In July, Siyan, a UK-based Discord user, logged on one morning and found himself unable to access some of his text chats marked NSFW. The channel, a popup informed him, was now age-restricted. The United Kingdom had enacted its far reaching child safety laws , which includes an age requirement system to verify users are over 18. Discord’s updates required users to verify their age, either by government ID or a face scan.
Siyan (who requested to only be referred to by his screen name for privacy reasons) describes himself as “painfully over the age of needing to fake an ID.” He didn’t want to take a photo of his ID. The face scan feature wasn’t yet available on mobile, he says, and he didn’t own a webcam, so he decided to give the platform someone else’s face. First, he tried using an e