> Discord seems to have intentionally softened its age-verification steps so it can tell regulators, “we’re doing something to protect children,” while still leaving enough wiggle room that technically savvy users can work around it.

...source?

I sincerely doubt that Discord's lawyers advocated for age verification that was hackable by tech savvy users.

It seems more likely that they are trying to balance two things:

1. Age verification requirements

2. Not storing or sending photos of people's (children's) faces

Both of these are very important, legally, to protect the company. It is highly unlikely that anyone in Discord's leadership, let alone compliance, is advocating for backdoors (at least for us.)