LOUISVILLE, Ky. (KT) – “Get your kids off Roblox.” That’s the warning to parents from Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman about the popular children’s gaming and social media platform Roblox.
Coleman’s office has filed a lawsuit against Roblox because of what he says are the website’s lack of age verification and other safeguards to protect children from predators.
In an interview on the Kentucky Today podcast, the attorney general called Roblox “a platform for predators.”
“You have kids who are too young to be on, who are creating accounts and getting on. And more frighteningly, on the other end, you have adults that are purporting to be children that are coming on and engaging and talking with our kids with minimal filtering,” Coleman said. “It’s a playground by which adults that you don’t know, some of which are predators, are engaging and seeking access with our kid.”
Coleman said predators posing as children are luring some youngsters into giving their addresses and even meeting them. He said there are cases of children being physically harmed.
“I had a friend of mine who works for Fox News tell me after we filed this that her young niece at seven years old was contacted by someone seeking her address on Roblox,” Coleman said. “It is a platform for predators.”
Coleman also said Roblox is filled with “absolute filth” including a Charlie Kirk assassination simulator which appeared shortly after the Christian activist’s murder. He said the images on the platform are cartoonish but dangerous.
“I have to be careful how I even articulate this on your podcast, but we included an anecdote of [a six-year-old] seeing images of adults engaged in sexual conduct,” said Coleman.
The attorney general said there is an avatar representing a child being sexually assaulted and rooms with cartoonish images of child abuse.
“Those are traumatic. One may say, ‘that’s cartoonish,’ well, try explaining to a six-year-old what they were seeing,” he said. “We have to guard and want to guard our kids’ hearts as long as possible. But allowing our kids to play Roblox, we are failing at that task.”
Coleman said he is not the first state attorney general to go after Roblox. Louisiana’s Liz Murrill filed suit in August, and Coleman expects other states to follow.
“The goal is to sit across the table with other states, with Louisiana and the other states that file suit, not to drive Roblox out of business. The goal is for Roblox is to take reasonable safety steps,” he said.
Roblox, which has more than 380 million monthly users, responded to the Louisiana lawsuit in a statement on its website.
“Roblox as a policy does not comment on pending litigation. However, the company would like to address erroneous claims and misconceptions about our platform, our commitment to safety, and our overall safety track record.
Any assertion that Roblox would intentionally put our users at risk of exploitation is simply untrue. No system is perfect, and bad actors adapt to evade detection, including efforts to take users to other platforms, where safety standards and moderation practices may differ. We continuously work to block those efforts and to enhance our moderation approaches to promote a safe and enjoyable environment for all users.”
But Coleman said the company needs to do more than issue statements.
“They’ve made a number of public statements, but the reality is the threat still exists. The reality is the technology is still not being deployed in a way to keep our kids safe, and predators are still using this as a way get access to our kids.”
In the meantime, Coleman urges parents to unplug their children from Roblox.
“Let me just say, speaking directly to parents and grandparents and youth pastors and pastors, what I would plead with you as a dad and as your attorney general, is get your kids off Roblox,” he said.
“This is not a safe platform. This would be equivalent to letting your kids play in a playground where there would be broken glass on the ground under the monkey bars; where you see those individuals that you don’t recognize that shouldn’t be there, those men that are skulking around the playground. This is the equivalent of that.
“Get your kids off roadblocks, full stop.”
You can see the full interview with Coleman on the Kentucky Today podcast.
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