The Dictatorship

Kids game Roblox faces legal backlash over allegations of child sex predation

Published

10 months ago

August 20, 2025

Kids game Roblox faces legal backlash over allegations of child sex predation

Happy Tuesday. Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, my collection of the past week’s top stories from the intersection of technology and politics.

Roblox faces a reckoning

Roblox, the popular online game for children, is under fire over allegations that it has failed to protect kids from sexual predators. The prevalence of pedophiles using Roblox has been under scrutiny for years now, as Bloomberg reported last year. But the issue has gained traction over the past couple weeks after a decision by Roblox executives to ban a user who claimed to have exposed predators on the platform. A statement from the company defended the ban, saying that “while seemingly well-intentioned, the vigilantes we’ve banned have taken actions that are both unacceptable and create an unsafe environment for users.”

That set off a torrent of backlash, including a petition circulated by U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., to urge Roblox to “do more to protect children, provide more support to parents, and strengthen law enforcement protocols that help bring predators to justice.” Meanwhile, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill filed a lawsuit against Roblox last week alleging the platform was intentionally or recklessly designed without effective age verification protocols and has allowed child predation, a claim Roblox called “categorically untrue.” (Roblox’s age verification rules are posted here.)

The company is also facing multiple civil suits that allege it has enabled child predation. A company spokesperson told Wired this week“We are deeply troubled by any incident that endangers our users, and safety is a top priority,” and, “While no system is perfect, Roblox has implemented rigorous safeguards, including restrictions on sharing personal information, links, and user-to-user image sharing, and prohibiting sexual conversations.”

Read more on the Louisiana lawsuit on NBC News here.

Man chases Meta’s flirty AI bot

A Reuters report uncovered the story of a man with cognitive issues who died while on a quest to “meet” a chatbot on Facebook Messenger after it reportedly flirted with him and convinced him it was a real person. (Meta didn’t comment to Reuters regarding the man’s death or “address questions about why it allows chatbots to tell users they are real people.”)

The story is a cautionary one about the spread of such chatbots across social media and what can happen when the humans who interact with them lose their grasp on reality.

Zuck unnerves the neighborhood

A New York Times report highlighted how Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has unnerved neighbors in the Crescent Park neighborhood of Palo Alto, California. The tech mogul has purchased at least 11 properties as part of a massive compound for himself and his family, while subjecting nearby residents to surveillance and frequent construction that some neighbors say has disrupted their lives. (A spokesman for Zuckerberg and his wife said that “the couple tried hard to do right by their neighbors,” according to the Times.)

Read the New York Times report here.

Newsmax to pay for propaganda push

Far-right media platform Newsmax has reached a settlement with election technology company Dominion Voting Systems, agreeing to pay $67 million to end a defamation suit over lies the network repeatedly aired after the 2020 presidential election in which it falsely implicated Dominion in a vote-rigging scheme against Donald Trump. A Newsmax spokesperson told NBC News that the company “was not required to apologize or issue a retraction as part of the settlement.”

Read more about the settlement on MSNBC here.

Trump Admin launches ‘after’

The Trump administration last week announced a program it’s calling USAi, to allow employees at federal agencies to experiment with generative artificial intelligence tools provided by OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and Google.

The announcement has been met with concern by some tech experts who fear what these tools could be trained to do. “These tools are marketed as making employees’ jobs easier, but agentic AI is largely unregulated and untested in making important decisions like loan approval, medicare enrollment, or social security payments,” J.B. Branch, a Big Tech accountability advocate at activist group Public Citizen, said in a statement. “The systems may have biased responses tied to historical data, which is troubling given the Trump administration’s ‘Woke AI’ executive order aiming to keep issues of diversity and equity out of AI.”

N.Y. attorney general sues Zelle parent company

New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit last week against Early Warning Services, the parent company of payment platform Zelle, alleging the company failed to protect users of the platform from fraud by neglecting to develop critical security features. The state case comes after a similar suit filed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was quashed by the Trump administration. A spokesperson for Zelle called the suit “a political stunt to generate press, not progress.”

See no evil

A report from Mother Jones found that several police departments across the nation that are using AI to convert police bodycam footage into police reports have deactivated safeguards meant to prevent digital “hallucinations” and ensure human oversight.

Microsoft probes Israeli spying allegations

Microsoft launched an investigation last week into allegations that an Israeli military surveillance group, called Unit 8200, used the company’s technology to conduct a massive spying campaign on Palestinians. The probe follows a report from The Guardian alleging Israeli spies used Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to store intercepted phone calls. Microsoft told the news outlet that the company “appreciates that the Guardian’s recent report raises additional and precise allegations that merit a full and urgent review.”

