The protection of children and teenagers online is one of the most important challenges facing the digital ecosystem.
Recent events in Brazil have brought that challenge into sharp focus.
As a global company operating in Brazil and across multiple jurisdictions, we believe it is important to explain both what is happening in Brazil and the principles that should guide the broader international debate around online safety, privacy and digital freedom.
What is happening in Brazil?
On July 22, 2026, a 13-year-old girl died following an incident involving self-harm and suicide that was livestreamed online. Brazilian authorities subsequently began investigating the circumstances surrounding the case and the role of the platform involved. The Brazilian data protection authority, the ANPD, states that the incident occurred on Discord.
On August 7, the ANPD opened a formal supervisory proceeding to investigate potential failures by Discord in protecting children and teenagers and in complying with obligations under Brazil’s new digital child-protection framework, known as the ECA Digital.
The Brazilian government subsequently sought information and commitments from Discord. The company has stated that it identified and disabled a private server associated with the case before the teenager’s death and that it maintains cooperation channels with Brazilian authorities.
The situation also prompted a civil lawsuit by a Brazilian consumer-rights organization seeking the suspension of Discord in the country. That lawsuit is separate from the regulatory action taken by the ANPD.
On August 12, the ANPD issued a preventive measure ordering Discord to suspend its “Go Live” livestreaming feature and equivalent video-sharing functionality in Brazil within three business days.
Importantly, Brazil has not banned Discord as a whole.
The ANPD’s measure is specifically directed at livestreaming and equivalent video-sharing features. The rest of the platform remains available. The suspension is intended to remain in effect until Discord demonstrates the implementation and effectiveness of technical, security and governance measures designed to address the risks identified by the regulator.
The ANPD says its decision was based on what it describes as evidence that livestreaming functionality has been used in serious violations involving minors, including violence, harassment and the inducement or encouragement of self-harm and suicide.
These are serious allegations and deserve serious consideration.
The underlying problem is real
There should be no ambiguity about our position on child safety.
Children and teenagers deserve meaningful protection from grooming, exploitation, coercion, violence, self-harm encouragement and other forms of abuse online.
Technology companies have a responsibility to understand the risks created by the products they build and to implement reasonable, effective safeguards.
That responsibility includes more than removing content after it has been reported.
Platforms should invest in effective reporting and escalation mechanisms, safeguards against grooming and exploitation, age-appropriate product design, mechanisms for identifying high-risk behavior, rapid responses to credible reports involving minors, appropriate cooperation with law-enforcement authorities, independent testing of safety systems and transparent measurement of whether those systems actually reduce harm.
Privacy should never be used as an excuse for inaction.
But accountability must also be based on evidence.
The question is whether the response solves the problem
The central question surrounding the ANPD’s decision is not whether children should be protected.
They should.
The question is whether suspending a particular technology feature is the most effective and proportionate way to achieve that objective.
Livestreaming is one mechanism through which online abuse can occur. But harmful communities can also use private messaging, voice communication, recorded video, images, external links and other platforms.
Removing one feature may therefore reduce one avenue of abuse without eliminating the underlying networks or behaviors.
In other words:
A harmful activity can migrate even when a specific tool is removed.
This is why effective regulation should measure success not by the visibility of an intervention, but by its ability to reduce the underlying risk.
Brazil’s broader regulatory context matters
The current Discord case also needs to be understood within the broader context of Brazil’s recent approach to online platforms.
Brazil has taken increasingly assertive measures against major technology companies in recent years, including actions involving the social platform X.
In 2024, Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes issued orders requiring X to suspend or remove specific accounts and content. The orders affected numerous political figures and accounts associated with different political movements. X publicly disputed a number of those orders and characterized them as censorship, while Brazilian authorities and the Supreme Court maintained that the measures were lawful judicial orders intended to address threats to democracy, disinformation and other unlawful conduct.
The dispute escalated significantly.
After X failed to comply with certain court requirements, including the appointment of a legal representative in Brazil, the Supreme Court ordered the nationwide suspension of X on August 30, 2024. The platform remained unavailable in Brazil for approximately 39 days and was restored on October 8 after the court determined that the requirements for its return had been satisfied.
X had publicly accused the Brazilian authorities of attempting to impose censorship and had refused to comply with what it described as unlawful censorship orders. Those allegations were strongly disputed by Brazilian authorities, which characterized the measures as lawful enforcement of judicial decisions.
We do not believe it is appropriate for a company such as ours to take a partisan position in that political and legal dispute.
