Roblox is 100% cooked (for real this time)

This has been a lot. I talked about this the other day and it's apparently getting pretty serious. Chris Hansen, always a really really good person to have associated with your company. Oh by the way, Roblox has been banned in China and Qatar in the last week. China banned Roblox. This is a very big deal. Oh yeah. Uh oh. This is a good video.

And we're not waiting for the law or legislation.

We've innovated with age estimation.

They're not waiting for the law?

On our own because we want to keep people on their own.

Well, that part's true. They just don't do anything.

This whole situation is kind of crazy.

Everybody go donate to this boy, Schlepp.

This is probably the worst decision this company has ever made.

Hashtag free Schlepp, I'm gone.

Yeah, they actually need Schlepp.

It's actually crazy how big of a fuck up this was. Like, this is probably the biggest backfire of, like, suppressing a content creator for doing something that's inconvenient for a brand that I've probably ever seen. It's massive.

Things slept the best.

Roblox, you need to do something.

There's gotta be something.

Nobody at Roblox listens to us. I'm frustrated, man. I'm frustrated.

Why should we support a platform that is taking steps to prevent predators from getting caught?

Kind of a good question.

Roblox has just lost for now oh my god market value following their response to their cease and desist letter against me just for context i'm someone

who's gotten six predators within their community and to be fair it's not about schlep it's about what schlep represents like if they sent schlep a cease and desist for making like racist Roblox videos, they wouldn't have lost 12 billion dollars. The reason why they did it is because they're effectively trying to prevent accountability from themselves, number one, and also from the predators that are on their platform. It's a lot.

Rested in real life. That loss though, isn't on me. It's a direct result of Roblox's own response to its child safety crisis. Instead of addressing the real issues, Roblox has doubled, tripled, even quadrupled down. They put out statements after statements,

painting me and my team as reckless vigilantes while claiming that their platform is safe, when it absolutely is not. People are just seeing through this. And that's why a huge movement has started online called Free Schlepp.

It's been trending everywhere. Multiple members of Congress have now called out the company's child abuse problem. And the Attorney General of Louisiana has filed a giant lawsuit against the company for and I quote, prioritizing user growth, revenue, and profits over

child safety. The day after the I think that the big problem that we have and I know that I sound like a broken record with this is that there is no direct personal accountability when decisions like this are made. They need to subpoena all of the personal communications and the meeting notes and the slack discussions and figure out if people are actually making decisions that put kids in danger in order to make more money. And if people are doing that, they need to be charged with crimes on a personal level. And that's the big reason why these bad behaviors continue, whether it's hiring illegal aliens, you know, congresspeople taking bribes, or whether it's a company doing something that increases its profit at the expense of its customers. The same thing is all it's all the

same. And the outcome is that they're doing this in order to just simply make more money, and they know they're going to get away with it. That's what the problem is.

Attorney General's lawsuit was filed. Roblox is market and they do get away with it. Twelve billion dollars in response. The company scrambled to roll out new policies targeting the very not safe for work games featured in the lawsuit and my video, like for instance, bathroom simulators. Mind you, the community saw this point out these games for years now but still even after everything

it's deranged like these games are definitely not meant like these games should not be meant for kids I mean bathroom simulator anything that has like a like any of this like weird innuendo it should have been categorically removed from being accessible to anybody who's under 18. removing these blatantly inappropriate experiences roblox simply slapped a 17 plus label on they also you know i heard from somebody very recently uh that 17 is actually not a good age

Yeah, I heard about the situation very recently that 17 is in fact not a good one

Yeah, ooh

So I don't know and wave against some of the worst games They've knowingly nobody knows for years games that have led thousands of children to getting extorted, crippled, and worse. Roblox's actions are nothing more than damage control for the problems they've allowed to fester when the entire community was screaming at them to fix these problems. And the community saw that killing the messenger was an act of war. Shortly after these changes, Roblox released a video. A video so bad that it was community noted on Twitter twice.

David Buzuki, CEO of Roblox. Matt Kaufman, the Chief Safety Officer of Roblox.

Yeah, you really fucked up, huh Matt?

Liza Jacobs, the Senior Director of Product Policy, did a 45 minute tech talk.

So can they explain why the product policy is to let children use video games that are full of sexual innuendos? Like what's the what's the logic of letting kids use a public bathroom simulator? Like would you want your kid playing public bathroom simulator? This is what I would ask any of these these executives.

