Discord

Discord Inc. is a Delaware corporation with its business address in San Francisco, California, and operates a voice, video and text communications service organized into servers, channels and direct messages.¹ In his Senate testimony of January 31, 2024, Jason Citron stated that he had co-founded Discord in 2015, that he had previously founded and served as chief executive of OpenFeint, that more than 150 million people used the service each month, more than 75 percent of them outside the United States, and that Discord sold no advertising and charged for subscriptions (Nitro) and Server Boosts.² A company press release of April 23, 2025 stated that Citron had served as chief executive since the company's inception and that Stanislav Vishnevskiy co-founded it with him; the release named Humam Sakhnini, formerly vice chairman of Activision Blizzard, as chief executive effective April 28, 2025, placed him on the board, kept Citron on the board as Advisor to the CEO, kept Vishnevskiy as chief technology officer, and gave the service more than 200 million monthly active users.³

Securities Filings

Discord has filed six Notices of Exempt Offering of Securities (Form D) with the Securities and Exchange Commission under Rule 506(b), between January 2019 and March 2023. None names a purchaser.¹

The first, filed January 8, 2019, reported a first sale on December 21, 2018, an offering of $150,000,085 with $94,000,000 sold to 11 investors, and named Citron (executive officer and director), Josh Elman (director), A. Relan (director) and Les Wright (executive officer, who signed the filing). The filing of July 2, 2020 (first sale June 30, 2020; $100,049,866 sold of $101,322,695; 14 investors) named Citron, Mitch Lasky, Elman, Vishnevskiy and Stephen Gillett as directors and Wright as an executive officer. The filing of December 21, 2020 (first sale December 11, 2020; $100,045,423 sold of $139,999,359; 9 investors) named David Sze as a director and Clint Smith as an executive officer and signatory, and no longer listed Elman or Wright. The filing of July 13, 2021 (first sale June 28, 2021; $104,078,000 sold of $128,832,976; 71 investors) added Danny Rimer as a director. The filing of September 17, 2021 (first sale September 9, 2021; $499,999,442 sold, the full offering; 41 investors) added Tomasz Marcinkowski as an executive officer. The filing of March 15, 2023 (first sale January 17, 2023; $15,749,250; 3 investors) added Amrita Ahuja and Leslie Kilgore as directors. The amounts reported as sold across the six filings add to $913,921,981.¹

Unite the Right

In Sines v. Kessler, filed in the Western District of Virginia, the plaintiffs alleged that the organizers of the Unite the Right rally held in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 11 and 12, 2017 had used a Discord server named "Charlottesville 2.0," with at least forty-three channels, to plan and direct illegal acts. The plaintiffs relied on chat logs leaked by Unicorn Riot, which they believed omitted the channel used by the rally's leadership. The Northern District of California order recites, from a declaration of the plaintiffs' counsel, that Discord shut down the servers connected to Unite the Right on August 14, 2017 and kept backup tapes of them.⁴

The plaintiffs subpoenaed Discord for all documents and communications related to Unite the Right. Document Request 7 named the defendants and more than thirty anonymous nonparties. The holder of the account "kristall.night," represented by Marc Randazza and Alex Shepard of Randazza Legal Group, moved to quash in that court; the plaintiffs were represented by Boies Schiller Flexner. On August 6, 2018, Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero denied the motion for lack of standing as to all information other than the "kristall.night" account, granted it in part by quashing the subpoena to the extent it sought the content of communications without the consent of a party (a limit the plaintiffs acknowledged under the Stored Communications Act), and denied it as to non-content account information, which the order directed be treated as "highly confidential" under the protective order.⁴

The Pentagon Document Leak

The affidavit that supported the April 14, 2023 criminal complaint against Jack Teixeira does not name the platform; it calls it "Social Media Platform 1," a messaging service with communities called servers. According to the affidavit by Special Agent Patrick M. Lueckenhoff of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a user of the platform interviewed on or about April 10, 2023 ("User 1") said that the administrator of a server about geopolitics and wars had begun posting what appeared to be classified information in or about December 2022, first as text and from about January 2023 as photographs of documents. On April 12, 2023 the platform provided the FBI, on legal process, records that included the administrator's subscriber information; the billing name was "Jack Teixeira," with an address in North Dighton, Massachusetts, where the FBI arrested him on April 13, 2023.⁵

