• Discord released its latest Transparency report last week highlighting how the platform addresses problematic content.
• Child Safety is an area of major concern with over half a million accounts being banned for violating Child Safety rules in just three months.
• As many as 12 531 accounts were banned without warning for violent extremism.

Earlier this year Discord implemented a policy forbidding the spread of harmful misinformation on its platform. Now the platform has revealed how that fight is going in its latest safety report.

To be frank, misinformation is a problem, but its not the biggest problem over on Discord. Between April and June of this year, 18 individual accounts and eight servers received warnings regarding misinformation.

In addition, 2 777 users on servers received warnings about spreading misinformation. More impressive is that of 26.3 percent of those punished for sharing misinformation appealed and none were granted those appeals.

So what is the biggest problem on Discord?

Well one of the larger ones is child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Between April and June, Discord issued child safety warnings to 4 206 users, 1 307 servers and 23 507 server members. The number of accounts banned for violating Child Safety rules was reportedly 532 498.

“For some high-harm issues such as Violent Extremism or Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) – a subcategory of Child Safety – we do not issue warnings but rather immediately disable the account and remove the content. In the case of CSAM, we also report the account to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,” explains Discord.

In somewhat good news, servers that threaten child safety are removed very quickly and proactively by Discord. The platform reports it removed 11 810 servers proactively while a mere 3 353 servers were removed when a report was issued.

Worryingly, the number of warnings being issued is increasing across the board. While Discord says 15 percent of its staff are dedicated to maintaining safety on the platform, that’s not all that many people. Discord reportedly has 650 employees meaning that approximately 97 people are responsible for maintaining the safety of some 140 million monthly active users.

Looking at the data Discord provides, servers for Exploitative and Unsolicited Content together with Regulated or Illegal Activities are incredibly popular, when it comes to receiving warnings at least.

One warning type that wasn’t issued at all was for Violent Extremism. This is because, as Discord explains, it bans accounts for this offence immediately. To that end 12 531 accounts were disabled.

However, the number of accounts being disabled has dropped compared to the first quarter.

“We disabled 767 363 accounts between April and June 2022 for policy violations not including spam, a decrease of 27 percent from the 1 054 358 accounts disabled in the previous quarter. The decrease in the number of accounts disabled mostly came from Child Safety which accounted for nearly 70 percent of total accounts disabled in this quarter and saw a decrease of 35.5 percent from the previous quarter,” writes Discord.

Whether this is a result of ne’er-do-wells wising up to Discord’s policing of the halls or simply that Discord has made these folks feel as if they aren’t welcome anymore is unclear.

You can find Discord’s full Transparency report for April to June here.