An Israeli military spokesperson told The Guardian that “its work with companies such as Microsoft is ‘conducted based on regulated and legally supervised agreements’ and the military ‘operates in accordance with international law.’”

Extremist influencers

A recent report from Wired exposed how Christian extremists — some armed and militant — are using Instagram to recruit followers by branding themselves as social media influencers.

Read the Wired report here.

Cybertruck sales still sliding

Tesla’s Cybertrucks have hit a slump in sales. A new CNBC video report sources the issue to several factors, including Tesla’s failure to deliver on key capabilities it had promised, the company having overpriced the vehicle, and numerous recalls due to defective parts.

Watch CNBC’s explainer on “Why Tesla Cybertrucks Aren’t Selling” below.

The Dictatorship

Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 6.22.26: Why Trump backed both Republicans in a key S.C. race

Published

19 hours ago

June 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 6.22.26: Why Trump backed both Republicans in a key S.C. race

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.

* In South Carolina’s gubernatorial raceDonald Trump endorsed Lt. Gov. Pam Evette last month. Last week, however, ahead of this week’s primary runoff election in the race, the president published an online item telling voters that “you can’t go wrong” with either Evette or state Attorney General Alan Wilson.

If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because Trump has done this before. Around this time two years ago, for example, he endorsed both Republicans running in a congressional primary in Arizona. And two years before that, he endorsed two leading contenders in a Senate primary in Missouri.

Only the president can say for sure why he ended up endorsing Evette and Wilson in the South Carolina race, though it’s worth emphasizing for context that GOP primary voters have already ignored his direction into two gubernatorial primaries this month, and it stands to reason that he hoped to avoid a third.

* We’re one day away from a variety of notable racesincluding but not limited to South Carolina’s gubernatorial race. There are also some congressional primaries in a handful of statesincluding Maryland, New York and Utah.

* In took a while, but the ballots have been tallied under Maine’s ranked-choice systemand we now know that Democrat Hannah Pingree, the former state House speaker, will face off against Republican Bobby Charles, who worked at the State Department during the Bush-Cheney era.

* As for Maine’s closely watched congressional racestate Auditor Matt Dunlap won the Democratic nomination in the battleground 2nd District, defeating state Sen. Joe Baldacci, who enjoyed the backing of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Dunlap will run in the fall against a familiar figure: former Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who had moved to Florida a few years ago, but who returned to run for Congress.

* In California’s congressional special electiontwo Democratic candidates — state Sen. Aisha Wahab and Melissa Hernandez, a Bay Area Rapid Transit director — have advanced to an Aug. 18 special general election. The winner will fill the vacancy left by disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell, who resigned in April.

* In a new commercial shared first with MS NOWDemocrat James Talarico has launched his campaign’s first multimillion-dollar ad buy in Texas’ gubernatorial race. In the 30-second spot, Talarico focuses on affordability and the cost of living. The state lawmaker will face scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the fall.

* And in New Jersey, Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr.who has been missing from Capitol Hill since early March, will reportedly return to work on June 30according to a statement from his spokesperson. Neither Kean nor his office have offered any public information about why he has been away.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

The Dictatorship

Trump tries dual endorsement in South Carolina as his pick for governor flounders in polls

Published

19 hours ago

June 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump tries dual endorsement in South Carolina as his pick for governor flounders in polls

Jun. 22, 2026, 11:39 AM EDT

After President Donald Trump’s pick for governor in Iowa lost in the Republican primary earlier this month, the president argued that he “would have endorsed the other person” if he had “the proper information.”

Trump is taking no chances in the South Carolina gubernatorial primary. Over the weekend he rescinded his exclusive endorsement of Pamela Evette, the lieutenant governor, announcing instead that he would support both Evette and her runoff opponent, Alan Wilson, the state’s attorney general.

The move put Evette’s political future in jeopardy: Even before Trump’s dual endorsement, she trailed in limited public polling and was seen by political observers in South Carolina as a weak candidate with little to show besides the president’s coveted endorsement.

“Her chief distinction from Alan Wilson was that Trump endorsed her,” said Dr. Dubose Kapeluck, a professor of political science at the Citadel Military College of South Carolina.

Trump’s dual endorsement “was a kiss of death,” he told MS NOW.

Evette, who moved to South Carolina from Ohio to found a successful payroll and HR company in 2000, has been lieutenant governor since 2019, serving under Gov. Henry McMaster, who is term-limited.

In office, she has pursued meaningful but little-celebrated policies, like a key tort reform bill, according to Gil Gatch, a Republican member of the South Carolina state House and an Evette supporter.