I think the answer to that is obviously no. I think to do that, but instead they went straight after me, moderating my accounts and sending a cease and desist before I could even react to the policy. I'm not a vigilante. That means I'm taking the law into my own hands. We work with law enforcement, which is why we have arrests. Roblox refuses to say my name because they'd have to acknowledge those arrests, but

make no mistake, if they're responding to the outrage, which is about me, and this is what they had to say about it. They first start off the interview by talking about how vigilantes started out as a good thing. Both inside of Roblox, and I think that there are lots of people outside of Roblox who really have the best intentions and the welfare of our community at heart. We all want to keep Roblox safe.

And we welcome them in part of the dialogue about how to keep Roblox safer. And we have members of the community and these vigilante groups that started off in a really good place. They started off by saying like, hey, they're reporting on issues on Roblox. They're talking about how we could do better. And you know, we paid really careful attention. This statement is just laughably hilarious.

If Roblox-

Why'd you stop?

Really paying attention. Then what about when my mom emailed you guys about my own fucking case? What did you do then? Nothing. Actually, you kept paying the guy for years afterwards until you were literally forced to do something about it.

If what Roblox- So he even has a personal experience that shows that this did not even ever happen. Of course, why am I not surprised? Roblox was claiming was actually true. Wow, what a shock.

Them listening to the community, why are the biggest content creators leaving your exclusive YouTuber program in protest of how you're moderating your platform? And I'm going to actually bring up something later in this interview to show you how much of a joke this is. This here is Meep City, one of the most controversial games on Roblox. Precraft, one of the largest Roblox YouTubers, joined this game and within 4 seconds was exposed to not safe for work content.

The community has been complaining about this game for almost a decade now. But Roblox has still continued to leave this game up and platform it. But CEO David Buzuki mentions this game by name and here's their philosophy on it.

Is this the butthead thing?

I can see some of our community naming experiences on Roblox and just say take it down, take it down, take it down. I'd say examples could be Meep City for example. Can you share like why should that be up? Should that be down?

Like what's up? I think one thing that's really challenging on the on this global immersive interactive platform is that we have content created by developers and creators and content created by the community by the users that are in that game and one thing that we really try to do is be fair to our developers and to not moderate them for the behavior of their users.

How is this a crazy math problem?

Just say you don't want to do anything you just want to collect the checks

Just be honest. Just just come on. What are we doing here? It's so obvious

This is so simple the creator of this game wants these people in their game. How is this even controversial? The developer is giving the tools to the player to make this inappropriate content. And that is the problem with Roblox. Roblox turns a blind eye unless the developers are blatantly making not safe for work games. And even then, it is still on the line if Roblox will take action. Roblox might have just went back on their word regarding Meep City.

This game had every inappropriate feature removed from it pretty much overnight. It's unknown if Roblox made out- So wait a minute. So you're telling me that all of these problems, they could have solved them overnight, but they just didn't? Because like that's what it shows to me. Is that like, okay, so now there's a really big controversy around this problem and somehow you're able to totally fucking get rid of it within like what? 48, 72 hours, three or four days maybe?

How does this happen? What a mystery.

Neutron, the creator of Meep City do this, but either way it shows the public pressure is working.

Games that Roblox is doubling down on are folding, so that's why it's really important to keep speaking up about this. is that they need to have a opt-in program where if you have like an account that isn't age verified, there are only different games that you can play that have already been pre-approved by Roblox. So they need to shift the way, because like right now what I'm assuming

is that they have a system that effectively, it doesn't ask questions until questions are asked about the game. But if you really want to make this work, you have to make it proactive. And so you have to make it to where if you're using an account, you can't access any of the games except for the games that are pre-approved by Roblox staff. Now this will never actually happen, but that's what who pre-approves?

Well, the staff of the of the company has to pre-approve it. Yeah, like YouTube. Yeah, do the YouTube kids and and yeah, approved by Roblox is extremely low bar. Well, like it will that those two things, right? So number one, it prevents like small games from coming out that are like they have like flash in a pan success They get taken over by weirdos and then you know, or they're co-opted and then it's just like a weird like kind of you know

Scandal right? but the other thing that it does is it prevents and It prevents this from just happening on its own and you stop the flow of it happening Because that's what I think they need to do. They need to stop the flow of it happening because that's what I think they need to do. They need to stop the flow of this happening period. Why don't they separate adults and kids to different servers? Well, I don't know why.

If there's over 100 million users, they need to hire a lot of people to audit every Roblox world created. Well, I understand that, but here's the problem. If you can't ensure a safe environment and a safe space for people to use as like, you know, as kids, then maybe you shouldn't be doing an online world. If you can't moderate your online service at all to prevent people from getting groomed, then maybe you need to figure out your business model

in a more effective way.

Change. What we saw is that some of these groups started engaging with the community

in ways that violated our policy.

Apple apps does that, yeah, it's just, it's common sense.

