He Hunted Alleged Groomers on Roblox. Then the Company Banned Him
Last month, Kentucky attorney general Russell Coleman announced the details of yet another lawsuit against Roblox over suspected pedophiles lurking on the hugely popular gaming platform. While doing so, Coleman singled out the work of one self-described “predator hunter” who claims to have helped identify alleged abusers mixing with young gamers. “Roblox is even trying to silence those who raised these security risks,” Coleman said. “The famous case of one of their developers, Schlep, immediately comes to mind.” Schlep is in fact Michael, a 22-year-old Texan who has spent the last two years working with a group of other Roblox players to track down and identify people purportedly seeking to groom young children on the platform—predators like the one Schlep says allegedly groomed him a decade ago, which he says led him to try to take his own life. In the process of attempting to out suspected groomers, Schlep—who doesn’t share his surname for privacy reasons—has amassed 2.3 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, where he highlights what he believes to be the shortcomings of …