But voters could be forgiven for knowing little about Evette besides the fact that Trump endorsed her, which he did just days before the June 9 primary. Visitors to her campaign website are greeted with a full-screen message labeling Evette as “Trump-endorsed.” The first line in her X bio states the same. Pro-Evette television ads are quick to tout the endorsement.

An accomplishment like tort reform, while noted on Evette’s website, “maybe could have been something that was highlighted more heavily,” Gatch told MS NOW.

The political makeup of South Carolina nearly guarantees the next governor will be whoever emerges on Tuesday between Evette and Wilson. They survived a crowded primary field on June 9, and nearly every challenger who fell short of the runoff publicly endorsed the attorney general.

“She’s just not a good candidate,” Josh Kimbrell, a state senator who failed to make the runoff and has since said he’d back Wilson, said of Evette.

“She kind of assumed this was a coronation, and that was never going to go over that well,” he added.

Even some pro-Trump voters were confused by the president’s initial endorsement of Evette, whom he called “a good friend, fighter, and WINNER” in a social media post in May.

“I have no clue why Trump would endorse Pamela Evette,” Leland Lemmons, a 30-year-old Trump supporter told MS NOW as he exited a polling site in the Greenville suburb of Easley on June 9.

“She’s served, you know, a decent time. I just haven’t seen much fruition of what she’s done in office,” he added.

In a post on Truth Social Friday announcing his dual endorsement, Trump wrote, “I can’t hurt one of them by only Endorsing the other, so, therefore, I am going to Endorse, for Governor of South Carolina, both Pam Evette and Alan Wilson!”

In a subsequent statement on X, Evette said, “I was proud to come in first as [Trump’s] endorsed candidate for Governor on June 9th. Looking forward to doing it again on June 23rd.”

After The Washington Post foreshadowed the dual endorsement last Tuesday, allies of Evette were quick to denounce the possibility.

“I would guess that’s fake news,” Suzanne Pucci, a member of Evette’s finance committee, told MS NOW of the chance Trump would also endorse Wilson. “She’s probably not real worried about it.”

Another close ally and supporter told MS NOW at the time the report was “a total, fabricated lie.”

“[Trump] is invested in Pamela Evette because she invested in him. He’s a loyal guy. That kind of stuff is important to him,” added the supporter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“With or without Trump, I think she is going to win,” they said.

On Thursday, a senior campaign aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, brushed off the idea of a dual endorsement, telling MS NOW in a statement, “Pamela Evette has earned the complete and total endorsement of President Trump. She is the only Trump-endorsed candidate in this race and we look forward to delivering a big win for the president on Tuesday.”

Roughly 24 hours later, Trump retracted the exclusive endorsement.

Will McDuffie is a reporter for MS NOW.

The Dictatorship

Fears of an ‘economic catastrophe’ helped push Trump toward an Iran deal

Published

19 hours ago

June 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Fears of an ‘economic catastrophe’ helped push Trump toward an Iran deal

As last week’s G7 summit in France got underway, a reporter asked Donald Trump whether his purported deal with Iran was final. “No, it’s not final,” the president replied. Later that day — during a visit to Versaillesof all places — he signed the framework anyway.

But moments after signing his name to the memorandum of understanding, Trump offered an unsubtle hint about what he was thinking at the time. Amid applause from those around him, the American president pointed down and then up while saying“Oil down, stocks up.”

In other words, Trump’s focus had nothing to do with natural security and everything to do with the economy. What’s more, the four-word phrase was part of a larger and underappreciated pattern. The Washington Post reported:

In the more than 100 days since President Donald Trump launched a war with Iran, he has offered a shifting list of reasons for why he started the conflict. But in explaining his push for peace, he named a priority much closer to home: protecting the stock market.

“I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe,” Trump told reporters gathered in the Alpine spa town of Évian-les-Bains, France, after the Group of Seven summit.

As the summit wrapped up, the Republican similarly said“I’ve studied presidents, some good, some bad, some great. Not too many are great and some really bad. … And the one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover. I didn’t want that and who knows what would have happened.”

He pushed the same point in an interview with Axios, which was released over the weekend.

“If I went further, the stock market would be much lower,” the president said. “Now think of this: I have one primary wish as president, in terms of people: I never want to be the late, great Herbert Hoover.”

The comments came days after Trump similarly argued“The alternative to this deal was a global recession. There are stupid people who want to see a global recession. They are just stupid people.”

Whether the president fully appreciates the implications of his own rhetoric, this string of comments doesn’t just shed light on his motivations for accepting a defeat, it also suggests he saw his failed policy in Iran as pushing the global economy toward a dangerous cliff.

In other words, based on Trump’s own comments, the war he started was poised to create an “economic catastrophe,” which he was desperate to avoid — and which led him to accept a framework that empowered Iran to get what it wanted in exchange for effectively no concessions at all.