CYBERSPACE—The popular chat app Discord, with a reported 300 million registered users, announced Tuesday that it will ban servers that include adult content—but only for users of Apple’s iOS, the operating system used on iPhones and iPads. Users of Android devices will continue to have access to all of the estimated 6.7 million servers used to host text, audio and video chats on a wide range of topics.
The service is focused primarily on video games, and is largely used by gamers to exchange messages during play. Each chat group dedicated to a specific topic is called a “server.” But gaming groups and others have long been plagued by extremist rhetoric and hate-filled comments.
“Racial slurs, sexist comments, politically incorrect memes and game-shaming are prevalent, users say,” according to a Wall Street Journal report in 2019. But Discord administrators say that they do not monitor the servers for such unacceptable content unless they receive specific complaints.
What the service has chosen to prohibit, however, is adult content and any sort of sexually-oriented material. At least for users of Apple mobile devices. While the site gave no reason why Apple mobile users are singled out for the restrictions, a report by The Verge noted that the new rules may be related to “Apple’s strict and often prudish rules around nudity in services distributed through the App Store.”
In 2018, the social media site Tumblr, which had been one of the most adult-friendly platforms available online, banned adult content altogether after Apple removed Tumblr’s iOS app from the company’s app store.
After Discord announced its Apple-only ban on adult content, former Tumblr executive Matthew Bischoff blasted the tech giant on his Twitter account.
“Apple’s regressive stance on sexual content being available on its largest platform is verging on a full on moral panic and it’s really gross,” Bischoff wrote. “Entire businesses and communities have been crushed by it, and it often hurts queer and trans communities most.”
The NSFW Discord servers will remain accessible to users of mobile devices with Android operating systems, as well as to users of Apple laptop and desktop computers.
According to an Ars Technica report, Discord may have an extra motivation for making sure its app remains available in the Apple app store, even if it means banning NSFW content. The company is reportedly in talks with Microsoft and “other parties” to sell the popular chat platform for a price estimated at $10 billion.
Photo By Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons
