Moderation Loopholes Resulting in a Flood of Copied Faces on the Catalog

bvetterdays · January 30, 2025, 2:59am

Roblox’s current moderation practices regarding knockoff copies of expensive faces have led to a significant issue in the UGC catalog. Creators have discovered and are actively exploiting a loophole where they can upload identical replicas of famous faces by adding a minor alteration, such as a tiny dot or symbol in the top right corner. This dot is usually hidden under hair and is deemed sufficient by moderators to bypass takedown actions. As a result, the catalog is being flooded with low-quality knockoff copies of iconic and expensive Roblox faces, devaluing the original assets and frustrating the community.

A prime example of this exploitation is the group linked here: Super Happy UGCs - Roblox
This group is responsible for uploading 1:1 replicas of expensive Roblox faces with trivial alterations like small dots or symbols in the top right. They have profited millions of Robux by capitalizing on this loophole, undermining the integrity of the UGC catalog.

An anecdotal case illustrating this issue involves the creator of this VERY group filing a bug report related to their copied “Super Super Happy Face” being taken down. The face had minimal changes, such as adding small lashes to evade moderation. Initially, the face was removed from the catalog, but the creator appealed through the Appeals Portal. Despite the clear violation, a human moderator reviewed the appeal and incorrectly accepted it. However, the face was not restored, leading the creator to submit this bug report:

In response, a moderation engineer explained that the system correctly recognized the face as a violation of UGC validation rules and automatically prevented its restoration, overriding the moderator’s misinformed decision:

This case perfectly illustrates the flawed moderation process. The moderator’s decision to approve the appeal highlights how moderation currently overlooks or dismisses knockoff items with small, intentional differences (like the lashes or dots) as non-violations of the rules. Meanwhile, the system correctly flagged the item, demonstrating that these minor modifications do not make the items compliant. This should eliminate any debate about whether these items are rule violations—they clearly are.

The issue lies in the fact that moderators generally only remove faces that are exactly identical to the originals. When reviewing reported knockoffs, they go out of their way to find minuscule differences like extra lashes or small, irrelevant dots and use them as excuses to dismiss the reports. This practice sets a harmful precedent, as it enables creators to flood the catalog with knockoffs while making minor, non-visible changes to evade enforcement. Moderators are fully capable of recognizing these similarities, but the current system incentivizes them to prioritize technical distinctions over the substance of the violation.

The community has expressed widespread backlash against the creator of the Super Happy UGCs group, with significant support for stricter measures, including shutting down groups that exploit this loophole. Examples of the community backlash can be seen in these posts:

However, as long as this bug persists, effective moderation will remain out of reach.

The ideal solution is to update the moderation practices so that knockoff items with superficial changes—like extra lashes, dots, or trivial symbols—are properly recognized and removed. The current precedent that only identical copies should be taken down must be re-evaluated. Moderators should no longer rely on small, irrelevant differences as excuses to let these items stay in the catalog.

This issue is one of many moderation challenges facing Roblox, but resolving this would represent a major step forward. Urgent action is needed to preserve the quality and integrity of the catalog.

Relevant mentions: @starhiker13, @knknGoing, @safetymod, @PseudoRNG3816

A private message is associated with this bug report

hunterk1241 · January 30, 2025, 5:45pm

I constantly check the Recently Created section to see a lot of these types of faces and report them immediately. I even considered writing a script to auto-report faces like this. I do hope Roblox resolves this issue as it is making the catalog more saturated with copies upon copies with people’s unique content being dragged down because of it

Kostiskat · January 30, 2025, 5:49pm

This is a really big issue. This needs to be looked into ASAP. And not only for faces.

FYI, this is what comes up when you search “Workclock Headphones” on the Roblox marketplace.

Check out all of these bootleg UGCs.

leftinadaze · January 31, 2025, 5:41pm

A castle is only as strong as the entrance. The issue here isn’t just large groups uploading these in mass, but also individuals being given UGC access for $10 and anyones ID that makes this an issue.

Even if you had all of these deleted, the robux from refunds would trickle down and reward the next person who had recently uploaded a copy. Moderation on upload needs to be fixed and nobody should have to be reporting these as they never should have made it onto the website on the first place.

MagicLuau · February 2, 2025, 6:45pm

i would recommend a asset ai moderation upgrade, the current moderation is leaking precisions, we should give the ai a task which is to find a asset that look a bit too similar to the roblox catalog one, if the asset is owned by roblox it should return. That would improve the moderation system overall.

bvetterdays · February 6, 2025, 1:04pm

Adding this testimony here:

DEVLocalPlayer · February 12, 2025, 1:31pm

Bump, no response from the staff team nor any fix/counter-measure has been placed yet

FastMagpie277 · February 14, 2025, 3:52pm

This is getting really annoying, I see people with limited hats, headless e.t.c and I just assume it’s a fake or knockoff. I really wish we could go back to a time where limiteds were not ‘just another hat on the marketplace’.

bvetterdays · February 14, 2025, 7:33pm

Checking back here to mention that after recent developments, this seems to have been resolved, and copies of famous Roblox items (both identical and similar) are now highly likely to be taken down on report. I’m 99% sure that this resolution has been a direct result of this bug report, but if an engineer would like to confirm this, that’d be much appreciated. This small change is going to make such a huge impact to the cleanliness of the catalog, and I thank the moderation staff so very much for working to address this in a timely and efficient manner.

