You may already know by now that you can report content to Discord's Trust & Safety team if it breaks Discord's Community Guidelines or Terms of Service. However, while moderating a server you may come across situations where you are unsure of whether you should make a report or not. This article will give you a good idea of what sorts of things are reportable, and what things are not worth reporting.

Here are some rules for content on Discord:

Do not organize, participate in, or encourage harassment of others. Disagreements happen and are normal, but continuous, repetitive, or severe negative comments may cross the line into harassment and are not okay.

  • Disagreements, insults, and other rude or disrespectful behavior is common, and should generally be handled in accordance with your own server rules.
  • Do not organize, promote, or coordinate servers around hate speech. It’s unacceptable to attack a person or a community based on attributes such as their race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, or disabilities.
  • If a user is participating in any of these actions aimed at another person or community, it is usually reportable.
  • Do not make threats of violence or threaten to harm others. This includes indirect threats, as well as sharing or threatening to share someone’s private personal information (also known as doxxing).
  • Do not evade user blocks or server bans. Do not send unwanted, repeated friend requests or messages, especially after they’ve made it clear they don’t want to talk to you anymore.
  • If a user is evading blocks or bans for the purpose of repeating their previous bad behavior, they should be reported.
  • Do not send others viruses or malware, attempt to phish others, or hack or DDoS them.
  • Viruses, malware, and phishing attacks are reportable as this content is directly against Discord’s Community Guidelines.

Here are some rules for content on Discord:

You must apply the NSFW label to channels if there is adult content in that channel. Any content that cannot be placed in an age-gated channel, such as avatars, server banners, and invite splashes, may not contain adult content.

  • Isolated incidents where NSFW content is posted outside of an NSFW channel should be taken care of on a server level. If a server regularly fails to remove NSFW content posted outside of NSFW channels, the server may be reported for this behavior. 
  • You may not sexualize minors in any way. This includes sharing content or links which depict minors in a pornographic, sexually suggestive, or violent manner, and includes illustrated or digitally altered pornography that depicts minors (such as lolicon, shotacon, or cub). We report illegal content to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
  • Content with minors being sexualized is taken very seriously and should be reported and removed as soon as possible. 
  • You may not share sexually explicit content of other people without their consent, or share or promote sharing of non-consensual intimate imagery (also known as revenge porn) in an attempt to shame or degrade someone.
  • You may not share content that glorifies or promotes suicide or self-harm.
  • Small, one-time offenses, or users who talk about self-harm in reference to themselves should be handled on a server level. Users who continue to promote self-harm either for themselves or others should be reported.  Users who are in physical danger due to a potential suicide attempt or self-harm should be reported as soon as possible. You should consider calling law enforcement if you believe the user may be in imminent danger to themselves or others.
  • You may not share images of sadistic gore or animal cruelty.
  • You may not use Discord for the organization, promotion, or support of violent extremism.
  • You may not operate a server that sells or facilitates the sales of prohibited or potentially dangerous goods.
  • You may not promote, distribute, or provide access to content involving the hacking, cracking, or distribution of pirated software or stolen accounts. 
  • In general, you should not promote, encourage or engage in any illegal behavior. This is very likely to get you kicked off Discord, and may get you reported to law enforcement.

Finally, we ask that you respect Discord itself:

  • You may not sell your account or your server. Users who want to buy or sell an account or server should be reported. Try to be sure they are serious about it before reporting.
  • You may not use self-bots or user-bots to access Discord. Users who use a self-bot or user-bot in a malicious way should be reported. Self-botting in this case includes users setting up a bot or automations that allow them to perform actions on Discord faster than any human is physically capable of.
  • You may not share content that violates anyone's intellectual property or other rights. In general, this guideline should be handled by the users involved, usually by means of a DMCA request. Instructions on properly filing a DMCA takedown request can be found in Discord’s Terms of Service, and must be initiated by the rights-holder of the intellectual property or an authorized representative. You may handle these situations on a server level if you wish.
  • You may not spam Discord, especially our Customer Support and Trust & Safety teams. Making false and malicious reports, sending multiple reports about the same issue, or asking a group of users to all report the same content may lead to action being taken on your account.
  • If you have evidence of users participating in this behavior, you should report it. Users impersonating Discord employees may also fall in this category. When submitting a report ticket about an issue, reply to the support ticket to bump it, but do not create a new ticket as you may end up violating this community guideline.

Conclusion

This is not an exhaustive list of the situations you may encounter as a moderator, nor is it a guide for what rules you should enforce on your server, as the platform is ever-evolving. You may enforce extra rules as you see fit in order to cultivate the type of community you want for your server.