Discord is in the face of a novel process from the state of Modern Jersey, which claims that the chat application is involved in “deceptive and unfettered business practices” that expose their younger users.
. lawsuitCompleted on Thursday, follows the office of the Prosecutor General in Modern Jersey for many years. The AG office claims that it has discovered evidence that despite the policy of disagreement in the protection of children and teenagers, the popular application for sending messages exposes juvenile people “threatened”.
“We are the first state in a country that suffered disagreement,” says Wired Prosecutor General Matthew Platkin.
Platkin claims that there were two catalysts. One is personal: a few years ago a friend of the family came to Platkin, he surprised that his 10-year-old son was able to sign up for Discord, despite the platform, he prohibits children under 13 years of age.
The second was mass shooting in Buffalo in neighboring Modern York. The perpetrator used disagreement as his personal diary during the attack and live live directly to the chat and video application. (Film material has been quickly removed.)
“These companies consistently bring profit before our children’s interest and prosperity,” says Platkin.
The Office of AG claims in the lawsuit that Discord violated the Act on consumer fraud. The allegations that were submitted on Thursday morning include a set of principles adopted by Discord to keep children under 13 years of age and protect teenagers from sexual abuse and violent content. The lawsuit is the latest from the growing list of courts on the parties against the main social media companies – a commitment that has so far proved quite ineffective.
The rules of the safety of children and teenagers Discord are clear: children under 13 years of age are prohibited to send messages, while more broadly forbidden any sexual interactions with minors, including youth “threat”. In addition, it has algorithmic filters acting to stop Unwanted sexual direct messages. The company’s security policy based in California, Posted in 2023He states: “We built disagreement to make it different and constantly work to make it fun and safe for teenagers.”
But Modern Jersey says: “The promises of disagreement have fallen and still falling, flat.”
The Prosecutor General points out that Discord has three security levels to prevent juvenile people from unwanted and exploiting messages from adults: “Baw Me Safe”, where the platform scans all messages in the user’s inbox; “My friends are nice”, where he doesn’t scan news from friends; And “don’t scan” where he doesn’t scan messages.
Even in the case of teenage users, the claim claims that the default platform is “my friends are nice”. The Prosecutor General claims that this is a deliberate project that poses a threat to younger users. The lawsuit also claims that Discord fails without conducting age verification to prevent children from being 13 years ancient.
In 2023, Discord added novel filters to detect and block unwanted sexual content, but the AG office claims that the company should by default enable the “Keep my safety” option.