Brazil's federal government asked a court again on Monday (21) for a preliminary injunction, an order that takes effect before a final ruling, to force Discord to adopt immediate protections for children, adolescents and women. The filing by the Attorney General's Office (AGU, the government's legal arm) went to the 14th Federal Civil Court in Brasília after settlement talks failed to advance. In the AGU's assessment, the proposal submitted by the platform is insufficient: generic, with no concrete commitments to technical change.
The settlement attempt had been set at a September 2 hearing, when the court gave Discord 10 business days to formalize concrete measures on four fronts: age verification, combating sexual extortion, moderating animal cruelty content and creating a communication channel with Brazilian authorities. According to G1, which reviewed the filing, the government argues the risk to minors is ongoing and that the absence of technical safeguards in the app makes the situation worse every day.
"Generic in character, with exceptions and conditions of every kind, it is not capable of addressing the gravity of the associated problems with the urgency and scope the case demands. There is also no consistent commitment to changing the architecture, improving systems or altering processes related to the service," the AGU wrote.
To justify the urgency, the AGU cited two recent cases investigated by police. On September 6, the Civil Police of Goiás rescued a 13-year-old girl kept locked in an abandoned building in Anápolis; investigators say she was groomed by a man she met on Discord. On September 12, the Justice Ministry's cyber operations laboratory launched, with state police forces, the second phase of Operation Lívia, which investigates deaths and serious acts tied to online challenges. In São Paulo state alone, police data attached to the case file show more than 54 Discord servers were forcibly taken down by authorities in the past month.
Where the case comes from
The dispute began with a civil lawsuit the AGU filed on August 27. The government seeks at least 500 million reais in collective moral damages and, if the injunction is granted, wants the main measures implemented within 15 days, under a daily fine of 500,000 reais. The case was motivated by the death of a 13-year-old girl in Mato Grosso do Sul in July, during a live broadcast on the platform. The episode led Brazil's data protection authority, the ANPD, to suspend Discord's live streams in the country. On Monday, the company said it had removed third-party apps used to bypass the suspension and said it remains in talks with the ANPD, which warned that further noncompliance can trigger daily fines.
Incentives and what to watch
The lawsuit's demands are specific and costly: age checks that rely on more than self-declaration, which today means only the birth date a user types in, Portuguese-speaking moderation teams, a legal representative in Brazil and tools against the re-creation of banned communities, as listed by the legal news outlet Juristas. For Discord, signing such commitments in a settlement turns them into court-enforceable obligations; a generic proposal preserves room to negotiate. What we still do not know: the full text of the proposal is not public, the judge has not ruled on the injunction and the G1 report includes no response from Discord to the latest filing. Watch the decision by the 14th Federal Civil Court and the outcome of the company's appeal before the ANPD's board. In the meantime, minors' access control on the app still depends on the age each user claims for themselves.