In the wake of growing concerns over child exploitation on the popular gaming chat platform Discord, CEO Jason Citron has voiced his alarm and commitment to tackling the issue.
Discord has long been recognized as a troubling vector for groomers and s*xual deviants to reach children and teens.
NBC News report that the CEO of popular gaming chat platform Discord, Jason Citron, has expressed his anxiety and commitment to addressing the issue of child exploitation and grooming in the wake of mounting concerns about child abuse on the site.
Speaking at a recent tech gathering in San Francisco, Citron stated that reports of child exploitation on the platform are “horrifying” and that Discord took the issue “very seriously.” Citron stated: “As a parent, it’s horrifying… We take this stuff very seriously.”
Citron emphasized the work of the company’s committed child safety team, which works relentlessly to prevent exploitation on the site “in a way that respects the privacy of all the people who are not doing these things.”
According to Citron, AI might be a crucial tool for combating child exploitation on the network. “One of the challenges I think that all of the folks in our industry have is that we have so many things happening at scale on the platform and it’s so hard to sort of identify things,” he said.
As RTM previously reported, the troubling discovery that NBC reported has revealed numerous instances of grooming, s*xtortion and trade of explicit images involving minors on the site.
The report notes a disturbing exploitation of the site’s youthful audience and decentralized operational structure, creating a breeding ground for negative activity.
Discord launched in 2015 and has grown its user base to 150 million. The NBC report charges the platform with fostering illicit behavior, including the exchange of child p*rnography and coercion of minors into generating s*xually explicit content.
The Daily Caller noted the investigation revealed that adults in several chat rooms were grooming minors, with 165 cases leading to prosecutions for the trade of explicit images of children and 35 cases associated with kidnapping, grooming or s*xual assault of children. Fifteen defendants have entered guilty pleas.
