Wednesday, October 9th 2024

Roblox Comes Under Fire for Failing To Protect Minors and Misrepresenting User Data

To anyone following gaming with any sort of regularity, it's plain to see that Roblox is by far one of the biggest, if not the biggest game among young audiences. Now, a new report from Hindenburg Research claims that Roblox has not only misrepresented its user count but has also failed to protect minors, who make up as much as 60% of the game platform's users. After Hindenburg released the statement, Roblox responded to the claim denying the allegations, citing that it strictly enforces its community standards, although it admits that bots and inflated user counts are an issue the company actively tries to fight.

Hindenburg's report alleges that Roblox has repeatedly inflated its user figure, intentionally using vague language to mislead its investors about how many users it has. The organization also claims to have discovered several cases of sexual abuse and exploitation of minors on the platform, citing incidents involving kidnapping and sexual assault against minors that stemmed from in-game meetings.
Hindenburg's allegations about misrepresenting user data stem from claims the company has made in its investor communications, citing close correlation between Roblox's assertion of how many people use its platform and its daily active user count—daily active users could easily be multiple accounts run by a single person or bots from developers on the platform trying to make their content seem more popular. Essentially, Roblox appears to be using intentionally vague language in its investor reports in order to drive up its share price by making the platform look more popular than it is.

Interviews with former Roblox employees also claim that the company apparently has separate metrics for internal user tracking and tracking done for investor reports, and that the internal books track users with multiple accounts, despite Roblox's insistence to the contrary. According to those interviews, Roblox's actual user count is as much as 30% lower than it claims at any given time.
In addition to alternate accounts, bots are rampant on the platform. For example, Roblox's 7th most popular game, Adopt Me!, has garnered over 83,000 Change.org signatures to remove it from the platform due to extensive "botting" that "breaks" Roblox. Roblox's 2nd most visited game, Blox Fruits, was dominated by traffic from Vietnam, where we found numerous Facebook groups, including 5 with 50,000 to 117,000 members each, advertising and soliciting tools to run 20+ Roblox bot tabs at a time.
The researchers also collected data on Roblox's engagement across the platform's top roughly 7,200 games, finding that user engagement was far below what Roblox claimed. It found "millions of "zombie" engagement hours," logged by what appear to be bots—activity that the researchers found by identifying accounts that spent over 24 hours in the game at a time.

The lengthy report provides evidence of several cases to substantiate Hindenburg's claims, including a group on Roblox that goes by "Adult Studios" whose 3,334 members were "openly trading child pornography and soliciting sexual acts from minors." The report also cites data from other organizations that have found that this sort of exploitation of minors is not uncommon on the Roblox platform.

After the report emerged, Roblox responded to the claims in the report in an investor relations post, calling the report misleading, citing its Community Standards and a recent blog post, and shifting the focus to cash flow metrics, rather than directly addressing the inflated user counts.

Hindenburg Research responded to Roblox in a post to X with a video clip containing very damning in-game screen capture clips, seemingly seeking more accountability from the game platform:
Roblox's response is an abject failure to address the two core allegations in our report, including:
  • Evidence that Roblox has been systematically lying for years about the number of people on its platform and their genuine level of engagement.
  • That the platform is a pedophile hellscape with no up-front screening, replete with child porn trading rings and prolific sexually explicit content, all available to children.
Sources: Hindenburg Research, Hindenburg Research on X, Roblox (PDF)
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23 Comments on Roblox Comes Under Fire for Failing To Protect Minors and Misrepresenting User Data

#2
eidairaman1
The Exiled Airman
I heard about this crap like 2 years ago

Let the assholes burn
Posted on Reply
#3
kawice
That only proofs people can post all sort of sh!t on the internet. The alleged report, yhmhm, tweet is clearly toxic.
Wtf is Hindenburg Research and why we should care what they say. I DON'T. Didn't even know Rolblox exists till this article.

Not sure how this article fits hardware and game blog. Obvious click bait.
Posted on Reply
#4
fec32a4de
kawiceThat only proofs people can post all sort of sh!t on the internet. The alleged report, yhmhm, tweet is clearly toxic.
Wtf is Hindenburg Research and why we should care what they say. I DON'T. Didn't even know Rolblox exists till this article.

