Discord, which is one of the primary chat applications for gamers everywhere, has been facing backlash for an upcoming age verification update. But the minds behind the application have not decided on cancelling the change yet; they are merely delaying it.
The developers have released a blog post addressing the complaints with words directly from the CTO, Stanislav Vishnevskiy. After all the feedback, they have now decided to push the update to the latter half of 2026.
Vishnevskiy accepts in the vlog that the announcements around the age verification update failed at one basic job, which was “clearly explaining what we’re doing and why.” He assures that future announcements will be made with further transparency.
History of Discord and Why Accessibility Matters
Discord was originally released way back in 2015 as an amalgamation of social media and forum-like features coupled with a voice chat service. Inspired by chat and messenger services of the yesteryears, it has slowly become one of the prime applications for connection between gamers and online users alike.
Fast forward to now, and this chat service that was primarily well-known for being super accessible is now caught in between a crossfire of criticisms from users for trying to implement systems that may bar its accessibility.
Discord had initially justified the rollout for age verification sighting the need for updating safety measures. Since the application is a lawless land with servers that may have unmoderated content. Just a while ago, Discord made an announcement regarding compromised IDs of over 70,000 users.
Social Media Reactions to Discord’s Age Verification Drama
Social media reactions to the newest developments are looking as expected. With most being of the opinion that delaying the age verification update sounds pointless, as Discord should rather work on completely cancelling the feature.
Some users think that the age verification update has no place in online spaces. Rather, it should be the job of parents to make sure that internet access is moderated.
Discord and its controversial ties are a problem
Amidst the turmoil, Discord has confirmed that it has dissolved its partnership with the vendor Persona after finding out about it’s controversaial ties with Palantir, which is owned by Peter Thiel. We are talking about ICE’s Government surveillance provider here, which is a big deal for a platform like Discord, as it would lead to the death of privacy.
A lot of users online learning about the situation are not buying into the fact that Discord just found out the implications of the ties and decided to cut them off. Most educated guesses are that Discord cut off the ties with Persona only because they were found out.
The internet is currently scrambling to look for a better alternative to Discord, but the sad reality is that there is none out there yet that does a better job. Apps like TeamSpeak were years behind in being a perfect service, and making the whole audience switch from a platform like Discord will not be easy.
