Roblox's Moderation Needs To Be Fixed

[Cindering]

This is completely outrageous.

Roblox, you guys need to proactively restore any and all accounts that were incorrectly terminated by this audio refund glitch. You can’t just tell people “oops, sorry we accidentally deleted your account for no reason, but if you email appeals they might help you out.” The appeals system is clearly useless here. They are refusing to unban completely innocent users. They do not understand this situation at all.

And there’s undoubtedly a ton of other users who were incorrectly rejected by appeals and are not a part of the developer forum, so they now have no way to get their accounts back themselves. This is the worst possible way this situation could have been handled.

[TheDreamDealer (Dream)]

I agree 100% with this. Even though accounts were possibly seen exploiting this on purpose, they are only doing it because THEY HAD the ability to do so. If they didn’t had the ability to do so, this situation wouldn’t have reached to this point. This entire audio incident sets back so many things for many users besides my self, especially towards other developers. I have been communicating with a user outside of the forums about the situation who has been impacted by it, and he has came down to this after getting no information or help from moderation:

At the end of our conversation, he mentions:

This is just 1 out of many cases that are happening outside of the developer community. Something must be done.

[DieSoft]

Roblox as a platform is too big to moderate by man power alone. It has also grown to the size and age where a company simply can’t function efficiently anymore. I don’t want to trash talk or anything, but the reality is that a lot of the people who make the decisions that impact us as developers and the player base, simply has never played Roblox and don’t actually understand it as intimately as they should.

I’m sure that there are plenty of rules given to moderators which don’t really make much sense (they don’t really like to share much information so I’m just going to assume that there’s more than what I’ve noticed on my own). Just to name one rule that doesn’t make much sense that I know of is that they’re not allowed to approve assets with images that can’t really be seen. So if I upload a simple 3x3 or 2x2 pixel texture (for low memory usage reasons, I purposely choose really small textures to ensure that the texture sizes don’t hog unnecessary memory), then it will be declined because they couldn’t see the texture. Either the moderation tools aren’t where they should be or this rule doesn’t work as intended.

Idk, just overall as a dev I find myself time and time again just face palming at how much of a hassle it is to upload assets.

Regarding the recent “audio exploit” which from what I can tell is really just a big mess up on Roblox’s part and I doubt even a slight percentage of the people who got banned did this intentionally as a way to make money. A bunch of users has contacted me on Twitter and Discord asking for help, random users that from what I can tell haven’t made a name for themselves yet so they don’t have access to the dev forums to complain. All I could do was to direct them to appeals. And hearing that the appeals guys just turn people away even after all of this is well… Extremely disappointing to say the least.

I doubt Roblox will be able to pull out a list of all users that got banned for this particular reason and restore their accounts. But considering how the mass plugin ban thing happened before, and now this? Honestly, I really hope Roblox will consider upgrading the moderation tools quite extensively and especially add some way to restore accounts on such large quantities as this. A case by case review doesn’t seem efficient enough and there is bound to be plenty of people falling between the cracks.

I doubt anything will change though as this will most likely fall upon deaf ears. But one can always dream.

[Scarious]

Even users which are a part of the devforums are having an extremely difficult time restoring their accounts, making little to no progress themselves, as far as I am aware.

[chesse20 (ChesseThe FluffyWasp)]

Why are high level power users assigned the same moderators as bots and bacon hairs? If I report someone for exploiting or selling robux offsite, it should be handled by a different moderation team then the guys who handle reports sent in by fpsplayerjohnny2006 complaining that “this guy keeps killing me in jailbreak”. High level power user’s image assets/textures should be handled by a different(and better trained) team than the moderators who moderate when BaconHairEarl uploads a picture of his dog that he found in his pictures folder.

Give devforum members and power users (users who have been on the platform for a long time, DevEx, have bought builders club for years, have millions of robux/ place visits, own huge groups, etc…) their own moderation team that’s trained differently, and have their own section of the devforum where they can be contacted.

(the usernames in this post are fictional and do not represent any actual users )

[TaaRt]

This reads a lot like ‘let’s make sure that the ones able to complain about it won’t face the problem any longer’. This reduces the overall visibility of the problem as a whole since high-profile users won’t bring it up, while anyone who isn’t part of the lucky few is completely abandonned.

When there is a problem for everyone, let’s make sure it’s solved for everyone, shall we?

[wravager]

Or

They get hundreds if not thousands of false reports everyday by players while the 1 report that is actually important sent by a developer is now placed with the same people who get bot style replies.

[Dev_Ryan]

This. Developers and non-Developers should be moderated separately (or developers being given a separate moderation channel) because of the fact that it seems there is just too many non-Developer reports that just drown out all the Developer reports who may have a more important report that should be handled as soon as possible.

