Turkey has blocked Roblox over child exploitation reports

Just five days after blocking Instagram, Turkey has banned Roblox over reports of inappropriate sexual content perceived as exploiting children, Türkiye Today reported. An official from the Türkiye Directorate of Communications also cited “promotion of homosexuality” and incentives for children via the game’s Robux virtual currency as reasons for the ban.

The regulator also said that monitoring content on Roblox is a significant challenge. The countrywide restrictions were imposed following an investigation by the chief public prosecutor’s office.

Last week, Instagram was blocked in in the country following a dispute over Hamas-related content on the platform. Turkey’s head of communications stated in a post on X that Instagram was “actively preventing people from posting messages of condolences” for Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader who was killed earlier this week.

Turkish authorities have banned major social media services before. Twitter was briefly blocked in the country last year following an earthquake that killed thousands of people. YouTube and Twitter were also blocked in 2014.

Roblox has had its own problems, particularly around complaints of child exploitation. Earlier this year, the company was hit with a lawsuit accusing it of exploiting child labor and deceptive advertising. The company was also sued in 2022 for allowing adult users to sexually prey on a 10-year-old girl. Discord, Snap and Meta were also named in that suit.