Latest news with #JillianSusi
Montreal Gazette
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Montreal Gazette
Discord takes down racist channel used by Quebec med school applicants
Discord, an increasingly popular social media platform based in San Francisco, has deactivated a controversial channel used by Quebec medical school applicants that was overrun by antisemitic and other racist messages, including threats of violence, The Gazette can confirm. Hours after the newspaper reported last Friday about a virulent stream of hateful content on the 1,400-member Med serveur channel on Discord, the chat forum suddenly disappeared. The deactivation occurred following a statement by Discord spokesperson Jillian Susi that 'once we become aware of such (hateful) content, we immediately take appropriate enforcement actions, which can include banning users and shutting down servers.' Quebec med student applicants immediately switched en masse to another server on Discord called 'ADMISSION MED QC 2024,' which had seen little activity since last year. That channel's membership has surged to nearly 700 members since last Friday. The Gazette has learned that Montreal police have launched an investigation into the origin of the racist trolling on Discord, even in going so far as to share information with the RCMP and CSIS concerning some of the perpetrators. Officially, a spokesperson for the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal would neither confirm nor deny that it is conducting an investigation. Dawson College, for its part, is carrying out its own probe into the antisemitic, misogynistic, homophobic, anti-Black and anti-Indigenous slurs on the since-deactivated Discord channel. At least one of the perpetrators of the inflammatory content on Discord is alleged to be a Dawson student enrolled in the enriched health science program and, until recently, a medical school applicant. In recent days, most of the language on the revived Discord channel, ADMISSION MED QC 2024, is considerably less prejudiced than on Med serveur. However, one user — who goes by the handle HydroBeatz — praised Hitler on Sunday as a 'charismatic' orator and 'particularly engaging,' but that didn't mean 'my words are antisemitic. That's exaggerated.' In 2024, some anonymous users on ADMISSION MED QC 2024 did engage in antisemitic, anti-Black, anti-Indigenous and misogynistic exchanges. At the same time, users last weekend alluded to The Gazette's coverage of the controversy on the revived channel. 'There are people who are snitching to the police,' a user named AimBot complained on Saturday. The previous day, however, a different user cited The Gazette article as well, saying they hoped the atmosphere on the revived channel would be 'respectful of everyone.' Meanwhile, McGill University's medical faculty released a statement on Tuesday evening condemning the hateful epithets on Discord by some aspiring doctors. 'The McGill faculty of medicine and health sciences does not tolerate hate speech,' the university declared. 'Our university has equity, diversity and inclusion policies that state that hateful and divisive language will not be tolerated in our community under any circumstances. As for the unacceptable comments made on the platform referenced, to our knowledge no students admitted to our faculty were among the authors. Our policies and regulations allow us to act accordingly if this was to be the case.' On Monday, Quebec Higher Education Minister Pascale Déry also denounced the incendiary rhetoric on Discord and appealed to both students and medical school applicants to come forward to assist in the investigation by authorities. 'The calls for violence and expressions of hatred in these exchanges are totally unacceptable in Quebec,' Simon Savignac, Déry's press attaché, said in a statement on Monday. In December, Déry opened an inquiry into complaints of racist bullying from students at Dawson and Vanier colleges stemming from the Israel-Hamas war. Since then, some academic union leaders have accused Déry of political interference after she demanded Dawson justify the content of a French course with most of the material focusing on the Palestinian cause. This story was originally published
New York Times
17-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Discord App Exposes Children to Abuse and Graphic Content, Lawsuit Says
The messaging platform Discord recklessly exposes children to graphic violent content, sexual abuse and exploitation, New Jersey's attorney general said in a lawsuit filed Thursday. New Jersey is the first state in the country to file suit against Discord, whose 200 million users can post in chat rooms and exchange direct messages with one another. Founded in 2015 as a chat tool for gamers, it has exploded in popularity in recent years among children, a trend that accelerated at the height of the pandemic. The app's popularity and limited safety controls have made its users easy targets for predators, prosecutors said in the suit, which was filed in Superior Court in Essex County. 'Discord markets itself as a safe space for children, despite being fully aware that the application's misleading safety settings and lax oversight has made it a prime hunting ground for online predators seeking easy access to children,' the attorney general, Matthew J. Platkin, said in a statement announcing the suit. Discord's users must be 13 or older, according to the platform's policies. But the suit says that because Discord accounts are so easy to create, and because users can use pseudonyms, younger children can evade the age restrictions with little difficulty and adults can readily pose as children. The complaint cites several criminal cases against adults in New Jersey who were accused of using the app to engage in explicit communication with children, solicit and send nude pictures and take part in sexual acts on video chat. Jillian Susi, a spokeswoman for Discord, disputed the lawsuit's claims in a statement. 'Discord is proud of our continuous efforts and investments in features and tools that help make Discord safer,' Ms. Susi said. 'Given our engagement with the attorney general's office, we are surprised by the announcement that New Jersey has filed an action against Discord today.' New Jersey is not the only state where people have been accused of using Discord to target children. On Sunday, a California man was arrested and charged with kidnapping and engaging in unlawful sexual conduct with a minor after a 10-year-old girl was reported missing and the police found that the two had been communicating on Discord and Roblox, a gaming site popular with children. In February, Discord and Roblox were named in a lawsuit filed in California on behalf of a 13-year-old boy who, according to the suit, was sexually exploited by an adult stranger on the apps. In one especially gruesome case, a 47 year-old man in Michigan used Discord to contact children and advertise 'livestreams of children engaging in self-mutilation' and sexually explicit activity, prosecutors said. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison. A 2023 investigation by NBC News found 35 cases over a six-year period of grooming, sexual assault or kidnapping that involved communication on Discord. The day after the report was published, Discord's chief executive, Jason Citron, said that he and the company 'take this stuff very seriously.' He added: 'As a parent, it's horrifying.' During a Senate hearing last January, lawmakers grilled Mr. Citron and the executives of other social media companies, including Meta, TikTok and X, about what they were doing to protect children from harmful content on their sites. Lawmakers told the executives that they had 'blood on their hands' and had created 'a crisis in America.' At the hearing, Mr. Citron said Discord was working with a tech company founded by the actor Ashton Kutcher to detect predatory conversations. Discord was aware that its young users were vulnerable, the New Jersey suit argues. But it marketed its platform to parents as safe anyway, highlighting a feature that it said would automatically identify and delete direct messages that contained explicit images or videos. Between 2017 and 2023, the app's default setting applied the feature only to messages between users who were not friends, prosecutors said. Cari Fais, the director of the division of consumer affairs in Mr. Platkin's office, said in a statement that Discord had deliberately misrepresented the application's safety features. 'Discord claims that safety is at the core of everything it does, but the truth is the application is not safe for children,' Ms. Fais said in the statement.
