Discord Chat App Is Safer Now for Kids but Still Lacks Parental Controls

Sub Title: Chat platform popular with gamers tries to shed anything-goes image; safety expert says, ‘I would give them a B+'

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Discord, the popular chat service used largely by teenage and young-adult gamers, is trying to reinvent itself as a friendly place to hang out—a virtual space where anyone can gather for karaoke nights, group painting sessions or yoga classes.

On Discord, anyone can create a private chat room—a “server,” in Discord parlance—and invite friends in to talk live via video, audio or text and to share pictures and videos. This made Discord a content free-for-all that many parents have been leery of allowing their children to access.

But over the past six months, the service, with more than 140 million monthly active users, has instituted changes and is taking a more proactive approach to policing the site for child predators and blocking minors from seeing porn.