Roblox went to court to ban a troll

Apparently, Roblox doesn’t want you to upload photos of yourself wearing only a lampshade.

Roblox is a popular social gaming platform full of user-created games. It’s worth $40B in market cap and has ~43.2m daily users, 67% of whom are under 16.

And like any platform, it has its trolls

In November, Roblox sued Benjamin Simon, AKA YouTuber Ruben Sim, claiming he was the ringleader of a “cybermob.”

The complaint accused Sim of:

• Glamorizing the deadly 2018 YouTube shooting and threatening a copycat attack on Roblox’s San Mateo headquarters
• Posting fake terrorist threats that temporarily shut down the Roblox Developers Conference in 2021 (and cost Roblox $50k)
• Cyberbullying the company’s employees and users
• Racial and homophobic slurs
• Sexual harassment
• Trying to upload photos of Hitler and “a nude image of himself with only a lampshade covering his genitals”

While this alleged behavior got his IP banned from the platform, Roblox also accused Sim of hacking other users’ accounts to get back in.

Despite initially seeking $1.65m+…

… Roblox has instead agreed to $150k and has banned Sim from the platform — and going near its IRL office — for several years, per Polygon.

Sim, whose channel has 850k+ subscribers, is refuting Roblox’s allegations via YouTube, starting by claiming that Roblox does nothing to stop child predators who groom victims on Discord.

And he’s not alone there. YouTube channel People Make Games’s exploration into Roblox’s moderation issues has racked up 4.1m+ views.

Related: Harassment in the metaverse? Yeah, it’s a problem.