Protecting Our Kids - Episode 203

In this crucial episode, of Compliance Unfiltered, the CU Guys cover some of the alarming tactics of online predators targeting children on platforms like Roblox and Discord. Discover how these predators build trust, impersonate kids, and manipulate them into dangerous situations. Learn about the hidden dangers in popular gaming spaces, the impact of recent exposés, and practical steps for parents to protect their children. This episode is essential listening for anyone concerned about children's safety in the digital world. Arm yourself with the truth and join the fight to protect the next generation.

Episode Transcript:

Well, Adam, today, we’re going to talk about something is as parents, it is near to dear to both of our hearts. And that is protecting our kids. Now, we both have a vested interest in protecting kids. Why don’t you tell the listeners how this topic raised its head to you recently?

Well, I was listening to the Sean Ryan show, and there was an episode from November where he had on an ethical hacker and cybersecurity expert, Ryan Montgomery, was on there and he was kind of going over and raising safety dangers, predator issues, and various threats especially within kind of the roadblocks platform. It was a fascinating, fascinating episode and honestly something that I wasn’t intimately familiar with, so it was fun learning.

And to that end, sharing information with others, spreading the word, all that fun stuff, I figured it’d be a good topic for us to go in and go in, hit, share the knowledge, and share the awareness.

Absolutely. Now, what exactly is roadblocks? I think that’s the best place to start for the listeners. They may be unfamiliar with it.

And I guess, what were some of the interesting outcomes of the unwanted exposure they got?

Well, Roblox is a popular online platform and creation system. It’s not just a single game, so it’s different than what a lot of people conceive as an online game. There’s a lot of them out there. We’ll be talking about them more as we go through this episode, but it’s not a single game.

Users can play millions of user-generated 3D experiences that range from role-playing and simulations to obstacle courses, and it’s kind of a social, user-generated, co-experienced platform where folks can create, share, and play games together. The downside is that effectively the bad guys, child predators, can interact with their victims through the communication capabilities within the game. As Ryan Montgomery brought up and brought forth a lot of the things that are going on on the platform as almost like a whistleblower style approach, he was reporting, reported finding predators and was providing assistance with getting them arrested for their activities on the platform. He claimed that Roblox had issued a cease and desist, and they banned his account instead of addressing the users that he exposed. Part of the problem with Roblox is that they have a financial incentive, because the way it works is that on the platform, as people are going in and playing games, some of them are free, some of them though are at a cost. or anywhere where there’s a cost for going in and playing different games on the platform, Roblox takes a cut. Roblox almost got a lot of financial incentive to allow activities that are making the money type of a deal. The interesting part of this particular exposure was that following the release of that Sean Ryan show episode, that Roblox ended up taking a significant temporary drop in their market value.