Content Moderation Case Study: Roblox Tries To Deal With Adult Content On A Platform Used By Many Kids (2020)

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Summary: Roblox is an incredibly popular online platform for games, especially among younger users. In 2020, it was reported that two-thirds of all US kids between 9 and 12 years old use Roblox, and one-third for all Americans under the age of 16. The games on the platform can be developed by anyone, as Roblox has set up a very easy environment, using the scripting language Lua, so that many of the games themselves are developed by Roblox's young users.Given the target market of Roblox, the company has put in place a fairly robust content moderation program designed to stop content that the company deems inappropriate. This includes all kinds of profanity and inappropriate language, as well as any talk of dating, let alone sexual innuendo. The company also does not allow users to share personal identifiable information.The content moderation extends not just to players on the Roblox platform, but to the many game developers that create and release games on Roblox as well. Roblox apparently uses AI moderation from a company called Community Sift as well as human moderators from iEnergizer. Recent reports say that Roblox has a team of 2,300 content moderators.Given the competing interests and incentives, there are both widespread reports of adult content being easily available (including to children) as well as developers complaining about having their content, projects, and accounts shut down over perfectly reasonable content, leading to widespread complaints that the moderation system is completely arbitrary.

• How do you monitor so much content to make sure that adult content does not get through? How do you make sure that kids are not exposed to adult content?
• If the moderation systems are too aggressive, will that drive developers (and possibly some users) away?
• Should all games go through a human review process before they can be offered through Roblox?
• Are there better ways to communicate how and why content is moderated?

• Which is a more important constituency: the kids/families using Roblox or the developers who produce content for it? Is being aggressive in content moderation about finding a balance between those two groups?
• Is it worth overbanning if it means families feel safer using Roblox?

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Following DC Circuit Ruling In Public Records Case, New Request Demands Senate Intel Committee Reveal Full CIA Torture Report

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Earlier today the DC Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a public records case brought by Judicial Watch against Rep. Adam Schiff. In an odd way, the ruling may have opened up a way to get the full copy of the Senate Intelligence Committee's giant locked up report on the CIA's torture program. And someone -- namely journalist Shawn Musgrave along with public records lawyer extraordinaire Kel McClanahan -- has jumped up to try. But, first, some background.The case decided today goes back to the first House impeachment inquiry. In the impeachment inquiry report, the House Intelligence Committee, helmed by Schiff, released some phone records that it had obtained via a subpoena, showing some questionable phone calls, including ones connected to fellow Intel Committee member Devin Nunes (which, separately, Nunes later sued CNN about).This resulted in some fairly silly posturing, and then Judicial Watch, in standard Judicial Watch fashion, insisted that Schiff abused his powers in getting that subpoena, and sought to get the details of the subpoena via a public records request, saying that they had a "common law right of access" (conceptually similar to FOIA, but rather than using the rules under the FOIA statute, claiming a common law right to get the document).It's important to note that, normally, Congress is exempt from FOIA, so it's generally silly to make such requests. But, since this was done under the common law claim, rather than FOIA, it was seen as an end-run on the Congressional FOIA exemption. Last summer, the district court dismissed the lawsuit arguing that members of Congress have sovereign immunity and that these records are protected under the "speech and debate clause" of the Constitution, which protects against legal liability for things members of Congress say in the course of their duty.That takes us to today's ruling. It upheld the district court ruling, again saying that the speech and debate clause protects Schiff here:

As precedent makes clear, none of Judicial Watch'scounterarguments have merit. That its lawsuit seeks only thedisclosure of public records, rather than to establish criminalor civil liability, does not render the Speech or Debate Clauseinapplicable. Appellant Br. 10. To the contrary, JudicialWatch is no more entitled to compel . . . production ofdocuments . . . than it is to sue congressmen. Brown &Williamson Tobacco Corp. v. Williams, 62 F.3d 408, 421 (D.C.Cir. 1995). To the extent Judicial Watch maintains thatlegislative independence is not at issue in this case becauseit seeks public records that are not confidential in nature, itmisunderstands the immunity afforded by the Speech or DebateClause. Appellant Br. 10-11. Notwithstanding the records'confidentiality, legislative independence is imperiled when acivil action . . . creates a distraction and forces [congressmen]to divert their time, energy, and attention from their legislativetasks to defend the litigation. Eastland, 421 U.S. at 503; seeBrown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 62 F.3d at 415.

Today, the court has no occasion to decide whether theSpeech or Debate Clause bars disclosure of public recordssubject to the common-law right of access in all circumstances.Nor need it consider whether and how the application of theClause relates to the two-step inquiry to determine whether thecommon-law right of access applies. See Washington LegalFound. v. U.S. Sent'g Comm'n, 17 F.3d 1446, 1451 (D.C. Cir.1994). The parties did not raise, and our precedent does notaddress those issues.

I agree with my colleagues that, under our precedent, theSpeech or Debate Clause of the United States Constitution barsJudicial Watch's lawsuit. But I join in the judgment only; Ibelieve, in the right case, the application of the Speech orDebate Clause to a common law right of access claim wouldrequire careful balancing....

We have never considered the Speech or Debate Clause'sapplication to a common law right of access claim and theparties simply cite a single district court case where the twodoctrines were raised, Pentagen Technologies International v.Committee on Appropriations of the United States House ofRepresentatives, 20 F. Supp. 2d 41 (D.D.C. 1998), aff'd, 194F.3d 174 (D.C. Cir. 1999) (unpublished table decision).2 InPentagen Technologies, the plaintiffs brought a common lawright of access claim against the Committee on Appropriationsof the United States House of Representatives, seeking toreview and copy a series of investigative reports that were notreleased to the public. 20 F. Supp. 2d at 42. The Committee onAppropriations asserted the reports were protected fromdisclosure by the Speech or Debate Clause. Id. at 43. Althoughthe district court conclude[d] that investigative reports [were]protected from compulsory disclosure by the Speech or DebateClause, it reached that conclusion only after determining thatthe investigative reports were not 'public records' as definedby WLF II and that [t]here thus exist[ed] no common lawright of access to the reports. Id. at 45. If the Speech or DebateClause in fact provided absolute protection from disclosureincluding protection from a common law right of accessclaimthe district court's public records analysis wouldhave been unnecessary.

Judge Henderson explained that if a sought document is a public record, the government's interest in keeping the document secret should be balanced against the public's interest in disclosure. Judicial Watch at *11. A public record, she notes, is a government document created and kept for the purpose of memorializing or recording an official action, decision, statement, or other matter of legal significance, broadly conceived. Id., quoting WLF-II, 89 F.3d at 905.The Torture Report is a public record under this longstanding framework and today's decision in Judicial Watch does not counsel otherwise. Moreover, the public interest in disclosure is especially high for this report. Thus, we request that you provide the full report to us under the common law right of access to it.

Judge Henderson's concurrence makes it clear that a congressional record that memorializes an official decision of legal significance is subject to the common law right of access if it involves a matter of public interest and doesn't fall within the scope of the Speech or Debate Clause. It's hard to envision a Congressional record from the last 20 years that better fits that definition than the final report of the wide-ranging investigation into the CIA's controversial torture program. We hope that this new decision clarifying the public's right to such matters of great public interest will finally allow the public to see what the Intelligence Community and its apologists in Congress have tried so hard to bury, so that we can finally close the lid on that dark period of U.S. history.

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