those encrypted acct could be Gaming accts ir Accts used for some kind of messaging that would not be picked up on here (?).
I heard some congress critter ? or some news reporter discovered Discord ?
Discord has been around at least 10 yrs now .... but I guess if you are not a gamer [ Fortnight / Call of Duty or Dungeons and Dragons or other Table Top Game ] or some other Gen Z'er or younger .... Discord has moved beyond gamers
Even the NYT published an article on how Discord has become a social hub for teh newest generation
I will say, NOTHING about Discord is encrypted .... so maybe Telegram, Signal and What's App .... those are mobile phone apps, but if they have the shooters phone the feds have access to those accounts
The Department of Homeland Security and FBI are in dialog with Roblox, Discord, Reddit, and others.
We'll get into the weeds of what the government thinks such content may include, but the report offers some examples. "Researchers have identified user-generated re-creations of mass shootings on the gaming platform Roblox, such as the 2019 shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the 2022 shooting in Buffalo, New York. Roblox officials told us their moderation team reviewed their content moderation tools and adjusted them to block these games and prevent content glorifying violent incidents from appearing on the platform."
Recreations of real world mass shootings (and on a platform with a huge young audience) are one thing, but what may worry some is how vague and potentially over-reaching the US government is about what may constitute domestic violent extremism. Since 2019 it has defined five types of domestic terrorism threat: racially motivated extremism, anti-government and anti-authority extremism, animal rights and environmental extremism, abortion-related extremism, then the catch-all of any other domestic terror threats.
These categories are so broad that people may rightly wonder where the line is between responsible intervention (such as with the Roblox examples) and the potential for Big Brother overreach when someone is having a normal one online about how much they hate the government or the repeal of Roe vs. Wade. To give the report its due, it does acknowledge the big unanswered questions about the friction between the above and Americans' free speech rights, but it's not like the FBI is known for its nuanced approach towards potential extremists: in recent decades it's been behind some
shocking lapses and botched schemes, and been accused of entrapment of suspects multiple times.
Nevertheless, this is not going away: the GAO was asked to investigate domestic violent extremists' use of games, gaming-related platforms and social media by the House Homeland Security Committee, and it follows Congressional pressure being applied to various major gaming publishers early last year.
