Discord's age-check crackdown is already pushing users elsewhere

[JMGuy]

And how does one establish this "age token"? How are you able to attach this to a person without someone, at some point, knowing their identity? Same with third party verification, the only way THEY cna verify is if they somehow know who you are too.

All these systems rely on your private information at the end of the chain.

This conflates verification at a point in time vs persistent identity storage everywhere in the chain—not the same thing.

Of course at some point, someone may need to verify age against an authoritative source. That’s unavoidable; but it’s also not the problem. The question isn’t whether identity is ever used. The questions are: who sees it, how long do they keep it, and is it linkable afterward.

Modern privacy-preserving systems are specifically designed to separate those steps. Here’s a quick list to consider. Feel free to do the research:

* Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) age verification
* Blind signature age tokens
* W3C Verifiable Credentials (selective disclosure age proof)
* Idemix attribute-based credentials
* Microsoft U-Prove credentials
* Decentralized Identity (DID) age claims
* Mobile Driver’s License (mDL) age-only verification
* BankID age confirmation (attribute-only)
* Mobile Network Operator (carrier) age verification
* Privacy-preserving biometric age estimation (on-device)

It’s not that privacy-preserving age verification is impossible, it’s that it’s not the cheapest, fastest, easiest to explain legally, or what regulators explicitly reward. And users rarely actually punish companies for over-collection.

In other words: lazy and self-serving. Companies take the path of least resistance because they feel it’s institutionally safer.

 

[toooooot]

Oh no, perverts can't get their precious child p0rn anymore!

If all of the booze was suddenly banned, it would not disappear. It would just become more expensive and a lot more profitable to make at home. Those who need it find a way to get it. Child porn will not go away, ever.

 

[TooQik]

Sorry, the original used by gamers was Roger Wilco.

I remember when Roger Wilco came along, it sure was easier to call out "bandits 10 o'clock high" than typing it when playing Microsoft Combat Flight Sim.

 

[Win7User]

Social Media, is simply a bully pulpit! They, have no redeeming value whatsoever!

 

[gamerk2]

Simple solution: Go back to using IRCs. Problem solved.

 

[Loadedaxe]

My Discord account is just over 10 years old now. Unless I signed up when I was 7 or younger, I should be considered an adult by Discord lol. Can I get a pass?

EDIT: It sounds like I won’t need to verify my age. TechSpot should improve their reporting because the article is wrong and borderline lying in many places:

Quick deletion: Identity documents submitted to our vendor partners are deleted quickly— in most cases, immediately after age confirmation.

This is the issue, they use words like "most cases".

That is too vague...anytime you leave a loophole it will get abused. There are many regulated paid services they could use, but that would break into their profits too much...profit over privacy!

Is this going to affect all users?
That remains to be disclosed and probably never will, Discord holds the key here, it is up to the user to decide if it is worth it.

 

[lonetac]

Quick deletion: Identity documents submitted to our vendor partners are deleted quickly— in most cases, immediately after age confirmation.

This is the issue, they use words like "most cases".

That is too vague...anytime you leave a loophole it will get abused. There are many regulated paid services they could use, but that would break into their profits too much...profit over privacy!

Is this going to affect all users?
That remains to be disclosed and probably never will, Discord holds the key here, it is up to the user to decide if it is worth it.

It wont affect all users. Its only for access to certain public spaces.

If you have a friend list and all you do is talk to those friends in your discord channels, there is no verification.

But I completely agree with your assessment of "most cases" and the vagueness behind it.

 

[Win7User]

Simple solution: Go back to using IRCs. Problem solved.

In, my day it was MSN messenger, Paltalk, and ICQ. In ICQ, you could split the screen, one side for you to type, and the other side to read what the other person typed. I could type about 60wpm at that time.

 

[VaginaWhisperer]

100% this.

Protecting minors online is a legitimate objective. But “scan your face or upload your passport” is not an appropriate way to achieve it—and treating it as the default solution is a lazy, half-assed approach.

Discord’s rollout is a textbook example of compliance by overcollection. Instead of asking, “What’s the minimum data required to prove someone is over X age?” they’re demanding you hand over high-risk identity data to a private company that already experienced an identity data breach. That’s not just clumsy—it’s indefensible, from a security design standpoint.

There are already better models available—including privacy-preserving age tokens and third-party verification systems that confirm age without storing sensitive documents. When a company chooses the most intrusive option instead of the most responsible one, users are justified in walking away. Market pushback seems the only signal that encourages companies to implement safety measures without sacrificing privacy. As such, I support abandoning them to the waste-bin of history if this is the best they can do.

they might be doing it to be like meta, and sell your sensitive info, another cash stream

 

[Burty117]

Matrix is the original decentralised chat system and Mumble is the original low-latency solution for early gamers?

Teamspeak. The answer to both is Teamspeak. Nobody is talking about it (here or in other articles I've seen) even tho it's fully decentralised by design, still allows self-hosting, and I am fairly certain it's quite a lot older than Mumble too.

I wish TeamSpeak was the answer, it's not far off, but there's a key feature missing, permanent server-side text channels.

In Discord, you can easily throw a link or ask something in a general text chat, and people can respond as they see it, TeamSpeak doesn't have that, the text chat works only while you're connected to the server, anything put in the text channel while you aren't connected, you'll never get to see, which makes doing simple stuff like, asking a question, basically impossible.

As someone who has a bunch of friends who all have a NAS or home server in some description, We have a self-hosted TS server, we tried Stoat (Revolt), we tried a few different ones out there, none of them are quite as good as Discord, so we've taken it apon ourselves (or should I say, our particularly angry developer friend "vibe coded" his own self-hostable chat service) and putting in a system with server-side text chat was super easy, even for AI to do, why TeamSpeak refuses to do that, I don't really understand.

 

[Shirley Dulcey]

Nobody can trust Discord. Their company model is pure evil, and their data breaches have already exposed user data, including IDs.

Perhaps they should have left the ID eurojank in Europe where it came from, instead of forcing it on everyone. Oh well. Nobody will miss them.

It's not just Europe. Some US states have passed age verification requirements; Canada is discussing a similar requirement, and additional US states are likely to jump on the bandwagon. Discord has decided to do it system-wide rather than have a crazy quilt of verification vs not. The crazy quilt could lead to undesirable things like a user not being asked to verify, and then suddenly being hit with it when they travel or when a mobile carrier geolocates them incorrectly.

I think that age requirements anywhere are a serious mistake. It's yet another misguided attempt to "protect the children". But governments are passing them, and online sites are forced to go along with bad law.