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Headphones appear in front of the Discord app logo shown in this illustration taken March 29, 2021.
Dice rovich | Reuters
SAN FRANCISCO — Discord’s head of trust and safety said Tuesday that the popular chat platform was changing and clarifying its child safety policies including those related to teen dating and AI-generated child sexual abuse material, an announcement that follows one NBC News investigation Last month in the safe kids on the platform.
John Redgrave, Discord’s vice president of trust and security, said Discord was expanding its policies to address generative AI. It can create fake content and pedophilia, specifically banning AI depictions of pedophilia and even pedophilia in text chats. Washington Post It reported in June that artificial intelligence-generated child sexual images had proliferated online in recent months.
Discord has been a hub for communities dedicated to creating generative AI imagery and has hosted several integrations that allow users to create them. Images of a sexual nature are often generated on those servers.
The company said in a blog post Announcing changes that the updated Child Sexual Abuse Materials Policy will cover “any text or media content that sexualizes children, including graphic, realistic, and AI-generated child sexual abuse material.” The goal of this update is to ensure the sexualization of children. Children in any context are not normalized by bad actors.”
Redgrave also said the company was making policy changes and clarifications to explicitly prohibit teen dating, which experts previously told NBC News presents a huge opportunity for adults looking to exploit or groom children.
Discord wrote in its blog post: “In this context, we also believe that online dating can lead to self-compromise. Under this policy, teen dating servers are prohibited from being used on the platform and we will take action against users who engage in such behavior.”
Redgrave said in a presentation at TrustCon, a conference of trust and safety professionals held in San Francisco, that the company saw such online relationships as a significant risk to young people.
“We no longer allow teen dating on our platform because we know that stalking teen predators is a huge cause of harm,” he said.
Discord Guidelines He did say that the company would “remove spaces that encourage or facilitate teen dating.” in June, NBC News investigation I found hundreds of Discord servers that appeared to be promoting child abuse material, and some that advertised themselves as teen or child dating servers soliciting nude photos of minors. Additionally, NBC News identified 35 cases over the past six years in which adults have been prosecuted for kidnapping, grooming, or sexual assault that allegedly involved communications on Discord.
NBC News identified an additional 165 cases, including four alleged crime episodes in which adults were prosecuted for sending or receiving child sexual abuse material via Discord, or for allegedly using the platform to blackmail children into sending sexual images of themselves, also known as sextortion. .
Redgrave noted that the company was also updating its policies to ban cases of older teens grooming younger teens. In the blog post, the company said, “Older teens who engage in grooming a younger teen will be reviewed and taken action under the Inappropriate Sexual Behavior with Children and Grooming Policy.”
As part of its policy updates, Discord has announced the release of more parental controls. in a new way Family Center toolParents and children can subscribe so that parents get updates about their children’s activities on the platform.
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