Roblox Banned a Creator for ‘Hunting’ Pedophiles

Question

The Rolling Stone article looks at a conflict between Roblox, one of the biggest online gaming platforms, and a YouTuber named Schlep, who says he tries to catch adults preying on minors in the game. Schlep claims that he has provided evidence to both Roblox and law enforcement to expose predators, but Roblox banned him and sent a cease-and-desist letter. The company argued that his methods, like posing as minors and communicating with users outside the platform, broke their rules. This disagreement highlights a bigger question about responsibility: should individuals take action to protect kids online when companies seem to fall short, or should that job belong entirely to the platform itself?

The article also presents several lawsuits and complaints that accuse Roblox of not doing enough to protect young players. Some of these cases allege that predators have used Roblox’s chat system and in-game currency to groom or exploit children, and that the company hasn’t enforced safety measures quickly enough. Roblox defends itself by pointing to new safety features, stricter moderation, and age-verification tools. Still, critics argue that these updates came only after years of public pressure and don’t fully solve the problem. Overall, the piece suggests that Roblox’s treatment of Schlep reflects a larger tension between corporate control and user-driven accountability in the fight to make online spaces safer for kids.

Answer 1

After looking through your source, as well as looking through a few of my own and even hearing about this claim before it was published on here, I can definitely say with confidence that this claim is indeed true. Although, I will say that the article you posted above is a bit hard to read through due to needing a subscription in order to read all of the content it has to offer. However, the title of the article still holds true to the claim above.

After doing some additional research, quite a few other sources have also reported on this very same topic. For instance, James Hale, an editing manager for the news and media company Tubefilter, wrote an article about how civilians catching criminals is not a new phenomenon, and that since post Covid-era, the same content that took place on Chris Hansen's channel has seen a spike in interest all over again. Schlep was indeed one of those content creators who took the issue of child safety seriously due to a similar prior experience as per https://www.tubefilter.com/2025/08/13/roblox-schlep-jidion-banned-predator-hunting/ mentions (Tubefilter, 2025). Not only that, but Roblox themselves even responded by sending Schlep a 'Cease and Desist' letter as well as permanently banned him from being able to play on the platform ever again -- this in turn caused a lot of doubt and hate towards the company rather than towards Schlep as no one other than the company themselves seems to see catching predators on your own as a "dangerous act" that harms users rather than helps them. They even went so far as to post a statement on their website, https://corp.roblox.com/newsroom/2025/08/more-on-removal-of-vigilantes-from-roblox, stating that the evolution of "vigilantism" "[] created an unsafe environment and normalized behavior that is both unacceptable on Roblox and is against our Terms of Use" (Roblox, 2025). They've even gone on to state that in 2024 alone, they've submitted a total of 24,522 reports alone (0.12% of 20.3 million total reports that submitted across the country) to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC for short), as well as have a trusted flagger program with trusted partners who report illegal activity on the platform, and even seem to have an AI implemented that helps take care of similar things (Roblox, 2025). Yet, as users such as Schlep and JiDion have seen no proper changes take place that can actually help protect younger users on said platform -- one example of this being the case is noted on Tubefilter where there's mention of how "Roblox [does] nothing" and that those who bail out just end up going right back onto the platform as if nothing happened (Tubefilter, 2025). Even other states have started taking notice of this very same issue happening, thus causing attornies such as La. Attorney General and Murrill suing Roblox for things such as consumer fraud regarding less safety precautions for kids, as per mention on https://www.kplctv.com/2025/08/29/roblox-under-fire-after-la-attorney-general-opens-lawsuit-ban-popular-youtuber/.

In short, there's a lot surrounding this specific topic, and it's definitely still something that is being taken into consideration even to this day.

Sources used:

https://www.kplctv.com/2025/08/29/roblox-under-fire-after-la-attorney-general-opens-lawsuit-ban-popular-youtuber/

https://corp.roblox.com/newsroom/2025/08/more-on-removal-of-vigilantes-from-roblox

https://www.tubefilter.com/2025/08/13/roblox-schlep-jidion-banned-predator-hunting/