The government's sentencing memorandum of October 29, 2024 named Discord and stated that Teixeira began removing classified information from the sensitive compartmented information facility at Otis Air National Guard Base and posting it on Discord in January 2022, that he disclosed it to "hundreds of individuals on Discord, including foreign nationals," that after the story became public he told associates on Discord to delete evidence, changed his username and deleted the contents of at least one server, and that a friend saw the disclosures circulating on a pro-Russian Telegram channel.⁶ The defense sentencing memorandum stated that the overwhelming majority of his conduct took place on private servers or in direct messages.⁷ A grand jury indicted Teixeira on six counts under 18 U.S.C. § 793 on June 15, 2023; he pleaded guilty on March 4, 2024; and on November 12, 2024 Judge Indira Talwani sentenced him to 180 months.⁸

The Buffalo Shooting

The New York Attorney General's October 18, 2022 investigative report on the role of online platforms in the May 14, 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo, New York stated that the shooter kept a private Discord server as a diary, an edited transcript of about 700 pages, with access restricted to himself until shortly before the attack, when he invited users and used the server to rebroadcast his Twitch livestream. The report stated that without other users or moderators there could be no reports to Discord's Trust and Safety team, and that Discord's automatic tools "either did not scan his writing, or else were not calibrated to develop any assessment" of it. It identified a server named Plate Land in which he posted at least 83 messages between August 1, 2020 and January 1, 2021 about protective gear. The Attorney General's office stated that it had not assessed the full extent of his Discord use, in part because the Stored Communications Act may restrict disclosure by providers, and that it took no position on the Act's applicability.⁹

Senate Subpoena and Hearing

On November 20, 2023, Dick Durbin and Lindsey Graham, chair and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced subpoenas to the chief executives of Discord (Citron), Snap Inc. (Evan Spiegel) and X Corp. (Linda Yaccarino) to testify at a December 6 hearing, "after repeated refusals to appear." The announcement stated that Discord and X had also refused to accept service of the subpoenas on behalf of their chief executives, "requiring the Committee to enlist the assistance of the U.S. Marshals Service to personally serve the subpoenas," which it called "a remarkable departure from typical practice."¹⁰ The hearing, titled "Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis," was held on January 31, 2024.²

Citron's written testimony stated that Discord had a zero-tolerance policy for content or conduct that endangers or sexualizes children; that it used PhotoDNA hash matching and internally developed tools; that it scanned more than 47 billion images in 2023; that in the fourth quarter of 2023 it reported 55,955 accounts to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (55,638 for media and 317 for grooming or endangerment), disabled 116,219 accounts and removed 29,128 servers for child safety; and that more than 15 percent of its employees worked on safety. It stated that Discord had open-sourced a visual safety technology in October 2023, built a text-based exploitation detection model with Thorn, was a founding member of the Tech Coalition's Lantern program in 2023, and worked with NCMEC, INHOPE, Thorn, the Family Online Safety Institute, the Internet Watch Foundation and the Tech Coalition. It stated that Discord received 1,326 pieces of legal process from United States authorities in the fourth quarter of 2023, of which 1,073 were valid, and 203 valid emergency disclosure requests, of which it answered 159.²

In answers to questions for the record, Citron stated that Discord was "aligned with the goals" of the EARN IT Act (S. 1207) but "concerned that the imposition of broad liability could inadvertently result in the over-moderation of content." He stated that Discord had bought Sentropy, a moderation technology company, in 2021; that its payments to an outside content moderation contractor for minor safety and exploitative content work were $0 in 2021, $217,600 in 2022 and $1.4 million in 2023; that it had met with the National PTA nearly every other week since late 2021 and had sponsored the organization since 2022; and that its reduction in force had left the safety share of employees above 15 percent. In response to a question from Senator Chris Coons about his testimony that Discord discloses estimates of the total amount of self-harm content and views, he wrote: "I misunderstood the question posed during the hearing and misspoke," and stated that Discord does not track views.¹¹

