Major News Regarding Discord

So a bit of strange news:

https://www.theverge.com/tech/875309/discord-age-verification-global-roll-out

https://www.ign.com/articles/discord-rolling-out-teen-by-default-settings-globally-next-month-with-age-verification-needed-to-disable-content-filtering

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/discord-faces-backlash-over-age-checks-after-data-breach-exposed-70000-ids/

https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/09/discord-to-roll-out-age-verification-next-month-for-full-access-to-its-platform/

To summarize, Discord next month will force you to scan your face or have you submit your ID to show you're an adult or minor. Accounts that do not do this, will have a ‘teen-appropriate experience by default.’

Some of us may not even have to do the above as “For most adults, age verification won’t be required, as Discord’s age inference model uses account information such as account tenure, device and activity data, and aggregated, high-level patterns across Discord communities. Discord does not use private messages or any message content in this process,” Savannah Badalich, Discord’s global head of product policy, tells The Verge.

What the above means is that they're tracking your activity btw.

Users who aren’t verified as adults will not be able to access age-restricted servers and channels, so no more NSFW.

Remember, they also had a data breach last year when they did this for the UK and Australia peeps.

While writing this, I just came to realize that I've had to ban numerous accounts in more numbers in the last five months then I've ever had to throughout the KaE server's existence.

Which all began when that October breach happened.

As some of you may already know, my mom was a victim of identity theft and I spent an exhausting weekend securing her accounts and information. In that weekend, I did ALOT of research regarding this issue, and am not convinced Discord will be able to deter future security breaches, nor their third-party partners who will handle our information. Discord says they won't keep our IDs and selfies, but they can't speak for their partners.

Then combined with the fact that what constitutes as "bad for children" is becoming more and more simply things that are Anti-LGBT, especially in this current political climate in the USA; one can see the writing on the wall of where this slippery slope is head down towards.

We saw it already with the itch.io fiasco concerning the payment processors:

https://www.polygon.com/news/615910/itchio-steam-sex-adult-games-delisting-pulled-vice-controversy/

https://medium.com/prismnpen/are-credit-card-companies-becoming-morality-police-d4f1e5240303

https://www.thegamer.com/itch-steam-censorship-payment-processors-collective-shout-delist-deindex/

I saw a really poignant comment that made me laugh; First they came for the gooners... but I said nothing because I don't goon.

Anyways, the Interactive Fiction community is under attack. As are any other communities that value creativity, stories, and diversity.

In all honesty, most people's experiences probably won't change.

However I'm very wary of this. I don't want to be a part of this. But I also recognize how important Discord is as a community gathering point.

Please participate in the poll below.

Not just for KaE, but for IF communities in general that use Discord.

Will you stay with Discord when the pop-up to submit a selfie or ID arrives?