Let me explain like what that means. They would go and create accounts on Roblox claiming to be a child. Roblox keeps repeating this same talking point, that I'm impersonating and pretending to be a child. But here's the reality, you have to pretend to be a child because if the predators knew they were talking to an adult, that wouldn't even be a crime. You guys seem to be more upset that I'm pretending to be a child

than predators are decoys. And if it wasn't our decoys, it would be a real person. It's also worth noting that the FBI, ICAC, and local law enforcement all use these same exact tactics. Would Roblox be willing to send them a cease and desist too? And their claim that I'm impersonating children is flat out false. Impersonation means I'm stealing the identity of a real child. From the very beginning, we've never

used real kids. We don't send pictures of real children and we create totally new identities. Yeah what a weird accusation to make especially whenever I think of the implications of that. That's crazy to say that somebody's doing that. Oh my god.

Where every single photo that's sent is of someone that is of age. The only difference is we tell these people that we are underage. This is flat out a lie what they're claiming. But what happens next is so wild that the CEO of Roblox cuts off the chief safety officer. And then they would enter into game servers and they would go and start asking everybody around them how old are you and they were seeking out adults. If

you said that you were... move on. But if you said that you were 25 then they would start engaging in conversations, and they would try and use those conversations to simulate-

Matt, is this anecdotal? Because I know we have chat logs for all chat on Roblox and historical records, so are you able to kind of-

David totally derails that conversation. That statement is probably the most wild made by Matt Kaufman in this whole interview. To simulate what, Matt Kaufman, because it's not simulation

These are predators thinking that they're talking to someone. What are they simulating if they're looking for people that are over 18? I mean like really what do you think here?

It's kind of obvious.

In person and do stuff to them in real life and in my opinion this shows how little Roblox actually cares about this problem. They can say whatever they want, they can talk about all the new safety features that they're rolling out, but it means nothing if lawsuits are being filed every single week against the company and headlines are making the media about a new horrible situation happening

because of this platform.

Also want to say how they totally mischaracterized how I run my Decoy operations. We are they're just trying to make him look bad. That's all they're trying to make him look bad and make him look like a bad actor. Because again, none of this is about protecting kids at all. It's about protecting the brand. For the first and that's obvious

to anybody that doesn't know, they always contact soA account first. So we saw these actors, they're pretending to be kids, they're trying to find adults. And then what they're doing is they're trying to move the conversation as quickly as possible to other platforms. Other platforms that don't have the type of monitoring and policies that Roblox has.

And then they were using that activity that happened on other platforms to create situations that they would then video, they would report to the police, and then only after would they let Roblox know. Roblox is-

The real crime is not telling Roblox of crimes. It's not the crimes happening, it's not telling them that they're happening. But whenever Schlepp's mom told you that the crime was happening with her son, well, you didn't do anything. Isn't that convenient?

...using me of encouraging adults to talk inappropriately to people they shouldn't. That is not true, and if it was true, I wouldn't have a single arrest. We present ourselves as a naive kid who doesn't...

No, no, the thing is that you're gonna have weirdos like this on every platform it's not like unheard of it's pretty common actually I mean like there's a lot of people that are weirdos on the internet and it happens on every platform including twitch and Twitter and discord everywhere the problem isn't that it happens the problem is that they're trying to hide it from happening they're trying to hide the fact that it does happen and they're actively using legal force to try to suppress people from talking about it.

That's really where the problem comes in. That's the big issue.

Know about these topics. Crimes like this should obviously be reported to law enforcement first, not Roblox. If Roblox is notified before the police, they can delete accounts, tip off the predators they're being investigated, and give them a chance to erase valuable evidence that the police need to prosecute.

Well to be fair, that probably, that part of that isn't true, because the odds are Roblox actually keeps the information on hand after it gets deleted by these people. But one thing that is true is that if the account gets deleted it might make it harder for a police officer to fully investigate what a person's behavior is in real time so like this is like partially true partially not from my understanding at least these predators are on the

platform to begin with shows that their safety systems have failed if roblox did their jobs there wouldn't be anybody for us to find. Roblox also claims that I'm moving these players to other platforms. But those platforms are linked directly on Roblox's own site. Roblox has actually even partnered with some of those platforms. They even own a bot on that other platform.

Anyone can make an account 13 plus and see social media links on Roblox. And unsurprisinglyprisingly people in real life have been abducted because of this feature that roblox allows and when they say i'm creating these situations that's just insulting i'm not creating situations these predators are trying to people

within your community and there's a it's his fault that the predators are there well if you didn't put the 12 year olds there they wouldn't go after them. What a fucking- what a bunch of bullshit. Oh my god.

