Image Credits: @ilgmyzin via Unsplash
For a little over ten years now, the social media app “Discord,” has been growing in popularity, becoming the go-to communication application for friend groups, afterschool clubs, gamers and more. But, Discord has been facing serious blowback lately from its user base following a controversial move to mandate age verification from its users, as part of what it calls an “experiment.”
On Feb. 9, the company put out a press-release on its website stating that this upcoming March, the company will automatically set all users accounts to “teen-by-default.” Discord’s Head of Product Policy, Savannah Badalich, was quoted in the press-release: “Rolling out teen-by-default settings globally builds on Discord’s existing safety architecture, giving teens strong protections while allowing verified adults flexibility. We design our products with teen safety principles at the core and will continue working with safety experts, policymakers and Discord users to support meaningful, long-term wellbeing for teens on the platform.”
In addition to rolling out the teen-by-default, change, the company also announced it would be creating a “Discord Teen Council,” an advisory group within the organization which will consist of ten to twelve teenagers that will, according to Discord: “inform future product features, policies and educational resources, grounding Discord’s approach in how teens connect through gaming, shared interests and online communities.”
To bypass the teen-by-default setting, the application will use an “age inference model,” of artificial intelligence to determine a user’s age. However, should the AI fail to determine a user’s age, they may need to provide a government ID, or do a scan of your face, which will then be forwarded somewhere to verify the user’s age. Should users refuse or fail to comply with this step, then their account will be unable to view “sensitive,” images, stage channels (which allows users to speak without interruption) will be unusable, along with other features being inaccessible.
This comes as another step towards age-verification from the company following the same policy it implemented in the UK and Australia last year. The decision is in response to waves of pressure on legislators from parental rights groups and child safety advocates to mandate protections for minors from adult content being shared on websites and social media, as well as protection from online sexual predators, resulting in legislation such as the “UK Online Safety Act,” in 2023.
However, while ostensibly about protecting minors from adult content as well as from becoming the potential victim of online sexual predators, many critics claim that it constitutes a gross violation of privacy and puts users personal data at risk of being stolen by hackers to be held for ransom, or handed over to government agencies. In a Features article written by PC Gamer’s Lincoln Carpenter: “Discord says video recordings are analyzed on-device and aren’t sent elsewhere and that photos of ID are deleted ‘quickly,’ but there’s already been at least one case where a data breach at one of Discord’s ID verification partners exposed the sensitive information and government IDs of its users.”
This refers to a breach in October of last year where one of Discord’s third-party customer service providers was breached by hackers. The hackers gained access to at least 70,000 government IDs and other sensitive data, which the hackers then used to extort money from the company. On top of that, The Rage (which covers financial surveillance and digital privacy), reported that a Persona frontend (the part of a computer system or application that a user interacts with) was dangerously exposed on an official US Government server, which could allow any competent black-hat hacker to mine for valuable data.
Along with cybersecurity concerns, it seems as though the facial-recognition software that Discord is using for its facial recognition check, is not as robust as the company would want. On July 25th of last year, one UK user reported on X (formally Twitter) a clever trick to get around facial recognition using the Photo Mode feature from the video game “Death Stranding 2,” specifically using the protagonist’s likeness to fool the software into thinking it was the user. Days later on July 31st, another user on X posted a picture showing how his friend discovered that another video game, “Garry’s Mod,” could also be used to fool the facial recognition software.
Privacy advocates, especially in the UK, are greatly concerned that Discord’s promises to protect its user’s personal data may not be truthful. As Ashley Belanger writing for Ars Technica pointed out in her article, in a recently deleted disclaimer on an FAQ page, the company warned UK users that: “If you’re located in the UK, you may be part of an experiment where your information will be processed by an age-assurance vendor, Persona. The information you submit will be temporarily stored for up to 7 days, then deleted.”
This further alarmed users and privacy advocates as Persona, an identity verification company based out of San Francisco, is funded by Founders Fund. Founders Fund is a venture capital firm which was founded and is owned by Peter Thiel. Thiel is also the Chairman of Palantir, which has connections to various American intelligence agencies, including foreign governments like Israel.
Discord has been no stranger to backlash in the past, such as its decision to allow marketing on its website in the form of interactive-advertisements called “Quests,” and also including an arbitration clause and class-action waiver for U.S. residents in their Terms of Service as of April 2024. All this bad press from its user base could spell trouble for the company, especially as it has already filed for an initial public offering this year and would need to prove a safe investment for their potential shareholders.