Transistors, the building blocks of modern electronics, are typically made of silicon. Because it’s a semiconductor, this material can control the flow of electricity in a circuit. But silicon has fundamental physical limits that restrict how compact and energy-efficient a transistor can be.

MIT researchers have now replaced silicon with a magnetic semiconductor, creating a magnetic transistor that could enable smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient circuits. The material’s magnetism strongly influences its electronic behavior, leading to more efficient control of the flow of electricity. 

The team used a novel magnetic material and an optimization process that reduces the material’s defects, which boosts the transistor’s performance.

The material’s unique magnetic properties also allow for transistors with built-in memory, which would simplify circuit design and unlock new applications for high-performance electronics.

“People have known about magnets for thousands of years, but there are very limited ways to incorporate magnetism into electronics. We have shown a new way to efficiently utilize magnetism that opens up a lot of possibilities for future applications and research,” says Chung-Tao Chou, an MIT graduate student in the departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and Physics, and co-lead author of a paper on this advance.

Chou is joined on the paper by co-lead author Eugene Park, a graduate student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE); Julian Klein, a DMSE research scientist; Josep Ingla-Aynes, a postdoc in the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center; Jagadeesh S. Moodera, a senior research scientist in the Department of Physics; and senior authors Frances Ross, TDK Professor in DMSE; and Luqiao Liu, an associate professor in EECS, and a member of the Research Laboratory of Electronics; as well as others at the University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague. The paper appears today in Physical Review Letters.

Overcoming the limits

In an electronic device, silicon semiconductor transistors act like tiny light switches that turn a circuit on and off, or amplify weak signals in a communication system. They do this using a small input voltage.

But a fundamental physical limit of silicon semiconductors prevents a transistor from operating below a certain voltage, which hinders its energy efficiency.

To make more efficient electronics, researchers have spent decades working toward magnetic transistors that utilize electron spin to control the flow of electricity. Electron spin is a fundamental property that enables electrons to behave like tiny magnets.

So far, scientists have mostly been limited to using certain magnetic materials. These lack the favorable electronic properties of semiconductors, constraining device performance.

“In this work, we combine magnetism and semiconductor physics to realize useful spintronic devices,” Liu says.

The researchers replace the silicon in the surface layer of a transistor with chromium sulfur bromide, a two-dimensional material that acts as a magnetic semiconductor.

Due to the material’s structure, researchers can switch between two magnetic states very cleanly. This makes it ideal for use in a transistor that smoothly switches between “on” and “off.”

“One of the biggest challenges we faced was finding the right material. We tried many other materials that didn’t work,” Chou says.

They discovered that changing these magnetic states modifies the material’s electronic properties, enabling low-energy operation. And unlike many other 2D materials, chromium sulfur bromide remains stable in air.

To make a transistor, the researchers pattern electrodes onto a silicon substrate, then carefully align and transfer the 2D material on top. They use tape to pick up a tiny piece of material, only a few tens of nanometers thick, and place it onto the substrate.

“A lot of researchers will use solvents or glue to do the transfer, but transistors require a very clean surface. We eliminate all those risks by simplifying this step,” Chou says.

Leveraging magnetism

This lack of contamination enables their device to outperform existing magnetic transistors. Most others can only create a weak magnetic effect, changing the flow of current by a few percent or less. Their new transistor can switch or amplify the electric current by a factor of 10.

They use an external magnetic field to change the magnetic state of the material, switching the transistor using significantly less energy than would usually be required.

The material also allows them to control the magnetic states with electric current. This is important because engineers cannot apply magnetic fields to individual transistors in an electronic device. They need to control each one electrically.

The material’s magnetic properties could also enable transistors with built-in memory, simplifying the design of logic or memory circuits.

A typical memory device has a magnetic cell to store information and a transistor to read it out. Their method can combine both into one magnetic transistor.

“Now, not only are transistors turning on and off, they are also remembering information. And because we can switch the transistor with greater magnitude, the signal is much stronger so we can read out the information faster, and in a much more reliable way,” Liu says.

