This is a distinction without a difference. Users were assured their selfies would not be retained and they were. Discord then proceeded to lose those selfies to bad actors, after promising not to retain them. The incident has caused enormous distrust of all age verification systems, which were already starting in the mind of the community from a base level of skepticism. It's already highly invasive to take a photo of yourself, but then the user must trust that the organization on the other end will handle it appropriately. To have that trust so conspicuously broken poisons the well for all other age verification systems and websites that are legally compelled to use it, or face penalties from aggressive organizations like OFCOM.

I disagree! There very much is a distinction and every age verification process will have the same failure mode. If there is something wrong with your account or ID, the user will have to go via the manual support proccess, which necessitates sharing particulars with falliable humans and the fragile support process. The alternative is to offer no support and prevent them from using the service... which is by far the worst outcome.

Were users assured that the selfies they emailed to support would not be retained? I'm loath to defend the multimillion dollar corporation, but let's at least be fair.