He said it’s not required for everyone.
It's clearly stated that "All accounts will be set to Teen Mode", which means they will be restricted and unable to access adult content. So the adults who want to have access to adult content are gonna have to identify themselves.
It’s from the on this new policy that Discord put out.
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.
I’m guessing they don’t want to crater their company by instantly losing millions of users who absolutely will not hand over sensitive information to creeps like them. All the sketchy intel agencies farming Discord for data already know everyone’s real ID (you have to hand over a phone number to sign up) and they don’t want to lose their honey pot.
Well, seems like they back-pedalled on that suicidal-idea.