Citron, the co-founder of chat forum Discord, created the popular site to help video gamers communicate with each other while playing. Discord lets users form servers to chat by text, audio or video. The platform is still popular with gamers, but has become more mainstream in the past several years, especially as people looked for ways to connect online during the pandemic.
In December, the company published a blog post about a new model it developed to detect CSAM. It’s working with other tech companies to identify and combat the material, it said.
The company was forced into an unwelcome spotlight last year when a Post investigation revealed that a Massachusetts Air National Guard member allegedly shared hundreds of classified documents that he obtained at work on Discord. That raised concerns about Discord’s moderation policies, which The Post found rely partly on users themselves to report others’ bad behavior.
Cristiano Lima-Strong and Will Oremus contributed to this report.
Photos by Josh Edelson, Jerod Harris, Frederic J. Brown, Kimberly White via Getty Images; Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post.
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