Texas Sues Roblox For Allegedly Failing To Protect Children On Its Platform (theverge.com) 45
Texas is suing Roblox, alleging the company misled parents about safety, ignored online-protection laws, and allowed an environment where predators could target children. Texas AG Ken Paxton said the online game platform is "putting pixel pedophiles and profits over the safety of Texas children," alleging that it is "flagrantly ignoring state and federal online safety laws while deceiving parents about the dangers of its platform." The Verge reports: The lawsuit's examples focus on instances of children who have been abused by predators they met via Roblox, and the activities of groups like 764 which have used online platforms to identify and blackmail victims into sexually explicit acts or self harm. According to the suit, Roblox's parental controls push only began after a number of lawsuits, and a report released last fall by the short seller Hindenburg that said its "in-game research revealed an X-rated pedophile hellscape, exposing children to grooming, pornography, violent content and extremely abusive speech." Eric Porterfield, Senior Director of Policy Communications at Roblox, said in a statement: "We are disappointed that, rather than working collaboratively with Roblox on this industry-wide challenge and seeking real solutions, the AG has chosen to file a lawsuit based on misrepresentations and sensationalized claims." He added, "We have introduced over 145 safety measures on the platform this year alone."
When are the schools going to get sued (Score:1, Offtopic)
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For failing to protect children, I'm looking at you Uvalde school district and Uvalde police dept.
not to distract but I read a lot about the PD but where did the school district fail in Uvalde? (Genuine question)
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For failing to protect children, I'm looking at you Uvalde school district and Uvalde police dept.
I'm quoting you against the apparent censor mods, though I think you should have made it clear that your concern is with misplaced priorities. But maybe I'm giving you too much benefit of the doubt in relation to the FP rush?
Most of the years I lived in Texas I owned a revolver... But I bought it for work. Can you believe that there was a time when you had to get some training before you could become a Private Commissioned Security Officer? Fuzzy recollection is that the instructor was a state trooper. DPS?
How Legit? (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:How Legit? (Score:5, Informative)
> but how much does it really happen?
A lot. Like, a LOT a lot [wikipedia.org].
Maybe you would like some other videos if that's your preferred media?
Roblox Situation is Worse Than You Think [youtube.com]
Roblox: How to Destroy Your $83,000,000,000 Company Overnight - A Deep Dive [youtube.com]
Roblox, Take a Seat (ft: Chris Hansen) [youtube.com]
Roblox has had problems with child exploitation too, for years now; Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers [youtube.com] and their follow-up, Roblox Pressured Us to Delete Our Video. So We Dug Deeper. [youtube.com]
=Smidge=
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It's apparently quite frequent, as recounted in this article at least.
https://www.theguardian.com/ga... [theguardian.com]
Texas? (Score:1)
Imagine if every state in the union sued a corporation.
I am not familiar with US law but should there not exist a federal bureau of investigation (or FBI for short) for such cases?
Re:Texas? (Score:4, Informative)
Imagine if every state in the union sued a corporation.
I am not familiar with US law but should there not exist a federal bureau of investigation (or FBI for short) for such cases?
Well, there was - but it currently suffers from some issues: the Trump-Epstein shutdown, incompetent partisan leadership, and being reallocated to be an instrument of revenge on people Trump don't like.
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The FBI Is currently in the process of removing anyone who won't commit the crimes they're being ordered to. So is the army.
It won't end well, even for the stooges.
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Re: Texas? (Score:1)
Itâ(TM)s easy to bribe one president to keep the federal government from reigning in a bad corporate actor. Itâ(TM)s hard to bribe fifty state AGs who all aspire to higher office and need big wins to show off on the campaign trail.
Satanic Panic all over again + Fake Culture War BS (Score:3, Informative)
I'm on Roblox nearly daily with my kids...never seen shenanigans. Some obviously happen at some time, but they do have pretty good AI filters and it's very easy to report people. I'm honestly not sure what else they can do. They're way ahead of Twitter or Facebook....but hey, that's the fault of Roblox founder David Baszucki for not donating to Trump's Inauguration, right?
The complaint I hear about is usually over-moderation. Kids are dicks and many have reported my kids for non-issues. My son got banned from his favorite game when he was 10yo for standing in the same spot for too long...annoyed another kid of a similar age, the dumb kid reported him, and my son was crying for weeks while we appealed the ban. My kids have friends who had their accounts suspended for routine cursing. My kids have been kicked out by AI moderators for saying bad words while their mic was on. With AI watching you, it's not easy to be a predator on such platforms, I would imagine.
