N.J. sues messaging app Discord for alleged youth endangerment

New Jersey is suing the messaging app Discord, alleging the company’s protections for young users were toothless and ineffective.

New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin announced the lawsuit during a Thursday press conference in Newark. Platkin and Cari Fais, the director of the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs, said lapses in the app’s safety features have allowed children to experience violent imagery, harassment, and even sexual abuse.

“Discord built this massive user base by touting its Application as a ‘safe space for teens,’ claiming that it ‘makes [its] products safe spaces by design and default.’ But Discord has deceived children and parents about the efficacy of the Application’s safety features, leaving children vulnerable to harassment, abuse, and sexual exploitation by predators who lurk on the platform,” the lawsuit reads.

The San Francisco-based company has more than 200 million monthly active users and is especially popular among gamers. The app features text-based messaging, as well as voice and video chats.

In a statement, a Discord spokesperson said the company is surprised by the suit and will fight the allegations in court.

“Discord is proud of our continuous efforts and investments in features and tools that help make Discord safer,” the statement read. “Given our engagement with the Attorney General’s office, we are surprised by the announcement that New Jersey has filed an action against Discord today. We dispute the claims in the lawsuit and look forward to defending the action in court.”

New Jersey’s lawsuit targets a handful of features they argue are open to abuse.

The state argues Discord’s age-verification process is ineffective, and despite advertising a minimum age of 13, many children younger than that are allowed to misrepresent their age and gain access to the platform.

“Simple verification measures could have prevented predators from creating false accounts and kept children under 13 off the app more effectively,” reads the attorney general’s press release. “Nevertheless, Discord actively chose not to bolster its age verification process for years and has allowed children under the age of 13 to operate freely on the app, despite their vulnerability to sexual predators.”

The state also alleges the app’s “Safe Direct Messaging” feature did not function as advertised. The lawsuit says the app claimed it would “scan” messages for explicit content, but the state argues the tool was not effective, and much explicit content was not detected or deleted.

Discord isn’t the only app to face a lawsuit from New Jersey; the state has sued Meta and TikTok in recent years. 

“Simply put, Discord has promised parents safety while simultaneously making deliberate choices about its app’s design and default settings, including Safe Direct Messaging and age verification systems, that broke those promises,” the release says. “As a result of Discord’s decisions, thousands of users were misled into signing up, believing they or their children would be safe, when they were really anything but.”