Bucks Co. DA Escalates Legal Battle Against Big Tech, Sues X In Amended Suit

DOYLESTOWN, PA — The Bucks County District Attorney's Office on Monday expanded its federal lawsuit against social media giants, becoming the first in the nation to sue X Corp, formerly known as Twitter, over its impacts on the nation's children and youth.

During a press conference in Doylestown, District Attorney Joe Khan announced the landmark expansion of the county's ongoing federal litigation, which is seeking to hold big tech accountable for fueling a youth mental health and child safety crisis.

The amended complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California’s Oakland Division, makes Bucks County the first DA's Office in the United States to sue X Corp. (formerly known as Twitter).

The lawsuit has also been expanded to include Roblox Corporation, Discord Inc., and Meta subsidiary Meta Platforms Technologies, LLC, and X Corp., representing the county's latest escalating action against tech giants whose platforms are allegedly designed to encourage youth addiction and exploit developing minds.

Khan, who originally led the historic litigation as county solicitor when Bucks County became the first county government in the nation to sue the social media giants in March 2023, emphasized that the legal expansion is driven by ongoing local harms.

“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,” said Khan. “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.”

According to the amended complaint, the county alleges that the newly added big tech defendants utilize defective reporting systems, inadequate parental controls, and manipulative algorithms that actively expose children to severe trauma, grooming, and exploitation. The expanded lawsuit levels severe allegations against X Corp., noting that the website is one of the five most visited websites globally, with Gen Z representing its fastest-growing user segment.

Despite X Corp.’s public promises of a zero-tolerance policy toward child exploitation, the lawsuit alleges the platform operates with a wholly ineffective reporting structure and an absence of child safety precautions.

The lawsuit alleges that X Corp.’s early leadership was so focused on adding users that it ignored the harm of user abuse. Under Elon Musk’s ownership, the trend intensified with Musk dissolving the platform’s Trust and Safety Council in late 2022, the lawsuit says. That same year, an internal X Corp. team concluded that the platform was unable to accurately detect child sexual exploitation at scale and lacked tools to verify that consumers of adult content were of legal age.

Additionally, X Corp.’s built-in Artificial Intelligence chatbot, Grok, is explicitly cited for producing nonconsensual sexual images of real people, including young children, upon request, with one late 2025 estimate showing 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 and other cases remain under investigation. The lawsuit alleges the systemic failures extend to platforms built specifically for children. Roblox, the complaint alleges, operates with an ineffective age-verification system and has routinely rejected employee recommendations to mandate parental approval for minors despite being used by 62 percent of all American children under 16 years old.

The suit details widespread child safety failures, alleging that adult predators routinely use Roblox to target underage users, exchange virtual currency for explicit material, and lure children into unmoderated, sexually explicit virtual environments.

According to the DA., users of all ages routinely encounter sexually explicit images, hate speech, or violent content in unrestricted environments, specifically naming user-generated games titled “Escape to Epstein Island” and “Diddy Party,” one of more than 600 Diddy-themed games.

To highlight the impacts of the platforms, the expanded lawsuit directly incorporates local criminal investigations and those handled by law enforcement throughout the Commonwealth and nation.

Most notably, the expanded lawsuit coincides with the sentencing of a county resident whose crimes were facilitated by the exact design flaws named in the suit. Alec Magill, 32, of Upper Southampton, was taken into custody after his sentencing Friday. He 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 Police Department revealed that Magill utilized Roblox and posed as a teenager to solicit explicit photos from a 13-year-old girl.

A subsequent forensic extraction of Magill’s device uncovered a deleted thread of nearly 3,000 messages on the platform with a 16-year-old victim, proving Magill relied on the application's lax safeguards to evade detection and coerce the minor into producing graphic material, the DA's office said.

Magill admitted to detectives that he used Roblox specifically to target multiple underage girls.

In addition to X Corp. and Roblox, the county’s lawsuit alleges that Discord’s design allows strangers to send private messages and friend invitations to minors by default, creating an unreasonable risk of sexual exploitation. Furthermore, the suit claims Discord’s marketing of its “Safe Direct Messaging” filters misleads youth users by creating a false sense of security while child sexual abuse material (CSAM) remains rampant on its servers.

The expanded litigation explicitly targets the use of advanced Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to maximize screen time, drive compulsive use, and deploy “experimental” virtual chatbots that deliver inappropriate, misleading, and dangerous content directly to youth.

This is not the first time Bucks County has led the nation in confronting Big Tech.

When Bucks County originally filed suit in 2023, it was the first county government and District Attorney’s Office in the United States to take legal action against Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube. That original 2023 civil complaint alleged that those tech companies used mechanics akin to gambling, such as continuous, algorithmic streams, infinite scrolling, and push notifications to cause problematic levels of use among vulnerable adolescents.

In Bucks County, school screenings conducted during the 2021-22 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 of school-aged youth had a history of suicide ideation, the lawsuit alleges.

The county’s expanded lawsuit seeks to halt these deceptive practices and recover the immense public resources, law enforcement hours, and social service expenditures required to combat the downstream mental health and safety crises.

The county is represented in this litigation by Robbins Gellar Rudman & Dowd LLP and Seeger Weiss LLP, two of the nation’s leading plaintiffs’ law firm with offices in California and Pennsylvania. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California’s Oakland Division, where the law firm has brought similar actions.