By Fox23.com News Staff
OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — Attorney General Gentner Drummond has filed a lawsuit against Roblox stating that the online gaming platform is endangering children and deceiving parents.
“Roblox marketed itself as a safe place for children but turned a blind eye as predators targeted and exploited minors on its platform,” Drummond said. “It failed to implement adequate safeguards, failed to protect young users and failed to be honest with parents about the risks. We must ensure Roblox is held accountable and Oklahoma families are protected.”
The lawsuit states that Roblox has allowed children as young as five to create accounts without parental knowledge and message strangers. It also states that the platform markets itself to children by selling virtual and physical Roblox items such as toys and gift cards.
It also alleges that Roblox prioritized revenue growth while disregarding safety measures. The lawsuit goes on to say it has violated the Oklahoma Consumer Protection Act. It is seeking civil penalties and a permanent injunction against the company among other relief.
Roblox’s Chief Safety Officer sent in a statement to our news partners at FOX23 which reads:
Roblox has built a multilayered safety system that includes pioneering safeguards to help protect our users. We do not allow the exchange of images or videos in chat, and we deploy a combination of advanced AI-powered detection, human moderation and rigorous filters designed to prevent the exchange of personal information. Additionally, we do not encrypt communications, which provides more visibility to help keep our community safe.
As part of our ongoing work to strengthen user protections, Roblox recently became the first online gaming platform to require age checks for all users to access chat features so that younger users are limited to chatting only with peers by default. Additionally, this June, we will launch new age-based accounts that automatically place our youngest users in a partitioned environment, further aligning content access and parental controls with a user’s age.
When we identify violations of our rules we take swift action and work closely with law enforcement to help hold bad actors accountable. While no system can be perfect, we are constantly strengthening our user protections, and we look forward to working constructively with Attorney General Drummond to help keep kids safe online.”
We reported in November that an Oklahoma mother filed a lawsuit against the Roblox Corportation saying the company put children in danger and is failing to stop predators. She says the company allowed a predator to target her 12-year-old son in 2023.
