News: This is How Roblox Dies – The Satisfying Downfall of an $80 Billion Pedophile Hub.

Back in 2023, I did three posts about how Roblox is not a safe platform for children (which I suggest you read if you haven’t). In those posts, I talked about how Roblox financially exploits its child users, protects and enables pedophilia, and censors those who try to bring this to light. However, as of this year, this type of thing seems to have reached a fever pitch, as a few weeks ago, Roblox permanently banned a Roblox YouTuber called Schlep.

If you don’t know who Schlep is, as I mentioned before, he’s a very popular Roblox YouTuber, with a platform of 1.87 million subscribers. Most of the videos on his channel revolve around highlighting the issues on Roblox, from gambling to the toxic culture on the platform, and, most notably, their pedophile problems. For Schlep, this isn’t just an issue of child safety; it’s personal. During his early teen years, Schlep had been groomed and preyed upon by a Roblox developer who worked for the site. Because of the abuse, Schlep attempted suicide, and afterwards, his mother took legal action against Roblox, who proceeded to do absolutely nothing to ban the developer until different developer filed a complaint against him.

Since then, Schlep has devoted himself to finding and outing pedophiles on the platform to prevent others from what he went through as a child. His videos doing this have garnered millions of views and the comments, if not utterly repulsed by what he’s found, are often commenters sharing their or friends/family members’ stories of abuse on Roblox’s platform. In order to do this, he will pretend to be a child (remember this for later) to lure in the pedophile, join them in a game, and let them make incriminating statements, which he screenshots or films. In the case of the six pedophiles he recently got arrested, this evidence was sent to Roblox and local law enforcement.

However, though what Schlep is doing is an objectively good thing as it exposes just how many disgusting individuals are on the platform, Roblox apparently didn’t think so. According to a recent video Schlep made on the situation, even when presented with the evidence, Roblox would do nothing to ban the pedophiles Schlep had outed until it became public. And it was because he made it public that they served him with a cease-and-desist letter and banned his account.

[Author’s Note: This also hasn’t been a problem that only Schlep experienced. Other Roblox YouTubers like Ruben Sim (who was also sued) have experienced this, too, where Roblox will say that it would take weeks if not months for not safe for work content to be banned (which already is a red flag that you have that much content that needs to be banned), yet once it’s exposed to millions of people, it’s gone within minutes, if not seconds. My brother and I also experienced this once in a Roblox game called “Twisted,” where we saw a pedophile interacting with someone in the chat describing certain bedroom activities, reported him, and found out later that three or four other people had also reported him for the same thing. It was only because my brother is a fairly big game creator on the platform that Roblox did anything about it.]

The cease-and-desist letter alleged that Schlep had violated Roblox’s terms and conditions by impersonating a child, encouraging people to move off Roblox and onto another website, etc., thus bypassing Roblox’s safety systems. Schlep quickly shot back, pointing out how he has not done many of the things that Roblox alleges him of doing and how many of his strategies, such as pretending to be a child (not impersonating one) are necessary to catch these predators.

Since then, the backlash to this situation has been immediate. The #freeschlep movement online has grown to astronomical proportions, big Roblox creators (like KreekCraft) on sites like YouTube and TikTok have left the Star Program in solidarity with Schlep, numerous big game creators (including my brother) have made it impossible for Roblox to profit from their games, a petition now has over 100k signatures wanting David Bazuki to step down from being CEO at Roblox, major news networks are now covering this story, and states like North Carolina and Louisiana are now suing Roblox for endangering children. However, even amidst the backlash, Roblox has doubled down on their banning of Schlep on their social media and now saying #freeschlep on Roblox will result in your account being terminated within seconds (if only they took pedophiles that seriously).

Because of this, Roblox has managed to lose $12 billion in that past week as their incompetence comes to light, and their stock now looks like an abstract drawing of a cliff. Now in panic mode, Roblox has taken action, heard our complaints, seen their falling value and… done the bare minimum. Now they’re going scorched earth on fedoras, Valkyries, and most female Roblox avatars. While some of this makes sense as many of the female Roblox avatars outfits look incredibly inappropriate for a kids’ game (nothing like 10-year-old Sally making her avatar look like a hooker), but when I opened up Roblox Market place, here are some of the first things I saw:

So, why is a kids’ game allowing this? Why do we need our kids being able to have a shirt that gives them massive boobs or wearing tiny bikinis? How is this what I see the instant I open up Roblox Marketplace? I remember when it used to be more kid friendly. And this isn’t even mentioning the fact that Roblox is allowing creators to make/sell emotes that do very inappropriate things that I can’t even begin to describe.

But as Roblox has continued to double down defending pedophilic games, emotes, etc. things have only been getting worse for them as Schlep has teamed up with the Predator Catcher himself, Chris Hanson, who gained notoriety on NBC’s To Catch a Predator and now runs TruBlu, a streaming service with true crime documentaries about catching predators, examining scams, etc. With Chris Hanson now entering the chat and working on a documentary about the dangers of Roblox, the company is scrambling to do anything it can to fix its massive PR flop and prevent the loss of more money.

This type of thing, though horrible, is shining a light on how screwed up this situation is, finally bringing to parents’ attention just how screwed up this platform is. For too long, this type of thing has been ignored, but now it’s here for everyone to see, as it’s exposing that Roblox doesn’t actually care for child safety, but the profits that the pedophiles bring in.

Until next time,

M.J.