Roblox Warning

[Stellaris22]

Anyone who lets their child play Roblox needs to have a read of this article https://hindenburgresearch.com/roblox/

Essentially, they are incredibly lax in their regulations and have several accounts linked to grooming and child abuse. This goes beyond monitoring your child’s play, no one (who knows about this) should be allowing their child access to this platform.

This is not about social media or screen time, it’s being safe online.

Taken from the article:

• After we found a username, we listed our age as “under 13” to see if children are being exposed to adult content. By merely plugging ‘adult’ into the Roblox search bar, we found a group called “Adult Studios” with 3,334 members openly trading child pornography and soliciting sexual acts from minors.
• Registered as a child, we were also able to access games like “Escape to Epstein Island” and “Diddy Party”. We found over 600 “Diddy” games, including “Survive Diddy” and “Run From Diddy Simulator”.
• Since September 2nd, 2024, third-party monitor ‘Moderation For Dummies’ has reported ~12,400 erotic roleplay accounts on Roblox. These include everything from “rape/forceful sex fetishes” to underage users “willing to do anything for Robux”.
• Users seeking sexual experiences on Roblox are so pervasive that there are thousands of Roblox sex videos on porn sites, inviting users of unknown ages to make explicit content on the platform.
• We tested out Roblox’s experiences to see what else kids were being exposed to. We quickly encountered images of male genitalia and hate speech in Roblox’s “school simulator” game, which had registered 28.9 million visits with no age restrictions.In the game “Beat Up The Pregnant”, users hacked pregnant women to death in a Wal-Mart parking lot with machetes or killed them with frying pans or a selection of guns.
• Posing as a child in Roblox’s “therapy” experience, our therapist introduced himself as a “rapper with only one p”. We were advised to run away from home and that he would come pick us up so we could move into his basement in exchange for paying rent with our body.

This is awful.

I have told parents aboput this time and time again and been accused of being "paranoid'", "obsessed with paedophiles" "a conspiracy theorist"
It is incredibly dangerous. And Social workers encourage DC in care to play Roblox as it is 'educational'.

You used to be able to change the settings so your child can only play alone or with known friends.
This is awful but I don't think it's new, roblox was known to be unsafe when my ds played a good few years ago.

This is a well time thread for me. In an argument with teen DS about why he should tuck his school shirt in, he brought up I never let him have Roblox or TikTok. I know other parents think I’m a dinosaur who just “doesn’t get” young people and controlling mother. But I’m also the only parent who can consistently control what their child does online. I’m talking primary school age children whose parents don’t know how to set parental controls.

makes my blood run cold how trusting some adults are with what they expose their children too. It’s not like you can’t catch up with exposure to the darker side of the internet as an adult!

DS gets it now (older teen) and his main annoyance it’s how he has to spend in school in assembly’s about the dangers of TikTok etc when he doesn’t have access. Not entirely sure how that’s my fault too though.

The argument most people make on here is that they monitor and set age ratings. This shows how children are still exposed to these dangers.

Ive told other parents about this but they still let their kids on it, it’s worrying.

I hate this game I use to watch my daughter play it as all her friends had it, she played a drawing game called speed draw where you draw what they tell you to, all normal things like ice cream/ animals etc but instead people would draw male genitals I tried to warn other parents but they said they/ their kids would have found it funny and made out I was stuck up for not finding it funny

My daughter is 10 and highly aggrieved by the fact that we won't let her play it because all her friends do.

The problem is that it's an entirely user created game, so every 'mini game' or whatever the terminology is, is created by the users and then made available to everyone to join. It's basically unmoderated and users can chat to each other, design what they like, have the characters act however they want.

It's not safe for kids and it's widely known that it's not safe.

I’ve known it’s not safe for years, and when I tell parents it’s unmoderated user created contents with games like ‘stroke the cucumber’ they either don’t get it or think I’m exaggerating.

Parents see an age rating and think it’s safe, or that they block chat and that makes it safe. My daughter used to get really upset that I wouldn’t let her play when her friends do, but this makes me glad we were strict.

@Clumsy12345 yeah that was an issue I found as well, people thinking I was being prudish about swearing and willy drawings. I explained to professionals who had had safeguarding training about grooming and they smiled and said “oh little Johnny/jane” knows not to send pictures of their bum to anyone”. I am so pleased that I’ve not heard of anything bad that’s come of parents lax attitude but that’s either luck or the parents don’t know.

People would think it was crazy to allow an unknown man to your kids bedroom for hours and not want to know what was happening, but that’s basically what they’re doing

I play roblox with my kids and worst thing i have seen is kids trying to swear but it blanks it out.

