Grooming allegations notwithstanding, Roblox itself reminds me of those generic games you'd see a character playing in some TV show.
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Roblox does not seem to care what they do as long as it makes money. This seems like a huge problem.
Discord on the other hand... I honestly don't care if they go out of business, I really don't like that platform. But how did they have any responsibility in this matter?
It argues that if Roblox and Discord had taken steps to screen users before allowing them on apps, or implemented age and identity verification and other safety measures, “Ethan would have never interacted with this predator, never suffered the harm that he did, and never died by suicide.”
They want these sites to screen every users ID on sign up. I’m sure the courts will love another, “for the children” security bill.
Roblox should be sued for alot of things, this is one of them.
Why? It's idiotic to force age verification and an ID to play games on the internet, and I'm assuming the kid didn't just click a button to turn off parental controls. He probably got his parents to do it. Liability shouldn't be pushed off to others every time something bad happens. This is the groomers fault. Not a game company or an internet provider or anyone else. Hell; why not sue Intel for making a processor that allowed the game to be played and discord to be used? Do you also expect every startup game company and Indy dev to have millions of dollars worth of chat security and oversight? Shit like this is nothing but a money grab.
This isn't an age verification problem, its a moderation problem. A massive one. There's hundreds of games that exist almost entirely for the purpose of grooming ppl (a common one is so called "bathroom simulators" iirc) and roblox frequently doesnt do anything about them until there's public outcry about ine particular game, no matter how many reports come in or how obvious it is.
Game companies shouldn't have to monitor and supervise children. Each kid already has adults legally responsible for them. It isn't a g companies job to do someone else's job for them, nor be financially responsible for criminals or parenting.
Roblox said it is designed with “rigorous built in safety features” and is “continually innovating new safety features — over 100 this year alone — that protect our users and empower parents and caregivers with greater control and visibility.”
The fact that they are framing it in this manner "100 features in this year alone" (what does this even mean?) suggests that they don't care.
I couldn't even name a hundred safety features. Ten would be enough. Age gate, parental controls, moderators, a report function... What more does it need?
If you could pump out 100 features in 1 year, how little were they doing before??
The parental options don't do a fucking thing. The game's predatory by design (in every meaning of the word)..
"No one in the history of games has cared this much!"
But now they know blatant bullshit lies generally work pretty well on our population so expect more of this crap.
Sadly, the first thing the defending lawyers will point out is where were the parents in all this? Why was he able to turn off the parental controls, and why didn't the parents notice?
Maybe the first thing is that it's just the predators fault and anything beyond that is bullshit. Gonna sue the company that made the PC too? Maybe the electric company for providing the electricity to it?
"Roblox allowed Ethan to turn off the parental controls "
If true, this is very damning for Roblox.
Parents can't be everywhere all the time checking what they already set up, that's unrealistic.
Will be settled out of court.