Because that non-Developer who reported about another player who keeps killing him too much in a pvp game is not a serious enough report to be put above a potential serious situation that a Developer is reporting about. I get that’s why we have categories to choose when reporting but even then it feels like the reason Developers have to wait so long to get replies from an actual person because of this long queue of reports in all categories of reports, probably from kids choosing the wrong category when reporting, just a theory.

So just like how we have Moderation Review Requests for assets that get declined, we should also have another option that devs can use to report other stuff that can be very serious and needs to be seen as soon as possible and any devs who abuse this report option can be removed from it to keep this report option as professional as possible.

Just my 2 cents lol.

[MetaProx]

The audio refund incident needs to be checked over again. I highly doubt a single person glitched intentionally, I doubt that people even knew about the glitch; yet even so, got banned permanently over it. Even if somebody knew about it by some strange means, they shouldn’t be terminated. This is entirely on Roblox, not on the users at all, shame that from the looks of things they will not admit that they are clearly the ones entirely at fault here. People spent money on this, some even make a living off this, to have this happen up and one day is a terrifying even to think of.

I will not let this topic die until something is done about it, you should all do the same.

[TheDreamDealer (Dream)]

I would directly email dev-relations, or try to contact someone from dev-relations. My account was just un-terminated this morning.

[MetaProx]

I wasn’t affected by this whole incident luckily. Glad to hear it all got resolved for you though.

I just want them to in the very least give us a reply on this whole situation.

[TheDreamDealer (Dream)]

True, a lot had to be done to get here so I would like a general statement on the incident to everyone who was part of it.

[MetaProx]

It would be amazing if they could just unban everybody affected by the incident and then give out an apology in some form or another. Admit that maybe they screwed up somewhere.

[Cindering]

Just want to say that I actually got to meet with someone internally about moderation today. I can’t talk about specifics, but I can tell you that these concerns aren’t falling on deaf ears - they have seen the concerns here and they are definitely listening.

[Frostananas (Gemini)]

Definitely support this. It’s 2020 and ROBLOX Support still hasn’t changed from being an automated maze. Moderation is constantly ignoring users and has told me to cease sending emails for an issue that can be easily resolved. Upon asking them any question with vital importance or is something that the user needs to know to proceed with their issue, they provide a copypasta message and closes the email thread. Upon sending multiple emails to continue getting information (information that has been learned over different email threads instead of just one of them) I was told to cease and desist, to stop sending emails again.

Moderation can’t ever be close to sympathizing with players and developers and simply cannot understand what something means to us. The current system upheld by ROBLOX is not held up to the standards of the website today and I am holding ROBLOX Support in contempt and in cynical thoughts. I hope reforms can happen.

[bigcrazycarboy]

This thread is 100% relevant and true. I recently was banned for a day due to an audio I had uploaded in 2016. The audio was a high-pitched sound with legitimate use cases (flashbang sound from call of duty). Of course, this sound actually was against the rules, but based on the fact that it was uploaded for a real purpose, four years ago, I don’t believe my account should have been suspended for 24 hours.

To further highlight the uselessness of current communication flaws on the Roblox platform, last year my development group account holder was exploited. An exploiters account took the group, and instead of giving the group back to one of us devs, roblox terminated the hacker account and did not return the group, locking up 20k+ robux in group funds and forcing us to relocate our playerbase to a new development group. Here’s a link if you need proof. Midnight Racing Community - Roblox

They didn’t refund the 100k+ that the hacker took before the account was terminated, I might add.

All these great updates to the platform need to be met with a group of moderators who care about the devs who make it successful, and unfortunately, it’s clear that roblox moderators just do not care enough to take care of these issues. Just one of the reasons a big studio would never choose roblox.

[Frostananas (Gemini)]

I believe that Roblox Support has become increasingly frustrating for users. With a lack of empathy and understanding, they now immediately sent me a shutdown message telling me that my questions couldn’t be answered when I specifically filed under “feedback and suggestions” and did not have any questions at all, only suggesting a change towards their systems. Roblox Support is negligent and its quality is not proportionate to other parts of the website and the number of users there are. This is absurd.

[NickoSCP]

As of this post from 3/23/2020 to 1/15/2020 and then now on 4/21/2020 and unterminated again on 4/22/2020… update below about termination status, I am/was/am again terminated on my account over code that was in my game that gotten flagged for review. I wasn’t provided a warning, didn’t have any previous moderation history on my account or a way of applying filtering or redacting content that caused this flag to occur in the first place and I’ve even sent numerous support tickets, 15737013, 15707739, 14624938, 14115202, 14091113, 14084488, 14059601, 14075877, 14067625, 14068087.

Only one ticket was able to tell me that the content of the game was inappropriate and replied with that they couldn’t provide any more information regarding my inquiry about my termination. Every single other support ticket for appealing is now either about

Hello,

Thank you for reaching out to us about your moderation concern. Our records indicate that an appeal has previously been sent for this account. Once a decision has been made to deny an appeal, further appeals for the same ban cannot be reviewed. Please do not send multiple emails about the same issue after a decision has been reached.

