FIRST Partnering with Roblox - A Platform with a Dangerous & Concerning Track Record

FIRST General Forum
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[cw: sexual harassment]

FIRST Audience,

Today, I saw that FIRST posted about their partnership with Roblox. Though their partnership has good intentions, Roblox is not aligned with FIRST values. My personal experience and the experience of others bring huge concerns.

I spent 10 years of my life playing Roblox and left after having been sexually harassed and stalked to the point that I was swatted. Regrettably, these problems were never effectively addressed, and numerous stalker accounts, like “NameKilled,” “NameStalker,” “NameMURDERED,” and others, continue to exist. Shown in Screenshots A in document below.

Around 50% of the harassment accounts are from when I was 12-14. They would join the game, I would locally ban, and they would make new accounts to rejoin and spam messages including death threats. I do not have screenshots of those messages. However, I have reported those accounts and only a few were removed. Screenshot B (in document below) shows harassment via Discord and Roblox, to go back to making food aka the whole sexist belief women belong in the kitchen. Screenshot C (in document below) shows people telling me that before we start a game, that I have to stream, use face cam, and other sexual remarks. Sadly, I do not have many screenshots of Roblox in-game harassment due to this treatment being normalized.

Actions like this are a plague on Roblox and are hardly ever properly addressed. In my adult years on Roblox, I spent a majority of it reporting scammers, doxers, swatters, and pedophiles to Roblox, Discord, and various law enforcement with little to no action being taken. These criminals rarely ever face a real life punishment even when their crimes affect the real-world.

Outside of my personal experience, Roblox also profits off of children making games. Besides being child labor, these children are either unpaid or minimally paid while working on profitable projects.

I would like FIRST to reconsider before endorsing a company and products that are bad at guarding their underaged users from dangers and have repeatedly fallen short to take action against rule violators, harmful individuals and youth exploitation for profit.

News Articles

YouTube Videos

The Roblox Developer Arrested By The FBI - https://youtu.be/wdDfdlLuAgA?si=kyoHfDQQWU30Z4xZ

How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ

Google Document with Censored Evidence & Supportive Signatures

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I’m not going to get into the ethics of this because I haven’t seen FIRST’s post and don’t know anything about the details of this partnership or potential benefits, but I do want to say that I’m sorry you had to go through what you did and thank you for spending time trying to make the platform safer for the kids on it even when nobody was paying attention to you.

If you do have a link to the post that would be great.

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From my limited knowledge of Roblox and its issues, I’m not sure I’d it’s really the platform/company I want to see FIRST partnering with.

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from an email titled “FIRST on Roblox, Introducing CEO Chris Moore, FIRST Championship update” sent to me by [email protected] on November 23rd, 2021: The Next Chapter of Teaching and Learning on Roblox - Roblox Blog

There is also this one pager that i have no source date for.

It seems Roblox doubled down on this commitment earlier this month, investing another $15 million into this (and other “community inspired projects”).

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I appreciate the support! It is hard to believe a gaming platform for youth has this toxic of a community and bad moderation. Part of what upsets me is the boasting of the Roblox moderation system in the article that FIRST reposted. I did enjoy playing the Roblox games but the community and moderation are severely lacking.

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