Global Courant 2023-04-14 04:28:52
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The associated press
Matt O’brien and Haleluya Hadero
Published April 13, 2023 • read for 4 minutes
FILE – A display of Discord is on the company’s booth at the Game Developers Conference 2023 in San Francisco on March 22, 2023. A major leak of classified US documents that has shocked Washington and revealed new details of its intelligence gathering may have begun in a chat room on the social media platform popular among gamers. Photo by Jeff Chiu /THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
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PROVIDENCE, RI (AP) — The chat app Discord, one of the most popular ways gamers communicate online, is at the center of an investigation into the leak of classified documents about the war in Ukraine.
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The investigation unfolds as Discord makes an ambitious push to acquire more users and expand the way they use the versatile app.
Discord said it is cooperating with law enforcement in the investigation of the leak, which is believed to have started on the site. A member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard reportedly spent years posting on Discord about guns, games, favorite memes and, according to some who talked to him, well-kept American secrets.
WHAT IS DISCODE?
Discord started out in 2015 as a nerdy online hangout for gamers and had some hiccups in its quest for mainstream success. Growth accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic as a forum for the mostly younger users to gossip or even help each other with homework.
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“More than 150 million people come to Discord every month to hang out with family, friends and communities,” said its co-founder and CEO, Jason Citron, at a press event last month. “It’s become a place where they have fun and get things done together.”
Discord users are young — about 38% of web users and nearly half of Android app users are between the ages of 18 and 24, according to digital intelligence platform Compareweb. They are about 75% male, says the research group.
Recently, the app has also pitched itself as a gateway to artificial intelligence tools like Midjourney, which conjures up new images based on commands it gives in a Discord chat.
Discord announced in January that it was buying another teen-focused social app called Gas, which allows people to share online polls and uplifting compliments.
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According to Insider Intelligence analyst Jeremy Goldman, the purchase was part of a larger push to target communities outside of gaming. Goldman said Discord has also benefited from the turmoil surrounding Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, as a “not insignificant number” of gamers posted Discord handles on their Twitter profiles to show they were decamping.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Discord can be accessed via desktops, smartphones or game consoles such as Xbox and PlayStation. Allows users to create invite-only “servers”.
The servers, which resemble the professional messaging platform Slack, allow users to create subchannels where they can communicate through text, voice or video chats.
Some users may have “friend servers” of a few dozen people they know in real life, while others may join larger servers dedicated to an online community of people interested in a specific topic.
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The company hosts nearly 21,000 servers, the vast majority of which are dedicated to gaming. Others focus on topics like generative AI, entertainment, or music.
WHAT ABOUT THE LEAKED DOCUMENTS?
The member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard was identified as Jack Teixeira, 21, who was arrested Thursday in connection with the disclosure of top-secret military documents about the war in Ukraine and other important national security issues. The breach has raised questions about America’s ability to protect its most sensitive secrets.
Some of the leaks are believed to have started on Discord. A chat group called “Thug Shaker Central” drew about two dozen enthusiasts who talked about their favorite guns and shared memes and jokes, some of them racist. The group also included an ongoing discussion of wars, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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In that thread, a user known as “the OG” posted material for months that he said was secret.
IS DISCORD INVOLVED IN OTHER INVESTIGATIONS?
The white gunman who killed 10 black shoppers and workers at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York last year, shared detailed plans for the attack with a small group of people on Discord about half an hour beforehand.
The diary, kept on a private server accessible by invitation only, contained months of racist, anti-Semitic notes, step-by-step descriptions of the gunman’s attack plans, a detailed account of a reconnaissance trip he made, and hand-drawn maps of the store. . He livestreamed the attack on another platform, Twitch.
Discord said 15 users clicked on the invitation and could have accessed its submissions before the attack. There was no evidence that anyone had seen them before.
Discord said it deleted the diary and banned the shooter’s account as soon as it became aware of it. The company said it has also taken steps to prevent content related to the attack from spreading.
As of 2020, Discord is part of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, a group co-founded by technology companies such as Microsoft, Facebook and YouTube that works to counter the proliferation of mass shooting videos streamed live by their perpetrators.
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Hadero reported from New York.
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