(The Center Square) – Though Louisiana only last week brought a lawsuit against the popular video game Roblox, a user-led revolution has been long in the works.
That revolution is being led in part by a YouTube personality known as “Schlep,” himself a victim of sexual exploitation on the gaming platform. He has since dedicated a massive portion of his content to helping expose and hold accountable Roblox, which boasts more than 400 million monthly users. More than half are under the age of 16.
Schlep’s most popular video, garnering over 5.8 million views, is a lucid case study of the vulnerabilities faced by users on the platform, especially younger ones. To help illustrate the issue, Schlep plays the part of a young girl named “Lilly” and then lures a would-be predator into an online relationship.
“The path I describe is a rabbit hole in which an unspeakable amount of children find themselves going down,” Schlep says in his video. “While Lilly isn’t a real girl, her experiences mirror the heartbreaking reality of thousands of real victims around the world.”
The predator works to groom Lilly, asking very intrusive questions and personal information, eventually setting a date to meet.
“I wish I could have you in real life,” “I want to have kids with you some day,” and “We can take pictures together,” messages from the predator read.
The video ends with the 25-year-old man’s arrest rather than meeting “Lilly.” The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office in Nebraska makes the arrest, charges him with online solicitation of a minor, according to Schlep.
Schlep is joined by a supporting cast of fellow YouTubers, with subscribers and viewers in the millions, including “Ruben Sim,” “JiDion,” or “penguinz0.”
So, when Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill announced the lawsuit against Roblox, it was no surprise that her posts secured a good deal of notoriety. Each of her posts about Roblox has received thousands of likes, far exceeding her average interactions.
“I will not allow Louisiana’s children to be victimized on Roblox,” Murrill wrote in one post that secured 27,000 likes and nearly 500,000 interactions.
“You are a hero,” Schlep wrote to Murrill.
Schlep’s content, as well as his supporting cast of fellow YouTubers, earns well above Murrill’s interactions. Schlep’s weekly average on YouTube is over 6 million viewers, according to Social Blade. Ruben Sim, who also dedicates much of his channel to exposing the Roblox pedophile-pipeline, averages nearly 3 million weekly viewers.
One of Sim’s videos details the FBI arrest of a Roblox developer, Arnold Castillo, who hired another person to drive a 15-year-old girl from Indiana back to New Jersey where they had sexual relations.
While their content has earned a massive following and supporting cast, it has also earned both Sim and Schlep a lawsuit from the game-developer itself. Schlep was sent him a cease and desist order over content Schlep produced that helped lead to several arrests of alleged child predators operating on Roblox. He was also banned by Roblox.
“Rather than addressing the safety vulnerabilities Schlep exposed, Roblox updated its terms of service to specifically target ‘vigilante groups’ and banned him from the platform,” Schlep’s attorneys said in a statement posted on social media. “The company then escalated with legal threats under the Computer Fraud Act – the same statute used in Roblox’s shameful lawsuit against another prominent critic, Ruben Sim…”
The user revolt has made its way to the very top, with a petition to remove current CEO David Baszucki securing 112,753 signatures.
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