How online group 764 uses Discord and Telegram to blackmail teens into degrading and violent acts, and then boast about it; Discord removed 34K users in 2023
The abusers were part of an emerging INTL NWK of online grps that've targeted 1,000s of children with a sadistic form of SM terror that authorities & tech cos. have struggled to control. … Matt Burgess / @mattburgess@infosec.exchange : Stories from the other media partners here: — On popular online platforms, predatory groups coerce children into self-harm: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Der Spiegel: https://www.spiegel.de/... Recorder: https://recorder.ro/... X: Chris Dehghanpoor / @chrisd9r : In Germany, @Roman_Hoefner, @LinaVerschwele and @romanlehberger dive deep into the life of ‘Sophia’ - a victim that, like many teens, turned to online communities like Discord to fill the social void left by COVID. For her, that had dire consequences. https://www.spiegel.de/... Chris Dehghanpoor / @chrisd9r : Over 3,000,000 Telegram messages were reviewed, as well as newly unearthed court documents and transcripts. Victims from several countries across Europe and North America were interviewed. We spoke to law enforcement agencies and organizations like NCMEC @MissingKids. Chris Dehghanpoor / @chrisd9r : Today we published an investigation into a group called ‘764’. The group - composed mostly (but not entirely) of teenage boys - targets vulnerable children and coerces them into harming themselves. This was a gut-wrenching story to report. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Damon Beres / @dlberes : I feel sick every time I read a story like this one—how could you not?—but I also struggle with placing the responsibility messaging platforms have. In this section alone there are entire universes of complex health and guardianship issues to contend with https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... [image] Kate Briquelet / @kbriquelet : Horrific but essential reading: “The perpetrators — identified by authorities as boys and men as old as mid-40s — seek out children with mental health issues and blackmail them into hurting themselves on camera.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Roman Höfner / @roman_hoefner : Probably the most challenging stories i have ever worked on for Der Spiegel (with @LinaVerschwele and @romanlehberger) A worldwide network of sadist groom vulnerable children and teens & blackmail them into self harm, animal abuse and even into suicide. https://www.spiegel.de/... Cristiano Lima-Strong / @viacristiano : On popular online platforms, predatory groups coerce children into self-harm. Incredible and grueling reporting by @ShawnBoburg @pranshuverma_ & @chrisd9r https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
The reporting places Group 764 within a broader cross-platform abuse ecosystem rather than an isolated moderation failure. A parallel examination of more than 3 million Discord and Telegram messages across 50-plus groups supports the picture of networks that can recruit, groom and coordinate across services.
The reported removal of roughly 34,000 Discord users shows enforcement at substantial scale, but the investigation’s central significance is the gap between account-level takedowns and the protection of vulnerable users targeted through widely used communication platforms.
First-order effects
- Discord’s removal of about 34,000 users disrupts identified abusive accounts and communities, while victims and families face a clearer record that platform channels were used to facilitate coercion.
- Discord and Telegram are put under immediate scrutiny over detection, reporting and intervention processes for grooming, extortion and self-harm content.
Second-order effects
- Large-scale removals can displace abusive groups between platforms or into replacement accounts, making cross-service intelligence sharing and preservation of evidence more important than isolated bans.
- Authorities, child-safety organizations and platforms will face pressure to turn reports of coercion into faster escalations, particularly where threats and blackmail create an immediate safety risk.
Third-order effects
- If these networks continue to operate across mainstream communications services, child safety becomes a core cross-platform enforcement problem rather than a content-moderation issue confined to individual posts or servers.
- The case strengthens the broader argument for distribution-layer accountability: platforms’ safety systems may increasingly be judged by whether they prevent coordinated abuse, not only by the volume of accounts removed.
The trend: This is one data point in the shift from reactive content removal toward coordinated, cross-platform safety enforcement against networked abuse.