Approximately 46% of teens in America regularly use Roblox, with an estimated 111.8 million daily active users. It’s one of the most popular games for young children. On Thursday, August 14th, Louisiana’s Attorney General Liz Murill filed the case against Roblox. Claiming Roblox has failed to implement the proper safeguards to protect its users, thus knowingly enabling the sexual exploitation and abuse of children across the US. It’s certainly clear why Louisiana would be concerned that its most vulnerable citizens are using a platform that might be endangering their safety.
Despite facing these allegations against them, Roblox is maintaining its stance. They’re claiming that they’ve taken the proper precautions to protect their userbase. A spokesperson from Roblox has this to say, “While no system is perfect, Roblox has implemented rigorous safeguards — such as restrictions on sharing personal information, links, and user-to-user image sharing — to help protect our community.” Over the past year, Roblox has added a variety of safety features. However, Liz Murill doesn’t buy it, and still believes that “Roblox created, curated, and perpetuated an online environment where child sex predators thrive, unite, hunt, and victimize kids.”
Roblox has been misused by people as recently as this year. An example of this was when police caught a Roblox user who used a voice changer to mimic a young female, which was allegedly used for luring and sexually exploiting minors on Roblox. Even though they’ve faced this type of case before, this is undoubtedly the biggest and possibly the most detrimental one they have been hit with. Roblox has started getting backlash online for banning a popular user known as “Schlep,” who referred to himself as a Predator hunter. Roblox sent him the cease due to “engaging in simulated child endangerment conversations,” “sharing or soliciting personally identifiable information,” and “directing users to move conversations off platform,” which Roblox says is against their policies. Once this became known to the public, people were outraged at Roblox for comparing the actions of a person like Schlep to a child predator. The public has been showing Schelp their support by participating in in-game protests, where they set up times to meet in certain games to gather and chant, “Free Schelp,” through the chat and post videos of them doing this on social media to gain more support. This has been a huge success, and with the power of the online community and social media influencers, these protests have only been getting more popular. Since then, Schlep has hired an attorney to defend him from Roblox.
The Attorney General’s purpose of filing the lawsuit is to get a permanent injunction order on Roblox that would keep them from saying they have adequate safety features and prohibit Roblox from participating in actions that violate Louisiana’s Unfair Trade Practices Act, which was passed in 1972 and makes unlawful all the deceptive trade practices or methods of competition. Some people have already decided where they stand on this issue. Interestingly, even users who are critical of Roblox continue playing the game because they still find it entertaining. This shows how big a piece Roblox has become in the daily entertainment of kids around the world.
Liz Murill’s case could lead others to follow suit, resulting in an overwhelming number of lawsuits. Roblox has been continuing to do fairly well, even while under a high amount of backlash; they’ve been claiming they’re a safe place for their users to have fun. This case poses the question of whether platforms like Roblox should face stricter regulations or if the current measures are enough to keep people safe.