A bot writes:

I'm somewhat surprised this didn't get more discussion.

But then when you read the Guardian summary:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/15/roblox-allegations-ofcom-online-safety-act

Hindenburg Research claimed Roblox’s games exposed children to grooming, pornography, violent content and abusive speech. The company, which has stated that it is seeking to profit from a fall in Roblox’s share price by taking out a so-called “short” position on the company’s stock, added it had found multiple accounts named using variations of Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and child sexual abuser, and had been able to set up an account under the name of a notorious American paedophile.
*
Roblox content is not authored by its developers, but instead by players. It provides the tools for children and teens to create their own simple gaming scenarios, and then play through them with friends. One popular Roblox “experience” has players working in a pizza parlour, and another involves a game of cops and robbers.

1. The article minimises the report by focusing on the short position.
2. It choses the Epstein username information to highlight, something that is easy to dismiss as, oh well just kids being edgy.
3. It focuses on 'children and teens' making innocent little games, but fails to acknowledge that of course, adults can make them too.

Why do you think the Guardian journalists (Dan Milmo and Keza Macdonald) didn't quote the part of the report about the paedophiles trading CSA images?

• We tracked some of the members of “Adult Studios” and easily found 38 Roblox groups – one with 103,000 members – openly soliciting sexual favors and trading child pornography.
• The chatrooms trading in child pornography had no age restrictions. Roblox reports that 21% of its users are under the age of 9, a number that is likely underestimated given that Roblox has no age verification aside
• Since September 2nd, 2024, third-party monitor ‘Moderation For Dummies’ has reported ~12,400 erotic roleplay accounts on Roblox. These include everything from “rape/forceful sex fetishes” to underage users “willing to do anything for Robux”.

Something tells me the Guardian journalists didn't even read to the end of the report:

[15] Disk (“💿”) and ghost (“👻”) emojis on the Roblox platform appear to signify Discord and Snapchat, respectively. It is a primary way that Roblox users posting illicit content get other users to add them off the Roblox platform. The illicit content can then be shared elsewhere while users pay Robux on-platform.
[16] It should be noted that Roblox has actively taken steps to silence critics who point out safety deficiencies, like Ruben Sim. Sim runs a YouTube channel that has chronicled horrific content on Roblox for almost a . In one case, Sim found and shared allegations that one of Roblox’s professional developers may be a pedophile. The exposing the possible pedophile garnered 1.4 million views. In others, Sim flagged suspected child exploitation content on Roblox. Instead of thanking Sim for help protecting vulnerable children on Roblox’s platform, in 2021, Roblox sued Sim for $1.6 million, alleging he incited a ‘cyber mob’ and off-platform threats. []

And of course, the final word goes to the Roblox company spokesperson.

I read that Guardian article, I wasn’t surprised they didn’t discuss the dangers of Roblox. If anything it read as paid advertising.

Online grooming gangs of boys competing to get children to self harm via Roblox

https://news.sky.com/story/sadism-sexual-abuse-and-self-harm-inside-the-online-gangs-where-boys-compete-to-be-cruel-13335183

I suppose it’s worth noting that Discord has prevented a server (owned by Ruben Sim) from blocking potential child abusers.

They don’t want children to have safe spaces to play.

Statement here:

https://x.com/realrubensim/status/1914811825050570881?s=46&t=TMUOZCqGbx3Pv9MjeQqrig

Rather than take down the Roblox sex game servers that blatantly violate Roblox, and by extension Discord's terms of service, @discord has banned Ro-Cleaner for profiling Discord users based on "protected characteristics". Apparently being in a Roblox porn server is a protected characteristic and we're not allowed to give owners of kid-friendly servers a tool to ban these people. Our appeal was denied.

This happened just one day after news broke that a 27 year old California man kidnapped a 10 year old girl that he groomed through Roblox and Discord. Not only is Discord facilitating child abuse, they're taking action against developers working to prevent it.

All bans performed by Ro-Cleaner are still in place. However, the auto-ban feature that checked new server members for their presence in condo servers is gone. Thanks to Discord, members of over 23,000 servers previously protected by Ro-Cleaner are now vulnerable to over 600,000 potential predators we spent four months tracking.

Moving forward, we're planning on making a new bot that allows server owners to create their own custom ban lists, and open sourcing the Ro-Cleaner database for them to import. Keep an eye on the channel for an announcement when this project is finished.

My twelve year old has never played or shown any interest but referred to Roblox as “paedophile central” and said one of his friendship group is mocked for using it because there are so many creepy adults and perverts. 😮