Proton VPN: “Discord is a wildly popular text, voice, and video chat platform used by over 153 million people each month. But is it safe? This is a question that may particularly concern parents(new window), thanks to it being the social media platform of choice for gamers, a demographic that tends to skew younger, and therefore may include more people who are potentially vulnerable online. In this article, we’ll break down what you need to know about keeping yourself or your kids safe on Discord. Discord is a “free” social media platform. It started in 2015 as a voice chat app for gamers, but its support for for a wide array of bots, custom emojis, GIFs, and public and private channels (which can be easily administered using customizable roles) has fostered numerous large and enthusiastic online communities — not just for gaming, but also for studying, working, fandoms, and hobbies. What makes Discord different from most other social media platforms is that you can create or join servers (which are essentially chat rooms), where people communicate in channels about different topics. Each server is controlled by its own admins and moderators, so safety and privacy can vary a lot between communities. These independent servers are hosted by Discord itself, which provides content moderation tools for server admins, and to reduce spam, harassment, and malicious links on public servers. Because of its popularity, access to Discord is periodically blocked by authoritarian regimes…”