Both Reddit and Discord have got themselves into trouble over age verification – Reddit for failing to properly check ages, and Discord for using a controversial third-party service.
Reddit has been fined £14.5 ($19.5M) million for the unlawful use of children’s personal information, while Discord has experienced a user backlash …
The UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) requires online platforms to verify the age of its users and ensure that children are not exposed to harmful content.
Reddit’s checks inadequate
BBC News reports that an investigation by the UK’s privacy watchdog found that Reddit failed to adequately carry out these checks.
Reddit has been fined £14.47m by the UK’s data watchdog for unlawfully using children’s personal information. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said the platform failed to properly check the age of its users, putting children using Reddit at risk of being exposed to inappropriate and harmful content online.
The ICO said its checks were inadequate, with many children being declared adults, and that the company was therefore illegally processing data from children.
Discord experienced user backlash
Discord used an outside firm called Persona which checks either an uploaded selfie or a photo of government ID, but quickly faced anger from users who pointed out that Persona appears to access government records. The Verge reports:
Users across social media accused Discord of “lying” about how it plans on handling face scans and ID uploads. Much of the criticism was directed toward Discord’s partnership with Persona, an age verification provider also used by Reddit and Roblox […] Users pointed to Persona’s privacy policy, which states that it may obtain personal data from users through “third party databases, government records, and other publicly available sources.”
The platform told us that it no longer uses Persona.
In January, we ran a limited test with Persona in the UK only. After completing the test, we decided not to move forward with them, and consistent with our privacy policy, all data was deleted after completing verification.
Discord says around 90% of users won’t need to verify their age as it can be estimated by “account-level signals” like how long you’ve had your account and whether you have a payment method on file. The company promises to publish details of this methodology for transparency.
Where external age verification is required, the platform says it deliberately uses third-party providers for privacy reasons.
The idea is simple: we don’t want to know who you are. We just need to know whether you’re an adult. And it works both ways: a vendor has no way to associate your identity back to your Discord account either. That’s by design.
Discord also promises full transparency and choice with external vendors.
We will offer multiple verification vendors and make it clear directly in the product who each vendor is, what method they use, and how they handle your data, so you can make an informed decision about which option you’re most comfortable with.
Growing calls to make Apple and Google responsible
There have been growing calls for the app stores of Apple and Google to be made legally responsible for age verification and then to apply age gating to app downloads in response.
This is already the case in some US states.
9to5Mac’s Take
While I fully understand Apple not wanting to take on this responsibility, I’ve said it before and I say it again:
Forcing users to hand over government photo ID and video selfies to an endless array of developers is a privacy nightmare. I’d far rather trust Apple to verify identity and age once, and then simply block downloads of age-inappropriate apps.
It would also be a way better user experience if each of us only had to verify our age one time, rather than every single time we downloaded a new age-gated app.
- Official Apple Store on Amazon
- Apple’s iPhone cases: iPhone 17 | iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max | iPhone Air
- Wireless CarPlay adapter (2026 update)
- AirTag holders and accessories
- Mac Pro-style Mac mini casing
- NordVPN – privacy-first VPN with no logs and independent audits to verify
Photo by Ralph Olazo on Unsplash
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