US Senators Say Discord And Roblox Should Have Their Day In Court

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Three US Democratic senators condemned both Discord and Roblox, saying that the voice-chat and game-creation platforms “deserve their day in court” instead of hiding behind private arbitration methods as it relates to child safety.

According to an August 31 Bloomberg report, Democratic senators Dick Durbin (Illinois), Kirsten Gillibrand (New York), and Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut) have filed an amicus brief on August 28 urging the courts to keep the myriad lawsuits Discord and Roblox are facing public.

“Instead of hiding behind the veil of arbitration, Roblox and Discord can be held accountable for their misconduct: misleading parents into thinking their platforms are safe and failing to protect children from sexual abuse,” the senators wrote collectively. “Such a requirement would contradict the very concern animating the EFAA in the first place: Companies enforce arbitration to silence and deny justice to survivors of sexual assault and sexual harassment.”

Arbitration is a way for lawsuits to get settled privately and outside of a regular courtroom. This would mean that, if Discord and Roblox compelled their victims into arbitration, whatever the aftermath of the lawsuits were would likely be sealed and unknown to the public. These senators don’t want that to happen, specifically because of the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act Congress enacted in 2022, which blocks companies facing sexual abuse lawsuits from entering arbitration.

The amicus brief (which is a document filed by someone who wants to give the courts extra information) was filed in a case involving a 13-year-old boy who reportedly met a predator on Roblox and was groomed, coerced, and blackmailed into sending lewd materials over Discord. This is just one of the hundreds of lawsuits both platforms are currently battling.

GameSpot has reached out to Discord and Roblox for comment and will update this story should we get a response back.

While Roblox has been at the center of a congressional investigation and has had several politicians set their sights on the platform, parent company Roblox Corporation has made changes to make the platform safer for children. This includes <a href="https://www.gamespot.com/articles/roblox-dev-agrees-to-pay-12-million-to-create-a-safer-environment-for-children-online/1100-6539442/#ftag=YHF6738a5f” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>paying $12 million to do things like adding facial recognition andage-verification systems. The company’s co-founder and CEO, David Baszucki, has responded to a lot of the complaints and criticism, but his comments didn’t go over well, signalling that maybe Roblox can’t make anyone happy right now.