https://discord.com/press-releases/discord-launches-teen-by-default-settings-globally

[February 9th, 2026]

Discord's new CEO Humam Sakhnini plans to roll out a forced AI ID verification system for all users this following March, however in October 2025, Discord confirmed a data breach originating from a third-party support provider, potentially exposing sensitive data for approximately 70,000 users. The stolen information includes government ID photos (passports/driver's licenses) used for age verification, along with user emails, names, and partial credit card data.

While some users can continue to use the platform as they usually do, the anonymous adults whom wish to be anonymous in NSFW/Age-gated servers, will be required to submit a video, or use a form of ID to scan to verify, however while Discord states:
- Facial scans never leave your device. Discord and our vendor partners never receive it.
- IDs are used to get your age only and then deleted
- Discord only receives your age — that's it. Your identity is never associated with your account.

For the majority of adult users, we will be able to confirm your age group using information we already have. We use age prediction to determine, with high confidence, when a user is an adult. This allows many adults to access age-appropriate features without completing an explicit age check. (Yet we'll see in March)

Which is confusing on last October's data breach, nevertheless new filters are being planned to set in place, that of which are:
- Mature Sexual Media Filter: Helps identify visual media that may contain sexually explicit or suggestive material involving adults
- Graphic Media Filter: Helps identify image-based media that may contain violent or potentially disturbing visual material

Several rumors circulating on the platform that the platform will scan all files and monitor your activity, even without your permission - however no article or online post mentions a thing about it

https://theintercept.com/2026/02/10/google-ice-subpoena-student-journalist/

Google provided Immigration and Customs Enforcement with a wide array of personal data on a student activist and journalist, including his credit card and bank account numbers, according to a copy of an ICE subpoena obtained by The Intercept.

Amandla Thomas-Johnson had attended a protest targeting companies that supplied weapons to Israel at a Cornell University job fair in 2024 for all of five minutes, but the action got him banned from campus. When President Donald Trump assumed office and issued a series of executive orders targeting students who protested in support of Palestinians, Thomas-Johnson and his friend Momodou Taal went into hiding.

Google informed Thomas-Johnson via a brief email in April that it had already shared his metadata with the Department of Homeland Security, as The Intercept previously reported. But the full extent of the information the tech giant provided — including usernames, addresses, itemized list of services, including any IP masking services, telephone or instrument numbers, subscriber numbers or identities, and credit card and bank account numbers — was not previously known.

“I’d already seen the subpoena request that Google and Meta had sent to Momodou [Taal], and I knew that he had gotten in touch with a lawyer and the lawyer successfully challenged that,” Thomas-Johnson said. “I was quite surprised to see that I didn’t have that opportunity.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/22/ice-jewelry-heist-suspect-self-deport

Federal immigration authorities allowed a suspect in a $100m jewelry heist believed to be the largest in US history to deport himself to South America in December, a move that stunned and upset prosecutors who were planning to try the case and send him to prison.

Jeson Nelon Presilla Flores was one of seven people charged last year with stalking an armored truck to a rural freeway rest stop north of Los Angeles and stealing millions worth of diamonds, emeralds, gold, rubies and designer watches in 2022.

Flores faced up to 15 years in federal prison if convicted on charges of conspiracy to commit theft from interstate and foreign shipment and theft from interstate and foreign shipment. He pleaded not guilty to the charges.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported Flores in late December after he requested voluntary departure, prosecutors said in court filings.

ICE did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-says-i-came-to-my-senses-about-going-to-epstein-island-2000718185

Elon Musk has spent recent days on his social media site X trying to explain why he exchanged so many emails with Jeffrey Epstein. The billionaire Tesla CEO insists that Epstein was the one pursuing him. But the more Musk explains, and the more emails are surfaced from the gigantic cache of so-called Epstein files, the stranger his defense seems to get.