August 27, 2025 • 15 mins
For decades, Chris Hansen’s iconic catchphrase, "Why don't you have a seat?" was the prelude to exposing predators in the real world.
Now, his hunt has moved into the metaverse. His target is Roblox, the global gaming platform used by over 70 million people daily, most of whom are children. Hansen and his team allege the platform is a "cesspool" and a "hunting ground" for criminals, while Roblox maintains its safety systems are robust.
In this special report, "Privacy Please" goes beyond the headlines to investigate the clash. We explore the platform's design, from the "Avatar Loophole" that allows bad actors to bypass chat filters to the recommendation algorithm that can lead young users down dangerous paths.
Is this a simple case of a company needing to moderate more, or is the very business model that made Roblox a multi-billion dollar success also its greatest safety vulnerability?
Credited Resources & Further Reading
Primary Sources & Reporting:
- Takedown Across America with Chris Hansen: Official platform for Hansen's ongoing investigations and reporting.
- Roblox Corporate Statements & Community Standards: Official statements and policies from Roblox regarding their safety and moderation efforts.
- WIRED/Bloomberg Reporting: Recent articles from major tech publications that have investigated platform safety issues on Roblox and similar metaverse platforms.
- Common Sense Media: A non-profit organization that provides independent reviews and ratings for media and technology, often analyzing the safety features of platforms like Roblox.
(Note: As this is an ongoing investigation, it's recommended to reference the most current news articles and official press releases from the time of recording for the most up-to-date information.)
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
It looks like a child's drawing come to life.
Blocky, cheerful avatars runthrough a digital park.
The colors are bright, thesounds are playful.
It's a universe built onimagination, creativity and
connection, a place where over70 million people, most of them
children, log in every singleday to build, to play and to be
(00:32):
with their friends.
This is Roblox, and for yearsit has been the virtual backyard
for our generation.
But look closer In the shadowedcorners of a private server and
a chat window designed todisappear, a different kind of
connection is being made.
The avatar may look like ateenager, but the person behind
(00:56):
the keyboard is much older.
The friendly questions aboutyour favorite game slowly turn
more personal, more probing, and, in a production studio, miles
away from the servers and thecode, a familiar voice is
watching, a voice that hashaunted the nightmares of
Predators for two decades.
I think you know who I'mtalking about.
(01:18):
His name is Chris Hansen.
Remember that.
Why don't you have a seat rightover there, chris would say.
Chris Hansen isn't in a suburbanhome anymore.
He's not waiting for someone towalk through the door.
His new hunting ground is thesame one your kids call their
(01:39):
playground, and he alleges it'sa platform in crisis.
So is he right?
Is one of the most popularplatforms for children,
fundamentally unsafe.
Today, on Privacy, please.
We investigate the battle forthe soul of Roblox.
(02:09):
All righty, then, ladies andgentlemen, welcome back to
Privacy, please.
I'm your host, cameron Ivey,and what you just heard is not a
hypothetical.
It's the new reality on one ofthe biggest entertainment
platforms on earth.
For years, we've talked on thisshow about the privacy risks of
social media, the dangers ofdata brokers and a surveillance
(02:31):
baked into our smart devices,but what happens when the
platform isn't just a place toshare photos, but a world to
inhabit, a world populatedalmost entirely by children?
To understand this crisis ChrisHansen alleges is happening on
Roblox, you first need tounderstand who he is.
(02:54):
For a decade, chris Hansen was afixture of early 2000s
television.
His show To Catch a Predatorwas an uncomfortable must-watch
cultural phenomenon.
The formula was simple andbrutally effective.
In partnership with a watchdoggroup, hansen's team would
create sting operations.
(03:15):
Posing as teenagers in onlinechat rooms, they'd lure
suspected predators to a housefilled with hidden cameras and
just as the confrontation began,hansen would emerge from the
shadows.
I'm Chris Hansen with DatelineNBC, and we're doing a story
about adults who come to meetunderage teenagers.
(03:36):
He would say the show endedyears ago, but Hansen has
continued his work independentlyand now, through his project
Takedown Across America, he andhis team have turned their full
attention from the chat rooms ofthe past to the virtual worlds
of the present.
Their primary target, roblox.
(03:56):
Now, if you don't have a childunder the age of 16, you might
still think of Roblox as justthat blocky kids game, but
that's a profoundmisunderstanding of what it is.