Will hold off on marking this reply as a solution to give engineers a chance to respond.

bvetterdays · February 18, 2025, 2:27pm

Circling back here to say that whilst progress has been made on this, and countless knockoffs have been wiped off the catalog, certain moderators still remain extremely hostile towards certain reports, instantly denying them over and over again which sets a bad precedent for other moderators. For example, a copy of the Epic Vampire Face with simply a different head shape is being denied, due to what I can only assume is the shape of the head being a non-circle. Again, the same issue persists—moderators look for any reason they can to deny reports on these items. I don’t know why this is the case; seems like pure laziness to me.

Another example is this item, which is an IDENTICAL copy of Super Super Happy Face, the only difference being a SINGULAR eye is changed. It is extraordinarily difficult to get this face taken down via any moderation avenue, because again, moderators don’t see it as similar enough to be removed, but rest assured it is 100% in violation of Marketplace Policy.

And finally, an even better example here is two-part faces:
Exhibit A: Super Super Happy Cheeks Face - Roblox
Exhibit B: Super Super Happy Mouth sshf (Use With Sunglasses) - Roblox

In Exhibit A, moderators refuse to delete the face due to the absence of the cheeks from it, despite both the eyes and mouth being direct copies of the face. What’s astounding is that I’ll be watching countless IDENTICAL copies of these knockoffs being taken down (see image below), and then I’ll go to report one of my own just to have it denied 10 times over. This is extremely unfair and shows that policies are not being standardized and properly communicated across moderators. DESPITE linking the Rolimon’s page of all four of these identical copies in my report, (MOST - some are understanding) moderators simply are ignorant and deny the reports and their subsequent appeals.

In Exhibit B, moderators simply refuse to take the face down due to the absence of eyes, which means these items can simply be uploaded in two parts from now on to evade moderation.

Update

TL;DR: Filing this bug report led to policy changes a few weeks later, resulting in thousands of copied faces being removed from the catalog. However, within the past 48 hours, moderators have started denying every single report related to these copied faces (and copied items in general)—whether they’re exact replicas or not—effectively undoing all my efforts and those of the engineers involved in improving these policies. In fact, the moderation system has now become even worse than before the bug report was filed when it comes to handling knockoff Roblox items. Previously, moderators would occasionally remove copies, but recently they’ve now inexplicably begun denying every single report on copies of Roblox items.

Since the filing of this bug report, I’ve observed a dramatic shift in the effectiveness of moderation in regards to knockoff items on the catalog. Before the bug report was made, both DSA reporting and the Report Abuse feature were inefficient at handling these items, with only occasional success in taking down copies. However, after this report was filed, there was a significant improvement in how these reports were handled.

A few weeks post-report, policy changes were made and moderators began accepting thousands of reports on copied items, leading to a major purge of these knockoffs from the catalog. The efficiency of the moderation system skyrocketed here, resulting in a much cleaner catalog. The standard report abuse system saw a slight increase in efficiency, but nowhere near the level of DSA moderation.

However, in a sudden and unexplained shift over the past 48 hours, moderators have abruptly stopped accepting any reports on copied items, including reports on 1:1 identical copies that were previously always taken down. This change occurred despite moderators being reminded that thousands of these reports had been accepted just the week before. The efficiency of reporting (specifically DSA reporting) plummeted to zero overnight, leaving the standard Report Abuse system as the only remaining method of reporting, despite its historically lower success rate. With this massive drop, it’s now essentially impossible to get knockoff items removed from the catalog, resulting in a situation even worse than before the bug report was filed.

This decision to instruct moderators to deny these reports is an extremely shortsighted and unviable solution in the long term. By halting moderation now, Roblox is simply setting itself up to repeat the same exact situation in a few months. Copies will inevitably be reuploaded, accumulate thousands of favorites and sales again, and will inevitably require mass deletions. Roblox will then face even greater losses from refunds than if moderation simply continued consistently right now, as allowing these copies to gain popularity again will compound the financial damage later.

Additionally, all the most popular knockoffs have already been deleted, meaning the so-called “damage” (which is actually beneficial, as it cleans the catalog and maintains fairness, but negatively impacts Roblox’s immediate profits) has already been done. Only newly uploaded copies and a small number of unchecked ones with minimal favorites remain, which represent negligible losses compared to the thousands of previously deleted popular items.

Transparency about why moderators have suddenly stopped accepting reports would be ideal, and this policy change should be reverted immediately to prevent further harm to Roblox’s catalog integrity.

I ask for proper communication from engineers here rather than silent, inconsistent changes which become null and void 2 weeks later. For whatever reason this change was rolled back, it must be reconsidered for the health of the platform’s UGC economy and user trust in the moderation system (which is already at an all-time low).

Moderation Loopholes Resulting in a Flood of Copied Faces on the Catalog

Suggested Solutions:

Update