Reports to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

NCMEC publishes an annual table of CyberTipline reports by electronic service provider. The Discord row reads 19,480 reports in 2019 (all providers: 16,836,694), 15,324 in 2020 (21,447,786), 29,606 in 2021 (29,157,083), 169,800 in 2022 (31,802,525), 339,412 in 2023 (35,944,826), 241,354 in 2024 (20,348,306) and 489,782 in 2025.¹² NBC News reported in July 2023, citing an analysis of NCMEC reports, that reports of child sexual abuse material on Discord rose 474 percent from 2021 to 2022; it quoted John Shehan, senior vice president of NCMEC, saying "There is a child exploitation issue on the platform. That's undeniable," and reported that NCMEC had rescinded an invitation to Discord to join its CyberTipline Roundtable after the company failed to "identify a senior child safety representative to attend." The article stated that NBC News had identified 35 cases over the previous six years in which adults were prosecuted on charges of kidnapping, grooming or sexual assault that allegedly involved communications on Discord, and quoted Discord's vice president of trust and safety, John Redgrave, whose company Sentropy Discord acquired in 2021.¹³

In the same answers to questions for the record, Citron stated: "In 2022, Discord submitted 58,179 reports to NCMEC. In 2023, we submitted 165,478 reports to NCMEC," and gave a total of 211,426 for "All CSAM Reported to NCMEC (2021-2023)," of which 1,519 reports from January 2023 were self-generated material.¹¹ NCMEC's tables give 29,606, 169,800 and 339,412 for 2021, 2022 and 2023, which add to 538,818.¹²

NCMEC also publishes the number of takedown notifications it sent to each provider and the average days to respond or remove. For Discord the figures are 68 notifications and 3.21 days in 2021, 1,533 and 4.7 days in 2022, 2,756 and 2.46 days in 2023, and 417 and 1.16 days in 2024.¹⁴

On April 29, 2025, Senator Marsha Blackburn wrote to "Mr. Jason Citron, CEO, Discord," citing the fall from 339,412 reports in 2023 to 241,354 in 2024, a decrease of 28 percent, in the year the REPORT Act (Public Law 118-59) was enacted. The letter described the drop as "puzzling and deeply troubling," recalled that the Act raised the maximum fine for a first knowing and willful failure to report from $150,000 to as much as $850,000, and asked four questions with a response date of May 6, 2025. Discord's press release had made Sakhnini chief executive effective April 28, 2025.³¹⁵ Federal law sets the $850,000 maximum for a first failure at providers with at least 100,000,000 monthly active users and $600,000 for smaller providers; Citron had testified that more than 150 million people used Discord each month.¹⁶

On April 9, 2026, Senator Chuck Grassley, chair of the Judiciary Committee, released data that NCMEC had given his office on March 16, 2026 about eight companies, among them Discord. The release stated that Discord "submitted nearly 490,000 reports involving suspected online child exploitation to NCMEC's CyberTipline in 2025," and listed as its most significant reporting issues "Failures to provide location or account information for individuals involved in reported chat logs, making these reports inactionable" and "Routine reports of adult and graphic gore content unrelated to child sexual exploitation, causing major workflow issues for NCMEC staff."¹⁷

The member list of the Internet Watch Foundation shows Discord as a member since November 1, 2023, in the tier of members contributing over 25,000 pounds; Microsoft (since 2001), Google (2004) and Meta (2009) are in the over 90,000 pound tier.¹⁸

Lobbying

Under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, Monument Advocacy registered for Discord with an effective date of May 1, 2022, listing the issues as privacy and content moderation. Its filings report income of $50,000 for each of the second, third and fourth quarters of 2022; $60,000 for each quarter of 2023 and of 2024; and $40,000 for the first quarter of 2025, in a report giving a termination date of February 28, 2025. The issue descriptions in the fourth quarter of 2022 and first quarter of 2023 included anti-swatting; the third and fourth quarters of 2024 listed S. 1409 (Kids Online Safety Act), S. 1418 and H.R. 7890 (Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act). The lobbyists named included E. Ashley Hoy (previously Director of Coalitions in the Senate Republican Conference and in the office of Senator Roy Blunt, as the Minority Whip), Jeffrey Gary (previously a law clerk to Senator Ron Wyden), Charles Verdery (previously Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security), Troy Stock (previously counsel to Representative Jason Chaffetz) and Kathryn Mills (previously Assistant Director for Congressional Relations at Immigration and Customs Enforcement).¹⁹

