Following an uproar over its ban of a popular YouTuber who purportedly pursues and exposes child predators on the platform, Roblox has posted an update saying it became necessary to remove "vigilantes" from its platform after their behavior "evolved" and began conflicting with Roblox's own systems.
Roblox banned YouTuber Schlep earlier this week, saying in a cease-and-desist that while his "stated intentions may be to protect children," his methods, including failing to report suspicious activity through proper channels, "are actively interfering with Roblox's established safety protocols and, critically, are exposing Roblox's users to increased risk."
Schlep subsequently claimed that he and his team send "everything" to Roblox, including videos of chat logs, and that in multiple instances Roblox has only banned alleged predators after he's released a video about it.
Roblox chief safety officer Matt Kaufman said last week that "while [vigilante] groups may appear to have the public's interest at heart, they are in fact acting in ways that could be harmful to others, both on and off our platform," and warned that anyone caught violating its policies "will face consequences up to and including removal and banning."
In today's update, Kaufman acknowledged the situation "has raised questions and sparked debate," and so went deeper into exactly why the company doesn't tolerate vigilante behavior on the platform.
"These groups began by reporting safety concerns, commenting on news about Roblox, and challenging us to do better," Kaufman wrote. "We appreciated this feedback and used these reports to improve our safety systems.
"More recently, vigilante activity evolved. Instead of just reporting on safety issues, vigilantes started impersonating children and actively sought to connect with adult users. Those conversations mimicked inappropriate behavior and actively encouraged other users to connect on other social media and messaging platforms—thus bypassing Roblox's own safety systems."
Kaufman said vigilante behavior has been "accelerating across many accounts," and has "created an unsafe environment and normalized behavior that is both unacceptable on Roblox and is against our Terms of Use," which includes prohibitions against directing users off of Roblox and onto other, presumably less-regulated platforms.
"On multiple occasions, we've found vigilante groups holding their reports to Roblox until after they had coordinated real-life meetups and built their own social media posts," Kaufman wrote. "Waiting to report to Roblox or the relevant authorities means alleged bad actors could potentially remain on the platform longer, leaving the community open to additional risk of harm."
Kaufman acknowledged that the Roblox community can be "frustrated" with the way it handles reports of bad behavior, but said privacy concerns limit how much information it can share, and that it's limited in how it can respond to complaints of "violative behavior" outside of Roblox.
"Rather than taking actions that violate our policies and potentially creating additional risk, we encourage users to report issues through the official channels so we can investigate quickly and effectively," Kaufman wrote. "We've designed our reporting tools to capture details and metadata that a screenshot cannot, including object IDs, avatar IDs, and context. This additional information goes a long way toward helping us investigate reported incidents."
There's no question that Roblox faces significant challenges when it comes to content moderation: Its audience skews young and is absolutely massive, currently an average of 111.8 million daily active users, according to Kaufman, producing 6.1 billion chat messages and 1.1 million hours of voice chat across 28 different languages. The platform has trumpeted steps taken in recent years to protect that audience from predators including new parental controls, banning under-13s from unrated experiences, and using AI to assist with voice chat moderation. But it's also dropped the ball in some very big ways: A 2024 report on a 15-year-old girl who was abducted and assaulted by an adult user who had been reported as a pedophile a full 18 months prior was extremely ugly.
In the wake of Schlep's ban, a petition calling for the removal of Roblox CEO David Baszucki for failing to take action against predators and instead punishing "whistleblowers and concerned community members" launched on Change.org, and has quickly received more than 55,000 signatures.
