Opponents of human trafficking in Alabama and around the nation are pointing more and more to a video game called Roblox. Three families in the state are suing the makers of the game. They say predators tried to use it to gain access to their children.
In August, a lawsuit was filed against the Roblox Corporation on behalf of an anonymous father from Covington, AL. He claims his 14-year-old daughter was nearly sexually assaulted by a man she met on the game. The young victim is one of three in Alabama, and all of these alleged crimes have one thing in common: It’s a video game called Roblox.
The unidentified victim was reportedly able to fight off the assault until the police arrived. But she had minor injuries and was later diagnosed with PTSD. The youngster and her alleged attacker reportedly met on Roblox. Her family is suing the makers of the game and they’re not alone
“I'm announcing today a lawsuit against Roblox, the number one gaming site for children and teens. It's also the number one site for sex predators,” said Liz Murill, Attorney General from Louisiana.
In addition to suits in Alabama, her state just recently announced her intentions in August to take legal action for similar reasons.
One issue is a lack of so-called moderators. Those are people who look over the user-generated games for inappropriate content. Alleged traffickers use private areas in games to access children. And there are a lot of games to keep track of with even more opportunities for predators to exploit the systems
“When I did my initial research, Roblox had 3000 moderators, whereas, like TikTok, which still has problems, has like 40,000 and that's a huge difference,” said Erik Grant, a cyber security professional who works with the North Alabama Human Trafficking Task Force.
“When I opened my account, I just did a quick search for certain usernames that might indicate someone has a sexual preference for children. And even though I'm not an expert on the platform, it took me about 10 minutes to find several usernames,” he said.
Artificial intelligence and human moderators are supposed to keep watch over platforms like Roblox. Any problematic words are intended to send up red flags. Grant says there are ways to game the system, so to speak. A name like Groomer, spelled with two O’s can be switched for two zeroes and slip by.
“You can play with the headsets and stuff and hear them, because you can talk to them,” said David Humprey with the Alabama Alliance for Human Trafficking and Child Safety. He says his daughter was on platform.
“Well, she was talking to somebody. What it sounded like a grown man on there, and I'm like, who you talking to,” he said.
Advocates for victims of human trafficking say there are things parents can do. Careful online monitoring and familiarity with the platform are just two examples. There are also parental controls designed to create a safer environment. Humprey says the Roblox Corporation could be doing more as well.
“These games are creating what these young kids are going to be as adults, and that's a lot of trauma to live with. We could have had a lot of preventative measures to stop some of it,” Humphrey said.
When asked for comment, the Roblox Corporation responded in writing. The company listed a variety of safety measures that were currently in use or in development. This included their most updated AI detection software Roblox Sentinel, age estimation technology, updated parental controls, and direct collaboration with child safety organizations.
“On our safety platform, we continue to innovate and set the standard of what we believe is the future of safety for people of all ages on platforms,” said Roblox CEO and co-founder David Baszucki in a presentation to investors in July of this year.
“We expanded privacy tools and screen time management, and we introduced Roguard 1.0, an open-source safety tool kit to help put guard rails around large language models,” he said.
Critics still say the biggest problem with the current program is tricking the age verification software. This means a predator could still masquerade as a child, which could lead to more alleged victims like the three here in Alabama.