A bunch of issues in here.

Number one, the violation of our policies. That's crazy! About being honest about how old you are. Number two, moving conversations off platform.

And number three, waiting to tell Roblox when they identified violative behavior And Matt Coffin's own words. In articles about vigilantes, he said law enforcement officials are best positioned why would he want you to yeah he's criticizing us for going to the police first and it's not like we're- exactly yeah

so like if the law enforcement are the ones that are best positioned to do it then why should he be telling roblox and not the law enforcement little bit of logic there huh little confusing isn't it how does that make any sense

we're not even reporting these things to roblox that's weird We're not even reporting this to Roblox. We do. We give Roblox the same Google Drive that we give to the cops. They have the first chat log till the very end where they're in handcuffs. And we have numerous fully documented instances where Roblox refused to take action until after we released videos that got millions of views. Also, waiting to tell Roblox in general is a policy violation?

If you were on Roblox and went straight to the authorities instead of reporting it to Roblox first, could you technically be violating Roblox's terms of service? He says I were putting our community at greater risk and were violations of our policy. He says I'm putting the community at risk. Roblox even went as far to accuse me and my team of being similar to predators.

Think about that.

What a disgusting thing to tell somebody that was previously groomed on your platform that they're similar to the people that are the actual predators. It's so nasty. Who does this?

They're implying I'm preying on predators. So to Matt Kaufman and David Suzuki, I'm very sorry for preying on the predators of your platform and getting them arrested and put in handcuffs because I didn't ever want to see kids go through what I went through

These actors that were coming on the platform They were reaching out to dozens and dozens of people and most the vast majority of those people were not responding to those engagements

And frankly were harmed in that process. I'm gonna show you this predator

I caught I sent a message in the chat and I got this guy messaging me. 101, uh, he asked for my snap or discord. The reason why he's asking for snap is because because the the s and the n

Like obviously like snap is probably word filtered. So dc Discord or snapchat. Yeah, exactly

Delete I tell him discord and I get on discord with him and the messages begin right away throughout that entire process

Where did I harm anyone because the real harm was Roblox letting this game exist on their platform. For years. It only disappeared after Hindenburg, an investment research firm went ahead and exposed Roblox for hosting this experience. reason. decoys and so many people are yeah a lot of these people initiate it themselves and even if uh schlepp had initiated it there would have been nothing wrong with that because you you can't get like entrapment is something that police officers do like schlepp isn't a police officer so he's not bound by the same limitations that entrapment is supposed to protect you against. Being victimized from people exactly like this.

They were normalizing policy violations on the platform.

What Roblox's own algorithm recommends inappropriate items to people. Roblox actively-

Pops white gum.

Not safe for work games for children. Roblox themselves in this interview doubled down on one of the most infamous instances of inappropriate behavior that they've allowed for nearly a decade. And they're really going at me

for normalizing policy violations. Absolutely unbelievable.

And the other piece is oftentimes the sort of evidence that was collected, the video evidence, was really difficult to verify, really difficult for us. And if law enforcement had to verify it, then they're talking about subpoenas. And so I think something that sometimes seems obvious to folks in the community really is just much more complicated on the back end.

I'm not sure how the-

Yeah, because you make it complicated. You make it complicated so it's harder for people to figure it out. Because if more people figured it out, it would make you look bad. Yeah, duh.

Evidence that I was sending you guys was hard to verify. I send you guys screen recordings of us scrolling through the entire chat on mobile. And a lot of the stuff that happens is happening directly within Roblox. Like for instance, when Roblox refused to ban this predator

We got arrested. They can figure this out. The police can figure this out in a day They just send an information request to discord and then discord sends them all the information It's not complicated it's not like this is rocket science It's so obvious how to handle it Like obviously, so they use the screenshots and everything and the videos taken as evidence, and then they find the evidence on Discord and they use it as proof Because of course they're going to verify it with the actual party because they can do that

It's common sense

That shit takes a long, long time going to verify it with the actual party because they can do that. It's common sense. That should takes a long, long time.

I mean, if it does, there's a reason for it. And it's probably because the companies are just making it take a long time to avoid having more things like this happen.

And Hawaii, and he was literally talking in game about planning the meetup in real life on Roblox. With all that being said, I wanted to ask someone who's been working with law enforcement and has been doing predator catching since before I was even born. So I decided to take a seat with Chris Hansen and catch some answers.

I'm Chris Hansen.

I'm co-founder and correspondent reporter for the True Blue Streaming Crime Network. We do a lot of crime and investigative reporting. Our take on mysteries, which exposes predators trying to exploit children online. And we also work on a number of documentaries, including this particular project,

exposing the sort of thing that goes on on Roblox.

