Link: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/02/discord-attempt-to-put-out-the-fires-with-a-clarification-over-new-age-verification/

Discord have released some clarifications around the new forced age verification system coming worldwide next month, as people look to flee the platform.

This comes as Google Trends show a huge increase in people looking for alternatives across the world. Clearly people aren't just sitting on their hands here thinking all will be okay

In an updated announcement, the Discord team said that the "vast majority of people can continue using Discord exactly as they do today, without ever being asked to confirm their age". How then? Well, they're using an age inference model / a machine learning model already in the background based on what you do and how you interact with Discord to predict what age group you fall into. This age gating system also only affects people who specifically want to access age-restricted servers, or who want to "modify certain safety settings" like a sexual media filter or a graphic media filter according to Discord.

That's arguably fucking worse, what the fuck.

Yep. They're specially calling out that they're training AI models to track your behavior across Discord and people think that's somehow "better"? Idiots.

People here on Lemmy were totally expecting some sort of partial clawback from the backlash...

That AI detection is not great sounding though. Is the interaction behaviour analysis going to include trying to guess my age from selfies I've sent to my closest friend(s)? That would be very worrying.