Roblox Bans “Vigilante” Schlep from Stopping Online Child Predators

Written by Cade Fergusson

Roblox accused Schlep of "dangerous vigilantism" and violated its terms of service by sharing personally identifiable information and directing conversations off the platform.

A young man was sitting at home, when suddenly he was banned from the Mega-Popular game Roblox for “violating their Terms of Service,” and received a cease and desist letter. As a result, the CEO of Roblox (David Baszucki) has been under immense backlash and scrutiny for his new policies for the platform, and the public is outraged. 

Schlep, a popular YouTuber for making content regarding Roblox, was permanently banned off of the platform for his ‘Violations of Terms of Service,’  after conducting sting operations on Roblox to catch Online Child Predators.  Schlep has been accused by Roblox of being a “Vigilante” and putting the lives of users in danger, even though Schlep did get police involved in the sting operations and has gotten a total of 6 arrests. 

The Roblox Chief Safety Officer (Matt Kaufman) claims to enforce child safety on the platform, but many reports of abuse on Roblox have surfaced, and people's safety have repeatedly been compromised.  Schlep himself was a victim of child abuse on the platform and was hospitalized, the perpetrator being a game developer and for years was funded by Roblox.  

Schlep’s mother reached out to Roblox using their ‘Report system’ and their lawyer Martin Gould said in a statement mentioned on NBC Chicago, “Roblox was unresponsive until she threatened legal action. Only then did they engage – and only to claim the abuse happened ‘on another platform,’ despite the predator being a contracted Roblox developer who the company promoted at events.”  

On August 22, Schlep posted a 30 minute YouTube commentary regarding the situation and criticizing Roblox for their actions.  The video garnered 7.3 million views in the last week and has been received very positively by the public, with other YouTubers making commentary videos on the topic. 

YouTuber Asmongold's reaction

Schlep’s ‘Roblox, Take a Seat’ video

In the video Schlep posted, he interviewed the especially well known ‘Predator Catcher’ Chris Hanson, known for his segment on Dateline NBC ‘To Catch A Predator.’ Hanson said, “you think they’d be more worried about the activity that you're exposing.… if I were the CEO of Roblox, I would make you an ambassador for security.”

In the past week, the internet has been outraged with people even making a petition to remove The CEO of Roblox (David Baszucki). The petition has 271,582 signatures and is rapidly growing, with many people agreeing with Schlep and wanting the CEO to resign.  Schlep is expected to keep doing his “vigilante” work on other platforms but hopes that Roblox will step down and let him continue his work.

Regarding the controversy about Roblox, I think that Roblox should step back and let Schlep continue the work he does catching online predators.  Based on all of what Roblox has done about their ever increasing problem on their platform, banning people from helping the situation is a bad call and should seriously reconsider their actions…but those are just my thoughts.