Discord disobeys its own rules and allows violent and extremist content.

By Laura Scofield, Agência Pública - Racism, misogyny, homophobia, neo-Nazism, and incitement to violence and suicide. This is the tone of conversations on some Discord servers, a text and audio chat application that is quite popular among young people and gamers. Often in the form of jokes, the so-called "shitposting"—something like "shitty posting" in English—has been a practice among young people who use the platform to share messages in which they joke, for example, about wanting to rape and kill women and girls."

One of the servers analyzed, with around 100 users, contains jokes about rape, pedophilia, necrophilia, and suicide. “Server intended for pure irony, uproar, and entertainment. If you are sensitive to such things, don't join,” says the description in the group on Disboard, a platform that brings together public Discord servers. The report decided not to publish the names of the servers to avoid publicizing the groups.

Participants pride themselves on watching and sharing content depicting child sexual abuse and "gore" content—a term referring to a subgenre of horror films with extremely violent scenes. They also frequently share neo-Nazi content calling for the death of non-white people, videos of Black people being killed by the Ku Klux Klan, and videos of women being assaulted. 

The text messages follow the same pattern, and the bots—accounts that send automated messages on the servers—have names like "rapist," "pedophile," "ILovePedophilia," among others. Some users in this group say they have been banned from Discord because of their behavior, but have returned.

On another server, geared towards supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL), a user said in a conversation on April 5th of this year that he would be "forced" to "kill" another member of the group because "I realized you're gay." In the same group, on April 12th, the conversation records that two users accessed the private information of two other members through a link they sent and threatened them by sending explicit videos of people being murdered. The two newcomers left, and the other two celebrated. The server, which has a name and photo in homage to Bolsonaro, has 24 members in total. 

“I’m a fascist and I support the Myth, if you don’t like it, go to hell, Bolsonaro 2022 (sic),” said a user on another server, which has 87 members, of which 24 are active. Another group says in its biography, jokingly: “we support Bolsonaro and we are neo-Nazis (sic).” On another server, in October 2022, a user shared a meme showing a man holding a knife. The image was captioned in English: “be the reason why women don’t go out at night.”

All the content mentioned — and many other similar items found by the report — violate Discord's policies. According to the community guidelines, it is not permitted to "encourage, coordinate, or engage in harassment"; "use hate speech"; "threaten the integrity of another person or group"; "organize, promote, or support violent extremism"; and "ask for, share, or attempt to distribute content that depicts, promotes, or attempts to normalize child sexual abuse."

The network claims that "everyone on Discord needs to follow these rules and they apply to our entire platform, including your content, your behavior, your servers, and your applications," but the investigation shows that the rules are not being followed.

“The terms of use exist, but [the moderation] is absolutely precarious. They are unable to apply the terms of use correctly, and the channels of communication in Brazil with the institutions that work with the systems are either precarious or nonexistent,” assessed Thiago Tavares, president of SaferNet Brasil. 

The expert also pointed out that there is a lack of moderators who speak Portuguese. "Moderation in English exists, and there are already data and algorithms trained to recognize certain keywords, texts, etc. in English, but when the content is in Portuguese, content moderation is very flawed," Tavares explained.

A study on the far-right on Discord, conducted by Rutgers University in the United States, also concluded that one of the reasons for the failure in moderation is that "platforms outsource responsibility to moderators and users, instead of addressing the problem at the design level." When the responsibility for managing the content shared on a server falls to the moderator, they can also allow and encourage violent content to be part of the conversation, as happens on servers analyzed in this report.

In response to Pública, Discord stated that it has “a zero-tolerance policy against hate speech or violent extremism” and that, when it becomes aware of this type of content, it takes actions such as “banning users, shutting down servers, and contacting authorities when appropriate.”