Sincerely, ###

or

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us about this issue. The ban you are trying to appeal was applied more than 30 days ago and can no longer be reviewed. Only recently banned accounts may be appealed.

In order to respond expediently to all appeals requests, we’ve established a reasonable timeline during which a moderation decision can be appealed. That timeline is one month, as this gives users enough time to contact us and for our team to review the situation.

Sincerely, ###

This alone is already demotivating me as a developer on Roblox over a simple mistake that I’m wanting to own up for doing accidently in studio. If I was provided a warning and the game to be set to private right away would of avoided this issue in entirety. Simply pasting user submitted quotes from another community of people into a script to your game ended up getting my account instantly terminated due to the content of the quotes. I’ve already resolved the issue about applying Text Filtering to the quotes and reuploaded the game to another account to be rest assured that my next revision is safe for use on Roblox.

I wasn’t informed at all that content in a Roblox game is subject to automated, strict, and harsh punishments against your own Roblox account until the DevForum post about code being flagged came up three days ago.

I’ve even went out of my way to contact a certain Roblox Staff member on DevForums, which if I didn’t stay logged into DevForum’s I wouldn’t be able to make this post right now because you need your Roblox account to login to DevForums in the first place. That Roblox Staff member simply isn’t even able to help appeal my account either so I’ve already ran out of options and already lost confidence in Roblox as a platform for me to develop on since I can’t even get my word across.

Does Roblox really want developers to make an alt for every single Roblox game they make and use a place teleporting hub on their main account to avoid this instant termination issue over code being flagged?

Will Roblox help offer another alternative way of appealing certain moderation activities or at least help developers find out more information to as of why their account has been terminated in further detail and more ways to restore their account instead of reciting the terms of service?

Edit: I’ve gotten my account unterminated by an unknown source as I wasn’t informed at all that it was unterminated. However, I’ll still be on my stance about the moderation system and appeals system letting me down as a developer.

Edit2:
I’ve now been re-terminated with yet another message. I’m confused to as what code has been deemed against the terms of service and feel that there’s no way of appealing said content.

Edit3: Now unterminated yet again on 4/22/2020, No update from any Roblox team as what steps I need to do or if I’m in the clear on Roblox now.

Edit4: There finally has been a message to me but the message in its context acted like the re-termination and un-termination was a glitch/bug and that if it wasn’t for community sage members arguing that my ban was unfair, the termination would of stayed on my account. No warning, no appeal, no previous moderation history, they were really going to consider keeping my account terminated.

[OmegaInvictus]

I have had a problem very similar to NickoSCP’s.

My account was also terminated a few days before Christmas Day of last year with no warning. Despite being on Roblox since 2011 and being a small/medium sized developer (my game has two and a half million visits with 75 players at the time of me writing this), I was not able to have my termination addressed through the appeals process, either. I can only assume that I was banned because of my group, but my termination page does not even have a moderator’s note or a reason why I was banned, so I can only guess.

My group is/was a Confederate Army (American Civil War) war group/clan. At the time of my termination, it had been operating for over ten years. Yeah, ten years. I have ran it since 2013. Due to the subject of the group, I and my admins controlled any misbehavior to the best of our ability, and due to Roblox’s community guidelines, my game has not had Confederate battle flags since they were banned a couple of years ago.

Like NickoSCP, I wasn’t given any warnings, either. Since my game was left up, I can only assume Roblox no longer wants Confederate Army groups, but I was not given the opportunity to rebrand my group, or anything like that, as I would be open to doing so. Instead, my eight year old account, around 45,000 Robux/lifetime Premium, and my over ten years old group were terminated.

I agree completely that things like this greatly shake the confidence of developers on Roblox. My game has millions of visits, and I have not been able to have this fixed for nearly four months.

I completely agree with Cindering that the appeals process needs some kind of reformation and that there needs to be additional safety checks before lengthy bans or terminations are given out. More ways to have an account unbanned in situations like this, as NickoSCP suggested, is probably an excellent idea, as most developers do not have the ability to directly contact people who can fix moderation issues on our accounts, as Cindering explains he had to do.
I expect what Cindering said about us being critical about the moderation system because we are passionate about Roblox is the truth for all of us; certainly it is for me, given that I have been a player on Roblox for almost a decade.

[TyDye8 (TyDye)]

Yet another false moderation action was discussed in this post https://devforum.roblox.com/t/roblox-moderation-in-the-eyes-of-small-developers/533569/1

This post goes through how @Sentross friend, whom is a group owner getting terminated for "“trading, buying, or selling Robux off-site” even though he did nothing. This post also discusses how the ban system is broken overall along with the appeal system. The group was also locked, which is also a key issue discussed.

I am only bringing this up in this post because this moderation action is NOT an isolated incident. I have constantly been seeing people get false bans especially during the past few months.