Building on this demonstration, the researchers plan to further study the use of electrical current to control the device. They are also working to make their method scalable so they can fabricate arrays of transistors.

This research was supported, in part, by the Semiconductor Research Corporation, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Army Research Office, and the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports. The work was partially carried out at the MIT.nano facilities.

The New York Times reported that Meta is considering adding face recognition technology to its smart glasses. According to an internal Meta document, the company may launch the product “during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.” 

This is a bad idea that Meta should abandon. If adopted and released to the public, it would violate the privacy rights of millions of people and cost the company billions of dollars in legal battles.   

Your biometric data, such as your faceprint, are some of the most sensitive pieces of data that a company can collect. Associated risks include mass surveillance, data breach, and discrimination. Adding this technology to glasses on the street also raises safety concerns.  

 This kind of face recognition feature would require the company to collect a faceprint from every person who steps into view of the camera-equipped glasses to find a match. Meta cannot possibly obtain consent from everyone—especially bystanders who are not Meta users.  

Dozens of state laws consider biometric information to be sensitive and require companies to implement strict protections to collect and process it, including affirmative consent.  

Meta Should Know the Privacy and Legal Risks  

Meta should already know the privacy risks of face recognition technology, after abandoning related technology and paying nearly $7 billion in settlements a few years ago.  

In November 2021, Meta announced that it would shut down its tool that scanned the face of every person in photos posted on the platform. At the time, Meta also announced that it would delete more than a billion face templates. 

Two years before that in July 2019, Facebook settled a sweeping privacy investigation with the Federal Trade Commission for $5 billion. This included allegations that Facebook’s face recognition settings were confusing and deceptive. At the time, the company agreed to obtain consent before running face recognition on users in the future.   

In March 2021, the company agreed to a $650 million class action settlement brought by Illinois consumers under the state's strong biometric privacy law. 

And most recently, in July 2024, Meta agreed to pay $1.4 billion to settle claims that its defunct face recognition system violated Texas law.  

 Privacy Advocates Will Continue to Focus our Resources on Meta  

 Meta’s conclusion that it can avoid scrutiny by releasing a privacy invasive product during a time of political crisis is craven and morally bankrupt. It is also dead wrong.  

Now more than ever, people have seen the real-world risk of invasive technology. The public has recoiled at masked immigration agents roving cities with phones equipped with a face recognition app called Mobile Fortify. And Amazon Ring just experienced a huge backlash when people realized that a feature marketed for finding lost dogs could one day be repurposed for mass biometric surveillance.  

The public will continue to resist these privacy invasive features. And EFF, other civil liberties groups, and plaintiffs’ attorneys will be here to help. We urge privacy regulators and attorneys general to step up to investigate as well.  

The agency relied on legal arguments to erase the basis for climate rules, ditching provisions that tried to poke holes in the scientific consensus on global warming.

The president has mocked global warming as a “hoax,” but his administration avoided testing that claim in court as it targeted the endangerment finding.

With its repeal of a scientific finding that requires greenhouse gas regulation, the agency has reopened a long-settled legal question over its own authority to act on climate change.

GOP lawmakers who engage in climate issues have been relatively quiet about the decision.

Revolution Wind in New England is nearing completion after overcoming Trump administration efforts to halt the project.

The state could become the first to sue fossil fuel companies for emissions that allegedly intensify disasters and lead property insurers to raise premiums.

The opposition exposes a fault line in the environmental, labor and business coalition that helped give California Gov. Gavin Newsom a major win on cap and trade last year.

The upshot is that “financial institutions may need to choose between financing growth and maintaining the pace of reducing financed emissions,” the bank said.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz joined industry in attacking the EU carbon market as Commission President Ursula von der Leyen defended its “clear benefits.”

The Associated Press looked at the impact on emissions if 10 percent of Americans changed four everyday behaviors.

