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Thursday, November 25, 2021

'Roblox' sues long-banned user for allegedly terrorizing the platform

Roblox is suing a person it banned years ago for allegedly terrorizing the gaming platform and its community of developers. The Roblox Corporation wants Benjamin Robert Simon to stop his alleged harassment of employees and users on Roblox and elsewhere, and to pay $1.65 million in damages.

In the filing, which was first reported by Polygon, the company claims Simon, an alleged "cybermob" leader, “commits and encourages unlawful acts designed to injure Roblox and its users.” Roblox banned him years ago, allegedly for using homophobic and racist slurs, harassing others and sexual harassment. Simon is said to use accounts created by others and hacks to maintain access to the platform.

The suit contains several examples of purported misconduct on Simon's part. Among them is an allegation that he posted "false and misleading terrorist threats" last month that led to a temporary shutdown of the Roblox Developers Conference in San Francisco. Roblox claims it cost $50,000 to investigate the threat and secure the venue.

In addition, Simon is accused of "glamorizing the April 3, 2018 active shooter and murder at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California and threatening/taunting a copycat act of terrorism at Roblox headquarters in nearby San Mateo, California." Roblox also claims he tried to upload a mostly nude photo of himself and images of Adolf Hitler, and attempted to upload a sex game to the platform.

Simon, a popular YouTuber known as Ruben Sim, allegedly profited from videos of stunts that were uploaded to that platform and Patreon. The Roblox Corporation is suing him for, among other things, breach of contract, fraud and allegedly violating both the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act.

Roblox has tens of millions of daily users, many of whom are kids. Keeping trolls as far away as possible from the platform is important to help protect the platform's young audience. The lawsuit follows an outage that knocked Roblox offline for three days.



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