By KAITLYN HUAMANI, AP Technology Writer<\/p>\n
Discord, the popular platform<\/a> for gamers to communicate online, is postponing its controversial age verification policy after receiving swift backlash from users with concerns about their privacy.<\/p>\n The global rollout of the system is now delayed to the second half of 2026, Discord\u2019s Chief Technology Officer and co-founder Stanislav Vishnevskiy wrote in a Tuesday blog post<\/a> acknowledging that the company \u201cmissed the mark.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMany of you are worried that this is just another Big Tech company finding new ways to collect your personal data. That we\u2019re creating a problem to justify invasive solutions,\u201d Vishnevskiy wrote. \u201cI get that skepticism. It\u2019s earned, not just toward us, but toward the entire tech industry. But that\u2019s not what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n Discord, which says it has more than 200 million active users, will continue to meet specific legal obligations it has for age verification of users, the company said, but the global expansion of age verification will only come after it makes changes to the initial policy it laid out in early February.<\/p>\n The company announced<\/a> earlier this month that it would roll out an age verification policy in March that would include face scanning or requests for an ID upload for users it could not determine were adults. This drew swift ire from users. Many pointed to a recent security breach<\/a> of a third-party provider Discord worked with that exposed government ID photos of up to 70,000 Discord users.<\/p>\n Vishnevskiy referenced the security breach in the blog post, writing that he understood that incident added to users\u2019 skepticism, but he emphasized the company no longer works with that vendor and has rigorous standards for its partners.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery vendor we work with goes through a security and privacy review before integration,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThat includes contractual limits on data use, and strict retention and deletion requirements. Information submitted for age verification is stored only for the minimum time necessary, which in most cases means it\u2019s deleted immediately. If a vendor doesn\u2019t pass, we don\u2019t work with them.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the vendors that didn\u2019t meet the mark was Persona, an identity verification service. Vishnevskiy said Discord ran a limited test with Persona in the United Kingdom only in January. The company was not able to meet Discord\u2019s standard for facial age estimation, Vishnevskiy wrote, which stipulates that the estimation \u201cmust be performed entirely on-device, meaning your biometric data never leaves your phone.\u201d<\/p>\n The company distanced itself from Persona after that relationship also became the subject of online criticism. Persona is backed by the venture capital firm Founders Fund, which is run by Palantir Technologies<\/a> co-founder Peter Thiel. Thiel and Palantir are often criticized for of the company\u2019s partnerships with the government for surveillance purposes, with Palantir recently inking an agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement<\/a> to streamline the process of identifying and deporting people the agency is targeting.<\/p>\n