By Gavin Boyle
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) is calling for Congress to pass a new child safety law after platforms like Roblox have failed to protect children from predators and sexual exploitation.
“Immensly popular with children, Roblox has become a predator’s playground. For years, we have called on Roblox to implement more stringent safety standards, but it has not done enough,” said Haley McNamara, the executive director and chief strategy officer at NCOSE. “Roblox puts children in harm’s way: predators groom children in chat rooms and games; minors can have sexually explicit ‘experiences’; and there is minimal moderation and easy workarounds for safety controls. These dangers are systematic, predictable, and preventable.”
After years of failure by major platforms to protect their young users, NCOSE is calling for Congress to step in to protect our children. The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) would promote online safety by requiring platforms with a large minor user base to impose their strongest safety measures on young users automatically; have the potential to hold companies liable if they fail to protect minors; require platforms to provide safety and oversight tools to parents; and require companies to publicly disclose their safety protocols.
Related: Roblox Isn’t Safe for Your Kids. In Fact, It’s a ‘Pedophile Hellscape’
While Roblox continuously claims that it is a strong advocate for child safety and is doing everything in its power to protect its young users, the company’s actions behind the scenes tell otherwise.
“For the last couple of years, I have passed a number of child online protection bills. And every year, Roblox hires lobbyists to oppose and actively work to stall my bills,” said Louisiana State Representative Laurie Schlegel. “This session, a Roblox executive personally came down to Louisiana to work against my Duty of Care bill. For a platform that has been described in the news as having a pedophile problem, you would think Roblox would make drastic changes. But they have consistently shown they put profits over child safety.”
Roblox’s most recent changes to its safety procedures saw it overhaul its system so young users can only communicate with “trusted connections,” people that have proven they know outside of the game. This system, however, has failed to make a difference and since its implementation minors have continued to be targeted by bad actors.
“No child should ever be placed in harm’s way to begin with. Roblox and Discord didn’t just fail to protect her; they built and sustained the very ecosystem that allowed this predator to thrive,” said Kristen Gibbons Feden, a shareholder at Anapol Weiss, the law firm representing a family whose daughter was abducted by a man she met on Roblox. “Roblox gave him direct access to a child. Discord gave him the tools to isolate and manipulate her. Both companies had countless chances to intervene, and they chose not to.”
While more regulation from the government is not always the best solution to a problem, in this case, Roblox has proven it is unable to properly protect children of its own accord. Thus, the platform, and others like it, need new laws put in place to make them actually protect our kids from those trying to harm them online.
https://vimeo.com/1095958657
Read Next: Roblox Enabled Young Girl’s Abduction. Now Her Parents Are Suing.
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