As Discord Begins Testing Face And ID Scanning, Founder Passes CEO Role To Former Activision Blizzard Exec In Hopes Of Taking Company Public
In a leadership shake-up that could have massively negative implications for the already-frail concept of internet privacy, Discord Founder and CEO Jason Citron has announced that in an effort to eventually take the company public, he will be stepping down from his current leadership position and passing the reigns to former Activision Blizzard CSO Humam Sakhnini.
Citron, who launched Discord in 2015 after noticing the lack of effective outside-of-game communication platforms for multiplayer gaming, confirmed his exit on April 23rd via a post made to the company’s official blog.
“As we enter our next phase, I’ve been reflecting on how I can best contribute to Discord’s long-term success,” explained Citron of his decision. “The job of a CEO is constantly evolving, and over the years I have continuously ‘hired myself out of a job.’ Usually that means delegating work and then taking on different leadership challenges. However, as I look at what is needed of Discord’s CEO over the next few years, I realize that it’s time for me to literally ‘hire myself out of a job.'”
“One thing I know for sure: our company is bigger than any one person,” he added. “Its future depends not just on me, but on a strong leadership team, a clear vision for what comes next, and all of your incredible talent, care, and hard work. Today’s Discord has all of that. It’s by far the best version of the company we’ve ever had. We have a clear strategy, new business lines to grow into, love and passion from our users, and an incredible team of people working tirelessly to deliver for them.”
Noting that he would officially be transitioning from “CEO to Board Member and advisor”, Citron then moved to introduce the aforementioned Sakhnini as his replacement.
“Humam brings more than 15 years of experience in the gaming industry, including at Activision Blizzard where he served as Chief Strategy Officer helping guide franchises like World of Warcraft and Call of Duty,” recalled the exiting CEO. “He later took over from the founders of King [being appointed as President of the Candy Crush Saga developer following its purchase by Activision Blizzard] to delight the players of their live service games while substantially growing the King business in the public market.”
“Humam and I are fundamentally aligned that creating long-term value requires long-term thinking and focusing on an amazing user experience,” he concluded. “I am excited for his collaborative approach to fostering a creative environment for you all to continue delivering for our customers. Humam’s first day will be on Monday, April 28, and I’ll continue to be around as he onboards and in the background to support him in an advisory capacity.”
Offering his own statement on his new appointment, Sakhini asserted, “I’m incredibly excited to join Discord at such a pivotal moment.”
“Discord stands as a massive, foundational part of the gaming ecosystem that millions of players, developers, and publishers rely on every day,” he said. “What Jason and Discord co-founder and CTO Stan Vishnevskiy have built is truly remarkable — a platform with an undeniable product-market fit where hundreds of millions of people connect around their passion for gaming and shared interests. I look forward to working with Stan and Discord’s talented team to scale our business while staying true to the company’s core mission and the special connection it has with player communities. We’re still at the beginning of gaming’s impact on entertainment and culture, and Discord is perfectly positioned to play a central role in that future.”
In general, while the prospect of an independent and community-oriented (for all its flaws) video game project/community/platform being thrown into the corporate profit-grinder is sadly one that has become all too common across the industry, what makes this instance particularly eye brow-raising is the aforementioned timing of Sakhini’s appointment and Discord’s new ‘age verification’ efforts.
Currently being tested on users strictly within the United Kingdom and Australia, this in-development-feature will require users to either provide a full “video selfie” or scan an approved “ID document” in order to access content marked as ‘sensitive’ by other users or change their own personal content filter settings.
On their end, Discord does explicitly claim that “The information you share to power the age verification method that you choose is only used for the one-time age verification process and is not stored by Discord or its vendor,” with the face scanning program supposedly running fully “on-device” [in other words, the program processes the video recording on the user’s device rather than sending it to a third-party] and ID scans being “deleted upon verification”.
However, for those who have been on the internet for longer than a day, this promise holds very little water, especially given the abundant potential that exists for human or technological errors (and while Activision Blizzard, to their credit, has not yet suffered a massive data breach of user info, as the old adage goes, ‘Never say never’).
And what makes this combo particularly worrying is that, while Discord may currently be operating its age verification process on a supposed ‘privacy first basis’, the addition of Activision Blizzard’s business stylings into the mix could very well lead to the platform one day choosing to hold on to said face and ID data in order to sell them to whatever marketing operation or ad center can afford them.
Admittedly, this is all speculation, and a particularly ‘doom and gloom’ round at that – but in light of the current anti-consumer state of the industry, there’s really no reason to give the corporate giants any benefit of the doubt.
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