It's less like a single videogame and more like a digital
Lego set the size of a galaxy.
It's an engine, a platformwhere users themselves create
(04:18):
and share the games, orexperiences, as the companies
call them.
The scale is almost impossibleto comprehend.
As of today, august 27th 2025,roblox has over 70 million daily
active users.
They spend billions of hours amonth on the platform and,
(04:39):
according to the company's owndata, more than half of its
users are under the age of 13.
More than half of its users areunder the age of 13.
More than half, it's an entireeconomy fueled by a virtual
currency called Robux, a socialnetwork, a creative outlet and,
according to Chris Hansen, it'sa predator's paradise.
(04:59):
That could be the name of likea band in high school, not a
very good band.
I'm going to verbatim say a clipfrom Chris Hansen from one of
his recent interviews andpodcasts.
He said it is a cesspool, it isa hunting ground.
We're talking to predatorsevery single day on this
(05:21):
platform who are activelylooking for children.
Their safety systems are a joke, end quote.
Hansen's allegations arespecific and deeply troubling.
He claims his team hasuncovered rampant grooming in
private chats and on third-partyapps like Discord, which users
are often lured to.
(05:41):
He points to the ease withwhich bad actors can bypass the
platform's chat filters usingspecial characters or coded
language.
And, most disturbingly, hehighlights the proliferation of
what are known as condo.
Games is designed explicitly tosimulate adult and sexual
(06:09):
interactions, using the game'sown mechanics and animations to
sexualize the childlike avatarsin ways that automated
moderation struggles to detect.
So you have this massive clash Achild safety crusader whose
name is synonymous with catchingpredators versus a 30 billion
billion tech Goliath thatinsists it's doing whatever it
can to protect its young users.
(06:31):
But is it that simple?
Is this a case of a companyturning a blind eye?
Or is this a problem ofunprecedented scale that no
amount of moderation can trulysolve, scale that no amount of
moderation can truly solve.
To find out, we first need tolook under the hood of Roblox
itself.
What are their defenses?
(06:51):
And are the very features thatmake Roblox so popular also the
ones that make it so dangerous?
That's coming up after thebreak.
Welcome back to Privacy, please.
(07:13):
Before the break, we laid outthe battlefield Chris Hansen, on
one side, alleging that Robloxis a cesspool for predators, and
, on the other, a tech giantthat provides a creative outlet
for over 70 million people a day.
So, to be fair, we have to lookat this from the company's
perspective.
If you were to ask Roblox, theywould tell you that safety is
(07:36):
their absolute top priority, andthey have the numbers to back
up that claim, at least on thesurface.
They employ an army ofthousands of human moderators.
They use protective AI systemsdesigned to scan text, images,
audio and even the 3D models ofuser-created items before they
ever go live.
And of course, there's the bigred report abuse button
(08:02):
available to every user, whichgenerates millions of reports a
month.
In a recent statement, a Robloxspokesperson said, and I quote
we have a zero-tolerance policyfor sexual contact or predatory
behavior of any kind.
Our team works tirelessly toact on any inappropriate content
(08:22):
or behavior to protect ourcommunity.
End quote.
They also provide a suite ofparental controls.
A parent can set a pin to lockcertain settings.
They can restrict who theirchild can chat with or turn off
chat altogether.
They can limit the types ofexperiences their child has to
(08:43):
access.
On paper it sounds robust.
Sure, a multi-layered defenseof AI, human vigilance and user
empowerment.
But in practice, this digitalfortress has some serious cracks
and to understand them you haveto understand the fundamental
nature of the platform.
The first issue is simply thescale.
(09:05):
When you have 50 millionuser-created games and millions
of people interacting everysecond, a reactive moderation
system is playing a game ofwhack-a-mole.
It can never win.
For every condo game that getstaken down, two more can spring
up with slightly different names.
But the second, more subtleproblem is something we'll call
(09:27):
the avatar loophole.
Most online moderation is builtto catch bad words.
It looks for text slurs,threats, talk of harm or
self-harm or attempts to sharepersonal information.
But sophisticated groomers knowthis.
They know that the chat ismonitored, so they don't use
words, they use actions.
(09:48):
This is the secret behind thesecondo games.
They are built to bypassmoderation because nothing
explicitly violating is evertyped into a chat box.
