Child Safety Discord has a zero-tolerance policy for anyone who endangers or sexualizes children. Child-harm content is appalling, unacceptable, and has no place on Discord or the internet at large. We work with industry peers, civil society, and law enforcement to ensure that this effort extends beyond Discord. Discord is an active supporter of cross-industry programs such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and is a member of the Technology Coalition. We’re also a frequent sponsor of events dedicated to increasing awareness of and action on child safety issues such as the annual Dallas Crime Against Children Convention.
We have a dedicated team and invest heavily in advanced tooling and education so parents know how our service works and understand the controls that can contribute to creating a positive and safe experience on Discord for their children. As part of our ongoing commitment to parent engagement, Discord is a proud sponsor of the National Parent Teacher Association and ConnectSafely. We continue to be a member of the Family Online Safety Institute, contributing to and learning from its important work.
Discord disabled 532,498 accounts and removed 15,163 servers for Child Safety in the second quarter of 2022. Servers removed for CSAM increased to 6,640, up from 1,271, with a proactive removal rate of 95%. This is a significant increase from the 52% CSAM server proactive removal rate in the first quarter of 2022, and resulted from the introduction of new tools built to identify and detect servers hosting this content.
Users who upload abuse material of minors to Discord are reported to NCMEC and removed from the service. We deeply value our partnership with NCMEC and their efforts to ensure that grooming and endangerment cases are quickly escalated to law enforcement.
In the second quarter of 2022, we reported 21,529 accounts to NCMEC, a 101% increase in reports made when compared to the first quarter of 2022. 21,425 of those reports were media (images or videos), of which many were flagged through PhotoDNA – a tool that uses a shared industry hash database of known CSAM. 104 high-harm grooming or endangerment reports were also delivered to NCMEC.
Of the 532,498 accounts and 15,163 servers removed for Child Safety, 497,267 accounts and 7,834 servers were removed for Sexualized Content Regarding Minors (SCRM), the largest sub-category within Child Safety. This represents a 30% decrease in accounts disabled and a 65% decrease in servers removed for SCRM from the previous quarter.
These decreases can be attributed to better operating procedures and our enhanced detection capabilities which enable our team to identify these servers faster. We believe these interventions have resulted in a behavioral shift with fewer SCRM servers created and fewer accounts joining these servers when they are created.
Deceptive Practices Using Discord for the purpose of distributing malware, sharing or selling game hacks or cheats, and theft of authentication tokens is a violation of our Community Guidelines.
We disabled 6,150 accounts and removed 1,677 servers for Deceptive Practices during the second quarter of 2022.
Exploitative and Unsolicited Content It is a violation of our Community Guidelines to share or promote sexually explicit content of other people without their consent.
We disabled 106,645* accounts and removed 2,326 servers for Exploitative and Unsolicited Content, which remained the second-largest category of accounts disabled. Accounts disabled for this category declined by 27.5% when compared to the previous quarter. This decline was largely the result of successfully targeting specific abuse types that comprised the higher number of actionable content during the first quarter.
For nonconsensual pornography, one of the high-harm issues that Discord targets proactively, 701 servers were removed, with a proactive removal rate of 36%.
Harassment and Bullying Harassment and bullying have no place on Discord. Continuous, repetitive, or severe negative comments, circumventing bans, suggestive or overt threats, the sharing of someone’s personally identifiable information (also known as doxxing), and server raiding are violations of our Community Guidelines.
During the second quarter of 2022, 13,779 accounts were disabled for harassment-related behavior, and 598 servers were removed for this issue.
Hateful Conduct Discord doesn’t allow the organization, promotion, or participation in hate speech or hateful conduct.
During the second quarter of 2022, 5,719 accounts and 713 servers were removed for hateful conduct. Compared to the previous quarter, this was a decrease of 35% and 25%, respectively.
Identity and Authenticity Using Discord for the purpose of coordinating and participating in malicious impersonation of individuals or organizations is a violation of our Community Guidelines.
We disabled 148 accounts and removed 12 servers for this issue.
Misinformation We recently published a blog post discussing our new policy prohibiting the sharing of false or misleading information on Discord that is likely to cause physical or societal harm. This blog post discusses the new policy and our enforcement criteria in more detail.
We disabled 270 accounts and removed 73 servers for misinformation.
Platform Manipulation Spam, fake accounts, and self-bots are examples of platform manipulation that damage the experience of our users and violate our Community Guidelines.
During the second quarter of 2022, 3,400 accounts and 351 servers were removed for platform manipulation-related issues not related to spam. An additional 27,733,948 accounts were disabled for spam or spam-related offenses.
We're focused on combating spam and minimizing users’ exposure to spammers and spam content on Discord. We have a dedicated cross-functional anti-spam team building sophisticated anti-spam measures, and as a result of this work, 90% of accounts disabled for spam were disabled proactively, before we received any user report.
You can read more about how Discord fights spam here .
Regulated or Illegal Activities Using Discord for the purpose of engaging in regulated, illegal, or dangerous activities is strictly prohibited, including selling or facilitating the sale of prohibited or potentially dangerous goods or services.
We disabled 27,494 accounts for engaging in this behavior, an increase of 39.5% from the prior quarter.
A total of 4,639 servers were removed for this category with a proactive removal rate of 60.5%. The overall increase in warnings, accounts disabled, and servers removed for this category was the result of more sophisticated methods for proactive detection being introduced during the quarter.
Self-Harm Concerns Using Discord to glorify or promote suicide or self-harm is not allowed under any circumstance.
Actions may be taken on accounts or servers encouraging people to cut themselves or embrace eating disorders, or otherwise manipulating and coercing other users to engage in acts of self-harm. These actions are only taken on accounts glorifying or promoting acts of self-harm, not on users seeking help or in need of medical attention.
We recently announced a new partnership with Crisis Text Line , a nonprofit that provides 24/7 text-based mental health support and crisis intervention via trained volunteer crisis counselors. Crisis Text Line is currently available to those in the United States and is offered in both English and Spanish. You can read more about this partnership here .
We disabled 2,495 accounts and removed 620 servers for self-harm concerns.
Violent and Graphic Content Real media depicting gore, excessive violence, the glorification of violence, or animal cruelty with the intent to harass or shock others is not allowed on Discord.
In the second quarter of 2022, 15,630 accounts were disabled for posting violent and graphic content. We also removed 1,286 servers for violent and graphic content.
Violent Extremism We consider violent extremism to be the support, encouragement, promotion, or organization of violent acts or ideologies that advocate for the destruction of society, often by blaming certain individuals or groups and calling for violence against them.
This blog post discusses our methods to address violent extremism. Through partnering and engaging in cross-industry work with Tech Against Terrorism, the Global Internet Forum To Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), the European Union Internet Forum and other organizations, we’ve made progress in our tooling, policy, and subject matter expertise to ensure that violent extremism does not have a home on Discord.
We want to acknowledge the horrific attack in Buffalo, New York that occurred on May 14, 2022. You can read our full statement and a summary of the actions that we took here .
In the second quarter of 2022, 12,531 accounts and 910 servers were removed for violent extremism.