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Live Click here to searchsearchSign upNews|TechnologyBrazil orders Discord to suspend livestreams after teen’s deathRegulator says Discord failed to protect minors from violence, self-harm and suicide content.
Brazil’s National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) on Wednesday gave Discord three business days to suspend its “Go Live” feature and other similar video-sharing tools.
Discord itself will not be blocked, but those features won’t be available to users until the company can show it has put adequate safeguards in place for minors, said the agency in a statement.
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The regulator said it had found “robust evidence” that Discord failed to take reasonable steps to prevent minors from being exposed to content promoting violence, self-harm and suicide.
The order follows the death of a 13-year-old girl in central-western Brazil last month. Authorities say that during a 45-minute Discord livestream, she was encouraged to harm herself and ultimately take her own life.
Cinco adolescentes foram presos em conexão com a sua morte. A polícia disse que a investigação também os levou a outra garota “que estava prestes a cometer suicídio ao vivo na internet”, mas que a operação policial a salvou.
Alessandro Barreto, coordinator of the Brazilian Justice Ministry’s Ciberlab intelligence unit, described the case as a “terrible failure in moderation” by Discord.
He said the 13-year-old had first been encouraged to kill an animal and, when she could not do it, was then encouraged to kill herself, “all of it broadcast live”.
Barreto said a 14-year-old boy arrested in connection with the case was “smiling as if he had just beaten a level in a game.” He added that the parents of most of the teenagers detained had been taken completely by surprise.
Following the girl’s death, Rosangela da Silva, the wife of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, called for Discord to be shut down and urged the judiciary to “remove this horrible network from the Internet”.
Discord says it has more than 90 million daily active users worldwide.
Mas a ANPD disse que suas preocupações vão além deste caso. A agência disse que as transmissões ao vivo do Discord foram repetidamente usadas em conexão com crimes graves e colocaram em risco a segurança física e mental de menores.
It also pointed to the way Discord’s livestreaming system works. According to the regulator, Discord cannot access the content of video streams while they are happening, meaning it cannot automatically analyse the video and detect violations in real time.
Instead, the ANPD said, the platform relies on automated systems the agency described as flawed, as well as reports from users themselves.
Discord said in a statement to AFP before Wednesday’s decision that it was “cooperating with authorities in the investigation into this serious case”.
Brazil’s move against Discord is the latest example of the country taking a tougher approach to tech giants, particularly over their responsibility for what happens on their platforms.
Em 2024, o Brasil bloqueou X por 40 dias, até que a empresa atendesse às ordens do Supremo Tribunal para remover contas acusadas de disseminar desinformação. A repressão irritou o presidente dos Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, que acusou o Brasil de mirar empresas de mídia social americanas e citou isso como uma das razões para impor tarifas sobre bens brasileiros.
Fontes
Informação baseada em material público de Al Jazeera, reescrito pela redação ULTRA NOTÍCIAS.
