Discord adjusts policy on furry ‘cub content’

Discord adjusted its Trust and Safety policies today in an effort to increase transparency, the chat platform announced on its blog. One major adjustment pertains to “cub” content on Discord, which caused controversy last month after users called out the platform’s lax policies on sexually explicit, underaged animal-themed art.

“Over the past couple of weeks, posts have appeared inquiring about Discord’s stance on a niche area of NSFW policy, which is cub porn,” reads the blog post. A clarification in guidelines revealed that Discord saw some cub content as a “grey area,” especially in situations where the characters weren’t “human like at all.”

Discord’s Trust and Safety team that its original policy followed the United States federal guidelines, which meant that, while all cartoon art of underaged characters is banned from the platform, not all cub content fell under the same ban.

“You can see this distinction in action on Google Images which does not show results for lolicon but does show results for cub porn,” reads the post. “Discord’s current policy is that anything human or humanoid is forbidden (including anthropomorphized characters). This includes most cub pornography.”

Discord previously cracked down on other types of explicit material featuring underaged characters, such as lolicon and shotacon, so many users felt that the guidelines for cub content were inconsistent. But in response to users who took to Reddit and Twitter to voice their complaints late last month, Discord has updated its policies on “cub” content.

“As of today, we’re changing our policy to ban all cub porn. This means the sexualization of minor ban now extends to non-humanoid animals and mythological creatures as long as they appear to be underage,” the post continues. “We’re adding ‘cub’ to the list of categories, after lolicon and shotacon, to our Community Guidelines to clarify that this content is not allowed on Discord.”

In addition to the updated policy, Discord announced that it would be releasing periodic transparency reports in order to maintain ongoing dialogue and communication with its users. The first transparency report will be released in April.

In a Reddit post detailing the new policies from the main Discord subreddit, many users are thanking the Discord staff for taking action on the issue and for their transparency moving forward — signaling a positive first step toward making changes to Trust and Safety on the platform.