Reddit and Discord are in trouble over controversial age verification

Both Reddit and Discord have gotten themselves into trouble for age verification – Reddit for failing to verify age, and Discord for using a controversial third-party service.

Reddit has been fined £14.5 ($19.5M) million for illegally using children’s personal information, while Discord has faced a backlash from user …

The UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) requires online platforms to verify the age of their users and ensure that children are not exposed to harmful content.

Reddit reviews are not enough

BBC News reports that an investigation by the UK’s privacy watchdog found that Reddit had failed to do these checks adequately.

Reddit has been fined £14.47m by the UK’s data watchdog for illegally using children’s personal information. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said the platform failed to properly assess the age of its users, putting children who use Reddit at risk of being exposed to inappropriate and harmful online content.

The ICO said its checks were inadequate, and many of the children were said to be adults, and therefore the company was processing children’s data illegally.

Discord user feedback

Discord used a third-party app called Persona that checks an uploaded selfie or government ID photo, but it quickly faced the ire of users who pointed out that Persona appeared to be accessing government records. The Verge report:

Users across social media have accused Discord of “lying” about how it plans to handle face scans and ID uploads. Much of the criticism has been directed at Discord’s relationship with Persona, the age verification provider also used by Reddit and Roblox. […] Users pointed to Persona’s privacy policy, which states that it can obtain personal data from users through “third-party information, government records, and other publicly available sources.”

The platform has told us that it no longer supports Persona.

In January, we ran a limited trial with Persona in the UK only. After completing the tests, we decided not to continue with them, and in accordance with our privacy policy, all data was deleted after completing the verification.

Discord says about 90% of users won’t need to verify their age as it can be estimated by “account-level signals” such as 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 age verification is required, the platform says it intentionally uses third-party providers for privacy reasons.

The idea is simple: we don’t want to know who you are. We need to know if you are an adult. And it works both ways: the seller has no way to link your identity back to your Discord account. That is by design.

Discord also promises full transparency and choice with third-party vendors.

We will provide 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 are most comfortable with.

Calls are growing to hold Apple and Google accountable

There have been growing calls for Apple and Google’s app stores to be legally responsible for age verification and use age ratings on app downloads.

This is already happening in some US states.

9to5Mac’s Take

While I fully understand that Apple doesn’t want to take this responsibility, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

Forcing users to provide government photo ID and video selfies to an endless list of developers is a privacy nightmare. I’d rather trust Apple to verify your identity and age once, and then just block downloads of age-inappropriate apps.

It can also be a way a better user experience if each of us had to verify our age once, rather than every time we download a new app with an old gateway.

Photo by Ralph Olazo on Unsplash