Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows on Monday targeted Roblox for alleged child endangerment, after learning the platform offered a simulation of the 2022 Uvalde mass shooting.
Burrows instructed lawmakers to study ways to strengthen child safety and accountability for virtual gaming, singling out Roblox, an online platform and community where people can play and design their own games. In a news release, he call Roblox a place where “exploitative content and nominal safeguards are exposing Texas children to ongoing endangerment.” The charge adds to a list of policy priorities Burrows has focused the House around ahead of next year’s legislative session.
“Turning an unspeakable act of violence, whose scars remain across the Uvalde community, into entertainment is a profound moral failure,” Burrows said in a statement. “The State of Texas demands accountability — not a system that profits from violence and provocation while exposing young minds to hateful content. Lawmakers cannot stand by while a platform aimed at children enables and monetizes this kind of abuse.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Roblox in November for allegedly exposing children to sexually explicit content and exploitation. The company has faced a flurry of lawsuits from states and local governments, including Los Angeles County, alleging child endangerment.
Burrows instructed the House State Affairs Committee to evaluate “content moderation practices, enforcement gaps and the adequacy of existing child safety protections, noting that nearly 40% of Roblox’s 144 million daily users are under the age of 13.
He directed lawmakers to recommend proposals to “enforce accountability that are unconstrained by federal preemption or immunity defenses,” assess the possible civil and criminal liability of third-party content developers on platforms like Roblox, study the potential applicability of age verification and parental consent laws to gaming platforms, and “determine the extent to which platforms prioritize user engagement over safety.”
Rep. Don McLaughlin, who represents Uvalde and was mayor of the city at the time of the shooting, thanked Burrows for “recognizing the seriousness” of child safety in a statement on Monday and condemned the Roblox simulation of the 2022 shooting.
“Turning the murder of innocent children and teachers into virtual content is beyond sick, and the fact that this kind of material can exist on a platform used by millions of kids is a staggering failure,” McLaughlin said.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
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