Roblox reported more than 13 thousand cases of child exploitation last year alone

ROBLOX is one of the most popular games in the world and has built its popularity through the kids who play it.

The majority of Roblox players are children, with 56% under 13 and 67% of users under 16.

In 2023, Arnold Castillo was charged with transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity after meeting a child on Roblox.

Castillo claims he paid an Uber driver $1,000 to take the child to his home across state lines.

He developed one of Roblox’s most popular games, Sonic Eclipse, and was reported for sexually explicit messages with minors as early as 2020.

Although the account was banned, he created new accounts on Roblox and maintained notoriety as the company did not remove the game from the platform until 2021, when Sega filed a copyright infringement lawsuit.

Castillo is far from the only case of predatory behavior on the platform and, according to a report by BloombergSince 2018, police have arrested at least 24 people accused of abusing and kidnapping children they met or groomed on Roblox.

After Castillo’s arrest, Roblox reinforced security measuresand reports of child exploitation to the company’s National Center for Missing and Exploited Children have skyrocketed.

Roblox reported 13,316 cases of child exploitation in 2023, compared to 2,973 the previous year.

Parents have criticized the platform for its child safety measures in the past.

Roblox uses AI to censor certain words from in-game chat, but predators used different words or emojis to bypass these censors.

Castillo said: “It’s very easy to do the math. It’s very easy to play.

“[It’s] very easy for an adult to talk to a young person.”

He also described how easy it was for him to meet kids on the platform and move them to less moderated spaces using ‘cord’ instead of Discord.

Speaking to Bloomberg, an anonymous source claiming to be a Roblox moderator said his team receives hundreds of growing reports involving child safety every day.

Roblox employs just 3,000 human moderators, but says the size of its moderation team is not an indicator of quality.

We reached out to Roblox for comment on the report and a spokesperson said: “A recent article contained blatant mischaracterizations about how we protect users of all ages on the platform and did not reflect both the complexities of children’s safety online and the realities of the overwhelming majority . positive experiences that tens of millions of people of all ages have on Roblox every day.

“We wanted to take this opportunity to set the record straight and reaffirm our firm commitment to keeping Roblox safe.

“Bloomberg does not provide context on the scale of these reported incidents relative to the amount of content on the platform and the growing user base of 77 million daily active users.

“In a single quarter, Roblox users generated and uploaded approximately 205 billion pieces of content.

“The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s (NCMEC) CyberTipline in 2023 received more than 36.2 million reports, with the vast majority pertaining to incidents of suspected child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

“Roblox contributed less than 0.04% of this report’s total.”

If you want to read more about Roblox, check out Parents Concerned About Roblox’s Intention to Include 17+ Content.

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