I wanted to ask you about some of the comments that Roblox has specifically stated about like predator catching. One of the main complaints is pretending to be a child. I want to know your answer. It's kind of obvious, but the importance of using decoy accounts to just find different predators.

Well, it's so obvious. In order to figure out whether somebody is looking for a 14 year old or not, you have to say that you're 14.

Duh.

How do you find out if somebody wants a hamburger? Well, you ask them if they want a hamburger. Like, it's so obvious. I don't know how this is happening.

Couldn't do it without using decoy accounts. In the very beginning, we had an online watchdog group, Perverted Justice, do that work. And now, and for the last several years, it's been members of law enforcement who have opposed it. It's children online, merely sitting in one of these areas, and they wait to be approached by somebody who is seeking to exploit children.

And then the conversation takes place. And they wait to be approached. That's to exploit children and then the conversation takes place going out and asserting this themselves. It's not like they're trying to bait this guy into doing it. No, they're the ones that are initiating this and pushing for it themselves.

It all happens according to the law, and then that gets turned over. Now, I understand that any time somebody's not with law enforcement, it gives pause to a corporation. It's like, okay, here's this kid.

We don't know whether he's following the rules properly. We don't know if he's running this by a lawyer. Maybe you could argue that they just don't want that sort of activity on their platform.

But you think they'd be more worried

about the activity that you're exposing.

That's what I've been trying to get at this whole time.

I'm worried about that, number one.

And then you can to wonder what the problem is here. I mean if I was the CEO of you Roblox I would make you an ambassador for security. I you know I would get out in front of this thing and do what would be a fantastic promotional move. I'm a little dumbfounded that they haven't figured it out given

that these guys are in the hot seat. Well they're so afraid of having robots become synonymous with grooming online that's the reason why Is that they're so afraid of protecting their brand they're destroying it.

That's what's happening. We invented this stuff in some ways. You know, why don't they get ahead of it and get a young guy on their team?

That's what I'm doing with you, right?

Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, sure.

I heard a long time ago that if you're not listening to the youngest guy or girl in the room, you're missing opportunity. You have to evolve and you have to keep on top of this technology. You have to bring new ideas into the room to do your job. My job is to expose bad people.

You are helping. I mean, the thing is I've made it very, very clear to Roblox since the beginning. Give us a private line.

We are open to communicate with you. We want to talk with you guys. We know a lot of these really bad actors and the first official contact I had with them was the cease and desist letter. What a surprise. Formal from a

public image standpoint, I mean, you're killing the messenger, right? It's not like you're out there tracking these guys down with tasers and smoke guns. I mean, you're providing information

to the platform to do something about it. One of the major complaints that Roblox had about me was that I was actually going to law enforcement first before sending their report just so that they would have a start to finish conversation of everything that took place. Did you guys ever reach out to social media sites before the sting goes down?

No, we always go to law enforcement. We work with law enforcement in everything we do.

And that is to ensure-

Yeah, duh, of course. Like, yeah, if you don't work with the law enforcement, in everything we do. And that is to ensure-

Of course there's prosecution. That's why the prosecution rate in these days is

99.1%

in this law enforcement- Yeah, this is some guy that's dog whistling. It's people that have been banned You really think that you can do that bro? Like you really you really think that it's not gonna be it's so we we know what you're doing Everybody knows what you're doing. What are you doing? You trying to be smart?

Oh my god

Corporation should be more concerned about reporting when it finds too law enforcement to investigate First oh my god

I'm gonna read to you a quote from roblox is corporate blog describing our operations similar to actual predators They often impersonate my actively approached users and then try to lead them on to different platforms have really explicit conversations Yes, we obviously do not talk to these predators. We don't impersonate real children or decoys or, you know, adults.

Well, I think if they're mischaracterizing what you're doing, that's wrong. Based upon what you said to me, you don't actively bait these guys in terms of making the first approach. You merely set up a profile of somebody who's underage and you exist in that room until an adult approaches one of your decoys. Then a conversation takes place, they get exposed, and that information gets turned over to law enforcement. And in many cases, they do something,

and then you report that, both on your platform as a citizen journalist, a young guy working on these stories, and to robots to take action as a corporate citizen.

I thought it was kind of wild how they compared what we're doing to actual predators.

