Is this the start of Roblox’s own Adpocalypse?
Roblox is facing increased scrutiny over its child safety practices.
Earlier this month, in two entirely separate cases, two families filed suit against the platform, alleging their 10– and 13-year-old daughters were found, groomed, and then kidnapped by adult predators who used Roblox to connect with them. (Both girls were found.)
Shortly after those cases were filed, Roblox took action…to ban YouTuber Schlep, who’d been conducting child predator hunts on its platform–hunts he says resulted in six men being arrested and charged. Schlep and fellow creator/hunting partner JiDion say they reported the men they found to Roblox, including sending chat logs showing nefarious intent, plus police reports and arrest records, but Roblox never banned offending accounts. Instead, it told Schlep he was “simulating” child endangerment, and threatened to sue him if he made another Roblox account, whether it was for personal use or to continue what it called “vigilante” behavior.
After that is when things kicked into high gear. Schlep’s video about the situation amassed 4 million views and brought him nearly 500,000 new subscribers, making his channel one of the fastest-growing on YouTube.
Roblox wouldn’t specify what it’s doing to catch potential predators like the ones Schlep and JiDion forwarded to police; to explain Schlep’s ban, it simply said it has “robust” Community Standards in place that “prohibit content or behavior that may be inappropriate or harmful,” that it maintains “comprehensive on-platform abuse reporting tools,” and that it seeks the advice of law enforcement officials.
But now, hearing Schlep’s story, law enforcement officials are concerned.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill filed suit against Roblox Friday, calling the platform a place where predators “thrive, unite, hunt and victimize kids.”
“Due to Roblox’s lack of safety protocols, it endangers the safety of the children of Louisiana,” Murrill said in a statement. “Roblox is overrun with harmful content and child predators because it prioritizes user growth, revenue, and profits over child safety.”
Responding to the AG’s lawsuit, Roblox said the assertion that it would intentionally put its users at risk of exploitation “is categorically untrue.”
“While no system is perfect, Roblox has implemented rigorous safeguards–such as restrictions on sharing personal information, links, and user-to-user image sharing–to help protect our community,” it added. “Unfortunately, bad actors will try to circumvent our systems to try to direct users off the platform, where safety standards and moderation practices may differ. We continuously work to block those efforts and to enhance our moderation approaches to promote a safe and enjoyable environment for all users.”
Also in response to the suit, Roblox issued updated guidelines on romantic and sexual content. It already prohibited explicit romantic and sexual content, but the new policy also prohibits “content, settings, or behavior that implies sexual activity,” it said.
Roblox is making a few additional changes to moderate user-generated content:
- Unrated games/experiences are restricted to developer access only.
- “Social hangout” experiences that have “private spaces” like bedrooms and bathrooms are restricted to users who have proven to Roblox (through its newly introduced age verification system, where teens are required to send in videos of their faces and sometimes government IDs) that they’re age 17 or older
- Virtual bars and clubs will also only admit users proven to be 17 or older
And it’s introducing new tech it says can detect “violative user behavior in otherwise policy-compliant experiences,” meaning it will comb through all-ages experiences for potential issues, too. This follows the rollout of another, AI-based system that is supposed to detect early signs of possible endangerment and flag the users involved to Roblox.
That system was introduced earlier this year, and Roblox says so far, it’s caught around 1,200 incidents of potential attempts at child exploitation. Roblox reported those incidents to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
As all this happened, To Catch a Predator‘s Chris Hansen chimed in to say he and his team are “all over the Roblox story,” and Roblox’s stock dropped sharply (though most analysts still class it as a “strong buy” and say the dip is temporary).
So where does this leave Roblox? We have a prior example of what can happen if a platform faces scrutiny over child safety and doesn’t meet regulators’ expectations: YouTube’s failure to protect child privacy on its platform resulted in a hefty FTC fine and a swath of policy changes impacting kids’ content and accounts. But the fine and changes came after something else: the Adpocalypse, where nearly all YouTube’s advertising clients pulled their spend while it was getting things figured out. And, since Roblox just began running programmatic ads, it could face a similar fate.
The bulk of Roblox’s money doesn’t come from running ads…yet. It has, however, struggled to get brands on board with buying marketing space across its platform–so a situation like this, where companies might shy away from controversial partnerships, could kneecap its efforts.
