Safer for Teens, Same Discord for Adults

TLDR

• More than 90% of you won’t be asked to confirm your age. Since our last post about teen safety, we've had to launch age assurance solutions in more places, including Texas and Brazil. Laws requiring age assurance are expanding around the world. Rather than waiting to be told how to do it, we’re launching our own privacy-preserving approach: one that reflects your feedback.
• You can check your age group status at User Settings > Account Status. We've estimated your age group automatically from account signals like how long your account has existed or the kinds of servers you're a part of. We don’t look at your messages, calls, or other content. We're launching this over the course of this week, so it may take a few days to reach your account.
• If you're in the adult age group (18+), nothing changes. If you're in the teen age group (13-17), you can keep messaging friends, joining voice calls, and participating in non-age-restricted servers, but with additional safety protections that block age-restricted content, spaces, and settings. Otherwise, Discord works the same. More on this below.
• We've added several new ways to confirm your age, including some that don't require an ID or selfie (including credit cards). If you're an adult but weren't automatically placed in the adult age group, you can confirm your age group at any time by going to User Settings > Account Status. More on the new options below.
  ‍

In February, after listening to your feedback, I shared that we were delaying our announced plans for global age assurance. I promised we'd come back in the second half of the year with a more transparent, clearer path forward, with less friction. Here's where we landed.

Age assurance draws strong opinions and skepticism, especially when it involves sharing biometric information or a form of ID. At the same time, age assurance laws are expanding, and since my last post we've had to launch age assurance in other regions, including in Brazil and in Texas. We're hearing from policymakers in countless states and countries who want stronger teen protections, from the European Union to Indonesia. To me, that makes it more important than ever to show that this can be done in a privacy-preserving way: one where more than 90% of you won’t have to confirm your age.