Kentucky Attorney General Files Brief on Discord Over Child Safety and Section 230

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman, joined by attorneys general from Ohio, Michigan and Tennessee, filed an amicus brief with the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on October 29, 2026, asking the court to reverse a lower court ruling that they argue misconstrued Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and hampers state attorneys general in their ability to stop child sexual abuse on social media. The brief argues that child sex abuse is pervasive on social media platforms, citing a finding from the Crimes Against Children Research Center that one in six children is currently a victim of online sex abuse, and specifically references extremist sextortion groups like 764 operating in Kentucky, where members use platforms like Roblox to recruit, groom, extort, threaten and conspire to kill children as young as eight years old. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation also filed an amicus brief stating that Section 230 has been wrongly applied in a way that undermines its original purpose, giving social media companies broad protections rather than children.

When attorneys general from four states argue that Section 230 has inverted its purpose, shielding platforms rather than the children the law was meant to protect, the question becomes how to address harm without waiting for the outcome of appellate litigation. The brief's citation that one in six children is a victim of online sex abuse and that extremist groups use Roblox and other platforms to groom and extort children as young as eight demonstrates the urgency of operational intervention at the point of contact. Guardii operates independently of platform liability frameworks, offering schools, parents and child-safety organizations direct detection capability for grooming, sextortion and child sexual abuse material including on Roblox, Discord and other platforms named in the brief. By identifying coercive patterns, sustained targeting and escalation to threats or demands, a Meta Business Partner AI detection system surfaces a child at risk to the adult or authority in a position to intervene, addressing the pervasive abuse the brief describes without requiring a platform to admit liability or a court to reinterpret Section 230 first.