Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (#1497094) sued Discord on Friday. The lawsuit alleges the platform enabled child predators, deceived parents, and violated the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
But the remedy Texas is asking the court to impose goes far beyond fixing Discord’s broken safety systems. Paxton wants a judge to order mandatory age verification for every user on the platform under the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act, Texas’ SCOPE law.
That means before you can type a message, join a server, or talk to anyone on Discord, you would need to prove your identity to the state’s satisfaction. Government ID uploads. Biometric face scans. Third-party verification services that cross-reference your private records.
Pass a law, sue a platform or website for not following the law, enforce tighter control over access to the internet.
More than 25 US states now require age checks to access some form of online content. The Supreme Court upheld Texas’s age verification law for adult websites last year.
The EU is rolling out its Digital Identity Wallet by the end of 2026. Australia banned under-16s from social media entirely. Discord is just the latest target.
Thankfully, even though Paxton has his own criminal record, he may soon no longer be Texas attorney general...if he gets elected to the US Senate.
Earlier this year and last, his office has gone after Snapchat, TikTok, and Roblox on similar grounds.
I don't see how we fix this, though, because the problem seems to stem from the fact that people don't want to take responsibility for their own actions or the actions of their children.
At the rate things are going Texas is going to end up not having any visitors, any tourists, any snowbirds, any women, any teens or much of anything else but beers, steers and ....