Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a sweeping lawsuit against Discord, accusing the company of deceiving parents about child safety while knowingly operating what the state calls “one of the internet’s most efficient hunting grounds” for predators targeting children.
Filed in Collin County, the lawsuit alleges Discord violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act by falsely marketing its platform as safe for children while designing features that allegedly maximize exposure to predators, extremists, and sexually explicit material.
“Discord has allowed and invited all kinds of nihilistic violence and evil,” Paxton said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “My office is taking action to protect our nation’s precious children from predators.”
The state’s petition portrays Discord as a platform intentionally structured to prioritize growth and user engagement over safety. According to the lawsuit, Discord combines pseudonymous identities, direct messaging, private servers, voice and video chat, and invitation-based communities into a system that allegedly enables predators to groom minors out of public view.
Texas points to multiple cases involving children harmed after interactions on Discord. The lawsuit references a 13-year-old Texas girl who was allegedly groomed and sexually assaulted by a predator she met on the platform, a 15-year-old autistic boy who later died by suicide after allegedly being coerced into sending explicit material through Discord, and a Washington teenager targeted by the extremist “764” network before taking his own life.
The petition argues Discord publicly claimed that “safety is at the core of everything we do” and “fully integrated into our design process,” while internally making design decisions that allegedly weakened protections for minors.
According to the lawsuit, Discord allegedly defaulted many safety settings toward broader exposure instead of maximum protection, relied heavily on self-reported ages that minors could bypass by entering false birthdates, and left key moderation tools optional rather than automatically enabled.
Texas also accuses Discord of relying heavily on unpaid volunteer moderators with little training or support while publicly portraying the platform as heavily invested in user safety. The lawsuit further claims Discord’s “zero-tolerance” policies toward child exploitation and extremist content were inconsistently enforced and easily circumvented because banned users could quickly create new accounts.
Texas is seeking civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation under the DTPA, along with court orders requiring Discord to implement stronger default protections and age verification measures under Texas’ SCOPE Act.
The attorney general’s office first opened an investigation into Discord in October 2025 following reports involving child exploitation and extremist activity on the platform used by the accused assassin of Charlie Kirk.
Discord disputed the allegations in a statement to Texas Scorecard, saying the lawsuit’s “characterization of Discord does not reflect the platform we have built or the investments we have made in user safety.”
The company said its platform is designed around user-created communities rather than algorithmic feeds, and argued that it employs both automated systems and human-led investigations to identify harmful activity, including child sexual abuse material. Discord also pointed to safety features such as its Teen Safety Assist and Family Center tools.
“We look forward to collaborating with policymakers in working toward a safer online experience for all users on Discord and across the internet,” a company spokesperson said.