Kountoupes Denham Carr & Reid registered for Discord effective April 1, 2025, listing privacy, content modernization, AI and online safety. Its registration names MJ Kenny, whose covered positions are Deputy Floor Director and Floor Assistant in the Office of the Senate Democratic Whip and Legislative Aide and Legislative Correspondent to Senator Durbin; David Peluso, a former chief of staff to Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers; Adam Hechavarria, a former legislative director to Senators Todd Young and Kelly Ayotte; and Lisa Kountoupes. The firm reported $100,000 for the second quarter of 2025, amended to $80,000, and $80,000 for each of the third and fourth quarters of 2025 and the first and second quarters of 2026, with issues including H.R. 6265 (Safer GAMING Act) and H.R. 7757 (KIDS Act).¹⁹

State Actions

On April 17, 2025 the State of New Jersey, through Attorney General Matthew Platkin and the Division of Consumer Affairs, sued Discord in the Superior Court, Chancery Division, Essex County (ESX-C-000084-25) in a 45-page complaint, partly sealed, with four counts under the Consumer Fraud Act. New Jersey alleged that a "Safe Direct Messaging" setting offered from March 28, 2017 until April 22, 2023 defaulted to the option "My friends are nice," under which messages from friends were not scanned; that age verification relied on a self-reported birth date; that banned users could register again with a new account; and that the service was used by 764, citing the sentencing of one member to thirty years. It sought an injunction, civil penalties and disgorgement.²⁰

On May 6, 2026 the State of Indiana, through Attorney General Todd Rokita, sued Roblox and Discord in Hamilton Superior Court 1 under the Deceptive Consumer Sales Act (29D01-2605-PL-005581). Its complaint alleged that Citron "refused to accept service of a subpoena" from the Senate and appeared only after the Marshals Service was enlisted, and that NCMEC had rescinded the Roundtable invitation, citing the NBC News report.²¹

On May 22, 2026 the State of Texas, through Attorney General Ken Paxton, sued Discord in Collin County District Court under the Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Texas's petition stated that a network called 764 "originated in a Discord community titled '764'," that the Texas Attorney General had opened an investigation of Discord's practices toward minors in December 2024, that the Federal Trade Commission had issued orders to Discord and eight other companies in 2020, that federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York had described Discord in open court in April 2025 as "a hunting ground to find, manipulate and sextort our most vulnerable," and that Discord relied on unpaid volunteer moderators. The petition cited suits by the State of Nevada and the State of Indiana. Texas sought maximum default safety settings for new accounts, age verification under the SCOPE Act, repayment of revenue and civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation.²²

Networks Prosecuted

The January 17, 2025 indictment in United States v. Rane in the Central District of California charged Rohan Rane, Kaleb Merritt, Clint Borge and Collin Walker with engaging in a child exploitation enterprise under 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(g) from at least 2019 through about 2022. It alleges that members of CVLT worked to entice and coerce children to produce child pornography "on servers associated with and run by CVLT on a platform known as 'Platform D' and elsewhere online." The indictment does not name the platform.²³ Marc-André Argentino wrote in a January 31, 2025 threat assessment that CVLT emerged as an online group between about 2017 and 2019, "organized primarily on platforms such as Kik Messenger (initially), Instagram, and later Discord and Telegram," and that one administrator turned a Discord server into a "no-rules" hub.²⁴

The FBI's public service announcement of March 6, 2025 warned of a sharp increase in the activity of 764 and other violent online networks that "exist on publicly available online platforms, such as social media sites, gaming platforms, and mobile applications"; it names no platform.²⁵