The mascots of these Olympics are stoats, weasel-like animals whose fur changes from brown to white for winter, to blend in with the landscape.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 13 February 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-026-02571-7

Planning for climate action in food systems requires disaggregated spatial information on greenhouse gas emissions and removals. Now, a study on the major emission sources for global croplands yields such emissions estimates, identifies the locations of hotspots and assesses mitigation trade-offs with food productivity.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 13 February 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-026-02559-3

This study shows that the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) drives sea surface salinity (SSS) variability in the China Seas through coupled freshwater and oceanic processes, influencing regional fisheries. Under a warming climate, projected intensification of ENSO will amplify SSS heterogeneity.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 13 February 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-026-02561-9

The authors model the emergence of climate-driven changes in Antarctic sea ice, phytoplankton, krill, fish and penguins. They show earlier emergence for higher trophic levels, as well as highly seasonal and regional responses.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 13 February 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-026-02558-4

Emissions from croplands are an important source of GHG emissions that can be shaped by management. This study presents maps of emissions globally for different crops, showing that drained peatlands, rice paddies and fertilizer were the main drivers, and highlights differences in emission intensity.

America has been making steel from iron ore the same way for hundreds of years. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been making enough of it. Today the U.S. is the world’s largest steel importer, relying on other countries to produce a material that serves as the backbone of our society.

That’s not to say the U.S. is alone: Globally, most steel today is made in enormous, multi-billion-dollar plants using a coal-based process that hasn’t changed much in 300 years.

Now Hertha Metals, founded by CEO Laureen Meroueh SM ’18, PhD ’20, is scaling up a new steel production system powered by natural gas and electricity. The process, which can also run on hydrogen, uses a continuous electric arc furnace within which iron ore of any grade and format is reduced and carburized into molten steel in a single step. It also eliminates the need for coking and sintering plants, along with other dangerous and expensive components of traditional systems. As a result, the company says its process uses 30 percent less energy and costs less to operate than conventional steel mills in America.

“The real headline is the fact that we can make steel from iron ore more cost-competitive by 25 percent in the United States, while also reducing emissions.” Meroueh says. “The United States hasn’t been competitive in steelmaking in decades. Now we’re enabling that.”

Since late 2024, Hertha has been operating a 1-tonne-per-day pilot plant at its first production facility outside Houston, Texas. The company calls it the world’s largest demonstration of a single-step steelmaking process. This year, the company will begin construction of a plant that will be able to produce 10,000 tons of steel each year. That plant, which Hertha expects to reach full production capacity at the end 2027, will also produce high-purity iron for the magnet industry, helping America onshore another critical material.

“By importing so much of our pig iron and steel, we are completely reliant on global trade mechanisms and geopolitics remaining the way they are today for us to continue making the materials that are critical for our infrastructure, our defense systems, and our energy systems,” Meroueh says. “Steel is the most foundational material to our society. It is simply irreplaceable.”

Streamlining steelmaking

Meroueh earned her master’s degree in the lab of Gang Chen, MIT’s Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering. She studied thermal energy storage and the fundamental physics of heat transfer, eventually getting her first taste of entrepreneurship when she explored commercializing some of that research. Meroueh received a grant from the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund and considers Executive Director Jinane Abounadi a close mentor today.

The experience taught Meroueh a lot about startups, but she ultimately decided to stay at MIT to pursue her PhD in metallurgy and hydrogen production in the lab of Douglas Hart, MIT professor of mechanical engineering. After earning her PhD in 2020, she was recruited to lead a hydrogen production startup for a year and a half.

“After that experience, I was looking at all of the hard-to-abate, high-emissions sectors of the economy to find the one receiving the least attention,” Meroueh says. “I stumbled onto steel and fell in love.”

Meroueh became an Innovators Fellow at the climate and energy startup investment firm Breakthrough Energy and officially founded Hertha Metals in 2022.

The company is named after Hertha Ayrton, a 19th-century physicist and inventor who advanced our understanding of electric arcs, which the company uses in its furnaces.

