Fresh off the news that it had banned YouTuber and “predator hunter” Schlep from the game, Roblox has taken to its website to talk about the “removal of vigilantes” from the platform.
In a lengthy post, Roblox’s chief safety officer Matt Kaufman discussed the company’s policy regarding “vigilantes” and why they remove them from the game.
“We have been monitoring vigilante activity on Roblox for some time,” Kaufman said. “These groups began by reporting safety concerns, commenting on news about Roblox, and challenging us to do better. We appreciated this feedback and used these reports to improve our safety systems.”
Kaufman continued to say that, recently, activity within Roblox “evolved”. Rather than just report safety concerns, he said, these people began “impersonating children and actively sought to connect with adult users“. The conversations would then mimic what they believed to be inappropriate behavior while actively encouraging others to connect on different social media and messaging platforms. These actions would bypass Roblox’s safety systems.
“These were not one-off situations and we saw the behavior accelerating across many accounts,” he said. “This activity created an unsafe environment and normalized behavior that is both unacceptable on Roblox and is against our Terms of Use. Our policies prohibit directing other users off Roblox to another platform through chat and having/simulating sexually explicit conversations. These are serious policy violations that risk removal from the platform.”
Kaufman said that none of the activities he mentioned were acceptable on Roblox. He said that the company has teams who are dedicated to reviewing and investigating the reports that are received.
“When we find that violations have occurred, we act in accordance with our policies—up to and including permanently removing users from Roblox and reporting to law enforcement when warranted,” he said.
Kaufman says that due to “privacy considerations”, Roblox can’t let users know if their reports led to any consequences. The company, he says, wants to protect the privacy of users as they work to keep them safe. Roblox, he said, submitted 254,522 reports in 2024 to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) while also regularly meeting with the NCMEC to learn how to best support the agency and law enforcement.
It was said that Roblox understands the frustration from players in regards to how they handle reports of violative behavior that occurs outside of the game. Kaufman says that they would often be sent as screenshots from other applications, but they still do their best to investigate the reports. Action, however, can’t be taken without verification or similar behavior being observed within Roblox itself.
Despite these concerns from the community, Kaufman implored users to continue to report any and all concerns they may have so that they can “remove bad actors”.
“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,” he said. “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.”
Mike has been covering the gaming industry since 2012, and has reported on some of the largest events in the industry while also working as an investigative reporter. Outside of…
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