Discord has announced that it's rolling out age verification checks globally from March – and the decision has sparked fury from many privacy-conscious users.
The thing is they aren’t (yet). It looks like the EU might be thinking about introducing some sort of requirement for age verification, but it’s nowhere near decided enough for Discord to demand it globally. There are also methods of age verification that are much better and more secure than what they will use, like the German AusweisApp.
Sorry if I misread your post, but hopefully this comment of mine is relevant:
In my humble opinion, the digital wallet is horrible, because as far as I can tell 1. it requires Google device attestation so all custom ROMs are out and to be a citizen you can apparently no longer own your device, 2. unless you use iOS or Android you’re apparently not a citizen and you can’t e.g. purely use Linux (this is as far as I know not the case with the German AusweisApp), 3. once everyone is used to using some citizen app like that, I feel like a fascist government could easily tie it to a social score or other authoritarian measures bewyond the age verification. 4. There is a privacy friendly alternative approach for age verification anyway, that most governments seem to conveniently be ignoring: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/13/california-law-online-age-checks-00606115
I am going to bet noone in their team wants to do that, they are most likely pressured into it legally.
I hope they find a way to fight this
The thing is they aren’t (yet). It looks like the EU might be thinking about introducing some sort of requirement for age verification, but it’s nowhere near decided enough for Discord to demand it globally. There are also methods of age verification that are much better and more secure than what they will use, like the German AusweisApp.
The eID can do this EU wide already but it’s usage is regulated and that’s not something a company wants to accept. The EU Digital Identity Wallet would hit the spot even more, since it’s very privacy friendly: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/sites/spaces/EUDIGITALIDENTITYWALLET/pages/930450954/The+Age+Verification+Manual
That’s still in testing though and even less in the interest of a company that wants to extract as much user data as possible.
Sorry if I misread your post, but hopefully this comment of mine is relevant:
In my humble opinion, the digital wallet is horrible, because as far as I can tell 1. it requires Google device attestation so all custom ROMs are out and to be a citizen you can apparently no longer own your device, 2. unless you use iOS or Android you’re apparently not a citizen and you can’t e.g. purely use Linux (this is as far as I know not the case with the German AusweisApp), 3. once everyone is used to using some citizen app like that, I feel like a fascist government could easily tie it to a social score or other authoritarian measures bewyond the age verification. 4. There is a privacy friendly alternative approach for age verification anyway, that most governments seem to conveniently be ignoring: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/13/california-law-online-age-checks-00606115
Also see here on the EU apparently trying to make this mandatory: https://leminal.space/post/31858818/21120139