The details of the case are a bit more complicated, but essentially the TL;DR is that the kid was autistic and the parents were under the impression (based on Roblox’s advertising) that his account was locked down to only be able to talk to kids his own age. The adult perpetrator was pretending to be another boy the victim’s age. The part which seems kind of weird legally is that the actual abuse occurred on Discord, after they moved to that platform from Roblox.

Personally IDK how much responsibility we should say Roblox has. I think our culture has a major problem with no longer fearing the Internet. When I was a kid it was taken for granted that if you let your kid use the Internet unsupervised there were pedophiles waiting around every corner. That hasn’t changed, but both parents and companies have seemingly just forgotten about it. I think it’s kind of insane that Roblox is allowed to act like they can prevent your kids from talking to adults when that is obviously false. I also think it’s kind of insane to believe them.

The situation is tragic. I read a longer article about it and just felt bad for the parents and the victim. They really were trying to do the right thing, and they tried to cut their kid off from online games when they found out about all this but again he was autistic and it was one of the only things that could calm him down. It has got to be tough being a parent these days.