Discord says a problem in its safety tools led to the mistaken banning of more than 8,000 accounts, with the issue affecting users who uploaded images that were not harmful, according to the company.
The reports surfaced after users said they had been banned for posting pictures with grid patterns, including chessboards, game textures and Minecraft inventories. Discord cofounder and chief technology officer Stanislav Vishnevskiy said the bug affected roughly 200 users who shared “grid-like” images, along with about 8,000 others who posted other benign images since May 2026.
How the error happened
Discord said its automated safety system is meant to compare content with known harmful material and flag possible violations for human review. In these cases, the company said, a software bug caused the system to ban accounts outright instead of only blocking uploads while staff reviewed the content. Even after workers cleared the accounts, the same flaw prevented the bans from being removed automatically.
Discord said all affected users have now been unbanned.
Source: theverge.com
