February 13, 2026
Scan your face to post a meme?
Discord Voluntarily Pushes Mandatory Age Verification Despite Recent Data Breach
Discord’s age check drama: “Face scan or ID for full access?” Fans split, some already bailing
TLDR: Discord will require some users to verify age with a face scan or government ID, despite a recent data leak. Commenters are split: some quit on principle, others flee to self-hosted chat, and skeptics say AI will bypass it—making privacy and trust the hottest battleground.
Discord is rolling out mandatory age checks and the comment sections are on fire. The platform says it will guess your age from account history and device data, and if it can’t, you’ll need a face scan or government ID to escape a locked-down, teen-style mode. After last year’s breach that exposed around 70,000 IDs and selfies, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is ringing the alarm again, calling this a privacy nightmare. Over on Hacker News, threads like “Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access” are packed with “Discord just killed anonymity” takes.
The community mood? Pure chaos. Some users are rage-quitting (“deal breaker”), others are spinning up self-hosted alternatives—one bragged they had a Matrix chat server running in 20 minutes. Jokes write themselves: “Show me your papers to post a GIF,” “Stage channels by face reveal,” and “scan your face to send a DM.” Skeptics wonder if this will be worldwide or just bypassable with AI-generated selfies, while a smaller camp argues it’ll keep kids safer. Discord insists IDs are deleted and facial scans stay on your device, with vendors k-ID and Persona handling verification—but trust is the battlefield, and users aren’t buying “this time is different.”
Key Points
- •Discord will roll out mandatory age verification in early March, applying teen-specific restrictions to users estimated under 18 or lacking sufficient data.
- •An age inference system will attempt to classify most adults using account tenure, device/activity data, and platform patterns.
- •Users not inferred as adults must verify via face scan or government ID through third-party vendors (k-ID globally; Persona for some UK users).
- •Discord states it will delete government ID records, keep facial scans on-device, and not associate IDs with accounts; documents won’t be retained.
- •EFF highlights privacy and anonymity concerns, referencing Discord’s 2025 breach affecting ~70,000 users via a third-party support system.