Discord takes a second swing at age verification, but don't worry, this time it'll guess how old you are with 90% accuracy

After some heavy controversy and arguments with the internet writ large, Discord is now trying to fulfil legal obligations to roll out age verification systems that snoop on you as little as possible. How so? Well, with an "age estimation model" that tries to figure out how old you are, which I'm sure will put everyone at ease.

"Our age group estimation model looks at patterns of account behaviour on Discord. It does not look at your messages, calls, or other content. For example, the way a typical teen uses Discord will look different in aggregate from how a typical 30-year-old uses Discord. Our model has learned these patterns and uses them to estimate whether a given account most likely belongs to an adult (18+) or a teen (13-17)."

"Specifically, the age group estimation model looks at factors such as the communities, servers, and games you're connected to, general activity levels, such as how many channels or servers you're active in, and account history, such as how old your account is."

How did we get here?

• Back on February 9 of this year, Discord announced it'd be locking you into a "teen-appropriate experience" if you didn't verify your age.
• Notably, this still had an "age inference system" similar to what Discord is proposing now.
• In February 13, it emerged that the rollout had ties to Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel via Persona.
• By February 24, Discord had delayed its verification rollout, and also revealed that Persona didn't meet the bar for its privacy concerns.
• September 22 (earlier this week), Discord tries again.

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