April 17, 2025
Doug Hood/USA TODAY NETWORK
New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin has sued Discord for failing to enforce its security features.
New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin sued the messaging app Discord on Thursday under the state Consumer Fraud Act, saying the tech giant has failed to protect underage users from sexual predators, harassment and violent content.
Platkin, who also has sued TikTok and Meta, alleges Discord misleads parents and users about the efficacy of its “porous security features that Discord knows do not work as promised.” The decade-old platform, which caters to teens and gamers, has 200 million users.
“Too often, parents feel helpless as rich and powerful corporations find new ways to put harmful content literally directly into our kids’ hands, callously placing their own profits ahead of the safety and well-being of our children,” Platkin said at a news conference in Newark.
Platkin pointed to violent incidents involving white supremacists who used the platform to plan or publicize their crimes, including a deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and a 2022 mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket that left 10 dead.
Platkin said his office launched its investigation after the Buffalo massacre and found that Discord, even as it publicly promotes its safety measures, fails to enforce them, making it “alarmingly easy for predators and other malicious actors to target children on the app.”
“There’s very little to prevent kids from connecting with and receiving messages from complete strangers on their platform. This includes strangers who are adults pretending to be kids, something that should be a red flag for every parent,” Platkin said.
Discord prohibits children under 13 on its platform, he added, “but it barely enforces its own rule.”
“All a child has to do to access the app is just say they’re 13. Discord will take any 8-year-old’s word for it,” he said.
He added: “There are very few roadblocks between a child under the age of 10 accessing Discord and being groomed in a private chat or coerced to engage in self-harm. It’s horrifying, sickening, and it’s especially horrifying and sickening given that Discord users in New Jersey exchange billions of direct messages on the app every year.”
Officials from Discord, which is based in San Francisco, did not respond to a request for comment.
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