Global Online Networks Coerce Youth into Violence and Self-Harm

In late 2024, in a quiet suburb of Stockholm, a 14-year-old boy approached a man in his 80s who was using a walker. He stabbed the man three times in the back.

The video of the attack in Hässelby was streamed and spread quickly. It fed a global online ecosystem that actively encourages and glorifies acts of violence and degradation – the “gamification of harm”, as the researcher Marc-André Argentino puts it.

The boy allegedly had links to a network known as 764. Such groups are known to target young people in games including Roblox and Minecraft as well as communities struggling with mental health or sexual identity for online extortion, pressuring them into acts of violence and self-harm.

The 764 network, founded by a Texas teenager, Bradley Cadenhead, is just one part of an evolving online ecosystem, with perpetrators and victims in dozens of countries. Cadenhead is now serving an 80-year sentence in the US for possessing child sexual abuse material.

There are several cases currently before courts around the world with alleged links to such groups. Legal records from numerous countries suggest they often celebrate violence, manipulation and harm for its own sake, collecting records of such acts to gain notoriety and control.

“These are young people recruiting other young people,” says Bjørn Ihler, the founder of the security firm Revontulet. “It is a youth phenomenon.”

The Australian federal police commissioner, Krissy Barrett, has said: “A worrying trend is how victims are becoming perpetrators to try to escape their online bullies who have befriended and groomed them, and then forced them to hurt themselves.”

A Swedish court decided in April 2025 that the teenager had carried out the stabbing although he was too young to be held criminally responsible. But another name emerged during the investigation, local authorities told the Guardian – an online username: “Chai.”

In early 2025, as the country was still reeling from the attack, an Australian girl rang Swedish police. She wanted to tell authorities about Chai.

‘It’s bigger than these few cases’

Linus Svensson, an investigative reporter at the Swedish broadcaster SVT, had never heard of 764 before the 2024 stabbing.

Svensson says he now knows of at least nine local court cases related to “the Com” – the term for a broad online network that engages in cybercrime, extortion and violence, and which includes 764. He says he has found dozens of Swedish members in chat groups.

“It’s bigger than these few cases,” he says. “I think it took a while for Swedish authorities and also the general public to actually understand this.”

As he began to wade through videos and imagery shared by the group for SVT’s investigation, Svensson came across a teenager in the north of Sweden who had been convicted in 2024 of trying to coerce a 13-year-old boy to take his own life.

This, according to Jenny Östling, a senior public prosecutor with Sweden’s National Unit against International and Organised Crime, was Chai.

The teenager, whose real name cannot be published, is on trial for more than 70 alleged offences, according to the indictment, including allegedly encouraging someone to self-harm and kill themselves, and the creation of child sexual abuse material. Most were allegedly committed against the Australian girl.

He is also charged with inducing a young man in Germany to harm himself so badly he almost died.

His lawyer, Emily Töyrä, told the Guardian he denies all the allegations.

The trial was paused in late June after the Swedish court sent him for a forensic psychiatric investigation, according to court records, stating there was “compelling evidence that [he] has committed several of the acts with which he has been charged”. The matter will return in August.

Östling says the case will test whether people can be held responsible for remotely coercing others into acts of self-harm or violence – a hallmark of groups such as 764.

“They have a goal for the group itself: to destroy the world … But [members] also have a goal for themselves: they want to gain status within the group,” Östling says.

Creating new material can be a prerequisite of entry to closed chatrooms and other markers of membership. “They primarily coerce young victims into cutting themselves or sexual acts,” she says. “They use it to be able to coerce them into doing something worse.”

Östling alleges Chai was “high status” within 764, and was invited into a chatroom known as “764 Inferno”.

His lawyer disputes that characterisation, and says her client’s involvement was limited to editing images and videos. “The Com environment is highly fluid,” Töyrä says. “My client does not accept the characterisation of ‘764 Inferno’ as the type of organised group alleged by the prosecution. In his view, it was simply one group chat among many.”

A global phenomenon

An indictment unveiled by the US Department of Justice in April 2025 alleges that two American men in their early 20s, Leonidas Varagiannis and Prasan Nepal, were part of a chatroom with the same name which “was reserved for the inner core of 764 members”.

The pair are accused of using “764 Inferno” to conspire with other members to create and distribute child exploitation images, among other charges. Researchers have found at least 295 arrests linked to the Com network in 33 countries, including Australia, where there are matters before the courts.

In New Zealand, after a tipoff from US authorities, Ronndog Keefe pleaded guilty in 2025 to 13 charges, including the distribution of “horrific and graphic” child exploitation material. The 22-year-old was sentenced to more than five years’ jail in December.

Keefe claimed he was also a victim of 764, which he said had threatened to dox him if he did not distribute such material, according to legal records, but the court found this “simply was not credible”.

Last year in the UK, Cameron Finnigan, then 19, was given a nine-year extended sentence for possessing a terrorist document – a “kill guide” with advice about how to commit “truck attacks” – and indecent images of children. He was also convicted of encouraging someone online to take their own life.

The court found Finnigan was part of 764. “The intended victims are … vulnerable individuals: in particular, LGBTQI+ youth, racial minorities and those suffering from mental illnesses or disorders,” the judge said at his sentencing. “They are targeted precisely because they are so obviously vulnerable.”

In June another British teenager, Elijah Palmer, was sentenced for encouraging serious self-harm, among other charges. He was also linked to 764, police said, and had targeted his victim on Roblox and the chat platform Discord.

The FBI uses the term “nihilistic violent extremism” to describe these activities but there is debate about the moniker. Some argue it is vague and tries to unite too many different groups under one umbrella.

Researchers such as Argentino have noted that ideology in these spaces can be “fluid, performative, and primarily symbolic” – occult or neo-Nazi imagery can function as markers of group membership rather than “as coherent political programs”.

Membership is also vague, according to Bjørn Ihler, who prefers to add the term “misanthropic”. “These are basically Discord servers,” he says. “There’s channels upon channels upon channels.”

Ultimately, the pursuit of sextortion material is about “power and … control of the victim”, Ihler says, and such content can be shared in so-called “lore books” for further victimisation by others.

“Sharing those materials … leads to increased ‘clout’, which is like the social currency,” he says. “Grappling with that is incredibly important from a victim-protection perspective.”

‘It could happen to anyone’

Long before these arrests took place, an independent researcher, Becca Spinks, had been tracking these groups from her home in Texas.

“As a mom, I’m just horrified,” she says. “I couldn’t close my eyes and just be like, ‘Oh, well, someone else will deal with it.’ Who’s working on this? What’s going on? How can we help?”

As part of her work, she started to speak to the mother of Chai’s Australian alleged victim several years ago, who was looking for help to get the attention of authorities and assistance for her child.

The trials of men linked to 764 taking place all over the world, Spinks says, have come as some relief. “She’s very brave,” she says of the alleged victim in Chai’s case. “And her mum also is really just a powerhouse.”

Chai’s trial has largely taken place behind closed doors but the toll the alleged crimes have taken on victims is clear.

Spinks says her biggest priority is raising awareness for parents and law enforcement officials.

“A lot of times kids come forward and maybe [the police] don’t recognise the signs that it’s the 764 network, and so they don’t pursue it as aggressively as they should,” she says.

Spinks says there needs to be greater awareness for parents too. The Australian federal police cite warning signs including indications of self-harm, sudden withdrawal from family and friends and secretive behaviour about online interactions.

“One of the biggest, most dangerous misunderstandings is that this won’t happen to us, or this only happens to a certain type of kid, when in reality, it could honestly happen to anyone.”