Brazil sues Discord for R$500M and wants an office in the country

Brazil’s federal government has sued Discord for R$500M, about $97M, over what it describes as severe gaps in the platform’s age verification and user safety protections.

It lands three days after Discord appealed against the data protection authority’s order suspending its livestreaming feature, arguing that only a court can suspend a service, and amid a wider wave of litigation framing platforms as defective products rather than publishers.

It was filed on Tuesday by the Advocacia-Geral da União, the federal government’s own legal arm, in the federal court in Brasília. The decision to bring it was taken in a meeting between Solicitor General Jorge Messias, President Lula, and other officials.

The money is not compensation in the ordinary sense. It is sought as collective moral damages and would go to Brazil’s Diffuse Rights Defence Fund rather than to any individual, with a further R$500,000 a day sought for non-compliance and fifteen days to comply if the injunction is granted.

What the government actually wants is the list of remedies rather than the cheque. Discord is asked to build real-time blocking of self-harm and extreme violence content in livestreams, a dedicated protocol for reporting sextortion to authorities, and age verification that does not depend on a user typing in a birthday.

Several of the demands are structural rather than technical. The AGU wants under-16 accounts formally linked to a guardian, restrictions on server invitations from new accounts, measures to stop banned servers being recreated, a permanent reporting channel in Portuguese, moderation staffed in proportion to the Brazilian user base, and a registered office and legal representative in Brazil.

The case rests principally on the Digital Statute of the Child and Adolescent, the law that took effect in March. It bars self-declared age as a verification method outright, requires the most protective settings by default, and applies to any platform likely to be accessed by minors regardless of where the company is based.

The precipitating incident is the one that has driven Brazilian regulation all month. In July, a 13-year-old girl in Mato Grosso do Sul died during a Discord livestream after being coerced by members of a group; a 17-year-old was pushed to self-harm in the same episode, and investigators found indications that a seven-year-old was being targeted by the same people.

What the filing emphasises is that none of it was hidden. The event had been announced in advance and ran through core platform features, and the government says Discord neither detected it, interrupted it, nor reported it to Brazilian authorities.

One finding from the regulator’s earlier investigation is harder to explain away than the rest. The ANPD concluded that in early March, on the eve of the new law taking effect, Discord made technical changes to its livestreaming feature that left it less protective of minors than before.

Discord calls the suit “disproportionate” and says it “does not accurately reflect Discord’s approach to safety and compliance with Brazilian law”.

The company says it had been negotiating in good faith and offered a detailed package of technical changes plus financial investment in online safety in Brazil.

Messias tells it differently, saying Discord declined to sign a formal commitment to bring its operations into compliance. Neither side has published the rejected proposal, and the AGU says it remains open to settling.

The timing has a political edge worth naming. Lula is seeking re-election in October, the first lady called publicly for the platform to be taken offline this month, and TikTok was fined over children’s data the day before this suit was filed.

The administrative and judicial tracks now run in parallel, which is the part Discord will find most uncomfortable.

The AGU states explicitly that its case does not displace the ANPD’s measures, so the livestream suspension stands while a federal judge considers a longer list of demands, and the age verification question Europe is still working through is being answered in Brazil by court order.