Discord must extend age-assurance and default child-safety controls already offered to users in the United Kingdom to accounts identified as belonging to Texas residents, under an agreed temporary injunction entered by a state court.
The order gives Discord 90 days to implement the additional protections. The company must provide the Texas Attorney General’s office with written progress reports every 30 days until it has fully complied with the order.
Discord currently allows users in Texas to register using an email address and a self-reported date of birth without independently confirming the information beyond presenting a neutral age screen.
The protections required under the injunction include routing messages from unfamiliar users to a separate request inbox, applying stronger sensitive-content filters to accounts belonging to minors, and preventing users who have not completed age assurance from entering adult-only spaces.
The order defines a Texas user as an account Discord identifies as being located in the state through commercially reasonable IP-based geolocation using information already in its possession. Discord is not required to collect a new category of personal information solely to determine whether an account is located in Texas.
The company is not required to rely on one particular verification technology. The order permits Discord to use additional or alternative commercially reasonable age-assurance methods, provided those methods are supported by evidence or information disclosed to the state.
The agreement follows Discord’s decision to delay the global expansion of its age-verification system until the second half of 2026. The platform also ended its relationship with identity verification provider Persona after testing age-assurance technology in several markets.
Discord introduced its UK controls in response to the country’s Online Safety Act. According to Discord’s description of that system, most users are not required to complete an active age check. When additional assurance is needed, available methods can include on-device facial age estimation or verification of an identity document by a third-party provider.
The broader category of age-assurance technology includes methods ranging from document verification and facial age estimation to signals-based approaches that assess whether a user is likely to be above or below a specified age threshold.
The temporary injunction does not represent a final ruling on the Texas Attorney General’s allegations. Discord has not admitted liability or wrongdoing and has preserved its jurisdictional objections and request to transfer the case to another venue.
The order will remain in effect until the lawsuit is dismissed, reaches a final judgment, or is otherwise resolved. Trial was set for June 2027, subject to any further scheduling order from the court.
The case shows how age-assurance requirements are increasingly being imposed through state-level consumer-protection litigation as well as legislation. It may also increase pressure on large platforms to replace country-specific safety systems with more consistent controls across jurisdictions.
Sources: Agreed Temporary Injunction, Texas Attorney General
By the ID Tech Editorial Team
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