{"id":12308,"date":"2025-10-20T13:51:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T13:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/12308\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T13:51:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T13:51:08","slug":"florida-launches-criminal-probe-into-roblox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/12308\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida launches criminal probe into Roblox"},"content":{"rendered":"

After announcing civil action<\/a> against Roblox<\/a> earlier this year, Attorney General James Uthmeier<\/a> is expanding that scrutiny to a criminal investigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur initial inquiry, as well as arrests and convictions across the state, have shown that Roblox is a breeding ground for child predators to get on the platform, solicit information, locations, and ultimately abuse kids,\u201d the Republican said on \u201cFox & Friends First<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a nonstarter here in Florida. We will go after child predators with everything we\u2019ve got. And we\u2019re going to hold Roblox accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n

In April, the Attorney General\u2019s Office<\/a> subpoenaed the online gaming platform that is widely used by children, seeking information on marketing, age-verification requirements and how chat rooms are moderated.<\/p>\n

Uthmeier is troubled by what his Office discovered.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe immediately started gathering information, and what we found is evidence that they\u2019ve been operating in a careless way. They know child predators are using the app to go after our kids, and they haven\u2019t done enough about it,\u201d Uthmeier said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t have enough protocols in place for age verification. They\u2019re not doing enough to monitor the content that\u2019s being shared over the application, sexual content with 8- (and) 9-year-olds. And ultimately, they haven\u2019t done enough to work with the state to ensure proper online protocols, so we\u2019re going to hold them accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Uthmeier alleges that adult users \u201cpretend to be kids themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey engage in long-term dialogue, communicating with kids over the platform. They start to send and solicit imagery, sexual content. Ultimately, they schedule meetups, and in the worst of cases, we\u2019ve seen actual physical abuse. So again, in Florida, we\u2019re going to stop at nothing to protect our kids, and that means holding businesses responsible that (choose) profit over protecting children.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roblox claimed earlier this month to have made safety improvements<\/a> in light of concerns raised by Uthmeier and other state-level legal officials.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

They have worked to remove access to unrated content, expanded voice moderation into new languages, pulling what is called \u201cinappropriate legacy content,\u201d and \u201cengaging our community.\u201d<\/p>\n

But these modifications aren\u2019t stopping Uthmeier.<\/p>\n

\u201cKids are still being solicited online, so they haven\u2019t done enough. We look forward to working with them to the extent they\u2019re willing. And if they\u2019re not, we\u2019ll see them in court or more.\u201d<\/p>\n

We reached out to Roblox Monday morning with some questions about Uthmeier\u2019s statements and how the company plans to address them and will update if they comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After announcing civil action against Roblox earlier this year, Attorney General James Uthmeier is expanding that scrutiny to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29,11230,4260,9459],"class_list":{"0":"post-12308","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-headlines","10":"tag-florida-news","11":"tag-fox-and-friends-first","12":"tag-james-uthmeier","13":"tag-roblox"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}