Discord Age Verification

Discord recently announced they’ll be requiring age verification for all users in order to get an unrestricted experience on the platform. Details in the official press release are vague (of course), but include this bit about verification:

“Discord users can choose to use facial age estimation or submit a form of identification to its vendor partners, with more options coming in the future. Additionally, Discord will implement its age inference model, a new system that runs in the background to help determine whether an account belongs to an adult, without always requiring users to verify their age.”

I’m already opposed to sending my personally-identifying information to companies that, by all accounts, don’t need to have it. The one-two punch of additionally having some vague background task running on my computer is particularly egregious, though. Also, in light of the recent breach of one of their vendors, this is a good enough impetus to get me looking into alternatives.