Not sure how this article fits hardware and game blog. Obvious click bait.
Are you a bot? This article is part of gaming - and a big one in regards to younger audiences.

Just cause you never heard of it doesn't mean it's minor. Hell, if we're on topic of shit general public never heard of you can list most tech and games; how many people know if Silent Hill 2? Or the entire series? Or in gergards to tech like DDR5?

Roblox has been up to shady stuff for a while now, glad TPU is reporting on it.

There's: arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/open-source-roblox-tool-will-allow-3d-world-creation-from-text-prompts/

And

arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/08/roblox-facilitates-illegal-gambling-for-minors-according-to-new-lawsuit/
Posted on Reply
#5
mav1178
kawiceThat only proofs people can post all sort of sh!t on the internet. The alleged report, yhmhm, tweet is clearly toxic.
Wtf is Hindenburg Research and why we should care what they say. I DON'T. Didn't even know Rolblox exists till this article.

Not sure how this article fits hardware and game blog. Obvious click bait.
Hindenburg Research is well known as a short seller in investment circles, so part of the motivation behind this may very well be motivation to short stock.

they've done a lot of this over the years, the most recent being their report on Supermicro and the short position they had when the stock collapsed at the end of Q3.

as for how this fits hardware or gaming? its an online game, quite popular, and PC-based since 2006 (among other platforms)
Posted on Reply
#6
BArms
Been hearing the same about Facebook and Instragram as well for awhile now.
Posted on Reply
#7
eidairaman1
The Exiled Airman
Wow look at all the roblox defenders coming out of the woodwork, perhaps should be vetted?
Posted on Reply
#8
Chaitanya
kawiceThat only proofs people can post all sort of sh!t on the internet. The alleged report, yhmhm, tweet is clearly toxic.
Wtf is Hindenburg Research and why we should care what they say. I DON'T. Didn't even know Rolblox exists till this article.

Not sure how this article fits hardware and game blog. Obvious click bait.
As pointed above Hindenberg is a short seller aka greedy stock market manipulator. Just another case of pot calling kettle black.
Posted on Reply
#9
Count von Schwalbe
Nocturnus Moderatus
ChaitanyaAs pointed above Hindenberg is a short seller aka greedy stock market manipulator. Just another case of pot calling kettle black.
The point about active users, yes. The other one needs as much media attention as we can give it.
Posted on Reply
#10
JWNoctis
Count von SchwalbeThe point about active users, yes. The other one needs as much media attention as we can give it.
Arguably, any platform with significant population of minors and allowing messaging of any kind at all would fall into these ills. What more could be done, where supervision fail and community as a whole endangers? I do agree, though.

Entirely doing away with those messaging functions would do just fine. Doubt anyone would agree, when it merely shifts the problem elsewhere.
Posted on Reply
#11
RaceT3ch
Took them long enough.
Tons of games there that are not kid friendly at all, some are based on historical tragedies, others are straight up sexual, scams that steal your account or spoof it, or its gambling.
Hell, even the messaging aspect has a bunch of predators or scammers
Meanwhile normal people get banned for saying hello :wtf:
Posted on Reply
#12
mb194dc
Yikes, pretty daming stuff. Need to watch what kids are playing.
Posted on Reply
#13
RaceT3ch
Did I mention the avatars?
Yea they're pretty bad too ever since roblox allowed you to make your own stuff.
It's a shame, there's some pretty interesting games like Flood Escape 2 on there.
Posted on Reply
#14
GerKNG
it's easy to dunk on everyone if you, the parent is responsible for your child.
we do not have to lock down the internet because a child could come in contact with explicit material. prevent your children from seeing this content.
Posted on Reply
#15
RaceT3ch
GerKNGit's easy to dunk on everyone if you, the parent is responsible for your children.
we do not have to lock down the internet because a child could come in contact with explicit material. prevent your children from seeing this content.
Roblox is designed for kids though, is kinda their issue.
But yes, parents need to step in since Roblox does nothing these days.
Posted on Reply
#16
Caring1
Nope, it all comes back to the parents responsibility to vet what THEIR children are watching and playing.
Posted on Reply
#17
DaemonForce
Not a minor game, game is targeted to minors by throwing everything at a wall and checking out what sticks.
I can kind of see why it has such a following but it's definitely not for me. Also...
Cpt.JankRoblox has not only misrepresented its user count but has also failed to protect minors, who make up as much as 60% of the game platform's users.
Again? Dude...It's bad enough that my favorite streaming services are caught by the balls with DMCA, COPPA and JASRAC but we need some way to just yeet all the minors from social media activity. They should be able to enjoy some of the same things on a heavily restricted level with social media accounts but have ZERO capability of sending or receiving any kind of interactions from users.