Instead, they use the game'sown physics and animation
systems.
Users can make their avatarsperform gestures, lie down or
(10:09):
interact with an in-game objectin ways that are clearly
intended to simulate sexual acts.
There are no trigger words foran AI to catch when the
violation is being communicatedthrough the movement of a blocky
digital puppet.
The third crack is one thatshould be familiar to anyone
who's used the internet in thelast decade the algorithm.
(10:31):
So, like YouTube or TikTok,roblox wants to keep you engaged
, and it does this with arecommendation algorithm that
learns what you like and showsyou more of it.
But this can create dangerouspathways.
A child might play a gamethat's just a little edgy, but
not technically rule-breaking.
The algorithm sees this andconcludes okay, this user likes
(10:55):
experiences that are a bit moremature.
It then might suggest somethingthat is over the line.
It can unintentionally guideusers from the well-lit town
square of the platform to itsdarkest alleys.
And finally, all of this raisesa thorny privacy question.
Under US federal law, calledCOPPA, c-o-p-p-a the Children's
(11:19):
Online Privacy Protection Act,there are strict limits on how
companies can collect and usethe data of children under 13.
To police.
Their platform, roblox, needsto monitor and log what kids are
doing and saying.
It's a classic security versusprivacy dilemma.
To catch the predators, arethey creating a massive
sensitive database of millionsof children's private
(11:41):
conversations, one that could bea target for hackers or be used
in other ways down the line?
So we have safety systems thatare impressive on paper but are
constantly being outsmarted bybad actors exploiting the
platform's core features, itsscale, its avatars and its
algorithms.
This leads us to thebillion-dollar question.
(12:03):
Literally, could Roblox trulyfix this if they made it their
one and only priority?
Fix this if they made it theirone and only priority?
Or are these safety failuresnot just bugs but unavoidable
side effects of the verybusiness model that has made
them so successful?
To answer that, we have tofollow the money.
(12:25):
That's next.
Alrighty, then, ladies andgentlemen, we have come to the
end of today's episode.
If you like this content, letme know.
I love digging into storieslike this.
I found this one absolutelyfascinating.
We'll obviously keep followingalong as Chris and his team do
(12:48):
their thing, and it excites mebecause there's a lot of bad
people out there, and I love thegood work that Chris Hansen
does to protect children.
So, with that being said, ifyou guys have not heard yet, we
are launching our own networkand website.
You can go to it now.
So if you're a listener,theproblemloungecom, go check it
(13:11):
out.
You can listen to episodesthere.
You can contact us there.
So if you want to be a guestyou have somebody that wants to
be a guest.
You have questions, you want usto talk about certain things?
Go on there, leave us an email,send us a contact thing.
Would love to hear from you and, as always, thank you for
supporting Privacy, please, andthe Problem Lounge Network.
We're so excited about what'sahead and thank you again for
(13:34):
listening Cameron Ivey over andout.
It looks like a child's drawing come to life.
Blocky, cheerful avatars runthrough a digital park.
The colors are bright, thesounds are playful.
It's a universe built onimagination, creativity and
connection, a place where over70 million people, most of them
children, log in every singleday to build, to play and to be
(00:32):
with their friends.
This is Roblox, and for yearsit has been the virtual backyard
for our generation.
But look closer In the shadowedcorners of a private server and
a chat window designed todisappear, a different kind of
connection is being made.
The avatar may look like ateenager, but the person behind
(00:56):
the keyboard is much older.
The friendly questions aboutyour favorite game slowly turn
more personal, more probing, and, in a production studio, miles
away from the servers and thecode, a familiar voice is
watching, a voice that hashaunted the nightmares of
Predators for two decades.
I think you know who I'mtalking about.
(01:18):
His name is Chris Hansen.
Remember that.
Why don't you have a seat rightover there, chris would say.
Chris Hansen isn't in a suburbanhome anymore.
He's not waiting for someone towalk through the door.
His new hunting ground is thesame one your kids call their
(01:39):
playground, and he alleges it'sa platform in crisis.
So is he right?
Is one of the most popularplatforms for children,
fundamentally unsafe.
Today, on Privacy, please.
We investigate the battle forthe soul of Roblox.
(02:09):
All righty, then, ladies andgentlemen, welcome back to
Privacy, please.
