Perhaps the word Roblox is somewhat unfamiliar to adults. Not so much for children and teenagers. It is an online video game platform that also allows users to create and play games developed by themselves or other users. This company is now the Grifols of Wall Street. The research firm Hindenburg accuses the company of inflating its accounts, but worse still, of constituting a “pedophile hell for children”.
The published report accuses Roblox of lying to its shareholders and investors about the number of real users passing through the platform, inflate this metric between 25 and 42%. Hindenburg denounces the fact that the company uses bots or alternative accounts of the same user to increase the number of its subscribers. “We believe Roblox can and should report its estimated bot removal and removal metrics so that investors, advertisers, and regulators can be better informed about the true number of “people” on the platform and their actual level commitment”, they note in the report. report.
Since the video game company went public, as Hindenburg reports, it has posted losses every quarter, even topping $1 billion over the past 12 months. Furthermore, they accuse the company of having benefited from privileged information: “Insiders cashed in $1.7 billion in shares since the company’s direct listing in 2021. Over the past 12 months, insiders have sold approximately $150 million in shares, including $115 million from CEO Baszucki personally,” they explain in the survey.
But, regardless of how their accounts may or may not be changed, this is not the worst accusation. Hindenburg denounces that the platform allows pedophiles to approach children: “our investigation into the game revealed an X-rated pedophile hellscape, exposing children to grooming practices, pornography, violent content and extremely abusive speech“. According to the research company, Roblox’s social media features allow pedophiles to effectively target hundreds of children, without there being a prior assessment of these profiles to allow their access to the platform. In fact, They point out that sexual predators recruited children through the creation of video games and then kidnapped, raped or exchanged sexual content with them. That same year, the US National Center on Sexual Exploitation described Roblox as “a tool.” for sexual predators” a threat to the safety of children.
In conclusion, Hindenburg asserts that “Roblox has adopted Silicon Valley’s ‘growth at all costs’ approach, whether by outright misleading or lying to investors about its key metrics or by opening its platform to dangerous predatory and illicit content not suitable for children.
The release of the report caused the company’s futures to fall as much as 13% and its shares ultimately opened with a drop of more than 9% at the start of trading on Wall Street. This fall means a reduction in its market value of almost $2.5 billion in a single session, falling below $25 billion. The company has continued to fall on the stock market since September 30, accumulating losses of nearly 13% during this period which brought its price into negative territory for the year.
