Just two weeks ago, Discord announced plans to enforce a new “teen-appropriate” experience by default next month, requiring age verification to access restricted content or change content settings, but it’s now “delaying [its] global rollout” to the second half of 2026.
In a lengthy blog, Discord co-creator and CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy admitted the company had “missed the mark” and “failed at [its] most basic job: clearly explaining what we’re doing and why.”
Discord initially announced plans to roll out the “controversial” age verification checks as part of its “internal safety systems” and “enhancing its age-appropriate protections for users worldwide while maintaining “privacy, community and meaningful connection on the platform.” The changes would have been coming to countries with age verifications mandated by law, as well as those without.
The announcement came just months after Discord admitted that hackers had gained access to images of 70,000 government IDs, uploaded to the servers of a third-party vendor that it had entrusted with the data, following user contact with its Customer Support or Trust & Safety teams. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, the news did not go down well, and thousands of members revolted, cancelling Discord’s premium subscription, Nitro, and threatening to move their communities to other platforms, like Steam Groups.
