Transcription
[Music] Police have now arrested all seven suspects in a major trafficking bust involving teenage victims. Police say they found two teen boys in a filthy trailer in St. Petersburg, and police say it was used as a slave.
"You can't change someone who is inherently just messed up in the mind." Before we get into this documentary, I want to give a quick shout out to my friend Nick, aka Soft Willy, for helping me tell the story about the dark sides of Discord. As we go deeper into these chapters, things are just going to get crazier and crazier, so stay till the end.
Who is this man that looks like the face of a gamer? A gamer who came out of his mother's womb with a Nintendo 64 controller in one hand and a mechanical keyboard in the other? His name is Jason Citron, the founder and CEO of Discord. In one of his interviews, he was asked what he thinks about screen time and limiting gaming for kids. This was his response: "I think that video games today actually can really help people learn a lot of great skills, especially online video games where you have to learn about cooperation. There's actually a lot of great, fantastic life lessons that get taught in the microcosm of playing online video games."
Citron said that he was obsessed with mobile games ever since he was gifted the original Nintendo NES at the age of five. As long as he finished his homework, his parents didn't care if he played video games instead of going outside. As a hardcore gamer, he believes that games teach valuable life lessons, and by creating Discord, he's giving people a safe space to grow in a gaming community. His passion is apparent, but there's something you should know about him. Discord wasn't the first platform he's built on.
February 17, 2009, he launched OpenFeint. The platform allowed app developers to add social networking right into their apps. They were dedicated to bringing the world closer together with mobile gaming, but here's when things started to become questionable. Just one year after launch, the network already had over 10 million users. Because of the rapid growth, Intel invested a good chunk of money in it, and soon after, a Japanese company called Gree bought OpenFeint for $104 million.
"Uh, there's no division between OpenFeint and Gree. One, we're acting as one entity." In the beginning, I have no doubt that Jason's intentions were pure, but when you add a ton of money into the equation, things change. Intentions shift, and people turn a blind eye more often than not. As soon as Jason sold the company, gamers filed a class-action lawsuit against it. Lead plaintiff Matthew Hines claimed that OpenFeint accessed and stored unique device identifiers. This means everything from gender, age, education level, and even exact GPS location. This was all done in a way that bypassed what was supposed to be unauthorized access. They had access to everything. Jason knew this. We'll never know if he planned it, but neither he nor his team stopped it. The company was eventually shut down, but that didn't stop Jason from moving on to his next project: Discord.
[Music] From a business standpoint, OpenFeint and Discord are very similar. Both businesses were built with the end goal of being acquired by a massive tech company, and we all know how that goes: profits over users. Discord's business model was complicated, too. First of all, it's free to use, so how did they make money? Well, right off the bat, Discord relied heavily on venture capitalist funding, which is not a sustainable model. Today, the way Discord earns revenue is through being a freemium platform, which means that it's free to use, but with optional subscriptions, such as Discord Nitro.
"Over two years ago, we launched Discord Nitro, a way for you to support us and get some sweet perks for your account." However, running such a huge company on optional subscriptions isn't helping them pay the bills. I'm not 100% sure, but according to some sources, Microsoft offered Discord $10 billion to buy the company, but Jason still turned Microsoft down. Forgot thinking big, Jason is thinking huge. He believes that his company is worth so much more. Now, we all know that businesses need good revenue to be sustainable, but Jason Citron already had a track record of illegally collecting and selling personal data from its users. So how can we be so sure that he won't do it again? The next time you open Discord, you might want to think twice if they're really putting you, its user, first.
I asked Jason about what he thinks about safety and content moderation. "We do have a trust and safety team, full-time employees that people can escalate issues to. If people forward messages to our, you know, or report content to our trust and safety team, we will go investigate and we will action communities that are violating our guidelines."
So, what happens if you decide to delete your Discord account? Well, it's obviously deleted, right? Well, this is the process. First, you click user settings, then you click delete account. You'll be asked to input your password to confirm deletion. If you try to log back in, you'll see that it says your account is scheduled to self-destruct soon. Then you'll have two weeks to decide if you want it to be permanent. After those two weeks, the real process begins. The user will no longer have access to their Discord account, and the username will be changed to "deleted user." Wait, what? So you're telling me that my account doesn't actually get deleted, but the name just changes to "deleted user"? Something's not right here.
