The County of Los Angeles filed suit today against social media gaming platform Roblox alleging that the platform failed to protect children from predatory behavior. The lawsuit alleges that while Roblox markets itself as a safe digital space for creativity, it is in reality an unsafe online environment that has become a breeding ground for predators.
multimillion dollar
They had a gross profit last year of 3.8 billion. They don’t give a shit about this.
Most games are games with a chat feature.
ROBLOX IS A CHATROOM WITH A GAMES FEATURE.
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It’s a chatroom where 60% of the user base is under the age of 16 and 40% is under 12.
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Grooming happens on Roblox. Predators move that conversation to places Discord which is where the crimes happen.
I am an adult who helped a kid that was the victim of online predators.
When talking to your kids about online safety, come up with a plan just like you might for a fire. Make sure they know what to do when something makes them uncomfortable and make sure you identify a 3rd party adult that you trust and your kid feels safe talking to, maybe a close family friend or an aunt/uncle.
That last part is how I got involved. I don’t have my own kids, but I knew a kid that felt more comfortable talking to me about that stuff than to his parents.
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Roblox literally monetized unsupervised access to children as a premium feature.
“What if we took Club Penguin but made it easy for pedos to communicate with children?” - David Baszucki, probably
As much as I think this is all terrible and that Roblox SHOULD answer for some of this shit, the fact of the matter is, PARENTS ARE NOT TEACHING KIDS HOW TO BE SAFE IN THE INTERNET. They just throw a fucking tablet or phone or console or PC screen in front of their eyes and refuse to do ANYTHING resembling parenting, and when their kid inevitably gets groomed they blame the platform and ask for daddy government to do their parenting for them and ask for things like age verification, which at least on Discord is literally being used to profile people criticizing the Trump administration and ICE.
Set parental controls, teach kids to not trust strangers and give them basic internet safety tips, and none of this shit will ever happen. Don’t sign away the rights of other adults because you’re a terrible fucking parent.
at least on Discord is literally being used to profile people criticizing the Trump administration and ICE.
Evidence?
teach kids to not trust strangers
That’s unrealistic. Teach kids about predators, and teach them about consent and bodily autonomy.
Facts. Feels good to subsidize parents and have their shitty kids be the reasons to take my rights.
Which rights?
The rights they are trying to take so their children can be safe on the Internet as they vote for a PDF in droves.
This lawsuit makes me feel extremely validated in my fight with my ex about not letting our kid play roblox unsupervised. Same with letting them use tiktok/youtube.
While I do believe Roblox has been doing a terrible job handling reports of predators on it’s platform and the fact that they would rather silence reporters than dealing with the reports is completely abhorrent and inexcusable. I do believe that the responsibility isn’t entirely on them.
Roblox isn’t a daycare. It isn’t a school. It isn’t marketed to have any responsible adults online per number of players.
Honestly, what is the solution that this lawsuit aims to enforce? Paid moderators with complete criminal background checks to be responsible for 10 underage players each? Who’s going to pay for this?
All that said would I allow my children to play Roblox unsupervised? No. Which is a shame as many of the available games are fantastic and my friends children really enjoy playing them. That said supervison can literally be myself glancing over every now and then to see what type of game they are playing and if they are interacting with anyone, really low tier, low effort parenting skills if you know what to look out for.
Roblox isn’t a daycare. It isn’t a school. It isn’t marketed to have any responsible adults online per number of players.
But it’s a platform marketed towards children, takes a cut of the shovelware that other kids make, and didn’t bother policing their platform seriously until recently. The fact that it’s a kids game that’s marketed to kids and they go after people reporting on the abuses that they let run rampant on their platform is just mental to me. I really hope Roblox gets taken to the cleaners for how they actively have fucked around and let their platform get to where it is.
It’s this type of thinking that is pushing the “but the kids” rhetoric seemingly world wide.
We either have a free, open and anonymous internet… or a dystopian identity-required-at-every-point-of-access, heavily moderated, hellscape.
The internet isn’t a daycare, the parents should be playing with them or close by at all times.
Internet is not a daycare. You are correct.
BUT ROBLOX MARKETED ITSELF AS BEING FOR KIDS. ROBLOX SAID THEY WERE FOR KIDS. YOUNG KIDS. ROBLOX SAID THIS.
You can repeat your daycare line all you want, but that line has nothing to do with what Roblox claimed they were. Your scenario has no place here, since you are not even in the same ballpark or planet as Roblox.
I will repeat it. Roblox is not a daycare. If you want your kids to go online and play games, then supervise them.
Sorry but the ipad isn’t a fucking pacifier. If you want to leave your children unhindered on the internet, Roblox or whatever, then that’s on you. If you aren’t looking after your child’s well-being, then don’t expect some game to do that for you.
The mental gymnastics people put to place the blame firmly on online games is maddening. I expect those who disagree also let their kids run around the supermarket unsupervised.
OK, and Discord, Facebook, etc? Or do they just lobby better?
The difference is Discord and Facebook don’t allow users under 13. Roblox does
About the only internet consumer protections that exist in the US are for under-13
I want stats. I mean, even if it’s only one predator and means saving even only one kid, you could still argue in favor of protections; but stuff like þis is always presented as if it’s an epidemic, and measures should be proportional to þhe problem.
How frequent is abuse? How many Roblox-playing kids are abused every year? I honestly have no idea, but am suspicious of movements which þrow a bunch of stats around
As of late October 2025, the company has reported over 151 million daily active users, and over 380 million monthly users, and it is one of the largest children’s gaming platforms in the world. Over 40 percent of users are reported to be under the age of 13, and according to the company’s own surveys, nearly 75 percent of all children within the U.S. between the ages 9 to 12 play Roblox regularly.
but conspicuously omit any stat about how much abuse is happening. It smacks of fear-mongering.
Not using actual letters is dumb.
It’s an actual letter. They just aren’t using it correctly.
Ok
