the hunt for alternatives…
Discord lives up to its name
There has been growing suspicion that age verification may be coming to Discord ever since the service rolled out age checks in the UK and Australia last year. Back then, some users found clever ways around the barriers imposed by the UK’s Online Safety Act, such as Death Strandings photo mode.
Unfortunately, that loophole was closed within a week, but it’s likely a taste of things to come from March given the widespread outrage that greeted the news. In countless threads on Reddit, the reaction has been near-universal condemnation, with some even predicting the demise of the messaging app.
“I categorically cannot trust tech companies with this kind of personal data,” wrote one frustrated user, with many hoping they might be able to convince Discord to do a U-turn with enough public pressure. Others moved on. “What a great way to kill your community,” added another long-time user, while some predicted “it’s game over for Discord” and ruefully noted that “privacy on the internet is truly dead”.
The latter gets to the heart of what many feel is wrong with these mandatory age verification checks. While governments say it’s an important tool to keep teenagers safe online, many feel it overreaches and does more harm than good, leading to compromised privacy and increased intrusion.
What’s upsetting to many Discord users is that they’ve been using the service for years, some since it launched over a decade ago in May 2015, and now feel like their rewards are being exposed to what feel like surveillance and privacy issues.
“My account has been around for 8 years, am I seriously going to have to scan my face to prove I’m an adult?” said one popular Reddit response. Another added, “I’m an adult and I’m tired of being treated like a child on the internet”, concluding that “I’m not going to upload my face or ID to a database that I know isn’t secure enough to handle this”.
What are the alternatives?
So what next? It’s not yet clear how Discord’s age verification checks affected its user numbers in the UK and Australia last year, and it’s possible the impact won’t be nearly as dramatic as the many “RIP Discord” posts predict.
However, some users are clearly serious about leaving the popular messaging service. For many, Discord has replaced forums and become the default home for hobbyist communities. Some alternatives mentioned by leavers include TeamSpeak, Stoat (formerly Revolt), and Matrix, but they have nowhere near the scope or popularity of Discord.
Meanwhile, the likes of Signal and Slack either lack its community features or are more work-oriented. There simply isn’t a direct Discord alternative right now, but it’s possible that some rivals will jump at the chance in the same way that Bluesky and Threads took advantage of misgivings about Twitter as it morphed into Elon Musk’s X.
What is far less likely is a U-turn from Discord on age verification, despite the hopes of many. The decision follows a trend that started last year following the UK’s Online Safety Act, which forced all websites hosting potentially ‘harmful’ content to confirm that users are over 18. Lawmakers in the US and Europe have now followed suit, meaning today’s Discord furore is likely to be the first of many similar incidents in 2026.
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