In a new statement, Discord CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy clarifies that 90% of global users will be able to continue to use Discord as they always have. The Discord users who will need to authenticate their age are those who both access age-restricted content and whom Discord’s internal system cannot verify as adults. The statement also announces that the global age verification on the platform has been delayed from March to sometime in the second half of 2026.
This is not the first time Discord has attempted to change the narrative. Discord posted a statement on X earlier in February clarifying that most Discord users will not have to verify their age.
Users have raised concerns about third-party contractors which Discord might use to verify age. A hack attacking service provider 5CA in October 2025 leaked thousands of UK IDs. Additionally, Discord’s partnership with verification service Persona drew criticism, due to Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel’s backing. The statement attempts to assuage some of these concerns, saying that every third-party vendor must undergo a security and privacy review before Discord will partner with them.
Vishnevskiy says, “We’ve set a new bar for any partner offering facial age estimation, including that it must be performed entirely on-device, meaning your biometric data never leaves your phone. Persona did not meet that bar.” The statement further promises that Discord will offer multiple verification options and transparency concerning each of those option’s data collection and privacy policies. However, where Discord has legal obligations to provide age verification, like the UK and Brazil, it will continue to do so.
Discord is set to address lingering questions, like which safety features unverified users will be unable to turn off and how exactly its own age verification program works without mining user data, in a future technical blog post. The company will also disclose anonymous data on the number of users asked to verify their age, which methods they chose, and how often its internal verification worked to prevent user action.
The statement concludes with Vishnevskiy acknowledging error and promising to do better. He says, “We’ve made mistakes. I won’t pretend we haven’t. And I know that being a bigger company now means our mistakes have bigger consequences and erode trust faster. I don’t expect one blog post to fix that. Trust is earned through actions over time: shipping the things we promised, owning it when we miss the mark, and giving you real control over your own experience.”
