(UPDATE) MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) announced that the ban on the messaging platform Discord has been lifted.
“Discord laid out its commitments as a guide to serious concerns of the government towards Nihilistic Violent Extremism (NVE), grooming and radicalization to Filipino youth through its platforms, and other threats to online safety, that includes violence in our schools,” DICT Secretary Henry Aguda said in a livestreamed press conference at the House of Representatives on Thursday after a meeting with Discord Asia Pacific officials.
“Discord coordinated with us at the DICT and the CICC and vowed to immediately work on steps to strengthen the protection of our youth,” he added.
Aguda said Discord knew about the issues involving NVE and admitted there were issues that needed to be fixed.
He defended the ban on the platform, saying it was for the protection of the young people.
CICC Executive Director Renato Paraiso said that Discord was willing to work with the government on online child safety measures.
“We just finished talking to Discord officials and we would like inform you that the meeting was a success and we saw the commitment of Discord to cooperate with us to reach the goal to strengthen online child safety measures in our country,” Paraiso said.
“Just like Reddit, Discord vowed to give us a green lane in monitoring and recognizing threat actors in the platform,” he added.
Paraiso said through this measure, there will no one hiding and hurting the Filipino youth and they also await the platform in launching a satellite office in the country.
He also apologized to the public over the ban on Discord and they are working on restoring the platform.
Discord was banned on the country, following issues surrounding its satellite office amid recent school shootings in Tacloban City, Zamboanga City and in South Cotabato.