Well, if they're mischaracterizing I thought it was kind of wild how they compared what we're doing to actual predators

This is a this is an existential problem that exists on basically every social media platform and social media platforms actively try to lobby to avoid having restrictions and awareness on this placed because they don't want people to realize that it's happening and how often it happens. Like this is a very common occurrence. Now, obviously, the good thing is that most kids know not to like, you know, follow the white rabbit and go down that rabbit hole and you know, meet up with some random weird guy. But you know, one out of 100 of them do. And the problem is that whenever you have a guy that's doing it every day talking

to 10 kids a day, you're going to have one of those happen. Or the white van. Yeah, the white van. There you go. And so it's a predator trap. Yeah, exactly. And so that's the issue is that a lot of these companies are afraid of having any investigation into this because they're worried about what it will imply for their brand.

Yes, these dangers are out there. And then if your child is approached by a predator, they need to come to the parents I mean, that's the first line of defense great what you're doing. It's great what I do Yeah, great that law enforcement in the National Center for Missing Exploded Children does all this work every day across It's great that roblox has a department that takes a look at something

So what's not great is the lack of connection here that could make it even better and safer. Until that happens, we have to show parents what goes on here and they have to have the

discussion with the kids and say, hey, be careful.

What made you interested into getting into Roblox?

Because it's where weirdos are.

I was personally getting communications on social media saying, you need to look into this, you need to look into this, you need to look into this. You need to look into this. You need to look into this. And then we saw a big case down in Florida where a guy was arrested in central Florida for actually giving them Roebucks and having to exploit siblings and other. It made headlines down in Florida. And so I started digging into it. We had good contacts with that sheriff's department there.

We actually ironically just did a predator's game. was so big and so many kids use the platform. Like there's definitely a degree where like, I bet smaller platforms probably have a even, maybe even larger ratio of this bad stuff happening than Roblox does. But because Roblox is so big, the, even if the ratio is small,

if it's 1% of people, that's still, if they have a hundred million users a day, that's a hundred, that's a million people.

That's a lot of fucking problems. So we started with an interview there, and it turns out that in the same jurisdiction, there was a f***ing old girl who was exploited on Roblox by a man all the way over in Inland. And so we interviewed that victim's mother, and all of a sudden all these cases started

developing, including the lawsuit by the Attorney General of Louisiana.

That's interesting you mention Florida, because we got an arrest there. We got it in Polk County and it was a guy who possessed-

High-fives him.

Polk County, as you know, is where Sheriff Grady Judd is, and they're very active in this state. Yeah, he really doesn't fuck around. This guy's not fucking around at all. Oh yeah. First of all, it breaks my heart and I'm so sorry that you had to deal with this as a younger guy on this particular platform. The fact that you were bullied and preyed upon and took advantage of and that it went to the extent it did, it breaks my heart. And this is why we do these investigations.

But to see you at your age, turn it into a positive and do something about it, I think is incredible and admirable.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

For a guy who's been kicking around doing this for 42 or 43 years now, it's really cool because when I started on television, I was your age. I was 22 years old.

So what I- Damn, that's actually- That's crazy to think, yeah. Wow.

Yeah, that's weird.

To do this kind of work, it's very impressive to me because I know what it takes.

Yeah, I mean, it's very crazy when you start looking into this stuff. I mean, it's a rabbit hole. It only gets more disturbing the more you see it.

Well, you know, and since we announced that we're doing this documentary and that you are collaborating. I am overwhelmed.

Oh yeah, I saw a tweet on Twitter. It got like 160,000 likes that you're just even looking.

Well this is, again, like this is the Grim Reaper of PR. Whenever somebody finds out that Chris Hansen is looking into their app... Like what's worse than that? That's awful.

Into the platform. Really? That's awful. ...into the platform.

Really?

Think about it.

That's the thing. People have known about these issues for so long, but journalists haven't done enough to like really look into it. And now it's starting to break into the world where everybody's starting to like, start to be aware.

Well, now you're seeing more mainstream, you know, outlets covering it. Yeah. you know, outlets covering it. Look, we have the ability to infiltrate this world because we've been doing it for 21 years,

first with To Catch a Predator, and for the last two and a half years, it's been through our streaming crime network with Takedown. So we know how to do this and work with law enforcement. Now, a lot of people can go out and do this stuff independently,

but here you are, a good example of somebody who has done the work and given it to law enforcement, you know, and that's the key here, because if you expose these guys and, you know, make fun of them and do a borat thing, like some other content creators, they often don't face the consequences. I'm glad that he brought that up. Yeah, I'm glad he knows about this too, Is that you have a lot of weirdos that go and do this and they're really just looking for somebody that's it's okay to

Beat up on right where it's like, okay Yeah, you're gonna find a child predator and then beat them up and bully them like I'm sorry But like I'm not really gonna clutch a whole lot of pearls about this But at the same time, you need to also be thinking about, is this serving a goal that's beneficial for anybody other than myself? And I think the answer for that is generally no. It's not making this person, you know, like it's not holding them accountable. Really, it's not stopping them from doing this.

