Roblox, Discord sued after 15-year-old boy was allegedly groomed online before he died by suicide

Loomy

Loomy

Thinks Microaggressions are Real
www.nbcnews.com

Roblox, Discord sued after 15-year-old boy was allegedly groomed online before he died by suicide

Ethan Dallas was targeted by an adult sexual predator on Roblox when he was 12, and later on Discord, according to a lawsuit. He took his own life last year.
www.nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com
The mother of a 15-year-old California boy who took his own life is now suing Roblox and Discord over his death, alleging her son was groomed and coerced to send explicit images on the apps.

Rebecca Dallas filed the lawsuit Friday in San Francisco County Superior Court, accusing the companies of "recklessly and deceptively operating their business in a way that led to the sexual exploitation and suicide" of Ethan Dallas.
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Ethan was a "bright, imaginative boy who loved gaming, streaming and interacting with friends online," the lawsuit states. He started playing on the online gaming platform Roblox around the age of 9, with his parents' approval and with parental controls in place. When he was 12, he was targeted by "an adult sex predator" who posed as a child on Roblox and befriended Ethan, attorneys for Rebecca Dallas said in a statement.

What started out as innocent conversation "gradually escalated to sexual topics and explicit exchanges," the complaint says.

After a while, the man encouraged Ethan to turn off parental controls and move their conversations to Discord, the lawyers said.

On Discord, the man "increasingly demanded explicit photographs and videos" and threatened Ethan that he'd post or share the images. Ethan complied out of fear, the complaint says.
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After Ethan's tragic death, his family learned from law enforcement that the man who groomed him had been arrested in Florida "for sexually exploiting other children through Defendants' apps," the complaint said.

Today, Roblox's default settings do not allow adults to directly message children under the age of 13, but children can still create accounts with fake birth dates, giving them full access to direct-messaging options, the complaint said.
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Concerning as my niece and nephew are hooked on this roblox shit... I keep encouraging them to play some proper games on a console or pc nstead of a shitty tablet.

I'm shocked millions of kids play this crap daily..give the kids some mario like we had when we were growing up.

Condolences and thoughts with the family
 
Hunter 99 said:
Concerning as my niece and nephew are hooked on this roblox shit... I keep encouraging them to play some proper games on a console or pc nstead of a shitty tablet.

I'm shocked millions of kids play this crap daily..give the kids some mario like we had when we were growing up.

Condolences and thoughts with the family
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My daughter asked about it last year because one of her school friends played it and I immediately shut that shit down.
 
I'll never let my daughter communicate online with strangers at that age.
I'll go full NSA on her, record and analyze everything.

Sad story, the kid lost his life because of a mentally unstable freak.
 
Im sorry but this sint the fault of either platform.

Parents need to parent there kids. You can't hand a kid the keys to the internet and not monitor them, and do so diligently.

Kids are gonna find trouble regardless what they're on if you dont do that. It's a shame this boy lost his life because of it tho
 
Unknown Soldier said:
Roblox, you say?

Well I never!

That never happens on that platform

...oh.

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Roblox has an unfair market advantage where people can play unrated content that can't even be sold in stores. The ESA companies should be pissed at Roblox for being able to circumvent all responsibility like this.
 
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These games are not for kids. It mascarades themselves to look like its for kids, but its just a smokescreen so the company can farm money out of them.
I feel sorry for the kid.
 
Loomy said:
My daughter asked about it last year because one of her school friends played it and I immediately shut that shit down.
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This is concerning, although I don't know what it really is. However, the parent should sue themselves for not supervision their kid.

Kudos on you for paying attention to what they are doing. We'd be in a better place if more parents were like you.
 
My nephew plays this game too much, good thing he never read and pay attention to the chat and jump from one game to another every 2-3 minutes.
 
StereoVsn said:
Yep, did the same for my kids. Roblox is a fucking plague.

Condolences to the family :(.
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I know plenty of kids who play roblox. I have young family members that play it.

Its perfectly fine if the parent does their due diligence. Monitoring who they are playing with, how long they are playing, and where in the house they are playing it.

Not trying to change your decision but the platform is not inherently safer or more unsafe than any other game with messaging capability and internet interaction capability.
 
Toons said:
Not trying to change your decision but the platform is not inherently safer or more unsafe than any other game with messaging capability and internet interaction capability.
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I think where Roblox will get raked over coals is their apparent lack of effort in keeping the children on their platform(about 40% 13 and under) safe from predators using those messaging and internet interaction capabilities.

Things like Instagram, Twitter. Tik Tok technically do not allow 13 and under to create account - giving them the ability to say "these kids broke ToS to create an account". Roblox can't really do that since they encourage 13 and under to create accounts and have (now limited) interactions with other people on the platform.

Ultimately it's up to parents to make sure their kids are being safe on those platforms, but the platforms themselves also have a responsibility to make sure their users are safe while using them.
 
Terrible to hear. But pardon my ignorance what exactly is roblox? Do players within create games? I mean I watched some catching predator vids, not sure if it was Skeeter or Alex Rosen but they caught some piece of shit from roblox... But It went over my head when this thing dropped, and I'm too lazy to go really look it up so give me the easy retard explanation
 
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Toons said:
I know plenty of kids who play roblox. I have young family members that play it.

Its perfectly fine if the parent does their due diligence. Monitoring who they are playing with, how long they are playing, and where in the house they are playing it.

Not trying to change your decision but the platform is not inherently safer or more unsafe than any other game with messaging capability and internet interaction capability.
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The problem is that their parental tools are suboptimal and it puts a lot of onus on the parents. And that's fine, but it's a small mistake away from some serious consequences.
 
Loomy said:
I think where Roblox will get raked over coals is their apparent lack of effort in keeping the children on their platform(about 40% 13 and under) safe from predators using those messaging and internet interaction capabilities.

Things like Instagram, Twitter. Tik Tok technically do not allow 13 and under to create account - giving them the ability to say "these kids broke ToS to create an account". Roblox can't really do that since they encourage 13 and under to create accounts and have (now limited) interactions with other people on the platform.

Ultimately it's up to parents to make sure their kids are being safe on those platforms, but the platforms themselves also have a responsibility to make sure their users are safe while using them.
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At a minimum they should be able to block any request to converse outside of the game.
 
My nephew and cousins are hooked on Roblox. Never understood why, it looks garbage and they get to play more interesting games with my brother. Games that gave way better gameplay, graphics, stories and some also online. They just don't care enough about those to stay away from Roblox.
Hollywood Hitman said:
Terrible to hear. But pardon my ignorance what exactly is roblox? Do players within create games? I mean I watched some catching predator vids, not sure if it was Skeeter or Alex Rosen but they caught some piece of shit from roblox... But It went over my head when this thing dropped, and I'm too lazy to go really look it up so give me the easy retard explanation
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It's more like a platform in which you play games built within. Like Dreams was to an extent, but waaaay bigger. The games the kids are interested in usually look and play like garbage, so I have trouble understanding the appeal.

On Youtube you can see that it is in fact possible to make something that's actually quite impressive.
 
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