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Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has sued the makers of an online gaming platform and a messaging app that were used by the man who is accused of luring 17-year-old Hailey Buzbee away from her Fishers home and to her death earlier this year. Rokita says the companies have failed to employ sufficient protections against online predators.
The companies, San Mateo, California-based Roblox Corp., which makes online gaming platform Roblox, and San Francisco-based Discord Inc., which operates a messaging app, make products that have been used in connection to kidnapping and sexually coercive crimes for years, investigators say.
The lawsuit, filed in the Hamilton Superior Court on Wednesday afternoon, accuses the companies of violating the Indiana Deceptive Consumer Sales Act and seeks injunctive and declaratory relief and disgorgement of all money and benefits made through any unlawful, unfair, abusive and deceptive conduct.
“These companies, which cater to kids and young individuals, know full well that numerous predatory sex criminals have used these platforms to contact and lure their victims,” Attorney General Rokita said. “And yet, they continue promoting themselves as safe for children. That is more than reckless. It’s a clear and ongoing violation of Indiana’s Deceptive Consumer Sales Act and we are working to hold them accountable to protect Hoosier families.”
Matt Kaufman, Roblox’s chief safety officer, told The Indiana Lawyer in a written statement Thursday that the company shares Rokita’s commitment to “helping keep children safe online,” adding that Roblox has built a multilayered safety system that includes “pioneering, industry-leading safeguards to help protect our users.”
“When we identify violations of our rules, we take swift action and work closely with law enforcement to hold bad actors accountable,” Kaufman said. “While no system can be perfect, we are constantly enhancing our safeguards, and we look forward to working constructively with the Attorney General’s office to help keep kids safe online.”
A Discord spokesperson said in a written statement that the lawsuit’s characterization of the company “does not reflect the platform” it has built or the investments it has made in user safety.
“Our safety systems combine advanced technology and human-led investigations, alongside user reports to help identify accounts or spaces engaged in harmful activity, including sharing exploitative and child sexual abuse materials,” the spokesperson said. “We require all users to be at least 13 [years old] to use Discord and also provide teen users and their parents and guardians with important privacy and safety tools, including Teen Safety Assist and our Family Center.”
The spokesperson added that Discord looks forward to collaborating with policymakers in working toward a “safer online experience” for all users of the app and across the internet.
Wednesday’s lawsuit asserts that the companies have “corralled” children into their online communities and then “opened the gates wide” to adult predators.
Although Roblox has described itself as the “#1 gaming site for kids and teens” and has made public campaigns promising safety, the Office of the Attorney General, or OAG, says those reassurances mask the truth about the company.
The OAG argues that Roblox designed, built and maintained a platform that lacks safety features to protect children from predators and lacks warnings for parents and child users, including failing to ensure age-appropriate designations on online experiences, which the OAG says has exposed children to graphic sexual material.
Roblox, the complaint states, provides “the perfect place for pedophiles.”
Roblox’s Kaufman said that earlier this year, the company completed its global rollout of mandatory Facial Age Estimation, which requires age checks for all users to access chat features.
“This technology will also be used in the launch of our new age-based accounts for younger users to more closely align content access, chat settings and parental controls with a user’s age,” Kaufman said.
But the OAG alleges that Roblox only began implementing new safety technology after years of public pressure.
“These changes could all have been implemented years ago,” the complaint stated. “None of them involves any new or groundbreaking technology.”
The OAG says Roblox only implemented the changes after its stock price was threatened.
The lawsuit also asserts that the two companies have designed their products to work hand-in-hand. Roblox allows links to Discord servers and channels to be displayed on game or group pages, the lawsuit states, and both companies permit users to link their accounts. (For example, Roblox permits players to link their Discord account to their Roblox account, and vice versa.)
According to Discord, the platform is a place where people connect before, during and after gaming; it’s a communications app, not a broadcast platform.
The majority of its users — about 80% — are adults over the age of 18, according to Discord.
But because of the companies’ interconnectedness through gaming, the OAG holds that predators’ “tried-and-true” playbook is to misrepresent their age on Roblox to child users, pretending to be a child themself to befriend the user, and then convince them to move their conversation off Roblox to Discord, “where they coerce the children into sending sexually explicit images or into meeting in person so they can sexually abuse them.”
According to Discord, the company requires all users to be at least 13 years old to use the platform, and it proactively scans and removes known and novel instances of child sexual abuse material.
The platform also provides teen users and their guardians with privacy and safety tools, according to Discord.
But again, the OAG holds otherwise.
The complaint asserts that Discord is “overflowing” with sexually explicit images and videos involving children, which it says has created an ecosystem that “facilitates pedophilia.”
The OAG cited several cases in its complaint in which predators used both platforms to lure children, including the recent charges filed against 39-year-old Tyler Thomas, the Ohio man accused of abducting Hailey Buzbee, 17, from her Fishers home earlier this year.
On Jan. 6, Buzbee’s parents reported that she had left their house overnight. According to court documents, the parents found a note stating that Buzbee had run away and asked that no one search for her.
Through an investigation of video surveillance cameras and phone messages, federal agents discovered that Thomas had picked Buzbee up at her home and driven her to Ohio.
According to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Ohio in February, Thomas and Buzbee first met online through video games, including Roblox, and they had been in contact for more than a year. The two also communicated on Discord.
Thomas told investigators that after he picked Buzbee up, she asked to be dropped off on the side of the road near Eaton, Ohio. But an FBI analysis of his phone records was not consistent with his claim that he stopped in Eaton. Investigators determined that he had stayed in an Airbnb with another person in Logan, Ohio, on Jan. 6.
When interviewing Thomas, officers asked him if he killed Buzbee, to which he responded, “I think she is alive and safe.”
He ended the interview shortly after.
Law enforcement officers later searched Thomas’s phone and found messages between him and Buzbee, along with photos and videos indicating the two engaged in sexual acts.
On Jan. 31, a criminal complaint and arrest warrant were signed. Law enforcement took Thomas into custody the same day.
According to court documents, on Feb. 1, Thomas led state and federal officers to the location where Buzbee’s dismembered body had been buried in Wayne National Forest.
Last month, Indiana Gov. Mike Braun signed into law legislation crafted after Buzbee’s death that requires age and account restrictions on social media and made updates to the state’s Silver Alert system.
In its Wednesday complaint, the OAG also requested a jury trial against Roblox and Discord.
The case is State of Indiana v. Roblox Corporation, Discord, Inc. (29D01-2605-PL-005581)
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