Brazil sues Discord over alleged shortcomings in youth safety policies and enforcement News
RuinDig/Yuki Uchida, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Brazil sues Discord over alleged shortcomings in youth safety policies and enforcement

Brazil’s federal government on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Discord, Inc. accusing the messaging platform of violating national child protection laws.

Brazil’s attorney general’s office, the Advocacia-Geral da Union (AGU) brought the lawsuit in the federal court seeking roughly R$500 million ($97 million) in damages. The AGU alleges violation of Brazilian laws regarding age verification systems, parental controls, and content moderation.

The alleged violations point to Brazil’s ECA Digital (ECA), a law enacted in 2025. The ECA amends Brazil’s 1990 Statute of the Child and Adolescent law to apply protections to digital platforms. Under the law, digital platforms must apply stringent safety and privacy controls as their default, and must integrate safety mechanisms such as age verification and parental controls into the design of their platforms. The law is enforced through Brazil’s data protection authority, the Autoridade Nacional de Protecao de Dados (ANPD). Under the ECA, violators may be fined R$50 million ($9.7 million) for each infraction.

The AGU’s complaint alleges ten separate violations of the law including insufficient age verification controls, lack of parental monitoring systems, and failure to moderate content. The lawsuit follows recent action from the ANPD wherein Discord was suspended from operation in Brazil over these same child safety concerns. Discord’s suspension remains in effect independent of Wednesday’s lawsuit, according to government officials. In a statement, AGU Minister Jorge Messias said:

[translated from Portuguese] This platform has allowed illegal conduct to take place, based on what we call insufficient protection for women, children, adolescents [. . .] As many times as we identify this kind of practice, we will act to curb this type of unacceptable conduct throughout the national territory.

This follows heightened global concerns about child safety and protections in an evolving digital landscape. In July, the European Commission TikTok failed to meet child-safety requirements under the Digital Services Act. Earlier this month, a bellwether US federal trial began wherein a coalition of states sought up to $1.4 trillion in penalties against Meta for youth safety violations. 

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