Discord has begun taking action against servers hosting NSFW content.
Partnered Discord servers receive extra support and perks, are the status is usually applied to high-profile streamers, content creators and communities. But Discord has put its foot down on NSFW content, and has begun removing partnered status from porn-hosting servers.
One such partner-revoked community was the Discord server for the Final Fantasy XIV subreddit. Admin Eanae was contacted by the company to remove the content from a channel tastefully named “#nsfw-so-many-anime-girls-doing-lewd-things.”
It appeared Discord had discovered “illustrated or digitally altered pornography which depicts minors”, and threatened to delete the server if it wasn’t removed.
Shutting down sites over porn is nothing new - what’s interesting is that Discord appears to also be taking a zero-tolerance approach to rampant slur use. In further communications to Eanae, the platform confirmed that the server’s partnership would stay revoked permanently.
“Searching up the word ‘retard’ brings up a staggering 4,869 results at the time of sending in this ticket. There are also a large amount of strong racial slurs which we won't be mentioning here.”
Discord continued to say that the server’s community was “not fostering a welcoming home”, and that it had received direct feedback from users on the server’s behaviour.
The platform has admitted to failing to communicate and uphold the standards expected from partnered servers. An updated partnership requirements page suggests that while Discord contains tools to lock channels as NSFW, partnered servers are expected to present themselves in a more acceptable, public-friendly manner.
“NSFW content (such as pornography) is not allowed in partnered servers.” said a representative for Discord on Reddit. “When we introduced NSFW channels a while back this was made clear to all our existing partners (since our partner policy previous to this feature was not clear).“
“That said we've definitely failed to properly document and communicate this rule, both for new partners and existing partners who have forgotten/missed our previous clarifications.”
