New Jersey has sued the Discord Social Games Platform for allegedly not being able to properly protect minor users from predators, the first state to do so.
The very drafted civil demand, presented on Thursday, accuses the discord of violating the New Jersey consumer fraud by facilitating children to believe an account and not take more measures to prevent adult users from finding and communicating with minors.
Discord is designed as a center for players to chat through text, audio and video messages, and has become popular as an application to chat while playing video games, including those who are particularly popular among children such as Roblox and Minecraft. Calling himself a “fun and safe space for adolescents”, Discord prohibits any person under 13, and says he has a zero tolerance policy towards people who exploit minors.
New Jersey Attorney, Matthew Pathin, accused the discord of not making it difficult enough for children under 13 to reach the platform and predators to find and contact minor users.
“They have fought a very extensive public relations campaign to tell the public all the characteristics they established to protect the children in their application,” Pathin told NBC News. “They know they are not working, and they know that they are not really protecting children as they say they are.”
In a statement sent by email, a Discord spokesman defended the company’s measures against the child’s exploitation.
“Discord is proud of our continuous efforts and investments in characteristics and tools that help Discord be safer,” said the spokesman.
“Given our commitment to the Office of the Attorney General, we are surprised that New Jersey has presented an action against Discord today. We distribute the claims in the lawsuit and hope to defend the action in court,” said the spokesman.
Many of Discord’s policies to protect children easily, said Pathin. A child under 13 can still create an account if they simply mark a box saying they are older. The “sensitive means” filter of Discord, an option for the company to blur the material that could be explicit, often not only works, said Pathin.
“Even when it is enabled, it is very easy to evade it,” he said.
While states have increasingly sued technology companies for accusations, they cannot properly protect children, these demands tend to focus on larger companies such as Google and Facebook.
Discord, however, has increased greater scrutiny in the last two years. An NBC news investigation in 2023 found 35 cases in which adults were prosecuted for positions of kidnapping, preparation or sexual assault that supposedly involved communications in discord, and more than 100 additional cases of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
The company’s CEO, Jason Citron, publicly called those reports as “horrifying”, and Discord soon updated their child security policies, including the prohibition of adolescent quotes and the CSAM generated by AI.
In January, the Senate Judicial Committee questioned Citron about Discord Child Security policies, as well as Meta leaders, Snap, Tiktok and X.
