An analysis of 3M+ Discord and Telegram chats in 50+ groups finds a global network of thousands of violent predators who target, groom, and extort kids online
A global network of violent predators is hiding in plain sight, targeting children on major platforms, grooming them, and extorting them to commit horrific acts of abuse. Mastodon: @mattburgess@infosec.exchange . X: @ttp_updates , @chrisd9r , @stevehuff , and @andrewcouts Mastodon: Matt Burgess / @mattburgess@infosec.exchange : A reporting partnership by WIRED, Der Spiegel, Recorder, and The Washington Post has exposed a horrific global network of violent predators—where groomers, often teenagers themselves, extort children into committing acts of abuse. — The consortium analyzed more than 3 million messages, examined court records, interviewed victims of the group, and much more. … X: @ttp_updates : Discord didn't launch parental controls until the summer of 2023, despite having a large population of users under 18. Today's reporting in WIRED, Der Spiegel, Recorder, and the Washington Post underscores the recklessness of this decision. [image] Chris Dehghanpoor / @chrisd9r : For Wired, @awinston - one of the first journalists to shed light on 764 - wrote not just about the group, but the ‘com’ network as a whole. The piece also draws on police reports, court records, and victim interviews to profile several key members. https://www.wired.com/... Steve Huff / @stevehuff : This is beyond insane and I expect the story will go viral. While it appears well-sourced, I've no doubt it could also cause nothing short of a new Satanic Panic. Worse because these stories appear to be true. Don't read if you are easily disturbed. https://www.wired.com/... Andrew Couts / @andrewcouts : NEW: A global network of violent predators is hiding in plain sight, targeting children on major platforms, grooming them, and extorting them to commit horrific acts of abuse. READER DISCRETION ADVISED: https://www.wired.com/... Expand More For Next Unexpand More For Next
Context & Ripple Effects
The reporting consortium's message-level analysis gives scale to contemporaneous coverage of group 764's use of Discord and Telegram for blackmail and violent coercion, including Discord's removal of 34,000 users in 2023. It shifts the issue from isolated abuse reports to an identifiable, cross-platform network problem.
Later coverage connected 764 to financial-crime techniques such as SIM swapping in child sextortion, while reporting on The Com documented overlap between online extortion communities and cybercrime-adjacent networks. That broader context makes platform trust and abuse-response systems central to the story.
First-order effects
- Discord and Telegram are directly implicated as organizing and communication surfaces for groups that target and coerce minors, putting their moderation, reporting, and account-enforcement practices under sharper scrutiny.
- The dataset creates actionable evidence for investigators and platforms to identify accounts, groups, and behavioral patterns associated with the network, rather than treating each victim report as a standalone incident.
Second-order effects
- Platforms serving young users face pressure to detect coordinated coercion across private and semi-private groups, not just remove individually reported content; Discord's previously reported removal of 34,000 users in 2023 illustrates the enforcement scale involved.
- The apparent use of techniques associated with online financial crime broadens the response beyond child-safety teams, increasing the importance of coordination among trust-and-safety, fraud, and law-enforcement functions.
Third-order effects
- If such networks continue to move between mainstream communication services, child protection will increasingly depend on cross-platform intelligence sharing and durable abuse-prevention infrastructure rather than reactive takedowns alone.
- The case points to a wider convergence of cybercrime methods and coercive online abuse. Whether platforms and regulators treat distribution layers as accountable safety infrastructure will shape the long-term response.
The trend: Online child-safety enforcement is evolving from content moderation toward disruption of networked, cross-platform coercion operations that borrow tools and tactics from cybercrime.