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Religious and ideological extremists are using games like Roblox and online chat and gaming forums as a recruiting tool for Australian children.
The AFP has announced a growing concern over the online recruitment practices of a range of extremist groups.
Over the last two years, the law enforcement agency has seen a marked increase in the number of investigations it is conducting that involve children as young as 12 taking up “violent extremist ideologies”.
“The AFP is aware of groups and individuals with ideologically motivated violent extremism (IMVE) and religiously motivated violent extremism (RMVE) engaging with children online,” the AFP said in a statement.
Extremists are taking advantage of forums and games popular with young people, and some are also creating their own networks to share propaganda and recruit new members. However, one game in particular is popular as a recruiting tool – Roblox.
Roblox is a popular online game creation platform where users can create their own games to play and share with friends. It is a free-to-play platform available on a range of platforms and is extremely popular with children under 16. Roblox has more than 164 million users, 45 per cent of whom are under the age of 12.
It is that popularity that makes it an ideal platform for extremists to not only share their views to pick up new recruits but also to create their own content. The AFP has seen recreations of Nazi concentration camps, Chinese re-education camps, and Middle Eastern conflict zones and ISIS propaganda. The aim of many of these virtual creations is to encourage young people to engage with and act out extremist ideologies, blurring the boundaries between the online and real worlds.
Roblox has also been used to host several virtual pro-Palestine rallies in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023. Many have been taken down, although the game’s developers have not confirmed or denied that it was related to reports of hate speech.
Extremists are also known to target more vulnerable groups in these online communities, such as neuro-diverse children and kids raised in disruptive homes.
“With more than 3.22 billion active gamers online around the world, these extremists are attempting to target a significant part of the global population to spread their views and propaganda to recruit young people across popular platforms and games to encourage them to adopt an extremist or radicalised view,” said AFP Assistant Commissioner Krissy Barrett in a statement.
“These extremist groups and individuals are using these gaming and online platforms as a mode to transmit violent material and propaganda, across a range of extremist ideologies.”
Joint Counter Terrorism Teams – of which the AFP is a part – are actively working to counter these recruitment activities.
“We are urging anyone with information relating to concerning activity online to please come forward and help us keep our young people safe,” Assistant Commissioner Barrett said.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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