Globally, most steel today is made by combining iron ore with coke (from coal) and limestone in a blast furnace to make molten iron. That “pig iron” is then sent to another furnace to burn off excess carbon and impurities. Alloying elements are then added, and the steel is sent for casting and finishing, requiring additional machinery.

The U.S. makes most of its steel from recycled scrap metal, but it still must import iron made from a blast furnace to reach useful grades of steel.

“The United States has a massive need to make steel from iron ore, not just scrap, so we can stop relying on importing so much,” Meroueh explains. “We only have about 11 operational blast furnaces in the U.S., so we end up importing about 90 percent of the pig iron needed to feed into domestic scrap steel furnaces.”

To solve the problem, Meroueh leveraged a fuel America has in abundance: natural gas. Hertha’s system uses natural gas (the process also works with hydrogen) to reduce iron ore while using electricity to melt it in a single step. She says the closest competing technology requires scarce and expensive pelletized, high-grade iron ore and multiple furnaces to produce liquid steel. Meroueh’s process uses iron ore of any format or grade, producing refined liquid steel in a single furnace, cutting both cost and emissions.

“Many reactions that were previously run sequentially though a conventional steelmaking process are now occurring simultaneously, within a single furnace,” Meroueh explains. “We’re melting, we’re reducing, and we’re carburizing the steel to the exact amount we need. What exits our furnace is a refined molten steel. We can process any grade and format of iron ore because everything is occurring in the molten phase. It doesn’t matter whether the ore came in as a pellet or clumps and fines out of the ground.”

Meroueh says the company’s biggest innovation is performing the gaseous reduction when the iron oxide is a molten liquid using proprietary gas technologies.     

“All of the conventional steelmaking technologies perform reduction while the iron ore is in a solid state, and they use gas — whether that’s combusted coke or natural gas — to perform that reduction,” Meroueh says. “We saw the inefficiency in doing that and how it restricted the grade and form of usable iron ore, because at the end of the day you have to melt the ore anyway.”

Hertha’s system is modular and uses standard off-gas handling equipment, steam turbines, and heat exchangers. It also recycles natural gas to regenerate electricity from the hot off-gas leaving the furnace.

“Our steel mill has its own little power plant attached that leads to 35 percent recovery in energy and minimizes grid power demand in an age in which we are competing with data centers,” Meroueh says.

Onshoring critical materials

Today’s steel mills are the result of enormous investments and are designed to run for at least 50 years. Hertha Metals doesn’t envision replacing those entirely — at least not anytime soon.

“You’re not just going to shut off a steel mill in the middle of its life,” Meroueh says. “Sure, you can build new steel mills, but we really want to be able to displace the blast furnace and the basic oxygen furnace while still utilizing all the mill’s downstream equipment.”

The company’s Houston plant began producing one ton of steel per day just two years after Hertha’s founding and less than one year after Meroueh opened up Hertha’s headquarters. She calls it an important first step.

“This is the largest-scale demonstration of a single-step steelmaking company,” Meroueh says. “It’s a true breakthrough in terms of scalability, pace of progress, and capital efficiency.”

The company’s next plant, which will be capable of producing 10,000 tons of steel each year, will also be producing high-purity iron for permanent magnets, which are used in electric motors, robotics, consumer electronics, aerospace and military hardware.

“It’s insane that we don’t make rare earth magnets domestically,” Meroueh says. “It’s insane that any country doesn’t make their own rare earth magnets. Most rare earth magnets are permanent magnets, so neodymium magnets. What’s interesting is that by weight, 70 percent of that magnet is not a rare earth, it’s high-purity iron. America doesn’t currently make any high-purity iron, but Hertha has already made it in our pilot plant.”

Hertha plans to quickly scale up its production of high-purity iron so that, by 2030, it will be able to meet about a quarter of total projected demand for magnets in the U.S.

After that, the company plans to run a full-scale commercial steel plant in partnership with a steel manufacturer in America. Meroueh says that plant, which will be able to produce around half a million tons of steel each year, should be operational by 2030.

