In the first enforcement test of its online child protection law, the ECA Digital, Brazil has decided to suspend Discord's live-streaming feature. The platform had been under investigation after Lívia, a 13-year-old girl, was induced to harm herself and take her own life, on air, during a livestream on July 22.
The case is being investigated by Brazil's civil police, who launched an operation to arrest those suspected of driving the teenager to take her own life on air. The girl lived in a small town in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, and died at dawn at the home she shared with her family.
The case drew wide attention after Brazil's first lady, Janja Lula da Silva, recorded a video calling for the platform to be suspended in the country. "We need to take Discord offline immediately," she said. Shortly afterward, the Ministry of Justice said it had identified a "systemic failure" at the platform, which had also failed to verify users' ages. Following the first lady's statement, the Attorney General of the Union likewise called for Discord's suspension.
Soon after, the National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) — the body responsible for overseeing the implementation and enforcement of the ECA Digital — opened an investigation and, last Wednesday, ruled to suspend the platform's live-streaming feature, setting a three-business-day deadline for compliance. The suspension holds until Discord proves it has taken effective measures to protect minors on the platform.
According to the ANPD, there is "robust evidence that the company did not adopt reasonable measures to prevent and mitigate the risks of access, exposure, recommendation, or facilitation of contact with content or practices that constitute serious violations of the rights of children and adolescents within its service."
In a statement to the press, Discord said the "ANPD's characterization of Discord does not reflect the platform we have built or the investments we have made in user safety."
In a report sent to the Ministry of Justice and leaked to the press, however, Discord acknowledged that its safety systems failed in the teenager's case. The company took two hours to take down the livestream in which her suicide was broadcast.
In the document, Discord states that it uses an automated intervention system based on a scoring scale – a case is treated as dangerous from 0.95 upward. The suicide livestream initially scored just 0.12. According to the company, the organizers used names and communications that "masked" the stream's real purpose. Discord says lowering the automated detection threshold could increase false positives, but admits it is reassessing the results.
"This is the first major ECA Digital case, and one with wide social repercussions. And Lívia's case is not isolated – there are hundreds of cases of self-harm and spectacularized suicide," said Rafael Zanatta, director of the NGO DataPrivacy Brasil. In his view, the ANPD's move was sophisticated and shrewd, because it focused on where the harm occurred – the livestreams – and required the company to submit a compliance plan to prevent further crimes in its environment.
The ANPD's decision does not affect the platform's broader operation. Data Privacy Brasil released a note describing the ruling as proportionate, particularly because it is limited to the live-streaming feature rather than the entire platform. "The decision does not affect other features used by journalists, communications professionals, and the gaming community," the organization's note reads.
The organization, however, expressed concern about possible chilling effects on the use of end-to-end encryption, which "should be understood as an important tool for ensuring security and privacy" – without serving as a shield to evade protection [obligations].
Source: TechPolicy
Makes sense. When a dictatorship tries to censor something, they always use the excuse that "it's for the well of kids".
I used to watch my friends streams their projects in Discord while talking to them... Oh well.
