Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti (R) filed a lawsuit against the gaming platform Roblox, accusing the platform of misleading parents and luring children “into an environment it knows is dangerous but promises is safe,” his office argued.
“Roblox is the digital equivalent of a creepy cargo van lingering at the edge of a playground,” said Skrmetti. “Roblox invites children into a fantastic online world with the promise of creativity and play, but that wonderland is a trap that lets the company sell sophisticated predators access to those vulnerable kids. Roblox worked to reduce oversight and child safety resources despite repeated warnings, because less overhead meant more profit. And the whole time, the company lied and said safety was its top priority.”
“Beneath the bright animation and cheerful branding lies an environment in which child predators can—and do—make contact with minors, and where sexual content sits within easy reach to children, leaving them to navigate dangers they do not—and cannot—understand,” the complaint states.
A similar lawsuit was launched by Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, who called the platform a “breeding ground for sexual predators.”
Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman also filed a lawsuit against Roblox. “Defendants allow users to create accounts without providing any type of identity verification, and they do not require a child user to provide any type of attestation of parental knowledge or consent when establishing an account, no matter how young the user is per the birthdate provided to Defendants in the account creation process,” the filing argues, which “enables predators to create deceptive accounts—since no age or identity verification is required—and to do so as many times as they wish.”
