Attracting more and more minors, Discord has become a real hunting ground for pedophiles who use the platform to track victims and exchange child pornography content. A very worrying phenomenon.
While parents are aware of platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok and the dangers they harbor, they are not always aware of the more private ones. And this lack of monitoring and supervision opens the door to many dangers to which minors are exposed – already that “known” social networks lead to many abuses… This is the case with platforms such as Omefle, Bigo or Coco , which bring strangers into contact so that they can talk to each other and harbor many sex offenders and pedophiles (see our article). But they are not the only ones! As revealed by a survey of France Interchild criminals have made Discord one of their favorite hunting grounds.
Originally designed for online gamers, the chat platform has grown in popularity during the pandemic. Very popular with teenagers, it allows communication between friends or family, whether in text or voice, but also exchanges within communities that share the same passion, and even the development of projects. It was enough for pedophiles to invest massively in the platform.
Discord: child criminals on the hunt for minors
As a reminder, on Discord, the user goes to servers, which can be private groups – where only friends are accepted – or communities that come together around common themes – video games, music, science and technologies, anime and manga, or films and series for example. We can also use a search engine to find those that suit us, according to the criteria of our choice – like a server exclusively in French. Instant messaging has more than 150 million active users each month, including eight million in France – as many as LinkedIn and Pinterest.
With the Covid, children have had to abandon their activities by spending more and more time on screens, and more particularly on discussion platforms, which has made them prime targets for cybercriminals. Especially since the lack of physical social relations with their comrades has led to increased risk-taking during online exchanges. This is how the authorities quickly noticed a proliferation of pedophile content online. And Discord is no exception to this phenomenon. “He sent me pornographic photos and videos and he said to me, ‘If you agree, I will teach you to do the same as the lady‘ “, reports a witness to France Inter. She was only 13 years old when she received these messages via the platform, from a 30-year-old man. Because pedophiles do not hesitate to contact the potential victims directly by private message, in the hope that they respond to their requests and send them images and videos of themselves naked.Some do not hesitate to pretend to be minors in order to get in touch more easily and to establish a climate of trust to ultimately obtain what they came for.
Discord: a platform for exchanging child pornography content
But that’s not the only utility Discord has for sexual predators. The latter gather within the famous “communities” to exchange content of a child pornography nature. These servers are rather easy to access and France Inter has managed to enter around twenty of them. Some offer catalogs with various shows, sub-groups devoted specifically to themes such as “breasts”, “ex”, “cousins” or “lesbians”. Inside are videos of underage girls and French women, who pose naked, show their genitals and perform sexual acts. Other paid servers promise “videos of girls – 12 years old” or “sextapes, masturbations, blowjobs, incest”. The survey mentions for example an “ADØS NXDES” server, where you had to pay 24.99 euros to be able to access “new teen nxdes every day”.
What’s worse is that these servers are barely hidden. Contrary to what one might imagine, no need to venture into the darkest areas of the Dark Web to access it. All you have to do is create an account and type a few keywords into a search engine to find sites that reference Discord servers of this type. The names of the communities are quite self-explanatory, you just have to remove a few letters from the words in order to thwart the filters of the platforms, which gives “ADØS NXDES” or “nvde ados” to find naked self-portraits of teenagers. Some servers are accessible to everyone without compensation, while others require you to pay or send photos of yourself to enter the circle.
Discord: too long deletion times
The fact that Discord is home to such a network is hardly surprising given that it takes less than a minute to create your own server and make it private – similar to Telegram groups. We can then say and share there what we want, because if there is no report, there is no moderation. The platform claims to strive to apply “a policy of zero tolerance”. In its latest transparency reportreleased in March, she also says she has “disabled 37,102 accounts and deleted 17,426 servers” who breached child protection rules between October and December 2022.
The problem is that once detected, the offending servers can take between several hours and several months before being shut down. A much too long delay which gives the images time to circulate in peace. And we let you imagine their quantity, knowing that some groups have more than 700 members. Not to mention that once the room is closed, all you have to do is create a new one…
Pedophile platforms: the importance of prevention
But how do pedophiles find all their child pornography content? It can be photos and videos taken discreetly in public places, without people being aware. We thus find videos filmed in swimming pool showers, fitting rooms or under skirts. But most often, they are produced by the victims themselves, at a time of life when teenagers are exploring their sexuality and their capital of seduction. The images may initially be intended for a very restricted circle of people – a boyfriend for example – before being distributed by the recipient without the person’s consent – this is the case with revenge porn. Victims may also have been coerced into providing the photos or videos as a result of blackmail – this is sextortion. Pedophiles can also put them at ease – by pretending to be someone their own age or by seduction – in order to get them to give in to demands – this is called grooming.
Parents’ ignorance of the platform, who do not know how it works, prevents them from properly protecting their children. They have a false sense of security, as Discord is more closed than some social networks. This is why it is extremely important to carry out prevention, with young people and parents alike. To do this, the Government has set up a new platform, jeprotegemonenfant.gouv.fr, to help parents support their children in the use of screens and digital technology. It is essential to establish a preventive framework and dialogue around the potential dangers of the Internet, both in terms of behavior (cyberharassment, revenge porn, cyberattacks, addiction to screens, pedophilia, etc.) and content consumed by the most young people (fake news, pornography, violence, dangerous challenges to reproduce, sensitive content, etc.). Because, as they say, prevention is better than cure!