Roblox accused of lying to investors about user numbers by Hindenburg Research / A short-seller report claims Roblox intentionally includes bots and alt accounts in its user numbers and fails to adequately protect children.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/8/24265145/roblox-hindenburg-reseach-dau-child-safety-short-seller-report
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>The firm also claims Roblox isn’t doing enough to protect children on the platform, alleging its “in-game research revealed an X-rated pedophile hellscape, exposing children to grooming, pornography, violent content and extremely abusive speech.” Roblox shares dipped following the release of the report.
I have two boys, 12 and 14. Roblox for a long time was the only thing I specifically blocked in my routing rules, outside of generic parental controls like adult content and such. We noticed our oldest was being really withdrawn and depressed, and eventually got him to talking only to find an older girl was grooming him on there and effectively emotionally abusing him.
I know both kids really liked that game, but it’s not even remotely worth allowing them to access it.
Quote directly from [the Hindenburg report](https://hindenburgresearch.com/roblox/):
> After we found a username, we listed our age as “under 13” to see if children are being exposed to adult content. By merely plugging ‘adult’ into the Roblox search bar, we found a group called “Adult Studios” with 3,334 members openly trading child pornography and soliciting sexual acts from minors.
> We tracked some of the members of “Adult Studios” and easily found 38 Roblox groups – one with 103,000 members – openly soliciting sexual favors and trading child pornography.
What. The. Fuck.
Roblox can be good as long as parents keep an eye on their kids. I let my son play but he only uses it on the pc in the living room. I also have a mechanical keyboard so I can hear when he is typing. Roblox does have parental controls that you can stop kids from chatting completely.
Luckily enough my son uses Facebook messenger kids to talk to his friends while playing (this sends the whole chat to the parents as it’s happening).
Doesn’t Reddit also include bots and alt accounts in its user report numbers? I always thought that earnings releases for Reddit, etc being in large part judged by user numbers like Netflix was silly because of the bot issue the former has that the latter wouldn’t. I assumed Reddit was flying high on it during results because boomers who don’t use Reddit drive most of the trading volume for the stock at institutional investors and banks and so don’t understand the platform.
I’ve avoided adding a long-term holding in Reddit for this reason. If someone like Hindenburg doesn’t expose them earlier, the post-election drop in bot activity will show up in next year’s results reports.
Do twitch next
Still can’t wrap my head around why they ever went public in the first place.
So basically hidenburg is sorting them. In 2 weeks be ready, the shares will bounce back and Hindenburg will again make millions.
How come no one see this as illegal?
They don’t fail to protect children, they actively profit from the exploitation of children by game makers.
So someone who’s hoping that the stock price will go down on roblox stocks is putting shit about Roblox on the web.
Who would have thought.