I'm your host, cameron Ivey,and what you just heard is not a
hypothetical.
It's the new reality on one ofthe biggest entertainment
platforms on earth.
For years, we've talked on thisshow about the privacy risks of
social media, the dangers ofdata brokers and a surveillance
(02:31):
baked into our smart devices,but what happens when the
platform isn't just a place toshare photos, but a world to
inhabit, a world populatedalmost entirely by children?
To understand this crisis ChrisHansen alleges is happening on
Roblox, you first need tounderstand who he is.
(02:54):
For a decade, chris Hansen was afixture of early 2000s
television.
His show To Catch a Predatorwas an uncomfortable must-watch
cultural phenomenon.
The formula was simple andbrutally effective.
In partnership with a watchdoggroup, hansen's team would
create sting operations.
(03:15):
Posing as teenagers in onlinechat rooms, they'd lure
suspected predators to a housefilled with hidden cameras and
just as the confrontation began,hansen would emerge from the
shadows.
I'm Chris Hansen with DatelineNBC, and we're doing a story
about adults who come to meetunderage teenagers.
(03:36):
He would say the show endedyears ago, but Hansen has
continued his work independentlyand now, through his project
Takedown Across America, he andhis team have turned their full
attention from the chat rooms ofthe past to the virtual worlds
of the present.
Their primary target, roblox.
(03:56):
Now, if you don't have a childunder the age of 16, you might
still think of Roblox as justthat blocky kids game, but
that's a profoundmisunderstanding of what it is.
It's less like a single videogame and more like a digital
Lego set the size of a galaxy.
It's an engine, a platformwhere users themselves create
(04:18):
and share the games, orexperiences, as the companies
call them.
The scale is almost impossibleto comprehend.
As of today, august 27th 2025,roblox has over 70 million daily
active users.
They spend billions of hours amonth on the platform and,
(04:39):
according to the company's owndata, more than half of its
users are under the age of 13.
More than half of its users areunder the age of 13.
More than half, it's an entireeconomy fueled by a virtual
currency called Robux, a socialnetwork, a creative outlet and,
according to Chris Hansen, it'sa predator's paradise.
(04:59):
That could be the name of likea band in high school, not a
very good band.
I'm going to verbatim say a clipfrom Chris Hansen from one of
his recent interviews andpodcasts.
He said it is a cesspool, it isa hunting ground.
We're talking to predatorsevery single day on this
(05:21):
platform who are activelylooking for children.
Their safety systems are a joke, end quote.
Hansen's allegations arespecific and deeply troubling.
He claims his team hasuncovered rampant grooming in
private chats and on third-partyapps like Discord, which users
are often lured to.
(05:41):
He points to the ease withwhich bad actors can bypass the
platform's chat filters usingspecial characters or coded
language.
And, most disturbingly, hehighlights the proliferation of
what are known as condo.
Games is designed explicitly tosimulate adult and sexual
(06:09):
interactions, using the game'sown mechanics and animations to
sexualize the childlike avatarsin ways that automated
moderation struggles to detect.
So you have this massive clash Achild safety crusader whose
name is synonymous with catchingpredators versus a 30 billion
billion tech Goliath thatinsists it's doing whatever it
can to protect its young users.
(06:31):
But is it that simple?
Is this a case of a companyturning a blind eye?
Or is this a problem ofunprecedented scale that no
amount of moderation can trulysolve, scale that no amount of
moderation can truly solve.
To find out, we first need tolook under the hood of Roblox
itself.
What are their defenses?
(06:51):
And are the very features thatmake Roblox so popular also the
ones that make it so dangerous?
That's coming up after thebreak.
Welcome back to Privacy, please.
(07:13):
Before the break, we laid outthe battlefield Chris Hansen, on
one side, alleging that Robloxis a cesspool for predators, and
, on the other, a tech giantthat provides a creative outlet
for over 70 million people a day.
So, to be fair, we have to lookat this from the company's
perspective.
If you were to ask Roblox, theywould tell you that safety is
(07:36):
their absolute top priority, andthey have the numbers to back
up that claim, at least on thesurface.
They employ an army ofthousands of human moderators.
They use protective AI systemsdesigned to scan text, images,
audio and even the 3D models ofuser-created items before they
ever go live.
And of course, there's the bigred report abuse button
(08:02):
available to every user, whichgenerates millions of reports a
month.
