"We've made mistakes. I won't pretend we haven't."
Discord has delayed plans for a global age verification system after resounding backlash from its users, with CEO Stanislav Vishnevskiy admitting, “we’ve made mistakes.”
“Let me be upfront: we knew this rollout was going to be controversial,” Vishnevskiy wrote, starting a lengthy blog post. “Any time you introduce something that touches identity and verification, people are going to have strong feelings. Rightfully so. In hindsight, we should have provided more detail about our intentions and how the process works.”
Vishnevskiy continued on to assert that “over 90% of users will never need to verify their age to continue using Discord exactly as they do today.”
The CEO also addressed concerns of a limited trial that was undertaken with Persona, a company that seemingly has ties to Palantir founder Peter Thiel.
“On top of that, many of you are worried that this is just another big tech company finding new ways to collect your personal data,” Vishnevskiy wrote. “That we’re creating a problem to justify invasive solutions. I get that skepticism. It’s earned, not just toward us, but toward the entire tech industry. But that’s not what we’re doing.”
He added that the trial with Persona didn’t bear fruit.
“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,” he said. “We’ve set a new bar for any partner offering facial age estimation, including that it must be performed entirely on-device, meaning your biometric data never leaves your phone. Persona did not meet that bar.”
As such, the global age verification rollout has been postponed until the latter half of this year.
“We’ve made mistakes. I won’t pretend we haven’t,” Vishnevskiy added. “And I know that being a bigger company now means our mistakes have bigger consequences and erode trust faster. I don’t expect one blog post to fix that. Trust is earned through actions over time: shipping the things we promised, owning it when we miss the mark, and giving you real control over your own experience.”
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