When you delete your account, the goal is to delete all data associated with it. Under Article 17 of the GDPR, companies are required, when requested, to erase all personal user data without delay. This is called the right to be forgotten. It's an article that allows a person, a data subject, to erase their information under certain conditions. But what really happens when Discord deletes your account? All the messages you've ever sent are still stored, and your username simply changes. I'm not an expert in law, but to me, it seems like it clearly goes against the GDPR.
So, what else does Discord keep track of? Everything. A Reddit user by the name of CloudRacer did an interesting experiment in 2018. As part of GDPR, Discord allowed users to download their data and also created controls for turning off how much data was collected. This Redditer wanted to see exactly how much data Discord stores and how the whole system works. What they found was that every click of a button and every word typed was tracked by Discord. This information was then stored into five separate folders: account activity, messages, programs, and servers. You can find all the messages you have ever sent to anyone. And if you've ever used Discord for gaming, you're aware of the feature that tells you what games your friends are playing. Discord stores history of that too, which is just unnecessary. What's crazy is that everything you post or even send through a private message is not private. Everything you send, regardless if it's in a DM or in a public server, is absolutely not private.
One Reddit user said that his friends got their accounts disabled for being under the age of 13. This was a false report because they were all above 16. But why did Discord think they were 13? Discord staff looked through their old messages of them joking around about being 12 years old because they were playing Fortnite. "Nice, I'mma finish." But if you read the messages surrounding it, you could tell that it was a joke. They emailed Discord, and Discord requested selfies and a photo ID. But in the end, despite having done what was requested, Discord said that they were banned permanently.
On top of moderators having access to your messages, the Mozilla Foundation said that Discord, as a platform, is not intended for encrypted communications. It does use standard encryption but does not provide end-to-end encryption for its video chats. This makes them a massive target for hackers because it only takes one breach for everything to become public information. Even the notorious Facebook, which has had privacy concerns in the past, uses end-to-end encryption. But the question for Discord is, why? This is just speculation, but since Jason Citron had a past of selling personal data in OpenFeint, wouldn't it make sense for Discord to do the same? I mean, selling data is profitable, insanely profitable, and Discord is having trouble bringing in the types of profits that selling data would. But again, that's just one theory.
The Redditor that did the experiment left a powerful statement, which I summed up here: "Discord's moderation team can read your messages. What would you type in a private message to someone? Your secrets, fears, your passwords. I talk to my friends and I talk to my lovers. They know a lot about me, but less than Discord does." While the platform may not be able to do anything bad with my messages, Discord staff members absolutely can. And as Jody Rels once said, "Once you've lost your privacy, you realize you've lost an extremely valuable thing."
[Music] This documentary is about to take a turn. If you think that what we've talked about so far is problematic, stick around because it's going to get worse.
"It's just so stupid to me how people can eat for reason. I don't understand what you're saying. I'm sorry. Isn't being different a good thing? I'm down here, here. You're up there. If we were all the same, look at this, $2,000 plus fursuit, then the world would be [ __ ] you wish you could own something as good as this. Difference makes a difference."
If you don't have a clue what "cubs" are, and no, I'm not talking about this cub or this cub, then let's start with the basics. Furry fandom is a subculture interested in animal characters with human personalities. The members of this community are known as furries. "I'm not alone. There are other people out there that are into this."
[Applause] "We've made over 600 fursuits." A big part of being a furry is role-playing. By putting on what they call a fursuit, members of the furry community say that this is a way for people who are shy or don't fit in to fit in. Now, the term "cub" is used to describe an animal character, just like a furry, but is under age, often times even 10 years old or younger. And while not all cub content is explicit, a lot of it is. Discord was caught in a disturbing controversy involving these cubs back in 2019. One angry gamer posted about Discord allowing cub content on the platform, but not loli content. If you don't know what "loli" means, look it up at your own discretion, but just know you can never unsee it. Anyways, people were outraged that cub content was allowed on the platform at all. One of the Discord admins responded by saying that they do not consider cub content to be a violation of their terms or guidelines, and users should just mark it as NSFW. People were so outraged that Discord finally changed their policy to ban all cub content. The ban is for non-human animals, as long as they appear to be underage.
