Notably, by doing this Discord lied in their initial announcement. They originally said [1] that all processing would be on-device, but that's not true for users subject to this "experiment".
Article title, which was a lot clearer than this one: "Discord Distances Itself From Age Verification Firm After Ties To Palantir’s Peter Thiel Surface"
Not sure why you changed it but it makes quite the difference to the meaning.
I very hesitantly used discord occasionally because some projects I wanted to keep up with moved there
I gave up a few times since I kept getting autobanned by a broken algorithm (i.e., based on my ip or phone number, not anything I'd said) until I contacted their devs and they manually fixed it.
Obviously, I am never going to consider using discord again after this shit-tsunami. Back to irc and signal groups.
"Discord Distances itself from Peter Thiel's Palantir Age Verification Firm" means jack shit if they're still doing business with them.
And Discord has approached this in such a monstrously awful way that I don't know what they could possibly say at this point to make me believe them.
I fully expect Discord will buddy-buddy right back up with some other Thiel-affiliated company if there is a separation if not go right back to them once the heat dies down.
The risk in effect is that every message sent on Discord will make its way to Palantir with copy of your ID. This is not a risk that any user should accept. Discord fooled its users once, and it should not be trusted to not fool them again.
One of the most destructive ideas of the last century in the West (particularly the US) has been the idea that private industry is a better replacement for the government to provide services.
We see this with Internet and telecoms service where municipal broadband dominates national ISPs at a fraction of the cost. We see the sell-off of utilities and water, which just leads to massive price hikes, so much so that private equity is getting in on utilities because it's a captive market [1]. All these privatization schemes (including so-called public-private "partnerships") are simply schemes to transfer wealth from the government to the wealthy. And the real problem is a huge number of people who will never benefit from any of this think this is a good idea.
The only entity who can be trusted for identity and age verification is the government. This is how it works in China [2]. I can already hear the cries of "we can't trust the government with that". We already do. Who do you think issues drivers licenses and SSNs?
Another like objection: "the government can monitor your activity". Um, they already do [3][4]. In some cases they're doing this voluntarily. An administrative subpoena is not enforceable. That requires a court order. Yet Google, as just one example, complied anyway.
A government, unlike private corporations, is accountable to its citizenry.
Let me give you a concrete example of how disturbing this all is. Leon Black was the CEO of Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm that owned Shutterfly. Shutterly owns Lifetouch, which is a company that manages school photos for children for a huge number of schools in the US. Leon Black has links to Jeffrey Epstein [5].
As of now, there's no concrete accusation of wrongdoing here or of information (such as stored photos) being passed to Epstein or affiliates. But do you want an unaccountable private company owned an Epstein affiliate having the names, school, age and photos of your children? Yeah, me neither, which is why now a bunch of schools are distancing themselves from Lifetouch. Investigations are ongoing.
As for Discord even doing age verification, there are two angles. The legal one is easy to dispense with. Countries like the UK require it. I'm surprised Discord escaped the Australia under 16 social media ban. I expect that to change. There's going to be more of this. And I understand why. Predators inhabit these spaces and Discord, unlike "public" social media platforms, seem to have way less monitoring and scrutiny of what goes on there.
The second angle is should you be able to remain anonymous online? Call it the ethical angle. Reasonable people can disagree here. I just don't think it matters because there will be increasing pressure for Discord and others toc omply with legislation.
After Reddit API drama, a lot of people left it to avoid using its app and terrible position from the CEO. I am happy to be out of it to be honest, it is an utterly toxic place.
Reddit is there but no longer what it used to be, I will call it Skype 2.0
Discord has been having a rough time, data breach recently and now this.
After this massive backlash and how bad the company is involved into wrong doing, Skype 3.0 is strong on this.
21 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 55.1 ms ] thread1: https://discord.com/press-releases/discord-launches-teen-by-...
Not sure why you changed it but it makes quite the difference to the meaning.
I gave up a few times since I kept getting autobanned by a broken algorithm (i.e., based on my ip or phone number, not anything I'd said) until I contacted their devs and they manually fixed it.
Obviously, I am never going to consider using discord again after this shit-tsunami. Back to irc and signal groups.
And Discord has approached this in such a monstrously awful way that I don't know what they could possibly say at this point to make me believe them.
I fully expect Discord will buddy-buddy right back up with some other Thiel-affiliated company if there is a separation if not go right back to them once the heat dies down.
I know it'll be easier to bypass, but that does not matter. We're trying to stop children, not adults with technical skill.
They have no business keeping my ID scan or face in any case. Because there's an 120% chance they'll end up on a public S3 bucket.
We see this with Internet and telecoms service where municipal broadband dominates national ISPs at a fraction of the cost. We see the sell-off of utilities and water, which just leads to massive price hikes, so much so that private equity is getting in on utilities because it's a captive market [1]. All these privatization schemes (including so-called public-private "partnerships") are simply schemes to transfer wealth from the government to the wealthy. And the real problem is a huge number of people who will never benefit from any of this think this is a good idea.
The only entity who can be trusted for identity and age verification is the government. This is how it works in China [2]. I can already hear the cries of "we can't trust the government with that". We already do. Who do you think issues drivers licenses and SSNs?
Another like objection: "the government can monitor your activity". Um, they already do [3][4]. In some cases they're doing this voluntarily. An administrative subpoena is not enforceable. That requires a court order. Yet Google, as just one example, complied anyway.
A government, unlike private corporations, is accountable to its citizenry.
Let me give you a concrete example of how disturbing this all is. Leon Black was the CEO of Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm that owned Shutterfly. Shutterly owns Lifetouch, which is a company that manages school photos for children for a huge number of schools in the US. Leon Black has links to Jeffrey Epstein [5].
As of now, there's no concrete accusation of wrongdoing here or of information (such as stored photos) being passed to Epstein or affiliates. But do you want an unaccountable private company owned an Epstein affiliate having the names, school, age and photos of your children? Yeah, me neither, which is why now a bunch of schools are distancing themselves from Lifetouch. Investigations are ongoing.
As for Discord even doing age verification, there are two angles. The legal one is easy to dispense with. Countries like the UK require it. I'm surprised Discord escaped the Australia under 16 social media ban. I expect that to change. There's going to be more of this. And I understand why. Predators inhabit these spaces and Discord, unlike "public" social media platforms, seem to have way less monitoring and scrutiny of what goes on there.
The second angle is should you be able to remain anonymous online? Call it the ethical angle. Reasonable people can disagree here. I just don't think it matters because there will be increasing pressure for Discord and others toc omply with legislation.
[1]: https://jacobin.com/2025/08/private-equity-minnesota-power-t...
[2]: https://appinchina.co/blog/the-complete-guide-to-chinas-age-...
[3]: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-s...
[4]: https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/10/google-sent-personal-and-f...
[5]: https://...
After Reddit API drama, a lot of people left it to avoid using its app and terrible position from the CEO. I am happy to be out of it to be honest, it is an utterly toxic place. Reddit is there but no longer what it used to be, I will call it Skype 2.0
Discord has been having a rough time, data breach recently and now this. After this massive backlash and how bad the company is involved into wrong doing, Skype 3.0 is strong on this.