INTRO:
Hello everyone, I will try to keep this as short as possible seeing the quantities of situations similar to mine. I regret to inform that my account, “hxiltz”, has been wrongly terminated like many others a little over 4 weeks ago. I have been sending appeals every now and then, including voicemails, in hopes that Roblox support will get a sense of what happened. I am also aware that this is a devforum, not a place where people appeal, but understand that this is not an appeal but a post to gain attention to what has been happening lately.
MY BAN:
For context, I was working on my donations game and looking for a banner to put on it. I came across this widely known meme, called the “dr. house meme” on many platforms. My foolish self decided that, since I’ve seen the exact image all over Roblox (still exists in the catalogues), it means I will not get terminated, right..? FALSE. Shortly after, my screen had a ban page plastered over my roblox home and I started freaking out. The page only listed that I have been terminated for “other” and showed no evidence or image relating to my termination. From the first appeal I sent, I learned that the ban was a result of an image I uploaded that consisted of “Child Endangerment”. I immediately traced it back to the meme I mentioned previously because if I clicked on previous violations, it was something that happened over a year ago that was also taken out of context by the AI moderation bot. This termination is really unfair since millions of the same meme with different background characters still exist in games on roblox.
This is the image I uploaded:
Proof of similar images on the platform (Sourced directly from others with the same issue):
The meme I uploaded was not with any malicious intent towards younger audiences at all and I didn’t know it would result in a harsh punishment as there were many copies of it on the platform. If curious, the character in the back is just a harmless anime character that never did anything bad. My Roblox account is pretty old to me and contains many valuable items I would never risk in such a manner. I would also never engage in any of these actions as a person who pushes for child safety on internet platforms or break TOS as a strong rule follower. I sincerely apologize for my actions and if given another chance I would ensure to improve my account actions.
Now onto the REAL topic.
ISSUES:
Appealing through the support form has not been fun either. Many responses are the same text templates with a seemingly human name on top stating they will not adjust the moderation action. In some cases, they clarify that they cannot reveal any more information about this incident. This is a struggle because the 30 day limitation really knocks down the hopes and chances of getting unbanned since it’s always the same replies with no actual support.
I am also speaking to many others who got terminated from the same reason, the dr house meme, and they have almost the same experiences as me with little to no difference. Either no responses within 30 days, unhelpful support, or email templates.
Something that is absolutely OUTRAGEOUS is that I have heard and witnessed people getting successful appeals by appealing with a emoji?? This just shows how horrid the Roblox moderation AI is. While people out there are getting unbanned with emoji, others who were falsely banned from the game are still struggling to appeal to AI. If Roblox really wants to implement AI into their security system, they should at least remove a little of its power or have humans review huge actions like terminations before it happens. This will definitely lessen the amount of false moderation actions and ALSO lighten the workload that some employees will have with many people starting to send MIDRs to appeal now + the actual humans who review appeals (spiking due to false bans).
Another reason for remaking this AI system is that AI is known for misinterpreting things. Many cases of this can be seen online as well. For instance, some people got banned for saying “Hi” or even trying to tell someone who is underage to get off a 18+ game (mentioned on a sub-reddit post). On X, a creator got terminated wrongly on Roblox and their only source of income was from this platform as well, which puts them at a difficult spot with the fault of AI moderation.
To add on, the AI should be taught to place punishments on how severe the action was and take in record past violations. If the person who caused a violation had nothing severe in the past, they should not get a termination. However, if their action was really bad like doxxing someone, a termination would be reasonable. In my (and many others) cases’, a termination for posting a meme is a little too much. Do not get me wrong though, I am not a moderator of any kind, but I think a temporary ban will be more fitting, or even better a warning since it is not intentional.
SIDE REMARKS:
One of the people I was speaking with previously, with their main account known as “SleepFatigue”, was silently unterminated a week ago with the same termination reason as mine. I assume this was because their post reached enough popularity to attract roblox staff’s attention. I hope that, if any roblox employee sees this, can appropriately adjust the punishments on my account, “hxiltz” (+ the other wrongfully banned accounts) and consider the proposed changes to the moderation system.
Also, my friend with the user of “abraham_1115” got banned for the exact same reason as me (except their character in the back is a little different). They told me that their other friend posted the same decal and didn’t get any punishments at all (refer to image below).
The first largest photo is their ban (I couldn’t get a good ss apologies.) and the second photo is the decal they uploaded. While the third photo shows the gamepass their friend made and got pass AI without any moderation action.
These 2 experiences seem very unfair because why do we get banned for this when other people don’t? The AI also seems to be more lenient sometimes, proved by these photos.
END NOTES:
As probably proved by this post, the AI roblox uses could have some major improvements in order to be truly functional. Since many people have been banned so far from the AI either being nice or strict, I think it will be fair to also lighten the punishments on accounts who got the completely different moderation action than other’s who commited the same violation.
SIMILAR INCIDENTS THAT COULD BE HELPFUL:
Account permanently ban cause of a decal that still could be found currently in roblox creator store decals tab - This is the person who posted something like I did and got unbanned.
AI moderation terminated my account over a shirt while similar items remain on the marketplace - They posted a shirt with the image and got banned when there are the same things on the platform.
Falsely Terminated [Why should AI be allowed to terminate?] -Roblox Support being difficult and confusing.
I apologize if this was confusing since English was not my first language, please let me know below if any clarifications can be made or additions. I will also continue to update this post until something happens. Thank you for anyone who reads this and can help!
