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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.

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Speaker 2: Roadblocks is one of the largest online gaming platforms in

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Speaker 2: the world, and Cecilia Donistasio, who covers video games for Bloomberg,

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Speaker 2: explain to me how it works.

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Speaker 1: Think of it as a mall of video games, and

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Speaker 1: there are all of these little enclaves in there, but

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Speaker 1: it doesn't charge admission to get into the mall, and

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Speaker 1: you don't have to pay to get into any of

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Speaker 1: the enclaves.

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Speaker 2: And like the mall I remember from my childhood, Roadblocks

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Speaker 2: is a place a lot of kids go to to

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Speaker 2: hang out. Worlds and characters on the platform look like

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Speaker 2: a crossover between the Lego movie and Minecraft. Blocky, three

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Speaker 2: dimensional and often colorful, and the platform has millions of

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Speaker 2: user made games.

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Speaker 1: There are games in Roadblocks where you pretend you're working

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Speaker 1: at a pizza parlor, or where you fling yourself down

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Speaker 1: a set of stairs repeatedly, or you raise a virtualorns,

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Speaker 1: and they're all very weird and whimsical and the kind

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Speaker 1: of games that really appeal the kids.

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Speaker 3: When I started looking at Roadblocks, I was blown away

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Speaker 3: by how popular it is.

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Speaker 2: That's Bloomberg investigative reporter Olivia Carville. She says more than

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Speaker 2: seventy seven million people sign onto Roadblocks every day, and

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Speaker 2: more than forty percent of them are under the age

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Speaker 2: of thirteen.

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Speaker 3: This is where kids are today. Roadblocks welcomes children, It

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Speaker 3: invites kids of all ages. You can create an account

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Speaker 3: as a three year old, a four year old, a

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Speaker 3: five year old and play on this platform, and that

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Speaker 3: really surprised me.

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Speaker 2: One thing that makes it so popular is it's really

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Speaker 2: easy to access.

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Speaker 1: It's really quite simple, and that's why kids download it

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Speaker 1: and play it across iPhone, iPad, android, PC, PlayStation, any

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Speaker 1: device you can think of. It's free there.

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Speaker 2: Signing up is simple. Cecilia says it takes about sixty seconds.

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Speaker 2: You put in your birth date, pick a username, and

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Speaker 2: to pass, and you can customize an avatar. Everyone on

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Speaker 2: Roadblocks is anonymous, and once you're online, you can interact

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Speaker 2: with other players and you can chat with them.

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Speaker 1: A lot of the trust and safety individuals that we

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Speaker 1: spoke to for the story said that Roadblocks's open chat

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Speaker 1: was one of its most dangerous features. You can create account,

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Speaker 1: you can talk to anyone, anyone can talk to you.

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Speaker 2: Roadblocks uses a combination of human moderators and AI and

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Speaker 2: says it's safe for kids of all ages, but as

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Speaker 2: Olivia and Cecilia discovered that anonymity can be exploited and

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Speaker 2: it's left some young users vulnerable. Today on the show,

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Speaker 2: a Bloomberg Business Week investigation into how sexual predators have

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Speaker 2: infiltrated the world's biggest online playground and the ongoing fight

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Speaker 2: to keep users safe. This is the big take from

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Speaker 2: Bloomberg News. I'm David Durray. Before we get to the

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Speaker 2: rest of the day day's show, I want to let

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Speaker 2: you know that we're going to talk about some tough subjects,

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Speaker 2: including child abuse. Roadblocks was launched in two thousand and six,

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Speaker 2: and while it grew steadily, Cecilia Donastasio says it's popularity

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Speaker 2: spiked during the pandemic when kids were stuck at home.

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Speaker 1: Roadblocks just blossomed into this virtual cul de sac. And

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Speaker 1: you know, when it went public in twenty twenty one,

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Speaker 1: it had a forty one billion dollar valuation.

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Speaker 2: Today it has a market cap of about twenty five

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Speaker 2: billion dollars and one way the company makes money is

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Speaker 2: through a virtual currency you can purchase on the platform

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Speaker 2: called roebucks.

