On May 22, 2026, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a complaint and request for injunctive relief against Discord, Inc. under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA), alleging that the platform misled consumers about safety features while exposing minors to exploitation risks. In its complaint, Texas seeks civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation, as well as disgorgement of revenues and mandatory age verification as required by the Texas Securing Children Online Through Parental Empowerment Act (the SCOPE Act).

The same day, a Texas state court issued an ex parte Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) imposing immediate operational and marketing restrictions on Discord. A hearing on the TRO is schedule for June 5, 2026.

The action — preceded by investigations in 2024 and 2025 and followed by rapid injunctive relief — focuses not just on content harms, but also on product design choices, default settings, and “safety” representations.

“Discord designed a predator’s paradise, switched off the safeguards by default, and looked Texas parents in the eye and called it safe. That is not negligence. That is evil dressed up as a safety policy,” Attorney General Paxton said in a press release announcing the TRO. “A court ordered Discord to stop, and I will pursue this company with the full and unrelenting force of the law until every child in Texas is protected from the sick predators it invited in. Discord was warned again and again and did nothing. It will not get to ignore Texas.”

Key Allegations

In its complaint, Texas alleges that Discord engaged in false representations regarding platform safety, made material omissions regarding risks to minors, and participated in unconscionable conduct exploiting consumers’ lack of knowledge.

Specifically, the complaint alleges that Discord:

• Falsely represented “safety-by-design” features by claiming safety is “at the core of everything we do,” “built into every aspect of our product and policies,” and “fully integrated into our design process,” promising a zero-tolerance policy for anyone that endangers or sexualizes children.
• Developed its settings to default to less restrictive settings for sensitive content filters, permit direct messaging, and leave friend requests open to broad audiences.
• Failed to disclose material risks, such as risks of grooming and predation, limitations of moderation tools, and reliance on user-configured (opt-in) safety controls.
• Failed to design adequate age-verification mechanisms, instead relying on self-reported birthdates without verification or procedures to prevent underage users.
• Offloaded safety responsibilities to volunteer moderators who received no training from Discord, have no liability protections, and no escalation pathways for timely responses from Discord.

TRO Key Requirements

The court found good cause to believe that Discord misrepresented that the platform “is designed in a manner to keep users safe” and failed to disclose risks of harm and danger, including child exploitation and abuse. Because Discord’s default settings operate continuously on every Texas account, the court found the ongoing conduct inflicts injury on Texas consumers daily, causing the state to be irreparably harmed in its inability to enforce its consumer protection laws.

The TRO imposes immediate, affirmative obligations on Discord to:

• Set mandatory default safety settings by configuring Texas accounts to block (not blur) sensitive content, disable open friend requests, disable direct-message permissions, and enable maximum spam filtering.
• Refrain from claiming — where inconsistent with actual practices — that its platform is “safe by design,” “safe by default,” or that it has a “zero tolerance” policy.
• Suspend the automatic 90-day expiration of user violation records and preserve all enforcement, moderation, and safety records, including the data underlying its published transparency reports.
• Disclose to the court, within 14 days of order entry, the current default configurations, safety operations and engineering workforce allocation, and violation-record expiration and ban-evasion metrics.

Takeaways

The Texas AG’s action against Discord may represent a shift in platform regulation, where design decisions, default settings, and marketing claims form the basis of consumer protection liability. This theory might materially reshape compliance expectations for social platforms — particularly those serving or accessible to minors. The lawsuit follows ongoing state efforts nationally to impose stricter controls, through both legislation and attorney general enforcement actions, on social media, gaming, and AI platforms regarding children’s safety, transparency, and regulatory compliance.

Companies operating social, messaging, or user-generated content platforms may wish to consider auditing whether their “safety” representations align with actual product behavior; reviewing whether default configurations reflect the most protective settings; assessing age-verification mechanisms and their enforceability; and evaluating reliance on user-configured safeguards.