However, the history is relevant when evaluating the principles that should govern today’s regulatory actions.
The X episode demonstrated that disputes between governments and technology companies can escalate from individual content or account-removal orders to restrictions affecting an entire platform and millions of users.
That precedent makes transparency, proportionality and clearly defined limits particularly important.
Regulation must remain proportionate — regardless of the platform or the issue
This is not an argument that governments should refrain from regulating technology companies.
Quite the opposite.
Governments have a legitimate role in protecting citizens, enforcing laws and requiring companies to address serious risks.
But those powers should be exercised consistently, regardless of whether the platform involved is politically popular or controversial, and regardless of whether the underlying issue concerns misinformation, public safety, child protection or another legitimate public interest.
The standard should be the same.
Evidence should precede restrictions.
Restrictions should be proportionate to the demonstrated risk.
Companies should have meaningful opportunities to respond and appeal.
And temporary measures should have clear, objective criteria for review and termination.
These principles protect both users and governments from arbitrary or unnecessarily broad interventions.
Child safety must not become generalized surveillance
There is another issue that deserves equal attention.
The understandable desire to protect children can create pressure for increasingly intrusive systems of identity verification, behavioral monitoring and communications surveillance.
Some safety technologies can be valuable. But security measures can also create significant privacy risks if they are implemented indiscriminately.
We should not accept a false choice between privacy and child safety.
Modern security engineering should instead seek to achieve both.
Where possible, safety mechanisms should minimize data collection, limit access to sensitive information, use risk-based approaches and avoid treating every user as a potential offender.
Protecting children should not require turning the internet into a system of permanent surveillance.
This is bigger than Discord
The Brazilian case should not be viewed solely as a dispute between one company and one government.
It represents a broader global question:
How should societies regulate powerful digital platforms when legitimate public-safety objectives intersect with privacy, freedom of expression and technological innovation?
That question will arise again — with other companies, other technologies and other governments.
A principle applied to Discord today may eventually be applied to messaging services, social networks, gaming platforms, cloud services, encrypted communications or emerging technologies tomorrow.
That is why the principles matter.
Regulation should address demonstrated risks, not simply the existence of technology that can be misused.
And where platforms fail to address serious, foreseeable risks, they should be held accountable.
Our position
As a global privacy and cybersecurity company operating in Brazil and internationally, we support the following principles:
1. Children must be protected
Online services should implement meaningful safeguards against abuse, grooming, exploitation, violence and self-harm.
2. Platforms must be accountable
Companies should be responsible for understanding and mitigating foreseeable risks associated with the products and services they operate.
3. Regulation must be evidence-based
Restrictions should be grounded in verified facts and demonstrable risks, not speculation, public pressure or assumptions about a technology.
4. Measures must be proportionate
A restriction should be appropriately tailored to the risk it seeks to address and should not unnecessarily affect legitimate users.
5. Preventive measures need an exit path
When regulators impose temporary restrictions, companies should have clear, objective and measurable requirements for demonstrating compliance and restoring the affected functionality.
6. Privacy must remain a security principle
Child-safety measures should be designed to minimize unnecessary data collection and avoid indiscriminate surveillance.
7. The same standards should apply to everyone
Regulatory principles should not depend on the political identity of a platform, its owners, its users or the subject matter involved.
Governments should be able to address genuine threats to public safety and democratic institutions. At the same time, technology companies and their users should have meaningful safeguards against disproportionate restrictions.
8. Criminal conduct should remain the focus
Individuals and groups responsible for abuse must be investigated and prosecuted. Platform accountability should complement — not replace — criminal enforcement.
A safer internet does not have to be a less free internet
The events in Brazil are a reminder that digital safety cannot be treated as an afterthought.
Platforms must improve.
Governments must act when serious risks emerge.
And technology companies must be willing to accept scrutiny when their systems are inadequate.
But there is an equally important principle:
Security should not become a justification for censorship.
Our position is not that platforms should be above the law.
It is that the law should be applied transparently, proportionately and consistently — including when the government is regulating companies with which it strongly disagrees.
We believe it is possible to build digital environments that are safer for children while remaining private, open and respectful of fundamental freedoms.
The goal should not be to eliminate technology because it can be abused.
The goal should be to make technology harder to abuse, make platforms accountable when they fail, and make regulation precise enough to protect people without unnecessarily restricting everyone else.
The Brazilian Discord case is an important test of that balance.
It deserves neither dismissal nor blind acceptance.
It deserves evidence, accountability, proportionality and an unwavering commitment to both child safety and digital freedom.