You know that thing we had in our critical development called real parenting? Don't talk to strangers? Don't play in the road? Etc? Prev gen didn't get it and this one sure as hell didn't get the notes either. This is why you'll often see annoying squeaks zipping through public lobbies screeching, being creeps and hitting you with non-Euclidean slurs while they auto-dox themselves with FULL NAME and birth year @EmailDomain as their username. They don't deserve any of the good things we had, that much is obvious.

GATEKEEP.
Posted on Reply
#18
_roman_
Parents are responsible.

Not the others. Not the kids.
Posted on Reply
#19
Vayra86
mb194dcYikes, pretty daming stuff. Need to watch what kids are playing.
Yeah, but to me as a parent this was true from the get-go. I mean, anyone who's frequenting the internets in the last ten-twenty years should damn well know better than to let kids on it unsupervised. It has lost its innocence decades ago - if it was ever innocent to begin with.
_roman_Parents are responsible.

Not the others. Not the kids.
This. But, responsibility can be exercised in different ways, and demanding safe content isn't a strange path either.
Caring1Nope, it all comes back to the parents responsibility to vet what THEIR children are watching and playing.
Companies selling you a story and not acting to make that story happen/maintained though, deserve to be axed. Its simply false marketing. If they can't moderate their shit proper, they shouldn't keep it in the air, simple. Similar things apply to all social media and public platforms imho. And they ALL fail at it. You can't put that shit on parents - even they are stuck in a world of constant misinformation.
Posted on Reply
#20
Steevo
There are too many bots and shills allowed on the large platforms. I have turned in porn, scams, spam, celebrity scam accounts and they will do nothing scared of advertising knowing the real user count and the real number of bots and spam.

I got a strike on Farcebook for posting screenshots of content that they deemed not an issue for a spam account.


In this case, they have probably paid for some of those bots, easy way to inflate numbers and milk advertising revenue.
Vayra86Yeah, but to me as a parent this was true from the get-go. I mean, anyone who's frequenting the internets in the last ten-twenty years should damn well know better than to let kids on it unsupervised. It has lost its innocence decades ago - if it was ever innocent to begin with.

Companies selling you a story and not acting to make that story happen/maintained though, deserve to be axed. Its simply false marketing. If they can't moderate their shit proper, they shouldn't keep it in the air, simple. Similar things apply to all social media and public platforms imho. And they ALL fail at it. You can't put that shit on parents - even they are stuck in a world of constant misinformation.
Don't think that kids are innocent and it's entirely on the parents to filter what their kids see and access on the internet. Back in the day all of us boys had snuck a peek at the nudie mags at the store, snuck a smoke or a beer.
Posted on Reply
#21
R-T-B
SteevoDon't think that kids are innocent and it's entirely on the parents to filter what their kids see and access on the internet.
Nope, sorry, strong disagree. Still is completely on the parents, regardless of how innocent the kiddies are.

That being said, this is a kids platform supposedly. No way adults should be on it at all, frankly.
Posted on Reply
#22
RaceT3ch
R-T-BNope, sorry, strong disagree. Still is completely on the parents, regardless of how innocent the kiddies are.

That being said, this is a kids platform supposedly. No way adults should be on it at all, frankly.
Yea, update: It turns out they're adding adult features like swearing (albeit light and 17+ only) and literal dating now.
I'm not sure if this is a kid's platform anymore.
Posted on Reply
#23
R-T-B
RaceT3chYea, update: It turns out they're adding adult features like swearing (albeit light and 17+ only) and literal dating now.
I'm not sure if this is a kid's platform anymore.
As long as they seperate the two ecosystems couldn't care less. Thats how it should be if not being marketed as a kids exclusive game anymore.
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