Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti (R) has filed a lawsuit against popular online gaming platform Roblox, accusing the company of misleading parents about the safety of its platform and enabling predators to exploit children. Tennessee joins a growing list of states targeting the platform considered a “groomer’s paradise” by child safety experts.
FOX17 reports that Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti announced the lawsuit on Thursday, alleging that Roblox has long prioritized profits over child safety. The suit, filed under the state’s Consumer Protection Act, claims that Roblox deceived Tennesseans about the risks its platform poses to kids.
“Roblox is the digital equivalent of a creepy cargo van lingering at the edge of a playground,” said Attorney General 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.”
The Tennessee Attorney General’s Office is working with Nashville law firm Stranch, Jennings & Garvey on the case. Attorney J. Gerard Stranch IV criticized Roblox for failing to address safety flaws that have persisted for nearly two decades.
“Roblox has had nearly 20 years to fix these obvious safety flaws,” Stranch said. “Instead, they have chosen to profit from a system that monetizes the very interactions that put children at risk by ignoring these very serious flaws in the platform.”
The lawsuit comes amid growing scrutiny of Roblox and other online platforms popular with children. In November, Breitbart News reported that Texas AG Ken Paxton (R) filed a lawsuit against Roblox, claiming the company, claiming it prioritizes “pixel pedophiles” over the safety of children. In August, Louisiana AG Liz Murrill (R) filed a similar suit against the gaming giant. Other states including Kentucky have followed with their own lawsuits.
Roblox has faced criticism in the past for its content moderation policies and the presence of explicit material on its platform. The company has said it uses a combination of human moderators and automated systems to identify and remove inappropriate content.
In response to the Tennessee lawsuit, Roblox Chief Safety Officer Matt Kaufman defended the company’s safety practices, saying the suit “fundamentally misrepresents Roblox and how it works.”
“Roblox is built with safety at its core, and we continue to evolve and strengthen our protections every day,” Kaufman said in a statement. “We have advanced safeguards that monitor our platform for harmful content and communications.”
A recent lawsuit reveals how predators find victims on Roblox, then groom them by moving to other platforms including Discord. As Breitbart News previously reported:
According to the lawsuit, Jane Doe’s son was targeted at age 12 on Roblox by a predator posing as a fellow child. The predator allegedly exploited and manipulated the boy into exchanging sexually explicit images and videos of himself. The suit argues that Roblox’s design “makes children easy prey for pedophiles” and that the company prioritizes “financial gain over child safety.”
The lawsuit also accuses Roblox of misleading parents and guardians into believing that the gaming app is a safe and appropriate place for children through its “pervasive patterns of misrepresentations about safety.” The mother and son are seeking monetary damages from Roblox for the pain, suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, emotional distress, and expenses for medical treatments resulting from the alleged abuse.
Read more at FOX17 here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
Read the full article here