Nick explained his perspective on it: "That is someone who is or something that is of an adolescent mind, an underdeveloped mind. That's just wrong to me. There should be no entertainment of any sort of sexual activity with anything or anyone, whether it is a depiction or whether it is an actual being, um, where their mind is actually like fully developed." The fact that Discord was allowing this type of material for quite a long time is disturbing. But why was it allowed in the first place? Some think that the rules were unclear. Honestly, it's Discord being more unclear about the rules, not clearing up specifics about what should or shouldn't be allowed. Others think that the answer is way more personal. Probably, if I could think of a theory in like a few seconds, maybe a few of the admins are furries themselves that are creeps. But whatever it may be, the fact is that Discord staff has too much power and too little regulation.
"My name is Murray, and welcome to heaven." You see this abuse of power again and again. Someone posted about an experience with a Discord admin that goes by the name "All the Foxes" on Reddit. He was apparently disabling Discord accounts for no reason. The admin, All the Foxes, stated that the person's account was involved with servers that promoted non-consensual material. But this user was in 20 different servers and never posted a single thing that was even a little bit inappropriate. So we asked the admin why he was banned, and All the Foxes just gave a generic response: "Based on the results of our investigation, this is a permanent action, and we will not be reinstating the account. Sincerely, Discord Trust and Safety Team."
So, this banned person did some researching online and found that at least five people have had similar experiences with the same Discord admin, All the Foxes. Further investigation led him to finding even more upsetting posts about this admin. All the Foxes was a moderator for the gaming subreddit that has over 31 million members, but he was forced to step down from his position as moderator and explain this: "I made some unfortunate decisions and was irresponsible. I'm ashamed of myself, my decisions, and the pain I have caused." The admin realized that he abused the power he gained and ended up deleting his account.
As Lord Acton once said, "Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." You see this in the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment. "It's a real cop car. I was a real policeman, and there were real neighbors in the street who didn't know that I was... this was an experiment." I had really thought that I was incapable of this kind of behavior. In the study, college students became either prisoners or guards in a simulated prison environment. The guards subconsciously abused their powers so much that they became so cruel and tyrannical to the prisoners that in only four days, three prisoners were so traumatized that they were released from the experiment. And less than one week later, the experiment was shut down. This was a real-life example, but the hunger for power is the same everywhere, and when you're protected by the apparent anonymity of the internet, it's even worse.
There are many other examples of bans from Discord admins that were personally motivated, like when a popular YouTuber named Quackity was banned for reasons that didn't go against the terms of service. "This doesn't feel like I got the reasoning for my ban. This feels like you, like, you personally got motivated to ban me." The reason for the ban was so poorly written that it wasn't even grammatically correct: "Posting images of people using Discord in ways you think is funny isn't acceptable." That would just confuse me. What does that even mean? There's no doubt that the abuse of power is obvious with some of Discord's staff, but what happens when the hunger for power possesses an everyday user like you and me?
[Music] [Music] Oh.
What is doxxing? Doxxing is short for "dropping docs," docs being slang for documents. So, it's a malicious act used by people to get revenge on others by revealing their personal information. Living in a modern society, we all show off our personal data online. You post comments on Instagram, argue with people on Twitter, and buy things from Amazon. But what if you get in a fight with someone and they end up digging through your information to expose you and damage your reputation? Cyber criminals go a step further. I'm talking your home address, bank account information, and even your personal photos that aren't shared to the public.
And Nick, aka Soft Willy, explains that it happens more often than you think. "I was in communities where people would threaten to dox all the time. One server that I was on, where I met actually all of my friends, there was a huge doxing scare of like 15 people, where this one kid was just targeting loads of people with doxing and with the blackmail material that I had mentioned comes explicit material, comes like, 'I have your naked pictures, I have illicit photos of you, I have a list, I have screenshots of you, whatever it is. Give your information, this will be released.'"
