Privacy & Cybersecurity Law Blog

On April 17, 2025, the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General Platkin announced it had filed a lawsuit against messaging application provider, Discord, Inc. (“Discord”), for alleged violations of the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act (“NJ CFA”). Discord is an online social platform that enables users to interact through text, audio and video features. According to the complaint, children comprise “a significant portion” of Discord’s user base.   

The complaint alleges that Discord engaged in several violations of the NJ CFA by misleading parents and users about the application’s safety for children. In particular, the complaint alleges that Discord misled users and parents about the safety settings of the app’s direct messaging feature, which failed to protect its young user base from exposure to harmful content and online predators.

Key allegations highlighted in the complaint include:

• The app misled users about its “Safe Direct Messaging” feature. The complaint alleges that Discord represented this feature would automatically scan and delete direct messages containing explicit media content. Despite its claims, the complaint states that the app’s default setting, “my friends are nice,” only scanned incoming direct messages if the sender was not on the user’s friends list.
• The app’s design encourages unchecked engagement among users. The complaint alleges that Discord’s default settings enable users to receive friend requests from anyone on the app, allowing online predators to more easily reach young users with friend requests. Because the app’s default settings disable message scanning between “friends,” children on the app are exposed to explicit material from other users on their “friend” list.
• The app’s design decisions exacerbate risk to children. The complaint states that by default, the app allows users to exchange direct messages if they belong to a community server, which could contain over a million users.
• The app misrepresented that users under the age of 13 are not permitted to create accounts and are banned from the app upon discovery. According to the complaint, Discord did not strengthen its age verification process for years, enabling children to join and freely use the app.

The lawsuit seeks a number of civil remedies, including an injunction to stop Discord from violating the NJ CFA, monetary penalties, and the disgorgement of any profits generated in New Jersey derived from the activities alleged in the complaint.