Twitch Forces Partners to Show ID To Persona to Collect Earnings

Discord spent weeks playing down its plan to scan users’ faces through Persona, a controversial identity verification service. Twitch, apparently, was watching and decided to move in the opposite direction.

Some Twitch Partners now have to hand their government ID and a selfie to Persona before they can collect their earnings. Not to access content or to prove they’re old enough to watch anything. It’s to get paid for work they’ve already done.

Here is a screenshot of what users see: “Submit proof of identity and location to receive your payout,” before explaining that you will have to upload your government ID and a selfie to Persona in order to access your hard-earned funds.

Twitch’s own documentation describes the requirement as targeted: “Some streamers may be required to verify their identity before receiving their first payout. If your payout is on hold, you’ll see a message in your Payout Eligibility Panel and receive email notifications with instructions to complete identity verification through Persona, Twitch’s verification service.” Who gets flagged and why remains unclear.

The broader pattern here is regulation-driven verification creeping into every corner of the web. The UK’s Online Safety Act requires age verification to access large portions of internet content, pushing platforms toward ID checks at scale. The service is expanding whether users consent to it or not.

Discord’s path shows pushback is possible. CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy acknowledged in a blog post that “we knew this rollout was going to be controversial. Any time you introduce something that touches identity and verification, people are going to have strong feelings,” before confirming the company had walked away from Persona entirely because it failed to meet a requirement for on-device verification.

Discord will still use k-ID for age checks in Australia, Brazil, and the UK, though, where the law requires it.