Brazil’s data protection agency on Wednesday ordered Discord to suspend live streams, accusing the messaging platform of failing to protect children and adolescents after a teen girl was allegedly incited to commit suicide during a broadcast. In a case described by one police officer as a “real-life horror show,” a 13-year-old girl in a small city in the center-west of Brazil was incited during a 45-minute live stream last month on Discord to self-harm and eventually kill herself. Five teenagers have been arrested in connection to the death and a police operation saved “another girl who was about to commit suicide live on the Internet,” a police statement said.
The logo of the US tech company Discord is displayed on a smartphone in front of a screen in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Wednesday.
“Live streams have been repeatedly used to facilitate violence, harassment, and the incitement of self-harm and suicide,” said the Brazilian Data Protection Authority, which gave Discord three days to comply with the suspension. The agency cited “robust evidence that the company failed to adopt reasonable measures” to protect children and teenagers from such content.
Discord said in a statement it was “disappointed,” but was “carefully analyzing” the directive. It rejected the agency’s “characterization” of the platform. Discord said it had investigated and removed the invite-only group involved in the case and continued to co-operate with law enforcement. Brazil has in the past few months sought to boost protections for children online, obliging platforms to link the accounts of users younger than 16 to their parents’ accounts, and verify user age. Brazilian Ministry of Justice Coordinator-General for Combating Cybercrime Alessandro Barreto slammed a “terrible failure in moderation” by Discord. “We witnessed truly outrageous acts being broadcast online,” he said. He said the girl had been incited to kill an animal but “she couldn’t do it” and was then incited to kill herself, “all of it broadcast live.” “We used to see adults grooming minors. Now, what do we see? Minors grooming other minors to commit barbaric acts. It’s called digital slavery. Girls are being enslaved online and coerced into committing truly barbaric acts,” he said. One of those arrested, a 14-year-old boy, was “smiling as if he had just beaten a level in a game,” Barreto said. “The parents of most of the detained adolescents were completely taken by surprise.”