“We are eager to partner with today’s steel producers so that we can collectively leverage the existing infrastructure alongside Hertha’s innovation,” Meroueh says. “That includes the $1.5 billion of capital downstream of a melt shop that Hertha’s process can integrate into. The melt shop is the ore-to-liquid steel portion of the steel mill. That’s just the start.  It’s a smaller scale than a conventional plant in which we still economically out compete traditional production processes. Then we’re going to scale to 2 million tons per year once we build up our balance sheet.”

The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT has awarded funding to eight new research studies to understand how artificial intelligence innovations can be used in the fight against poverty through its new Project AI Evidence.

The age of AI has brought wide-ranging optimism and skepticism about its effects on society. To realize AI’s full potential, Project AI Evidence (PAIE) will identify which AI solutions work and for whom, and scale only the most effective, inclusive, and responsible solutions — while scaling down those that may potentially cause harm.

PAIE will generate evidence on what works by connecting governments, tech companies, and nonprofits with world-class economists at MIT and across J-PAL’s global network to evaluate and improve AI solutions to entrenched social challenges.

The new initiative is prioritizing questions policymakers are already asking: Do AI-assisted teaching tools help all children learn? How can early-warning flood systems help people affected by natural disasters? Can machine learning algorithms help reduce deforestation in the Amazon? Can AI-powered chatbots help improve people’s health? In the coming years, PAIE will run a series of funding competitions to invite proposals for evaluations of AI tools that address questions like these, and many more.

PAIE is financially supported by a grant from Google.org, philanthropic support from Community Jameel, a grant from Canada’s International Development Research Centre and UK International Development, and a collaboration agreement with Amazon Web Services. Through a grant from Eric and Wendy Schmidt, awarded by recommendation of Schmidt Sciences, the initiative will also study generative AI in the workplace, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.

Alex Diaz, head of AI for social good at Google.org, says, “we’re thrilled to collaborate with MIT and J-PAL, already leaders in this space, on Project AI Evidence. AI has great potential to benefit all people, but we urgently need to study what works, what doesn’t, and why, if we are to realize this potential.”

“Artificial intelligence holds extraordinary potential, but only if the tools, knowledge, and power to shape it are accessible to all — that includes contextually grounded research and evidence on what works and what does not,” adds Maggie Gorman-Velez, vice president of strategy, regions, and policies at IDRC. “That is why IDRC is proud to be supporting this new evaluation work as part of our ongoing commitment to the responsible scaling of proven safe, inclusive, and locally relevant AI innovations.”

J-PAL is uniquely positioned to help understand AI’s effects on society: Since its inception in 2003, J-PAL’s network of researchers has led over 2,500 rigorous evaluations of social policies and programs around the world. Through PAIE, J-PAL will bring together leading experts in AI technology, research, and social policy, in alignment with MIT president Sally Kornbluth’s focus on generative AI as a strategic priority.

PAIE is chaired by Professor Joshua Blumenstock of the University of California at Berkeley; J-PAL Global Executive Director Iqbal Dhaliwal; and Professor David Yanagizawa-Drott of the University of Zurich.

New evaluations of urgent policy questions

The studies funded in PAIE’s first round of competition explore urgent questions in key sectors like education, health, climate, and economic opportunity.

How can AI be most effective in classrooms, helping both students and teachers?

Existing research shows that personalized learning is important for students, but challenging to implement with limited resources. In Kenya, education social enterprise EIDU has developed an AI tool that helps teachers identify learning gaps and adapt their daily lesson plans. In India, the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Pratham is developing an AI tool to increase the impact and scale of the evidence-informed Teaching at the Right Level approach. J-PAL researchers Daron Acemoglu, Iqbal Dhaliwal, and Francisco Gallego will work with both organizations to study the effects and potential of these different use cases on teachers’ productivity and students’ learning.

Can AI tools reduce gender bias in schools?

Researchers are collaborating with Italy’s Ministry of Education to evaluate whether AI tools can help close gender gaps in students’ performance by addressing teachers’ unconscious biases. J-PAL affiliates Michela Carlana and Will Dobbie, along with Francesca Miserocchi and Eleonora Patacchini, will study the impacts of two AI tools, one that helps teachers predict performance and a second that gives real-time feedback on the diversity of their decisions.