It's just basically making content for yourself and then punishing somebody that you don't like, which again, good reason to not like them, but there's not really a lot to it. Respectfully disagree. Well, um, the problem and here's the issue. It's like what he and Chris Hansen literally just said it. They interfere with the ability to the police to actually do anything

because they usually brutalize this person or have some sort of other issue that makes it to where this person is now the victim of a separate crime. They are obfuscating and muddying the waters. I mean, he's the one saying it I'm not even saying yeah

And I think the thing is to a lot of the cameras might make this content is because we reach out to roblox We give them the emails we give them all the information They don't respond until after we publish a video that gets millions of views on YouTube You know, it makes me concerned because if we're getting that what are real victims getting. Look, I understand a little bit of a roadblock situation here.

What they're trying to do is follow the protocol. When they see something, they are mandated to report that to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which then refers it to law enforcement. And that's good. And they should be doing that. But why they wouldn't also take advantage of information given to them, wrapped with

a bow around it, you have because if they do that then it shows that they're aware of it and I think that them being aware of it they're worried about being seen as like the arbiters for this and then they get sued for it later on and they say oh well you took action about these cases why aren't you taking action with this case? That's probably what's going on. That's what I'm guessing. I don't know.

It's telling me that they wouldn't see the opportunity here to be an ally of yours as opposed to somebody, you know, they're making an example of and saying

your brief rule doesn't ban you.

I don't understand that. From a, from a corporate citizen aspect, it doesn't make sense. From a public relations standpoint it doesn't make sense. And from a justice seeking standpoint it doesn't make sense. So I don't know that during the course of this that we'll get a chance, I'll get a chance to sit down with somebody at Roblox and I have a feeling that's gonna happen. But I'm gonna be posting-

The moment that one of them does an interview, this entire thing will collapse. And I don't think that they will do an interview. Because I think they know that. Because anybody with any good intentions, like Chris Hansen or Schlepp or Jadeon or any other one, like, you've got to remember that a lot of guys become police officers. This is like their version of, you know, this is their best case

scenario. A lot of guys imagine becoming police officers and catching these specific kinds of people. And so really, you've got to keep in mind, like, this is the kind of stuff that they're going to be locked in on. And they're going to be the most focused on in general. This is their moment. Yeah, exactly. Like this is their 1% now.

Yeah.

Do you really think that they want to like micromanage crackheads downtown? No, that that sucks. That's awful. Or like, try to like stop some kid that's selling drugs in a high school. Like who cares? Like, oh, he's selling weed.

Oh, wow.

This is so horrible. No, they want to catch the predators. That's the main thing.

All of those question when that interview takes place. To young people who look up to you and see predators in online spaces, what is the single most important step that they can take to protect themselves?

I would be hesitant to tell people to conduct their own investigations, but I'm adamant that you've got to report this stuff to your local law enforcement agency. You got to report it to the service provider. You got to report it to the platform. Hopefully between those three things you get some action. I think 15-20 years ago law enforcement would be a little overwhelmed by this. You know if you're in a small

town you go to the police department. Well they weren't equipped for it back then because they didn't have the same type of infrastructure. Like now law enforcement is much more integrated with technology. I mean, very clearly like this happened, like I mean, versus like when To Catch a Predator came out, it was a totally different universe than it is now.

And they say, okay, well, you know, I don't know how to investigate it. Well, today every department has the ability to investigate it. Well, today, every department has the ability to investigate this stuff, and they are very willing to take these cases up.

It's an absolute honor to have Chris Hansen featured on this channel. Chris Hansen is flying me out soon to actually feature in his Roblox documentary about exploitation. With everything that we've learned so far,

one question persists. Why did I get this cease and desist? I'll let this alleged former Roblox employee answer this question for you.

Uh-oh

You have to make a decision, right? You keep your players safe But then it would be less of them on the platform

Exactly, or you just let them do what they want to do and then all the numbers look good and investors will be happy. Yep You don't even need a former employee to say that and investors will be happy. Roblox employees told a very similar story to this in 2024. Roblox is actively- Why can't they just get the information where they find- Like, why can't they find somebody at the company that said that this is okay? And that said to prioritize, like, you know, making money over child safety? Why can't you get them and charge them personally for, like, criminal negligence,

child endangerment, something. Like you've got to do something about this that way it doesn't just keep happening. That's the problem. I get so frustrated about this. So annoying.

The platform into arbitration, a tactic so unethical that platforms like Uber and Lyft actually have policies against doing this. The reason they're doing it is even more outrageous. Because this person received so many benefits from using the platform, he cannot now complain that Roblox is trying to prevent him from seeking justice in court for the life-altering harm he suffered. Here's why I personally care so much about this problem.

