Shehan said enticement reports made to NCMEC had nearly doubled from 2021 to 2022. While it’s hard to assess the full scope of the issue of child exploitation on Discord, organizations that track reports of abuse on tech platforms have identified themes that they’ve been able to distill from the thousands of Discord-related reports they process each year: grooming, the creation of child exploitation material, and the encouragement of self-harm.Īccording to both NCMEC and C3P, reports of enticement, luring and grooming, where adults are communicating directly with children, are increasing across the internet. That infrastructure proved incredibly popular, and in the past seven years Discord has been integrated into nearly every corner of online life.Īs the platform has grown, the problems it’s faced with child exploitation appear to have grown, too. Discord doesn’t require users’ real identities like some other platforms, and can facilitate large group video and audio-chats. Some of these communities had over 1,500 members.ĭiscord allows for casual text, audio and video chat in invite-only communities, called servers (some servers are set to provide open invitations to anyone who wants to join). At least 15 communities directly appealed to teens themselves by claiming they are sexual communities for minors. In a review of publicly listed Discord servers created in the last month, NBC News identified 242 that appeared to market sexually explicit content of minors, using thinly veiled terms like “CP” that refer to child sexual abuse material. Discord is currently not able to automatically detect newly created CSAM that hasn't been indexed or messages that could provide signs of grooming. Redgrave said he believes that the company now proactively detects most CSAM that’s been previously identified, verified and indexed. But since then, he said, Discord has implemented several systems to proactively detect known child sexual abuse material and analyze user behavior. When Discord responds and cooperates with tiplines and law enforcement, groups say the information is usually of high quality, including messages, account names and IP addresses.ĭiscord was “not proactive at all when I first started,” Redgrave said. But experts have suggested that Discord’s young user base, decentralized structure and multimedia communication tools, along with its recent growth in popularity, have made it a particularly attractive location for people looking to exploit children.Īccording to an analysis of reports made to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), reports of CSAM on Discord increased by 474% from 2021 to 2022. At least 91 of the prosecutions have resulted in guilty pleas or verdicts, while many other cases are ongoing.ĭiscord isn’t the only tech platform dealing with the persistent problem of online child exploitation, according to numerous reports over the last year. It is illegal to consume or create CSAM in nearly all jurisdictions across the world, and it violates Discord’s rules. NBC News identified an additional 165 cases, including four crime rings, in which adults were prosecuted for transmitting or receiving CSAM via Discord or for allegedly using the platform to extort children into sending sexually graphic images of themselves, also known as sextortion. In another, a 22-year-old man kidnapped a 12-year-old after meeting her in a video game and grooming her on Discord, according to prosecutors. In March, a teen was taken across state lines, raped and found locked in a backyard shed, according to police, after she was groomed on Discord for months. “What we see is only the tip of the iceberg,” said Stephen Sauer, the director of the tipline at the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P). Those numbers only represent cases that were reported, investigated and prosecuted - which all present major hurdles for victims and their advocates. At least 15 of the prosecutions have resulted in guilty pleas or verdicts, and many of the other cases are still pending. Twenty-two of those cases occurred during or after the Covid pandemic. In a review of international, national and local criminal complaints, news articles and law enforcement communications published since Discord was founded, NBC News identified 35 cases over the past six years in which adults were prosecuted on charges of kidnapping, grooming or sexual assault that allegedly involved communications on Discord.
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