Hi, recently I was developing a game, and one of the buildings within said game is a patriotic-themed diner.
The diner has various historical American flags on the walls, and I was already cautious over the website’s moderation, so I had to pick very specific ones. Despite this, the textures I made for these flags were uploaded months ago, and over a week ago, Roblox moderated one of the textures, a Betsy Ross flag, an earlier American flag.
There is nothing bad about the flag or how I used it, as it was simply hanging on the wall. Is there some change in the community guidelines now about specific flags being used in games, or is it just bad moderation?
Update: they won’t change the moderation. Why? well apparently, it wasn’t harassment; it was actually “”“hate speech.”“” EXCUSE ME?? LOL??
It’s my countries first national flag, not the flag of a controversial empire and SO MANY GAMES IN THE PAST have used this same flag before and I went almost 9 years on the platform, uploading this flag multiple times and suddenly it’s now problematic?? yes, I filed another complaint, this time more lengthy but this is absolutely ridiculous
Roblox needs to see this and immediately reverse this decision. This is absurd beyond measure.
I’m certain something happened in 2023 where moderation decided to go crazy. Something that’s totally normal and tame, even welcoming and accepting, suddenly being interpreted as hateful and discriminatory by moderation.
Then Roblox might as well ban the Novorossiya and Alabama flag for being similar to the battle flag if they’re trying to match similar but unrelated designs.
I also want to add on to the fact that Rise Of Nations has the confederacy as a country and even uses the straight up “stars and bars” national flag yet a flag that predates the CSA is… bad??
First of all, the Stars and Bars flag, which was the First Confederate Flag, is not what people think of when they say “Confederate Flag”. They think The ‘X’ Shaped saltire flag, which has been used constantly as a symbol of hate which is why it has fallen out of favor in society and prohibited from being used on many platforms, such as Roblox.
Since the first flag of the Confederacy, the Stars and Bars, looked so similar to the already existing flag of the United States, that’s when they decided to change their flag to the now familiar ‘X’ shaped saltire.
The Betsy Ross flag, being a flag of the American Revolution and a symbol of liberty, independence and general American Values, should not be misconstrued or confused with the Confederate flag. Anyone doing that is either dishonest or not smart.
I’m genuinely surprised that it’s the Betsy Ross flag being moderated and not the Gadsden one (either way, moderating either of them is a bit stupid as neither had problematic origins). Yet I think that with how people are co-opting the flags for political uses, that basically causes the flags to be misinterpreted by many and then it gets viewed negatively. Considering Roblox restored the Betsy Ross flag previously, it’s clear some on the moderator team know it’s not a problem, but some others see it that way.
Banning a variant of one of the first national flags of the U.S. is the biggest pointless move I’ve seen done by the moderation, I’m genuinely hoping it’s an automated warning/bot doing this and not an actual person believing this stuff, so many of my things on the platform are flag related or flag themed and it’s becoming a issue to wake up one day and find out some innocent flag related thing I made months or years ago is suddenly moderated and the fact there is no asset archiving system for certain assets just makes this worse
I’ve already got a moderation back in like 2021-2022 for uploading a variant of the Grand Union flag with blue stripes (an actually recorded variant, according to a flag website), and I genuinely don’t know what even caused the moderation as it was a flag that was hanging on a wall of a musuem game I was working on at the time. I believe some moderator somehow mistook the King’s Colors in the upper left canton for some kind of confederate battle flag.
The Gadsden one has been moderated many times for hate speech. If you search up “Gadsden” in the clothing search in the Catalog, you would only see a handful of items. There used to be an endless list, pages upon pages of the stuff. Now there’s a few items left. I don’t know the current status on whether the Gadsden flag is allowed, but I am certainly not going to find out the hard way by attempting to upload something.
I don’t see the Gadsden flag as a form of hate speech. It could be a political symbol, but it terms of history it fits in with Revolutionary war era role-play experiences, or generic American patriotic symbols for individual liberty.
Its much better to ask on the Dev forums rather than seeing what’s on the catalog.
If it exists in the catalog, Do not assume its allowed. They can be ticking time-bombs for an eventual ban wave.
As you know I am still seething over Roblox banning one of my groups for the most egregious form of Hate Speech even though what may have caused the ban, (It’s still not clear what happened since they never said what I did that was against TOS) was very subtle and a dumb mistake that could have been readily fixed. So you really got to keep close watch over key-words you use, what decals you use, to avoid the Eye of Sauron, that is Moderation, from enacting the worst and most extreme form of punishment on you.
Roblox should really take into account the cultural subtleties these symbols have, and Roblox itself being based in California might be trapped in a tech-cultural bubble that someone living outside of that are not accustomed to.
I have a ton of assets based around the Gadsden flag (my personal reconstruction based off an old surviving image of it, not the modern “coiled spring” snake that you see often), and yet I haven’t been warned for moderated for it yet
I think Roblox doesn’t care about if flags have mostly innocent origins or ties because I’ve seen a friend get moderated over the German imperial tricolor (again, another co-opted flag) and the old Canadian red ensign. The site can allow Imperial Japan Crime References, that Kampuchea, and Pro-Saddam stuff, but nope, the 13-star U.S. flag is apparently the issue.
I have nearly a thousand flag shirts and long ago I sent a message to that one asset removal agent roblox has last year with a whole list and well, no response… yet!
My other friend also runs a flag group and he got moderated for a Latvian Soviet Flag and also the old early 90’s Afghan flag (green-black-white triband w/ text) and his appeal got rejected last year
I’m working on a joke survival game and one of the areas is a museum and I am having to be unusually careful with what flags I want to put on display within it
