Discord's Age Checks Arrive After an Earlier Plan Was Scrapped

Discord is rolling out an age-verification system that estimates each user's age and requires some users to prove they are old enough. The company had announced a somewhat different plan for age checks in February but scrapped it amid backlash from users concerned about privacy. That worry had a concrete basis: in 2025, hackers stole the government IDs of 70,000 Discord users from a third-party service. Estimating age first, and asking only some users for proof, may limit how much identity data the platform has to hold — but it does not remove the check itself.