Brazil’s federal government is asking a court to order Discord to pay R$500 million ($97 million) in collective damages, and make a number of changes within 15 days, or pay a daily fine of R$500,000.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in the Federal District on Aug 25, 2026 and made public the following day. The government wants the US company to pay up for “omissions” that allegedly resulted in harm to children, teenagers, women, and animals.
Discord is accused of failing to implement “protection by design” as required by the Digital ECA (Law 15.211/2025). Justice Minister Wellington Lima said the lawsuit is a response by the state to ensure that no platform, domestic or foreign, disregards the law.
Digital Rights Secretary Victor Oliveira Fernandes explained that the legislation makes it mandatory for platforms to take proactive action to detect and remove harmful content, rather than wait for the state to tell them to do so.
The government’s demands, as cited in the lawsuit, include “robust and reliable” age verification digital ID that goes beyond self-declaration, which is to be barred as the sole method of gatekeeping adult or violent content. Accounts belonging to minors up to 16 years of age must be linked to a legal guardian, while the most protective settings must be turned on by default for minors.
Discord is also expected to detect and interrupt live streams showing self-harm, suicide, or extreme violence in real time, and immediately notify the authorities; set up a reporting protocol for sextortion; ensure that moderators and members of the Trust and Safety team speak Portuguese and are “proportionate” to the number of users in Brazil; and implement measures that would prevent removed servers and channels from being recreated.
The company is also expected to open an HQ in Brazil, appoint a legal representative, and set up a free reporting channel that works around the clock.
The lawsuit also seeks retention of moderation records for six months.
Federal Police official Otávio Russo explained that the goal is to make sure that “when a conversation about self-harm arises, the content must come down, the user must be banned and the police notified.”
Some of the measures, such as preventing removed communities from returning and linking young users to their guardians, may require some form of account analysis or ID verification. However, the government’s filing does not go into the technicalities of how this should be achieved.
But the very request to prevent removed communities from reappearing on the platform, as well as to identify and report to the authorities users who are “inducing or instigating” self-harm or suicide, raises the question of whether Discord is expected to be able to identify its users and link their accounts to their real-life identities.
Discord is accused of currently relying solely on self-declaration of age, but the company’s published policy for Brazil says that since March 2026, users in that country have been using facial age estimation or uploading their ID documents in order to access age-restricted content and spaces, or change relevant settings.
This does not mean that every Discord user in Brazil has been age-verified, but it does suggest that the government and the company are at odds over the scope and adequacy of age assurance, rather than its complete absence.
The lawsuit comes after the death of a 13-year-old girl, which the authorities linked to Discord, claiming that other adolescents had induced her to take her own life during an online broadcast. Discord said the death was not broadcast on its platform, and cited encryption as a limit to its ability to monitor live communications.
After the incident, Brazil’s first lady publicly called for Discord to be banned in the country. A court rejected that request, but the data-protection authority ANPD then suspended Discord’s live-video features, while prosecutors began investigating the company’s encryption and age-verification policies.
Keep in mind that all of this is coming after Discord's previous age verification process leaked over 70,000 government ID details. Forcing platforms to collect data is not only a privacy risk but an incredible security risk too.