In a recent statement, a Robloxspokesperson said, and I quote
we have a zero-tolerance policyfor sexual contact or predatory
behavior of any kind.
Our team works tirelessly toact on any inappropriate content
(08:22):
or behavior to protect ourcommunity.
End quote.
They also provide a suite ofparental controls.
A parent can set a pin to lockcertain settings.
They can restrict who theirchild can chat with or turn off
chat altogether.
They can limit the types ofexperiences their child has to
(08:43):
access.
On paper it sounds robust.
Sure, a multi-layered defenseof AI, human vigilance and user
empowerment.
But in practice, this digitalfortress has some serious cracks
and to understand them you haveto understand the fundamental
nature of the platform.
The first issue is simply thescale.
(09:05):
When you have 50 millionuser-created games and millions
of people interacting everysecond, a reactive moderation
system is playing a game ofwhack-a-mole.
It can never win.
For every condo game that getstaken down, two more can spring
up with slightly different names.
But the second, more subtleproblem is something we'll call
(09:27):
the avatar loophole.
Most online moderation is builtto catch bad words.
It looks for text slurs,threats, talk of harm or
self-harm or attempts to sharepersonal information.
But sophisticated groomers knowthis.
They know that the chat ismonitored, so they don't use
words, they use actions.
(09:48):
This is the secret behind thesecondo games.
They are built to bypassmoderation because nothing
explicitly violating is evertyped into a chat box.
Instead, they use the game'sown physics and animation
systems.
Users can make their avatarsperform gestures, lie down or
(10:09):
interact with an in-game objectin ways that are clearly
intended to simulate sexual acts.
There are no trigger words foran AI to catch when the
violation is being communicatedthrough the movement of a blocky
digital puppet.
The third crack is one thatshould be familiar to anyone
who's used the internet in thelast decade the algorithm.
(10:31):
So, like YouTube or TikTok,roblox wants to keep you engaged
, and it does this with arecommendation algorithm that
learns what you like and showsyou more of it.
But this can create dangerouspathways.
A child might play a gamethat's just a little edgy, but
not technically rule-breaking.
The algorithm sees this andconcludes okay, this user likes
(10:55):
experiences that are a bit moremature.
It then might suggest somethingthat is over the line.
It can unintentionally guideusers from the well-lit town
square of the platform to itsdarkest alleys.
And finally, all of this raisesa thorny privacy question.
Under US federal law, calledCOPPA, c-o-p-p-a the Children's
(11:19):
Online Privacy Protection Act,there are strict limits on how
companies can collect and usethe data of children under 13.
To police.
Their platform, roblox, needsto monitor and log what kids are
doing and saying.
It's a classic security versusprivacy dilemma.
To catch the predators, arethey creating a massive
sensitive database of millionsof children's private
(11:41):
conversations, one that could bea target for hackers or be used
in other ways down the line?
So we have safety systems thatare impressive on paper but are
constantly being outsmarted bybad actors exploiting the
platform's core features, itsscale, its avatars and its
algorithms.
This leads us to thebillion-dollar question.
(12:03):
Literally, could Roblox trulyfix this if they made it their
one and only priority?
Fix this if they made it theirone and only priority?
Or are these safety failuresnot just bugs but unavoidable
side effects of the verybusiness model that has made
them so successful?
To answer that, we have tofollow the money.
(12:25):
That's next.
Alrighty, then, ladies andgentlemen, we have come to the
end of today's episode.
If you like this content, letme know.
I love digging into storieslike this.
I found this one absolutelyfascinating.
We'll obviously keep followingalong as Chris and his team do
(12:48):
their thing, and it excites mebecause there's a lot of bad
people out there, and I love thegood work that Chris Hansen
does to protect children.
So, with that being said, ifyou guys have not heard yet, we
are launching our own networkand website.
You can go to it now.
So if you're a listener,theproblemloungecom, go check it
(13:11):
out.
You can listen to episodesthere.
You can contact us there.
So if you want to be a guestyou have somebody that wants to
be a guest.
You have questions, you want usto talk about certain things?
Go on there, leave us an email,send us a contact thing.
Would love to hear from you and, as always, thank you for
supporting Privacy, please, andthe Problem Lounge Network.
We're so excited about what'sahead and thank you again for
(13:34):
listening Cameron Ivey over andout.
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