Credit: Bucks County DA’s Office
Bucks County authorities have expanded its federal litigation against major technology companies in an effort to hold them accountable for fueling a youth mental health and child safety crisis.
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The amended complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California’s Oakland Division, adds X Corp., Roblox, Discord, and a Meta subsidiary as defendants in a 2023 lawsuit, which was filed in conjunction with the Bucks County Commissioners.
The amendments make the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office the first in the nation to sue X Corp., the company formerly known as Twitter.
Bucks County is represented in the litigation by Robbins Gellar Rudman and Dowd LLP and Seeger Weiss LLP.
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District Attorney Joe Khan, who originally led the litigation as county solicitor when Bucks County became the first county government in the country to sue social media companies, said at a Monday press conference that ongoing local harms drove the expansion.
“I do everything I can to protect my kids from the harms associated with screen time, but I know that as parents we are simply outmatched,” Khan said. “Parents rightfully expect someone to stop these companies from endangering their kids, and we won’t be intimidated by billionaires and corporations who think that the law doesn’t apply to them.”
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“It’s not good enough for us to say to people, ‘well, sure, we have the power to protect consumers, we have the power to protect workers, we have the power to protect the environment, but it’s just too hard’,” Khan told reporters.
The county alleges that X Corp., Roblox Corporation, Discord Inc., and Meta Platforms Technologies LLC, use defective reporting systems, inadequate parental controls, and manipulative algorithms that actively expose children to severe trauma, grooming, and exploitation.
According to the lawsuit, X Corp., which is owned by billionaire Elon Musk through his AI company, operates with an ineffective reporting system and lacks child safety precautions, despite Gen Z representing its fastest-growing user segment.
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The complaint alleges that leadership at then-Twitter ignored user abuse to focus on growth, a trend that intensified after Elon Musk dissolved the platform’s Trust and Safety Council in late 2022.
The filing points to a 2022 internal corporate finding that the platform could not accurately detect child sexual exploitation at scale.
The amended lawsuit also cites the platform’s built-in AI chatbot, Grok, for producing nonconsensual sexual images of real people, including young children, upon request.
The company has stated in media reports that it has cracked down on the practice.
The complaint notes a late 2025 estimate indicating Grok generated such material at a rate of one image per minute over a 24-hour stretch.
In Bucks County, one person has been charged with using Grok to create AI-generated child pornography, the district attorney said.
The lawsuit alleges systemic failures on Roblox, a platform used by 62 percent of all American children under 16 years old.
The complaint claims Roblox operates with an ineffective age-verification system and has routinely rejected employee recommendations to require parental approval for minors.
The suit details widespread safety failures on Roblox, alleging adult predators use the platform to target underage users, exchange virtual currency for explicit material, and lure children into unmoderated, sexually explicit virtual environments. It notes that users encounter sexually explicit images, hate speech, and violent content in unrestricted environments, specifically naming user-generated games titled “Escape to Epstein Island” and “Diddy Party,” which is one of more than 600 Diddy-themed games on the platform.
“Child predators know that Roblox’s lax controls allow them to use the platform to target our kids — in many cases without parents or guardians ever finding out,” said Elizabeth Oquendo, the district attorney’s office’s new chief of civil enforcement.
In an effort to highlight the impact of the alleged design flaws, the lawsuit showed local and national criminal investigations.
Last week, Alec Magill, 32, of Upper Southampton Township, entered an open guilty plea to multiple felony counts of child sexual abuse and unlawful contact with minors.
A joint investigation by Bucks County Detectives and the Upper Southampton Township Police Department revealed Magill used Roblox and posed as a teenager to solicit explicit photos from a 13-year-old girl, according to court papers.
A forensic extraction of Magill’s device reportedly uncovered a deleted thread of nearly 3,000 messages on the platform with a 16-year-old victim.
Magill admitted to detectives that he used Roblox specifically to target multiple underage girls, using the app’s lax safeguards to evade detection, according to prosecutors.
The county’s lawsuit alleges that Discord’s default settings allow strangers to send private messages and friend invitations to minors, creating an unreasonable risk of sexual exploitation.
The expanded litigation targets the defendants’ use of advanced AI and machine learning to maximize screen time, drive compulsive use, and deploy experimental virtual chatbots that deliver inappropriate and dangerous content to youth, the district attorney said.
At the Monday news conference, Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia said there has been a longtime lack of protections for children online.
“An entire generation has now reached maturity with social media and without the protections they deserved,” Ellis-Marseglia said. “I’m sorry for that, and in looking back, it seems we should have known the risks, but we didn’t. So now we will look forward to preventing such failures, stepping up to make sure that things change, and to attempt to make reparations to those youth.”
The original 2023 civil complaint filed by the county took legal action against Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube.
The filing alleged the platforms used mechanics akin to gambling through continuous algorithmic streams, infinite scrolling, and push notifications to cause problematic use among children and teenagers.
According to the lawsuit, school screenings conducted in Bucks County during the 2021-2022 academic year revealed that 34 percent of school-aged youth were at risk for moderate-to-severe depression, 40 percent were at risk for significant anxiety, and more than a quarter had a history of suicide ideation.
The expanded lawsuit seeks to halt the companies’ deceptive practices and recover public resources, law enforcement hours, and social service expenditures spent combating the downstream mental health and safety crises.
“The facts are on our side, the law is on our side,” Khan said. “It’s really on these defendants to answer the question as to when they’re going to step up and make things right.”