Can AI help career counselors uncover more job opportunities?

In Kenya, researchers are evaluating if an AI tool can identify overlooked skills and unlock employment opportunities, particularly for youth, women, and those without formal education. In collaboration with NGOs Swahilipot and Tabiya, Jasmin Baier and J-PAL researcher Christian Meyer will evaluate how the tool changes people’s job search strategies and employment. This study will shed light on AI as a complement, rather than a substitute, for human expertise in career guidance.

Looking forward

As use of AI in the social sector evolves, these evaluations are a first step in discovering effective, responsible solutions that will go the furthest in alleviating poverty and inequality.

J-PAL’s Dhaliwal notes, “J-PAL has a long history of evaluating innovative technology and its ability to improve people’s lives. While AI has incredible potential, we need to maximize its benefits and minimize possible harms. We’re grateful to our donors, sponsors, and collaborators for their catalytic support in launching PAIE, which will help us do exactly that by continuing to expand evidence on the impacts of AI innovations.”

J-PAL is also seeking new collaborators who share its vision of discovering and scaling up real-world AI solutions. It aims to support more governments and social sector organizations that want to adopt AI responsibly, and will continue to expand funding for new evaluations and provide policy guidance based on the latest research.

To learn more about Project AI Evidence, subscribe to J-PAL's newsletter or contact paie@povertyactionlab.org.

Discord has begun rolling out mandatory age verification and the internet is, understandably, freaking out.

At EFF, we’ve been raising the alarm about age verification mandates for years. In December, we launched our Age Verification Resource Hub to push back against laws and platform policies that require users to hand over sensitive personal information just to access basic online services. At the time, age gates were largely enforced in polities where it was mandated by law. Now they’re landing in platforms and jurisdictions where they’re not required.

Beginning in early March, users who are either (a) estimated by Discord to be under 18, or (b) Discord doesn't have enough information on, may find themselves locked into a “teen-appropriate experience.” That means content filters, age gates, restrictions on direct messages and friend requests, and the inability to speak in “Stage channels,” which are the large-audience audio spaces that power many community events. Discord says most adults may be sorted automatically through a new “age inference” system that relies on account tenure, device and activity data, and broader platform patterns. Those whose age isn’t estimated due to lack of information or who are estimated to not be adults will be asked to scan their face or upload a government ID through a third-party vendor if they want to avoid the default teen account restrictions.

We’ve written extensively about why age verification mandates are a censorship and surveillance nightmare. Discord’s shift only reinforces those concerns. Here’s why:

The 2025 Breach and What's Changed Since

Discord literally won our 2025 “We Still Told You So” Breachies Award. Last year, attackers accessed roughly 70,000 users’ government IDs, selfies, and other sensitive information after compromising Discord’s third-party customer support system.

To be clear: Discord is no longer using that system, which involved routing ID uploads through its general ticketing system for age verification. It now uses dedicated age verification vendors (k-ID globally and Persona for some users in the United Kingdom).

That’s an improvement. But it doesn’t eliminate the underlying potential for data breaches and other harms. Discord says that it will delete records of any user-uploaded government IDs, and that any facial scans will never leave users’ devices. But platforms are closed-source, audits are limited, and history shows that data (especially this ultra-valuable identity data) will leak—whether through hacks, misconfigurations, or retention mistakes. Users are being asked to simply trust that this time will be different.

Age Verification and Anonymous Speech

For decades, we’ve taught young people a simple rule: don’t share personal information with strangers online.

Age verification complicates that advice. Suddenly, some Discord users will now be asked to submit a government ID or facial scan to access certain features if their age-inference technology fails. Discord has said on its blog that it will not associate a user’s ID with their account (only using that information to confirm their age) and that identifying documents won’t be retained. We take those commitments seriously. However, users have little independent visibility into how those safeguards operate in practice or whether they are sufficient to prevent identification.