So, doxxing must be illegal, right? Yes and no. If your information is public and someone just reposts it, then it's not illegal. Chances are, your address is already public, and you don't even know it. There are tons of background check websites, and if someone doesn't like you, they can find out where you live, and again, it's still not illegal. But if someone forces this information out of you, like a hacker pinpointing your exact location or finding out your Social Security number, it's definitely illegal.
This almost happened to a YouTuber named Kemp Q. His life was threatened. Kemp Q plays the game Runescape and posts YouTube videos about it. There's a Discord community of desperate people that would do whatever it takes to get their hands on the in-game money. These people create a livelihood from manipulation and scamming. They're so numb to this lifestyle that they do cyber attacks to the point of committing felonies without thinking twice. One person even commented on Kemp Q's video saying that this literally feels like a virtual cartel, and Kemp Q was one of their victims.
It started when he made friends with a scammer on Runescape. The scammer taught him how to get a guaranteed first hit against an opponent and shared other secrets through Skype. "If I lag, I'm being targeted. Okay, big stake. Damn. Clicking into it. Wow, wow. Yeah, I'm done. I'm not thinking today. Today's the... I'm not saying a year later." The scammer stole 250 million in-game currency from Kemp. But luckily, the scammer ended up regretting his shameful lifestyle and offered Kemp an inside look into the underground scamming scene. "I knew people in the fed, man. Mode tournaments with teams of auto-hockey cheats."
Kemp Q got messages from the underground community when he started bringing to light the scams that have been going on in their Discord server. The scammers offered to pay him to tell them who his inside source was, but money wasn't going to change his mind. Kemp Q put out a tweet regarding the scammer's greedy mentality, and the threats began. "You really want to put me on a tweet? I'll get you swatted, you rat. You have two hours to take the video down, or I'll make you regret it." He continued saying that his community is working on doxxing Kemp Q to find out his home address so they could cause physical harm, and the threats just kept getting worse and worse. "You don't think someone can't just pay someone to get you killed?"
Luckily, I don't think their toxic community was able to find Kemp Q's personal information and actually do any real harm. But I'm sure they did this with other people in the past. This happened so often on Discord that many innocent lives have been ruined. So, how do you avoid being doxed? Well, the honest truth is that you can't be 100% safe. If a hacker truly has no life and hates you that much, he'll probably find a way. But the one big way to minimize risk is to remove your address from all online sources.
In 2017, an extremist group's Discord server was exposed. They doxed people that they felt were inferior to them. The server even contained detailed instructions on how to dox properly, as you can see right here. One of the most popular ways to find people's addresses is simply by searching White Pages. If your address is on a background check website like White Pages or PeopleFinder.com, you need to remove it ASAP.
It's sad to say, but doxxing is just the surface of toxicity on Discord. There are good people in the world, and sometimes good people make bad choices. But there are also bad people, people who only live for themselves and don't give any regard for others. When individuals like these band together, things can get really dark, really fast.
"So, is it cool if we do stuff though? I mean, as long as neither of y'all tell anybody." When you have something like an underage dating server, you are pretty much the light for a whole bunch of mosquitoes.
[Music] According to the FBI, there are believed to be more than 500,000 online predators active each day, and a lot of them are in Discord. They're very much around on Discord, and the reason why they're very much around is because it's so easy to be around. Discord is the perfect platform for these types of people because it's so easy to fake who you are. You don't need a real profile picture, you can set your age to whatever you want, and you can message whoever you want. When someone puts up a fake facade, "Hey, I just want to be your friend," but they're actually a 28-year-old dude, and you're a 15-year-old girl. The ease of doing it, it's just super easy.