Who's been offered free Robux to do something that was inappropriate in the game? Or someone has said, I'll give you some free Robux if you come and follow me on Snapchat or TikTok or something like that. Who's had that happen?

Okay.

Okay. That's crazy and you know who could have expected this literally anyone with a fucking brain anybody could have told you this was going to happen absolutely this most crazy video I've seen yes a really good video I'll link it to you guys at the end of it I've seen a lot corruption in tech, but I've never seen a company harm this many young people at the scale Roblox has. They can say whatever they want about safety or try to discredit me, but the arrests and their response to those arrests speak louder than any PR statement that they could possibly make. This isn't just about moderation. The rot goes all the way up to the CEO, a man whose vision

includes adding dating to this platform and defending predatory games like Meve City. Why would you even do that? The only way for this to stop is for there to be direct legal accountability. That is the only way is if there is legislation and legal accountability for the company. Even if people make the biggest amount of noise possible on the Internet, it will negatively affect Roblox,

but Roblox will ultimately recover from it because the Internet will just move on to something different and people will continue using Roblox. Kids will keep using Roblox. Like I'm just being realistic here, right? Like, internet outrage is important, but it's not the thing that you need.

The leadership of pedos is why it keeps happening? I don't think you should say the leadership of pedos. Like, again, that's a crazy statement to make, it's totally unfounded. You should... Why muddy the waters with baseless accusations when the truth is more than enough? Why do you need to make stuff up? It's weird.

Let us and lawmakers know how deep these problems run. Call your congressman and tell him you won't stand by while Roblox puts children in danger. I've been sounding the alarm for over a year as a whistleblower and Roblox's leadership Has tried to silence what needs to happen a surprise David Buzuki needs to sit in front of Congress Yeah, you're up true. He needs to explain why so many people have been abducted

I don't it like that's a good start. They need to subpoena employee communications and figure out if this was a systemic top-down decision, and if so, where did it start from and then hold the people that were the decision makers of that accountable personally. That's what you need to do. Embarrassing him in front of Congress is great,

but that doesn't really do anything. He's still gonna go back home and continue making billions of dollars doing this. You're correct, but they should be investigated? Well, I don't think that, I mean, I think it's very, like law enforcement is a limited resource, and I don't think that we should be applying law enforcement in a way that is just punitive. I'm talking about this because there are certain people that are doing this that are creating an action. I don't think they need to investigate every executive

at Roblox for having like weird stuff on their computer. This is like a crazy logic leap. Like let's focus on what's actually happening rather than inventing new problems.

Abused on his platform.

That's just me.

His company is choosing profits over safety.

Man, this video is fucking good. I did not expect it to be this good. Goddamn. Roblox, take a seat featuring Chris Hansen. Not a good title that you want to have. Oh my god. Let me link you guys the video and go ahead and make sure to, what do you call it, make sure to like it and you know Schlepp I

think absolutely deserves a sub. I mean this whole movement and everything is something that I think has attracted a lot of sympathy for him. I think people have been very positive about him talking and doing this and I think it's a great thing. I'm very happy about it. And overall, hopefully this will continue. Hopefully it will get more, uh, more attention and there will ultimately be a legal outcome for this. That is a consequence for this behavior, which is I think the main issue that we're running into right now. This couldn't be avoided to be honest. Roblox is a company that needs to make profit.

Well, I don't know about that. I mean, I think Roblox is definitely maybe the worst actor in this regard, but I think in many cases this will also be true to. It's going to 41 dislikes or PDFs. Probably just people clicking the wrong button to be honest, but yeah, I'll link it to you guys right now. What do you think the time frame for internet outrage is?

About 3 weeks. I think most issues, like if you really think about it, even something really big like the Epstein files, think about how big they were for like, it's about a month or so, and even a month is stretching it. So at a certain point, people just get tired of different issues. And so like at a very, very high level, I think a big issue is like a one month type situation.

I'm still talking about it. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Somewhere Roblox is getting just called their boss and said, ask me, go to saw this video. Well, I don't really think so. I feel like there's a lot of people that also, you know, like they're going to watch it. Like, I mean, it already has 2 million views. I mean, and it came out like today. So like me watching and reacting to it is like the least of their problems.

Like everybody is talking about this on the Internet. Like I'm just simply one drop in a very, very big tidal wave. And I think that's a good thing. I'm glad. And, you know, I was one of the first people that talked about it I think at least and so that is a good thing but yeah second has been gold videos hit the YouTube well I honestly I think this I've made like a gold videos hit the YouTube well I honestly I think this I've made like a

maybe a few of them