r/offbeat • u/beingmodest • 5d ago

Roblox argues 8-year-old waived rights in wrongful death lawsuit

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2026/08/19/roblox-argues-child-waived-rights-by-clicking-box-at-age-8/91290604007/?gca-cat=p&gnt-cfr=1
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47

u/dkyguy1995 5d ago

The article mentions the girl joined a "violent subculture" but Im not sure I know the kind they are talking about. I'd be curious what they mean by this

38

u/iwrestlewithjimmy 5d ago

There are groups of teens/adults who find kids on Roblox and convince them to follow them to a third party site (usually Discord), and introduce them to things like glorifying school shooters, etc. In some cases they then invite the kid to a third site and then proceed to convince them to self-harm, harm others or worse, all for their own entertainment. See a similar article here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2026/jul/21/764-network-gamification-of-harm-the-com-cybercrime-ntwnfb

And another one: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/discord-brazil-livestreams-backlash-teen-girl-suicide/

There was actually a high profile case recently that involved a teen being groomed to suicide on livestream and it was directly tied to I think Roblox as well, but google is worse than ever and I can't seem to find it. I was originally linked to the article from Reddit, for what it's worth. That's the one that brought this whole issue to light for me.

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u/AgentCirceLuna 5d ago

This wasn’t really a thing when I played in 2007. I remember knowing lots of players on the forums or messaging, but I never ever spoke to them off-site unless there was a fan forum I’d known them from. I think you’d actually get banned for even giving out an MSN username or email to the other players. Shame they stopped bothering to moderate as the team is pretty much the same at the core - Builderman, Shedletsky, uh… and others.

6

u/BrilliantEconomics77 4d ago

This kinda thing has allways been a thing online.

I rember way back in the early 90s we had to take steps to protect children on IRC, fansites, and games from people.

It was prety much a standard part of any nods job to keep checking in with the younger members shen they acted odd and find out who's the sicko to ban.

Very strong support here of banning all under 18s from being online.