Discord is rolling out an age verification system to its entire audience, with the company promising that over 90% of users will never have to manually verify their age or upload documents, as algorithms will do it in the background based on behavioral factors.
Discord's CTO Stanislav Vishnevsky announced the new rules and mechanisms of the Age Assurance system on the company's blog.
The main focus of the update is to reach every user of the service, but to do it as unnoticed as possible for the majority. Machine learning algorithms will evaluate the age of the account, the types of communities and servers the person is on, activity and device data. The company emphasizes that it does not read personal messages or view calls to determine the age category.
“The way a typical 15-year-old uses Discord looks different overall than the way a 30-year-old uses it. Our machine learning model learned these patterns to predict age,” the company’s technical experts explained.
The need to abandon mandatory biometrics and passport scanning arose after last year's incident: a hack of a third-party service provider resulted in a data leak of about 70,000 users . Then, photos of government IDs and selfies were leaked online.
"Age verification evokes strong emotions and skepticism, especially when it involves providing biometric information or showing an ID card. At the same time, age verification laws are becoming increasingly strict, and since my last post, we have had to introduce age verification in other regions, including Brazil and Texas," said Vyshnevsky.
If the system cannot determine the age automatically or mistakenly assigns an adult to the teenage category, the user will be able to confirm their status without ID cards and photos. To do this, authorization via a bank card (via Stripe without saving data) or transfer of the age range from profiles in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store has been added.
For adults, nothing will change after determining the status. For teenagers aged 13–17, the platform will automatically block access to servers with 18+ content, and messages from strangers will be sent to a separate folder.
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