Popular financial newsletter claims Roblox enables child sexual abuse

A popular financial newsletter accuses Roblox of allowing widespread child sexual exploitation and inappropriate content on its platform, based on years of media reports. The allegations are described in detail The Bear Cavea short selling newsletter – but Roblox says The Bear Cave The founder highlights rare cases of abuse to make profit by making the service look bad.

“This article makes misleading, irresponsible, and in many cases false allegations about Roblox to further the author’s motives as a short seller,” Eric Porterfield, senior director of policy communications for Roblox, told me. The edge. “We reject the claim that child endangerment is a widespread or systemic problem on Roblox, and millions of people have a safe and positive experience on the platform every day.”

The Bear Cave report lists 16 cases since 2020 in which adults were arrested or charged for sexually exploiting children they met on Roblox. One of these involved a man who “incited 150 children to engage in sexual activities” on the platform. It also discusses so-called ‘condo games’ in which users simulate sex, as previously reported by the BBC. To be fair, these documented cases involve only a small portion of Roblox’s massive user base: the platform has more than 79 million daily active users, 42 percent of whom are 13 years old or younger, according to VentureBeat.

Porterfield said The edge that Roblox continuously updates its security practices to “catch and prevent malicious activity” on the platform, including by blocking inappropriate words and phrases in chat and disallowing image-to-image sharing. Roblox says the condo games are typically removed quickly – within minutes – and are difficult for average users to find.

The Bear Cave’s report also alleges that Roblox hosts non-sexually inappropriate content, including games in which players reenact school shootings or the Holocaust. The edge has previously reported on reenactments of mass shootings, including the attack on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Roblox, and Wired reporters have seen Nazi role-playing games on the platform. In August 2023, two California families sued Roblox for allegedly allowing illegal gambling rings to prey on children on the platform. Roblox tried unsuccessfully to have the charges dismissed.

Reports of inappropriate content on Roblox – sexual or otherwise – are not a new problem for the service, and they are not necessarily surprising given its tens of millions of users. Still, it’s an especially heated issue for Roblox at a time when lawmakers and advocates are debating how much responsibility platforms have for protecting children.

Roblox has been involved in lobbying efforts to shape the Kids Online Safety Act, and its CEO, David Baszucki, traveled to Capitol Hill to meet with lawmakers earlier this year. “One of the things specifically with KOSA is that we want to make sure that when young people, for example, learn to create and share their creations, that they are not turned off,” Baszucki said in an April interview with Command lineby Alex Heath. “Or if there is organic learning on our platform or some form of positive communication, we don’t restrict it.”