Even if Discord can technically separate IDs from accounts, many users are understandably skeptical, especially after the platform’s recent breach involving age-verification data. For people who rely on pseudonymity, being required to upload a face scan or government ID at all can feel like crossing a line.

Many people rely on anonymity to speak freely. LGBTQ+ youth, survivors of abuse, political dissidents, and countless others use aliases to explore identity, find support, and build community safely. When identity checks become a condition of participation, many users will simply opt out. The chilling effect isn’t only about whether an ID is permanently linked to an account; it’s about whether users trust the system enough to participate in the first place. When you’re worried that what you say can be traced back to your government ID, you speak differently—or not at all.

No one should have to choose between accessing online communities and protecting their privacy.

Age Verification Systems Are Not Ready for Prime Time

Discord says it is trying to address privacy concerns by using device-based facial age estimation and separating government IDs from user accounts, retaining only a user’s age rather than their identity documents. This is meant to reduce the risks associated with retaining and collecting this sensitive data. However, even when privacy safeguards are in place, we are faced with another problem: There is no current technology that is fully privacy-protective, universally accessible, and consistently accurate. Facial age estimation tools are notoriously unreliable, particularly for people of color, trans and nonbinary people, and people with disabilities. The internet has now proliferated with stories of people bypassing these facial age estimation tools. But when systems get it wrong, users may be forced into appeals processes or required to submit more documentation, such as government-issued IDs, which would exclude those whose appearance doesn’t match their documents and the millions of people around the world who don’t have government-issued identity documents at all.

Even newer approaches (things like age inference, behavior tracking, financial database checks, digital ID systems) expand the web of data collection, and carry their own tradeoffs around access and error. As we mentioned earlier, no current approach is simultaneously privacy-protective, universally accessible, and consistently accurate across all demographics. 

That’s the challenge: the technology itself is not fit for the sweeping role platforms are asking it to play.

That’s the challenge: the technology itself is not fit for the sweeping role platforms are asking it to play.

The Aftermath

Discord reports over 200 million monthly active users, and is one of the largest platforms used by gamers to chat. The video game industry is larger than movies, TV, and music combined, and Discord represents an almost-default option for gamers looking to host communities.

Many communities, including open-source projects, sports teams, fandoms, friend groups, and families, use Discord to stay connected. If communities or individuals are wrongly flagged as minors, or asked to complete the age verification process, they may face a difficult choice: submit to facial scans or ID checks, or accept a more restricted “teen” experience. For those who decline to go through the process, the result can mean reduced functionality, limited communication tools, and the chilling effects that follow. 

Most importantly, Discord did not have to “comply in advance” by requiring age verification for all users, whether or not they live in a jurisdiction that mandates it. Other social media platforms and their trade groups have fought back against more than a dozen age verification laws in the U.S., and Reddit has now taken the legal fight internationally. For a platform with as much market power as Discord, voluntarily imposing age verification is unacceptable. 

So You’ve Hit an Age Gate. Now What?

Discord should reconsider whether expanding identity checks is worth the harm to its communities. But in the meantime, many users are facing age checks today.

That’s why we created our guide, “So You’ve Hit an Age Gate. Now What?” It walks through practical steps to minimize risk, such as:

• Submit the least amount of sensitive data possible.
• Ask: What data is collected? Who can access it? How long is it retained?
• Look for evidence of independent, security-focused audits.
• Be cautious about background details in selfies or ID photos.

There is unfortunately no perfect option, only tradeoffs. And every user will have their own unique set of safety concerns to consider. Amidst this confusion, our goal is to help keep you informed, so you can make the best choices for you and your community.

In light of the harms imposed by age-verification systems, EFF encourages all services to stop adopting these systems when they are not mandated by law. And lawmakers across the world that are considering bills that would make Discord’s approach the norm for every platform should watch this backlash and similarly move away from the idea.

If you care about privacy, free expression, and the right to participate online without handing over your identity, now is the time to speak up.

Join us in the fight.