Hello, I am a somewhat okay-ish Roblox developer whose primary interest is vexillology, the study of flags. I’ve been into the concept since I was very young and own many valuable flags myself personally. Because of this, my interests tie in here on Roblox as well. Since 2019, I’ve run a flag clothing group on the platform, and it’s served as my main source of Robux income for many years. I have uploaded nearly a thousand shirts to the group in total over the course of years, and with recent revamps, I will have to remake many of these shirts again for an upcoming flag store game that I and a dozen friends are currently developing and looking for help on.
Now, the point of this forum post is due to a primary concern that has developed once again as my flag group is now expanding and has a flag store-themed game planned for it. You see, Roblox has never had a good history with certain flags and emblems on their platform. For many years, I’ve been falsely moderated, and so have some friends who run their own vexillology-themed groups. Some of these moderations come from AI moderation or mass reporting. In such cases, I’ve been mass-reported for uploading the provisional Arab League flag of Palestine, which got me falsely moderated for “off-site links” when such flag was merely the Arabic script “Palestine” written in red on a white field.
The most controversial moderation I got involves the Betsy Ross flag, a variant of the first official national flag of the United States, which contains 13 stars in a circle. In recent years, Roblox has been repeatedly taking down the flag because it is “discriminatory” or “hate speech.”
There is a huge chance this is due to the fact hate groups have co-opted the flag for themselves or have made variants of the flag defaced with their own symbols. Because of this, my flag group and the game we are planning have had to ditch the Betsy Ross pattern in favor of a more basic 13-star layout flag instead.
Which means one of the most integral flags of American history cannot be displayed in our game due to multiple false moderations I’ve received in the past and ones that others are having.
One of the things that has been brought up is that the Betsy Ross flag is being moderated because it is repeatedly mistaken for the Confederate States-era “Stars and Bars” flag, also known as the first national Confederate flag. Both have similar designs and a variant that has 13 stars. However, you would assume someone moderating (or whatever AI they have sitting doing moderation) would tell the difference by the amount of stripes.
The funny thing is Roblox is very inconsistent with moderation of this flag. I’ve seen it be used since the more infamous battle flag and regimental flags of the Confederacy are banned. I’ve seen Civil War games use it, and I have had a friend upload it once with no issue in his group. A notable Roblox game called “Rise of Nations” also uses it with the Confederacy itself as a formable nation in said game.
I am bringing this up because Roblox seems to be okay with the literal first Confederate national flag in some cases but not the first official flag of the United States for some reason.
Another issue is also with Islamic flags. Roblox moderation has gone haywire a few times with Arab and Islamic flags, mainly because the moderation sometimes detects them as flags of terror groups. This has happened with Saudi Arabia a few times and once prompted me to have to make two sets of Saudi Arabian flag-themed clothing for my group however, both were eventually approved. The flag of Saudi Arabia, for example, contains the Shahada, which unfortunately is also used on flags of terror groups such as Al Qaeda. Because of this, moderation gets confused and sees the Saudi and terrorist flags as the same, with the Syrian caretaker government’s former “tawhid flag” being mistaken for the Taliban’s also being an example. The flag of Hamas is also similar to Saudi Arabia, as it has a green background but does not have a sword.
Another involves usage of Communist and Soviet flags and imagery. Roblox in the past has allowed the hammer and sickle for many years. Back in 2016-2018 it peaked in the “dank meme” internet culture, so I used to see a lot of Soviet-themed avatars back in the day. In recent times, since at least 2023, Soviet flags and emblems have been randomly removed off the platform in random “waves” leading to a lot of people wondering if the emblem is banned or not, or if the rule on banning of political party emblems is the reasoning for this, or the poor history of the USSR, such as the Holodomor. If it is the political party rule, then the flag of a former sovereign nation that was well known is entirely banned because its national flag and its republics are being mistaken as flags of political parties. However, it is somewhat understandable that Roblox would ban it as a whole due to the history of the USSR itself. But by this logic, this would also mean the flags of other dictatorships like North Korea or China would have to be banned too. Another could be because Communist symbolism is banned in some countries, which ban it on the same level as the Nazi swastika. But once again, that means banning the flags of currently present sovereign nations like Angola or China, which have such symbolism on their flags. Despite being asked many times, nobody really knows why the Soviet flags are banned. All moderations people have gotten for them are for “referencing tragic real-life events,” and moderation further refuses to give further detail on what they mean by that.
While some moderations are slightly understandable yet ridiculous, this drives me a bit nuts as I worry more about my flag store game. Some people interpret things like certain flags being near each other as some weird dog whistle for some certain symbolism, and I worry that moderation will do the same. Having a bunch of flags and symbols everywhere can be easily interpreted by certain people as having some ridiculous meaning, and such false meaning can be relayed to others. For example, in our game we had to keep the Turkish flag away from the Greek flag due to historical tensions because someone complained when we sent development screenshots, and another person threatened to report us because we placed a flag slightly higher than the U.S. flag on a wall display. And since Roblox does have a direct rule against desecration of national symbols such as flags, I worry someone will abuse that to falsely take down something we are working hard on.