Discord settles with Texas, agrees to stronger online protection for minors
Evidence showed predators target children on the platform.
The Discord logo on a smartphone screen. Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto via Getty Images.
- A Texas court ordered Discord to strengthen safety settings for minors within 90 days.
- Discord must give Texas children the same age checks and default protections it offers in the United Kingdom.
- Attorney General Ken Paxton sued after investigators found a stranger quickly solicited an account posing as a 13-year-old girl.
- The order requires stricter message controls, sensitive content blocks, adult-space limits, and progress reports every 30 days.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
Discord has to offer the same level of protection to Texas children as it already provides in the United Kingdom.
Discord is an instant messaging platform where anyone can sign up and create an account, offering little to no protection for young teenagers.
For example, users only need an email account and a made-up date of birth to sign up. There’s no verification whatsoever to check the user’s birthday. Additionally, there are no restrictions on who can send a friend request or private message.
According to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, when Texas’s investigators created an account as a 13-year-old girl, a complete stranger messaged her within a moment. And in less than 30 seconds, he solicited her for explicit sexual acts.
This shows that child abuse is lurking, and adult predators seeking to do harm can go about their business on Discord’s platform.
In February 2026, Discord promised to roll out additional and more robust protective measures worldwide. To this moment, this has only happened in the United Kingdom. In fact, the global rollout was pushed until the second half of 2026.
In May 2026, Attorney General Paxton decided to take Discord to court and secured a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the platform, forcing it to immediately stop defaulting Texas children’s accounts to its weakest safety settings.
Furthermore, Discord was ordered to stop marketing itself to parents as “safe by design,” while those very defaults leave children exposed to predators.
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Recently, Paxton obtained a temporary injunction (TI) requiring Discord to provide Texas children the same age-assurance and default safety protections it already has in place for its users in the United Kingdom.
“My office forced Discord to turn those protections on for every Texas child, and I will never stop fighting to keep predators away from our kids,” Paxton said in a statement.
Under the TI order, Discord must route messages from strangers into a separate request inbox, block sensitive content for Texas teens, lock that setting unless it confirms the user is an adult, and close adult-only spaces to anyone it has not age-assured. Also, Discord must report its progress to the Office of the Attorney General every 30 days.
Discord has 90 days to comply with the court’s order.
