Tech

What the ‘Roblox’ Hack Revealed About Chinese Censorship and U.S. Content Moderation

One of the world’s biggest video games wants to break into the Chinese market, here’s what it’ll have to do to make the cut.
Matthew Gault
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Hacking. Disinformation. Surveillance. CYBER is Motherboard's podcast and reporting on the dark underbelly of the internet.
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Last month, a hacker posted a trove of stolen documents online detailing the weird internal struggles of a little gaming company called Roblox. If you don’t know what Roblox is, just ask any child in America and they’ll explain it to you. The hacked documents contained fascinating insights into how gaming companies whose product depends on player freedom and creativity must navigate the treacherous waters of children, free speech, China, mass shootings, and content moderation. It’s a weird story where a child driven internet sandbox can lead to troubling and weird questions about genocide roleplay.

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Today on Cyber, Motherboard Staff Writer Joseph Cox comes on to talk about the hack and what we learned from it.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Hacker Posts Internal Roblox Employee Documents Online

Revealed: Documents Show How Roblox Planned to Bend to Chinese Censorship

Leaked Documents Reveal How Roblox Handles Grooming and Mass Shooting Simulators

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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