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Speaker 1: Kids buy this currency, kids beg for this currency, from

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Speaker 1: their parents. It's huge. Roadblocks made three point five billion

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Speaker 1: dollars last year, primarily through the sale of roebucks.

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Speaker 2: Users on Roadblocks can spend that currency on virtual accessories

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Speaker 2: like wings, hats or costumes that make their avatars look

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Speaker 2: like a cockroach or like Peter Griffin from the show

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Speaker 2: Family Guy. Establish brands like Nike and Gucci sell virtual

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Speaker 2: goods on the platform, but it's independent developers who make

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Speaker 2: most of the items and games on Roadblocks. Cecilia says

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Speaker 2: that in the world of Roadblocks, a game developer can

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Speaker 2: have a huge following.

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Speaker 1: Roadblocks developers are like modern day god kings on digital platforms,

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Speaker 1: and that sounds like an exaggeration, but there are so

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Speaker 1: many that have become so popular that they've had to

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Speaker 1: completely anonymize themselves, lockdown any even iota of some existence

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Speaker 1: outside of an avatar and a username on Roadblocks because

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Speaker 1: kids are ravenous for information about these people who are

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Speaker 1: cultivating spaces where they forge their identities, they make connections,

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Speaker 1: they grow up.

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Speaker 2: One of those developers who became wildly popular called himself

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Speaker 2: doctor Rafatnik. That's a not so subtle nod to the

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Speaker 2: villain in in the Sega game Sonic the Hedgehog. Olivia

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Speaker 2: Carville says doctor Rafatnik created what is basically a Sonic

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Speaker 2: knockoff called Sonic Eclipse Online through Siga.

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Speaker 3: You have to pay for the game. Here on roadblocks,

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Speaker 3: you've got access to it for free. And he knew

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Speaker 3: that kids love Sonic, so he created the space and

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Speaker 3: thousands of children came and played Sonic Eclipse Online.

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Speaker 2: And as his game became more and more popular, so

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Speaker 2: did Doctor Rafatnik himself. Cecilia and Olivia told me his

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Speaker 2: signature avatar would wander around the world he'd built, soaking

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Speaker 2: up the adulation.

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Speaker 1: On roadblocks. He was just wearing a tall white hat

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Speaker 1: and a red tie and an American flag pin. And

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Speaker 1: he looked a debonair professional, even political.

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Speaker 3: He said he was an industry visionary, that he was braggadocius.

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Speaker 3: He claimed that he was twenty eight years old, that

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Speaker 3: he lived in California, that he was the younger brother

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Speaker 3: of John Sheidlitski, who was the platform's first creative designer,

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Speaker 3: who was an absolute legion and among children.

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Speaker 2: Doc as he came to be known, also told users

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Speaker 2: that he had a quote hot Spanish girlfriend, that he

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Speaker 2: drove a fast car, and he'd encourage roadblocks users who'd

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Speaker 2: chat with him to take those conversations with him to

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Speaker 2: other online platforms.

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Speaker 1: You can click on a Discord link or an x link,

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Speaker 1: and your relationship all of a sudden, is cross platform,

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Speaker 1: and there it can blossom soon.

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Speaker 2: Doc was multi platform famous.

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Speaker 3: So he created in an online kingdom where children could

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Speaker 3: look up to him, interact with him, talk to him regularly.

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Speaker 3: Some of them said he was online twenty four seven.

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Speaker 3: Anytime you reached out to him, he'd reply.

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Speaker 2: And what a lot of his followers found appealing about Doc,

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Speaker 2: Olivia says, was his dark and edgy humor, but also

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Speaker 2: that he'd pay them in robucks. That's what was he

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Speaker 2: paying them for? What was he asking them to do

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Speaker 2: for that virtual currency.

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Speaker 3: He actually had dozens of kids working for him. They

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Speaker 3: also would design new characters for him or new spaces

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Speaker 3: inside the game, and he'd pay them for that.

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Speaker 2: Doc also encouraged bullying. Olivia says he used racist and

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Speaker 2: homophobic slurs, and in twenty twenty, a group of teen

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Speaker 2: vigilantes on roadblocks decided they'd had enough. Just heads up

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Speaker 2: what they sounded the alarm one could be troubling to hear.

