Financial newsletter accuses Roblox of enabling child abuse

A popular financial newsletter is accusing Roblox of allowing large-scale child sexual exploitation and inappropriate content on its platform, drawing on years of media reports. The allegations are detailed in The Bear Cave, a short selling newsletter - but Roblox says The Bear Cave's founder is highlighting rare instances of abuse to profit by making the service look bad.

"This article contains misleading, irresponsible and in many cases false accusations about Roblox to further the author's motives as a short seller," Eric Porterfield, Roblox's senior director of policy communications, told The Verge. "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's report lists 16 instances since 2020 in which adults were arrested or indicted for sexually exploiting children they met on Roblox, one of which involved a man who "groomed 150 children to engage in sexual activity" on the platform. It also discusses so-called "condo games" in which users simulate sex, as previously reported by the BBC. To be sure, these documented instances involve a small fraction of Roblox's massive user base: the platform has more than 79 million daily active users, 42 percent of which are aged 13 or younger, according to VentureBeat.

Porterfield told The Verge that Roblox continuously updates its safety practices to "catch and prevent malicious activity" on the platform, including by blocking inappropriate words and phrases in chat and not allowing image-to-image sharing. Roblox says the condo games are typically removed quickly - within minutes - and are hard for average users to find.

The Bear Cave's report also claims that Roblox hosts nonsexual inappropriate content, including games in which players reenact school shootings or the Holocaust. The Verge has previously reported reenactments of mass shootings, including the attack on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Roblox, and Wired reporters have seen Nazi role-plays 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 has unsuccessfully tried to get the charges dismissed. 

Reports of inappropriate content on Roblox - sexual or otherwise - aren't a new problem for the service, and they're not necessarily surprising given its tens of millions of users. Still, it's a particularly heated issue for Roblox at a time when legislators and advocates are debating just how much responsibility platforms have for child protection.

Roblox has been involved in lobbying to shape the Kids Online Safety Act, and its CEO, David Baszucki, traveled to Capitol Hill earlier this year to meet with legislators. "One of the things specifically with KOSA is that we want to make sure that when young people are learning to create and sharing their creations, for example, that doesn't get turned off," Baszucki said in an April interview with Command Line's Alex Heath. "Or when there is organic learning on our platform or positive communication in some way, we don't restrict it."