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I don't think this is culture war, I think it's legitimately about protecting kids.
The comparison to Facebook and Twitter is not great because those platforms aren't for kids (but I'm all for lawsuits against them as well).
And as for 32 lawsuits being cash grabs or not enough: ok if you say so, I'm not going to worry about your kids if you're not.
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I don't think this is culture war, I think it's legitimately about protecting kids.
The comparison to Facebook and Twitter is not great because those platforms aren't for kids (but I'm all for lawsuits against them as well).
And as for 32 lawsuits being cash grabs or not enough: ok if you say so, I'm not going to worry about your kids if you're not.
If they cared about kids, they'd restrict guns [npr.org].
A Lawsuit is meaningless without judgment (Score:2)
By all means, these people should have
Nearly every kid plays it (Score:2)
there are 5 billion Roblox accounts created.
That's more than half the population of the entire world. Think about that for a second.
Yeah, not the same as active users, but stats are not available for those. Nearly every kid under 18 plays it. It's MASSIVE and if it's not the most popular game in history now, it will shortly overtake Minecraft. It is a MASSIVE phenomena. It's honestly a decent gaming platform for kids and tends to cater to their interests. It's very clearly an environment for kids to make and share games...not a pedophile haven. They have better protections than any major platform in history and their clear focus i
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there are 5 billion Roblox accounts created
5 billion more accounts than you have brain cells, apparently
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Re: Satanic Panic all over again + Fake Culture Wa (Score:2, Insightful)
"Roblox is a shit hole of creeps and wannabe child rapists. My teen has been on it for years"
Awesome self own there
Paxton + child safety=David Duke + fire safety (Score:2)
Roblox is a shit hole of creeps and wannabe child rapists. My teen has been on it for years with her friends but they only play on private servers/instances to keep the child rapists away. That's her decision, not mine. She told me it's necessary to avoid the constant sexual come ons from adult men.
You feel what you want. I'll take my kid's personal experience over your unfounded feelings about something you readily admitted you know nothing about but felt the need to share anyway. Thumbs up!
You are clearly lying. You've never been on Roblox if you think it's a shithole for predators. It's a predator's playground about as much as your mall's LEGO store...it's very clearly a game platform and a pretty wholesome one at that. None of my kids friends have reported anything like that and I have been on for many hours as has my wife playing games with our kids...no one has initiated any conversation with us, let alone inappropriate ones...and we both have female avatars (my daughter chose mine).
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AI understands innuendo about as well as believers in Modern Monetary Theory understand economics.
These are the same people fighting relentlessly (Score:4, Insightful)
The only question is which ulterior motive is the most prevalent. On the one hand this is red meat for voters so that they can offer them something other than a functioning economy. On the other hand they are trying to eliminate anonymity on the internet so they can relentlessly punish anyone who says anything they don't like while also pretending they are persecuted.
Whatever the result it won't help children but it will hurt you and me.
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Don't be a dumbass. Multiple YouTube influencers, including former victims of predation on Roblox, have been lobbying for actions like this for years:
https://www.pcmag.com/news/rob... [pcmag.com]
But hey keep towing the corporate line. Way to show your true colors.
As if any of these fucks would listen to victims (Score:2)
That kind of naivety is why we can't actually solve problems.
Overreach of the law (Score:3)
I am certain there are pedophiles online seeking to groom children, but forcing tech companies to demand ID from every user will backfire in the long term by ending internet anonymity and having a chilling effect on free speech.
What do you do about pedophilia? Identify the pedophiles and jail them for life. If they cannot groom kids on Roblox, they will go somewhere else, so the actual problem remains.
Texas does a lot of great stuff but also some really stupid stuff, like its law against abortion. If you criminalize it, those who want or need it will go elsewhere or do it themselves.
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Seems more sensible (Score:2)
Apparently since the dawn of the human species, there have always been pedos, rapists, thieves, liars, and other unpleasantly sociopathic or psychopathic people. We know that a certain percentage of any population will be of this nature. To me, that says that the only safety from people like that is to identify them and lock them up. Trying to make tech firms do it is probably the wrong implement. But, I think you are correct, and the firms and the audience should accept that no matter what the sites do, th
But (Score:1, Offtopic)
#freeschlep (Score:1)