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Speaker 3: These gamers go after doctor Rofetnak, and what they do

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Speaker 3: is they post screenshots of a conversation he had with

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Speaker 3: a young twelve year old girl who worked for him,

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Speaker 3: where he talked about kidnapping her, raping her. He had

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Speaker 3: very inappropriate, hyper sexualized conversations with her, and all of

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Speaker 3: those screenshots were uploaded into a document that they dropped

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Speaker 3: on Twitter.

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Speaker 2: One of those gamers took that document to the police,

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Speaker 2: but that went nowhere. But eventually the mother of that

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Speaker 2: twelve year old girl saw those messages and she contacted

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Speaker 2: Roadblocks herself.

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Speaker 3: Her mum files a report to Roadblocks and explains that,

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Speaker 3: you know, there's a really creepy, dangerous man, a developer

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Speaker 3: going after her child and asked the platform for help.

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Speaker 3: So Roadblocks did receive a number of complaints from users

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Speaker 3: about the doctor Offetnek account, and four days after being

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Speaker 3: notified of these messages that he had been exchanging with

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Speaker 3: these young users, they blocked his account. They shut him down.

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Speaker 2: But that wasn't the end of it.

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Speaker 3: It was kind of just the beginning.

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Speaker 2: We'll be right back. Roadblocks blocked doctor Rafatnick's account, but

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Speaker 2: the man behind it was able to stay active on

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Speaker 2: the platform, He simply made another account before his main

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Speaker 2: account was banned. Doc transferred ownership of his game Sonic

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Speaker 2: Eclipse Online to a friend who kept running it on

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Speaker 2: his behalf. Roadblocks left it active because they said the

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Speaker 2: game itself didn't pose any safety concerns and told Bloomberg

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Speaker 2: It continued to search for and ban any of Doc's

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Speaker 2: alternate accounts. So kids kept playing the game and Doc developed,

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Speaker 2: They kept paying him through their in game purchases, and

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Speaker 2: they continued to look up to him. One of them

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Speaker 2: was a teenage girl from Indiana.

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Speaker 3: In May of twenty twenty two, a fifteen year old

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Speaker 3: girl goes missing. Her mom comes home and sees that

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Speaker 3: all of her electronics have gone from her bedroom. Her

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Speaker 3: favorite blanket's gone, some of her clothing is gone, her

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Speaker 3: charges are gone, and she sees that she's posted a

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Speaker 3: photo onto Instagram which shows her sitting inside a stranger's

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Speaker 3: car looking out the window, and she just wrote goodbye.

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Speaker 2: Indiana law enforcement started to investigate what they assumed was

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Speaker 2: a child abduction case, and a detective asked the girl's

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Speaker 2: family who she'd been talking to online.

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Speaker 3: She started to hear about this mystery figure who said

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Speaker 3: he was a popular developer on this gaming platform Roadblocks,

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Speaker 3: that he lived in California. She liked to draw, and

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Speaker 3: he actually called the mum at one point and told

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Speaker 3: her that he wanted to buy this teenage girl's artwork.

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Speaker 3: After that, Amazon packages started arriving on the doorstep, and

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Speaker 3: the girl would receive different tools or technology to help

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Speaker 3: with her artwork. She received a Teddy Beer takeout food

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Speaker 3: McDonald's Chinese noodles would come again.

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Speaker 2: That's according to the detective's account of her conversation with

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Speaker 2: the victim's family. The police got a hold of the

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Speaker 2: girl's private communications on social media, and they found she

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Speaker 2: and a man had exchanged hundreds of sexualized messages. The

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Speaker 2: FBI took over the case, and agents traced those Amazon

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Speaker 2: packages to an address in New Jersey.

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Speaker 3: Six unmarked cars pulled into the street for the stakeout

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Speaker 3: of this house, and within minutes, the teenage victim rounded

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Speaker 3: the corner with Arnold Castillo.

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Speaker 2: Arnold Castillo, aka doctor Rafatnik, had groomed the girl in

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Speaker 2: the virtual world of Roadblocks and then abused her in

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Speaker 2: the real world, where he was not A twenty eight

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Speaker 2: year old brother of a famous game designer in California.