“One of Discord’s highest priorities is ensuring a safe experience for our communities, and we are continuously investing in our safety resources. Our dedicated safety team uses a combination of proactive and reactive tools to keep activities that violate our policies off the service,” the network stated. “Any type of content or activity that puts children at risk or sexualizes them is terrible, unacceptable, and has no place on Discord or in society,” it concluded. 

The report questioned how many Discord moderators speak Portuguese and why some users said they had been banned from the network and managed to return, but the platform did not respond. Check out the full response, in English. 

Discord became a channel for supremacist marches in the US.

In 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia, Discord's power to organize far-right groups became more evident. In August of that year, the "Unite the Right" rally took place, bringing together white supremacists and neo-Nazis from various parts of the United States in the city. The reason was the toppling of statues of Confederate leaders—a group that, during the American Civil War, defended the maintenance of slavery. Studies following the event showed that the rally was organized through Discord, which then began excluding some far-right servers. According to an article by the International Association of Counterterrorism and Security Professionals (IACSP), the violence in Charlottesville "could not have been planned and executed without the Discord platform." The article points to anonymity and the fact that it is necessary to log into the servers to view the content, which reduces the exposure of the topics discussed, as characteristics that make the network a good place for these groups to organize.

“Networks like Discord have been used as a platform for the articulation of neo-Nazi groups,” explained researcher Odilon Caldeira Neto, adjunct professor of Contemporary History at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora and part of the Observatory of the Far Right (OEB). “They use the networks not only as a means of propagating their ideals, but also as a means of training. I always insist on this: there is a formative path for the young neo-Nazi; they have contact, they dialogue, they produce content, they receive content, they translate content, and they export content. There is a structured network, a network where this individual will meet and be formed,” he said in an interview with the reporter.

When questioned about the humorous and ironic tone present in most neo-Nazi and prejudiced posts, the professor emphasized that this is also a strategy of the group. “The formative dimension of these individuals doesn't occur exclusively through more hermetic content, that is, reading Mein Kampf [a book written by Adolf Hitler]. Before reaching this more organized content, these individuals go through a process where this content is naturalized, so they use humor and what many of these channels call…” shitposting”, He explained.

“The far-right has long understood the power of memes as a propaganda tactic; it has been using [humor] as a propaganda tactic for a long time,” added Thiago Tavares. He points out that extremist content is even more frequent and intense in private groups, whose invitations are directed to specific users—these servers were not accessed by the report. “The radicalization process initially begins there in the open showcases of social networks and narrows down to more closed spaces,” he explains. 

Discord did not provide data to the Brazilian Justice system in a racism case.

Another problem highlighted by the president of SaferNet is that Discord does not have legal representation in Brazil, which, according to the expert, "greatly hinders cooperation and communication with the company's security teams so that they receive notifications and take action." 

The consequences of the lack of representation in Brazil can be seen in one specific case: when questioned by the Cybercrime Combat Unit (NUCCIBER) of the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office about a case of racism that allegedly occurred on the platform, Discord responded that it "offers its services in the United States of America" ​​and that "user data is stored exclusively in the United States."

The complaint refers to an allegedly orchestrated attack against a university class, whose WhatsApp group was locked and redirected to Discord. There, racist messages were sent by a fake profile posing as one of the students. The company was unable to provide data that would allow the identification of the real user.

“They operate without any kind of dialogue, without any kind of formal representation in the country,” points out Tavares. “There are flaws in the legislation, an absence of law that obliges platforms with this level of relevance to the Brazilian market to have a national presence,” he concludes.

Brazilians are the second largest audience on Discord worldwide, behind only the United States. According to an analysis by SEMRush, a digital marketing platform, in March of this year the network received 2,9 million accesses from Brazil, representing 7,3% of the network's global traffic — the United States accounts for 23%. SEMRush data also shows that the network scores highly (93 out of 100) in Google's ranking, meaning that Discord is recommended for people who perform searches.

The news outlet asked Discord to explain why it lacks legal representation in the country that represents the network's second-largest audience, but received no response.