Discord partners with age verification firm backed by billionaire named 2200 times in the Epstein files

Discord is testing a new age verification partner in the UK, and the company behind it has strong ties to billionaire Peter Thiel. This has made users even more worried about the platform’s controversial age verification rules that were announced last week.

Discord said in March it will start checking users’ ages globally. According to PC Gamer, people who haven’t been identified as adults by the platform’s algorithms will need to scan their faces or government IDs. Users strongly disliked this plan when it was first announced.

Now Discord has told some UK users they might be part of “an experiment” with a third-party company called Persona. This partnership is raising concerns because of who is funding Persona and what it means for user privacy.

Peter Thiel’s investment raises serious privacy concerns

Persona’s biggest investor in its last two funding rounds has been Founders Fund. This is the venture capital firm that Peter Thiel co-founded and runs. The connection to Thiel has set off alarm bells among privacy advocates and Discord users.

Thiel co-founded Palantir, a data collection and surveillance company. Palantir works with ICE for deportation efforts and builds large databases from Americans’ private information. The company is named after a magical object that lets evil forces spy on people’s thoughts. His business history centers on mass surveillance and data collection.

Thiel wrote in 2009 that “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” He was also mentioned over 2,200 times in the recently released Epstein files. The documents show he had years of meetings with the convicted child predator and sex trafficker. Other public figures have also been named in the Epstein documents, sparking widespread attention.

Discord is testing Persona in the UK because of the country’s 2025 Online Safety Act, which requires age verification. The platform already works with another age verification company called k-ID. Some users think Discord is testing Persona because people have found ways to get around k-ID’s checks.

The massive release of Epstein files has continued to reveal connections between powerful figures and the convicted trafficker. This has made Discord’s choice of Persona as a testing partner even more questionable in the eyes of many users.

This partnership creates new privacy problems. Discord previously said facial age verification recordings would only be stored and processed on users’ devices. But the new support article about Persona says the information “will be temporarily stored for up to 7 days, then deleted.”

This seven-day storage period is a big change from what Discord promised before. Even though the company says it will delete the data after a week, storing sensitive biometric information on external servers was not part of the original plan.

Discord has tried to downplay the importance of these new age rules in response to public concerns. However, critics like the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Rindala Alajaji argue that the initial outcry was already justified. The appearance of Thiel’s involvement within days of the announcement has only made users more worried about data security and mass surveillance.