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PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV) – A lawsuit filed against the popular online gaming platform Roblox claims a young girl living in Oregon was groomed for years by a man using the in-game chat feature
The core of this new lawsuit claims the company Roblox is prioritizing user growth over child safety, even though this game is almost exclusively marketed to children
According to the lawsuit, the mom of the girl allegedly targeted in Oregon says she never would have let her 8-year-old play the game if she knew the chat features allowed anyone in the world to message her daughter
FOX 12 is not going to name the plantiffs in this case for their own safety, but the lawsuit says this young girl started playing Roblox in 2016. She then got a friend request and messages from a stranger who claimed to be her age but it was later discovered he was much older
The lawsuit claims the man convinced the girl they were in a relationship, told her he loved her, and asked to shower with her multiple times, trying to convince her to run away from home through the games chat feature
When the mom found these messages, she reported it to police. But after a long investigation, local officials said they could not track down the suspect because he is not in the United States
FOX 12 Investigates first shared this story last year when we sat down with 7th grader Rylund Strange, who said he has been asked multiple times by strangers to start communicating off platform on encrypted messaging apps like Discord
Roblox is already facing lawsuits from the attorneys general in Louisiana and Kentucky, and both of those lawsuits echo the claim Roblox is prioritizing profit over child safety despite targeting a young users
In a press release from the company, Roblox says they use AI to automatically detect language in chats that could be deemed illicit or criminal. They went on to say they have introduced more than 40 features in the last year to protect younger users, such as requiring users to be at least 13 years old to send direct messages
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