Children’s gaming platform Roblox has been hosting parties featuring strippers and naked avatars that simulate sex.
Roblox, which allows users to create and play their own games, is popular with young children between the ages of nine and 12.
The existence of rooms built for explicit activity has sparked concern young children could accidentally stumble into them.
Games found by the BBC feature a naked man wearing just a dog collar and a lead, a man in a Nazi uniform, and a group watching a couple having sex.
Avatars are able to communicate with each other through dialogue boxes, meaning adults with ill-intent could speak in an inappropriate way with children on the game.
Roblox, which allows users to create and play their own games, is popular with young children between the ages of nine and 12. The existence of rooms built for explicit activity has sparked concern young children could accidentally stumble into them
Games found by the BBC feature a naked man wearing just a dog collar and a lead, a man in a Nazi uniform, and a group watching a couple having sex
In 2020, Roblox told Bloomberg two-thirds of all US children between the ages of nine and 12 play the game.
Roblox sex games, known on the platform as ‘condos’, are usually only live for less than an hour before they are discovered and taken down.
A spokesman said: ‘We know there is an extremely small subset of users who deliberately try to break the rules.
‘We conduct a safety review of every single image, video, and audio file uploaded to Roblox, using a combination of human and machine detection.’
Larry Magid, president of ConnectSafely, told the BBC it is a ‘cat and mouse’ problem, with ‘people who are going out of their way to game the system’.
Mr Magid said children were unlikely to find the explicit games without actively searching for them.
Despite this, the BBC said it found inappropriate sexual language in games that were not of a sexual nature.
Dr Liraz Margalit, a digital psychologist who studies behaviour online, said users have ‘anonymity’ so often write sentences in the chat boxes they would never say aloud.
Roblox has published a blog post revealing the work developers have put into making the platform safe.
It reads: ‘In 2021 we implemented multiple new machine-learning-based systems and significantly increased the number of human moderators reviewing Roblox for bad content. As a result, in 2021 we saw an 84 percent reduction in the number of users who were exposed to any experiences that violated our policies.
‘This year – and every year – we continue to aggressively improve both our proactive and reactive detection methods.’
On a page specifically designed for parents, Roblox said: ‘An automated detection feature ensures that all players are wearing appropriate attire within the avatar editor and avatar thumbnails’
Avatars are able to communicate with each other through dialogue boxes, meaning adults with ill-intent could speak in an inappropriate way with children on the game
On a page specifically designed for parents, Roblox said: ‘An automated detection feature ensures that all players are wearing appropriate attire within the avatar editor and avatar thumbnails.’
A Roblox spokesman told MailOnline: ‘We work tirelessly to maintain a platform that is safe, civil and welcoming for all.
‘We have zero tolerance for sexual content or behavior of any kind, and we take swift action against anyone found to be acting in breach of our Community Standards.
‘We actively encourage users to report any content or behaviour that may make them feel uncomfortable using our Report Abuse feature, with a dedicated team who act on those reports.
‘We also have specific systems and features to protect younger members of the Roblox community, including stricter chat filters applied to children under the age of 13, and a suite of Parental Control tools that can be used to restrict who children interact with and which experiences they can access.’
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