Florida sues Discord, calling the platform a hotbed for child predators and its safety promises false

Florida has put another platform in the dock over children, and this time the target is the app where a large share of American teenagers spend their evenings.

Attorney General James Uthmeier announced a civil lawsuit on Thursday, October 15, against Discord, the messaging and gaming platform with more than 200 million monthly users, seeking potentially millions of dollars in damages. The suit accuses Discord of providing a hotbed for predatory and exploitative activity that put Florida children at risk, and of telling parents that safety is at the core of everything it does when, the state says, that was false.

Uthmeier put the enforcement record behind the filing. His office, he said, has arrested more than 2,100 child predators in Florida since he took office, and again and again their trail to children leads back to Discord. For years, he said, the platform's default settings let strangers send children friend requests and messages, and it still does not scan all private chats for rule breaking. His office announced an investigation in March and issued subpoenas for the company's marketing materials about safety for children and for evidence of what the company knew about adults posing as children on the app.

Discord rolled out age verification for the first time in September, using a system that estimates a user's age and requires some users to prove their identity for age restricted content. Uthmeier called the changes too little and too late. On its website, Discord says it has a zero tolerance policy toward child sexual abuse material and toward adults who attempt to groom users. As of Thursday afternoon, the company had not publicly responded to the lawsuit.

The Florida case joins a wider run of state actions against platforms over child safety this month, including the coordinated suits eight states filed against OpenAI on Wednesday, reported in this morning's sweep. The suits are allegations and have not been proven in court.