On April 6, 2009, Nick put out a video busting two preds on Discord. "Guess what, bro? You just got [ __ ] catfish, bro. How do you feel being a bro, 15-year-old bro, and you're 25? Damn, that's a... that's upsetting." The video got over 600,000 views, and he gave me some insight about what goes on in the minds of these people. "The biggest proponent is that they're lonely. So when they're lonely, then you start reaching for the vulnerable, which is what a lot of these people do. And I don't at all agree with what they're doing, that's just a simple truth. Some of them are just [ __ ] up in the head, and then some of them are just really [ __ ] lonely and they don't think straight and they, you know, still do it anyway because they're like, 'Okay, no, it doesn't really matter.'"
What's scary is that there are these dating servers specifically for people under the age of 18. These servers are for 13 to 17-year-olds, but they're the perfect bait for preds. A YouTuber by the name of Blazen decided to infiltrate one of these servers, posing as a young girl. A random Discord user named Wreck_SRS DM'd Blazen's fake profile. They were talking casually at first, but then he asked for her age. She explained that she was 14 years old, but that didn't phase 23-year-old Wreck_SRS. He proceeded to ask for selfies from her, and after receiving the fake pictures, he sent something extremely obscene. One in five U.S. teenagers who regularly use the internet have received messages like these. And sometimes, it's not just obscene pictures that are the result of it.
Border law enforcement just busted a major trafficking operation involving teenage victims who were lured through an online gaming app called Discord. In 2019, there was an article posted about Discord being used to lure teens into trafficking. Police arrested seven suspects in a bust involving teen victims. They found two boys locked in a trailer in St. Petersburg, Florida. One of those boys had been there for one year to be used as a slave for the next year. Police say he was held captive in a filthy trailer with four adult men. And Discord was the way the suspects connected with their victims. Christopher Gertison talked about why kids are easily accessible on the platform: "We just have it running in the background, so we don't have to like press down any buttons to allow our voice to pass through the game. We just, we just talking to our mics, and everybody in our, um, everybody in our channel can hear it."
These suspects most likely join servers posing as teenagers because it's so easy. All you have to do is join it. There's no one vetting anybody. All you have to do is join the server and pretend you're however old you say you are. Nick also talked to me about how kids who are under 13 were joining his own personal server. "I don't know how many times I've had to just say like, 'How old are you, man? Like, like honestly, be honest with me.' '11.' All right, and then I'm like, 'But I'm a really big fan.' It's like, 'I'm sorry, this is a liability for myself. This is against Discord's terms of service, and it's dangerous for you. So for that reason, I'm gonna have to remove you from the server.'"
On Discord, it's easy to pretend. Dangerous catfishes joining online communities will never go away. We can do our part, but they'll always exist online. When Nick caught these people on his YouTube video, he felt good, but he also felt helpless. "Us doing that was definitely rewarding, but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't change anything. All you're doing is providing entertainment to something that needs light. Anyway, however long that video was of us making a mockery, pretty much reading aloud the really cringe and horrifying messages, really didn't do much."
There will always be dangerous people online, and we can't stop them all, but we can do our best. I know this documentary is only about the dark sides of Discord, but Discord can truly be a wonderful platform. It's the perfect place to chat with your friends and build friendships that might last a lifetime. It gives you the power to create your own place to belong when you don't feel like you fit in.
Nick wanted to leave you with some advice: "Do not take this app so too hard. Do not take everything that you're doing here and make it your life. I fell into that hole. I'm pretty sure a lot of us did, and it is very, very dangerous and detrimental to the mind. I know what it's like to not have many friends, so you resort to your online friends. Online friends actually end up treating you a lot better is from what I've noticed than people in real life. However, you have to find that point where you know when it's healthy to kind of take a step back because when you take a step back, you're also no longer prone to any of these dangers."
And I agree. I would never encourage others to delete an app they enjoy using, but I believe that life is about balance. Your online presence on Discord should not constitute your entire life. The purpose of this documentary isn't to trash on Discord, but to bring to light the bad sides of the platform that many people don't know about. And since its users grow every day, we need to know what we're walking into. For all I know, this documentary may go nowhere, or if it does, it might not do much to make Discord a safer environment. Like I said, we can't stop every criminal, but let's never stop trying. Now, go make the world a better place.
Visual Venture. [Music]