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Speaker 2: He was a lonely twenty two year old man whose mom,

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Speaker 2: according to prosecutors, pulled him out of school in the

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Speaker 2: seventh grade and told him to make money through developing

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Speaker 2: video games. He still lived with her in a small

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Speaker 2: apartment above a garage. Castillo put his victim in a

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Speaker 2: room he'd rented in a building next door.

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Speaker 3: The prosecutor described the room that she was kept in

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Speaker 3: as this teeny, tiny, dank, damp room where he'd thrown

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Speaker 3: a twin mattress on the floor. He brought her hi

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Speaker 3: Adai to change her appearance.

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Speaker 2: Olivia says she and Bloomberg Gaming reporter Cecilia Denistasio managed

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Speaker 2: to determine and Roadblocks confirmed that Castillo was active on

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Speaker 2: Roadblocks on the day of his arrest. He was using

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Speaker 2: a different username than doctor Rafatnik, but he was active

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Speaker 2: on the platform all the same. He pleaded guilty to

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Speaker 2: transportation of a miner with intent to engage in criminal

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Speaker 2: sexual activity, coercion and enticement of a minor, and Castillo

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Speaker 2: is now serving a fifteen year prison sentence. Police across

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Speaker 2: the US have arrested at least two dozen people since

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Speaker 2: twenty eighteen who have abducted or abused victims they met

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Speaker 2: on roadblocks. That's according to data compiled by Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

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Speaker 2: Olivia and Cecilia reached out to Roadblocks for comment.

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Speaker 3: We received a statement from Roadblocks's Chief safety Officer, Matt Kaufman,

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Speaker 3: and he said that safety and civility are foundational to Roadblocks,

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Speaker 3: and they said that tens of millions of people of

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Speaker 3: all ages have a safe and positive experience on roadblocks

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Speaker 3: every single day.

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Speaker 1: Kaufman also rejected the claim that child engagement is widespread

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Speaker 1: or a systemic problem on roadblocks. He says that the

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Speaker 1: company has strong systems and protocols that are designed to

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Speaker 1: catch anyone circumventing their rules, including attempts to move conversations

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Speaker 1: off roadblocks for users who are under thirteen.

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Speaker 2: But Olivia and Cecily say that current and former employees

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Speaker 2: they spoke with told them that before twenty twenty two,

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Speaker 2: Roadblocks didn't have automated systems in place to proactively search

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Speaker 2: for grooming behavior beyond basic text filters. According to their sources,

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Speaker 2: back then, the word grooming didn't even appear in the

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Speaker 2: company's moderation guide. Roadblocks has made some changes since Arnold

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Speaker 2: Castillo is arrested. The company has two new child safety

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Speaker 2: investigators and a child exploitation moderation team. There's a child

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Speaker 2: safety officer who reports to Roadblocks's CEO, and on July fifteenth,

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Speaker 2: after multiple inquiries from Bloomberg Business Week, Roadblocks announced it

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Speaker 2: would change its default settings after this fall. Users under

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Speaker 2: the age of nine will be automatically restricted to games

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Speaker 2: that feature nothing more unsettling than mild violence and unrealistic blood.

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Speaker 2: Parents will have the option to allow their children to

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Speaker 2: access more mature content. But the scale of this problem

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Speaker 2: is only just coming into focus. In twenty twenty two,

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Speaker 2: Roadblocks reported nearly three thousand incidents of child exploitation to

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Speaker 2: the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. In twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty three, it flagged more than thirteen thousand. What really

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Speaker 2: worries child safety experts is Roadblocks's ambition. It's a publicly

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Speaker 2: traded company that's trying to get even bigger, and to

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Speaker 2: do that, it's aiming to have one billion users every day.

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Speaker 2: So you've spoken with a lot of I guess past

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Speaker 2: and present employees of the company. What do they say

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Speaker 2: about the challenge of scaling up the company of that

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Speaker 2: size and also scaling up the safety side of things

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Speaker 2: in tandem.

