Roblox Sued for Creating ‘Largely Unsupervised’ Online World That ‘Enables Predatory Pedophiles’
Roblox was sued by the People of California on Thursday on accusations that the online gaming platform created an inappropriate digital hub for children and permitted predators to exploit minors.
The lawsuit brought by Los Angeles County counsel Dawyn R. Harrison claims that the platform allows pedophiles to roam free, communicating with minors and “soliciting explicit material.”
“Roblox portrays its platform as a safe and appropriate place for children to play,” the complaint reads. “In reality, and as Roblox well knows, the design of its platform makes children easy prey for pedophiles.”
Roblox reported 151 million daily active users in its third quarter and nearly 400 million active monthly users with around 40% of them under the age of 13. The suit alleged that the platform “repeatedly assures these users, their parents and the public that its top priority is protecting young players,” but in reality these comments are “contradicted by the app’s own design choices and monetization practices.”
The multimillion-dollar suit seeks civil penalties and restitution from the gaming platform. The lawsuit also calls for Roblox to implement “meaningful safeguards” to prevent harm to its players who are minors.
“Far from creating a safe place for children, Roblox designed, built and maintains a toxic environment through its platform design choices, default communication settings and failure to implement meaningful verification and enforcement mechanisms that has enabled obscene material to flourish and, worse, created foreseeable pathways that enable predatory pedophiles to find, groom and sexually exploit children,” the filing asserted.
The suit specified several instances of when predators used the app to target children. In 2019, a Florida predator specifically targeted users ages 10 to 12, moving them to messaging platform Discord. That same year, a man in Wales encouraged 150 children to engage in sexual activity online, where he pretended to be a child and used fake names, according to the suit.
“Once they lure children from Roblox to other apps, like Discord or Snapchat, predators escalate their exploitation by soliciting explicit material, like nude photos or videos of children doing sexually inappropriate acts, all of which constitute child pornography,” the suit continued. “What Roblox represents and advertises as a safe, appropriate space for children is, in fact, a digital and real-life nightmare for kids.”
Roblox “strongly” disputed the claims made in the complaint.
“Roblox is built with safety at its core, and we continue to evolve and strengthen our protections every day,” a Roblox spokesperson said. “We have advanced safeguards that monitor our platform for harmful content and communications, and users cannot send or receive images via chat, avoiding one of the most prevalent opportunities for misuse seen elsewhere online.”
Roblox has partnerships and relationships with entertainment giants including Warner Bros., Netflix, YouTube, TikTok, Lionsgate and Universal. Former Warner Media CEO Jason Kilar and ex-Lifetime Entertainment CEO and Sony and ABC exec Amanda Wong serve on Roblox’s six-person board of directors.
The L.A. County suit mirrors other probes into the company from states including Georgia, Texas, Florida, Kentucky and Louisiana against the Nevada-based game. Reuters reported in December that Roblox was facing nearly 80 lawsuits accusing the company of “knowingly facilitating child sexual exploitation.”
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