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Speaker 1: It would be very difficult to find a platform out

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Speaker 1: there where safety and growth were not at odds, and

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Speaker 1: Roadblocks is one of those platforms. Sources I spoke with

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Speaker 1: at the company said that artificial intelligence isn't really capable

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Speaker 1: of picking up on the subtle signs of grooming.

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Speaker 2: Eight current and former trust in safety workers told Bloomberg

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Speaker 2: Business Week that user growth at Roadblocks takes prior over

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Speaker 2: child safety. They described calls for more resources going unanswered,

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Speaker 2: resulting in a backlog of safety incident reports. A Roadblock

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Speaker 2: spokesperson disputed the claims about resources and backlogs and says

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Speaker 2: the company has a robust pipeline of safety features in development.

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Speaker 2: Roadblock says that every second, fifty thousand chat messages are

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Speaker 2: sent on the platform, but it's not just the volume

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Speaker 2: that makes Roadblocks hard to police.

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Speaker 1: How do you tell if an avatar is simulating sex?

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Speaker 1: How do you tell if an avatar is simulating rape?

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Speaker 1: These are enormous challenges and ones that Roadblocks I think

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Speaker 1: has not necessarily grappled with.

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Speaker 2: You've talked to online safety experts, what is the advice

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Speaker 2: that they give to parents whose kids are in this

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Speaker 2: virtual world and to kids themselves who are trying to

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Speaker 2: navigate this at a very young age.

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Speaker 1: The question of child safety on all of these platforms

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Speaker 1: is what can parents do? What can parents do? How

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Speaker 1: can parents, you know, get into their kids' devices and

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Speaker 1: ensure that they're safe and not? What defaults must there be,

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Speaker 1: What age getting measures must there be, what chat filters

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Speaker 1: must exist, what moderation protocols, what number of moderations should

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Speaker 1: be employed by these companies? And I think part of

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Speaker 1: the issue is that there isn't the kind of literacy

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Speaker 1: with these platforms that's necessary for parents to really advocate

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Speaker 1: to them and to really make specific asks, or to

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Speaker 1: ask politicians to make really specific asks. I'm not a

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Speaker 1: parent myself, so maybe I'm speaking out of turn when sure,

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Speaker 1: they can disable a lot of settings, but you know,

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Speaker 1: we exist in a market where growth is why platforms desire,

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Speaker 1: and safety is at odds with that, and there just

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Speaker 1: aren't a lot of laws or policies that are forcing

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Speaker 1: companies to adopt common sense measures that will protect children.

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Speaker 1: That's something that safety experts have repeated over and over

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Speaker 1: and over to us.

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Speaker 3: So much of this conversation has been so dark and

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Speaker 3: so depressing. And while we don't want to deflect responsibility

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Speaker 3: onto parents, Roadblocks should be doing more to keep its

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Speaker 3: platform safer. They even say that themselves. They're continually working

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Speaker 3: to improve their safety measures.

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Speaker 2: But there are.

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Speaker 3: Things that parents can be doing that they should know about.

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Speaker 3: You know, there are safety features in the app. If

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Speaker 3: you do some research, you can switch on these safety settings.

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Speaker 3: They're not turned on by default, but you can go

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Speaker 3: in and do that for your child. Talk to them

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Speaker 3: openly about their experiences in the game, allow them to

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Speaker 3: come to you, to have those conversations. And I think that,

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Speaker 3: you know, parents should be proactively looking at what their

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Speaker 3: kids are doing because unfortunately the platforms just aren't doing

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Speaker 3: enough right now.

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Speaker 2: This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gera.

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Speaker 2: This episode was produced by David Fox with help from

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Speaker 2: RFA Jalasho Perry. It was edited by Aaron Edwards and

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Speaker 2: Robert Friedman. It was fact checked by Adriana Tapia and

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Speaker 2: mixed by Alex Sagura. Our senior producers are Kim Gittleson

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Speaker 2: and Naomi Shaven, and our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso.

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Speaker 2: Nicole Beamster Boor is our executive producer. Sage Bauman is

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Speaker 2: Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. Please

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Speaker 2: follow and review The Big Take wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 2: It helps new listeners find the show. We'll be back tomorrow.