Australian children as young as 12 are being targeted by extremists who are infiltrating online gaming platforms, with a rising number of children being investigated for radicalised ideologies, according to the Australian federal police.
The AFP says ideologically and religiously motivated extremists are seeking out new supporters online to coerce them into undertaking violent extremism for their cause.
One popular gaming platform, Roblox, sees users program games for others to play in a virtual universe.
Some games feature virtual worlds where players are able to act out an extremist ideological narrative, disseminate propaganda, recruit other users and generate funds online.
Others feature scenarios such as Nazi concentration camps, Chinese communist “re-education camps” of Muslims, and Islamic State-style conflict zones.
One simulation depicted a recreation of the 2019 Christchurch terrorist attacks that authorities said aimed to blur the reality of users, allowing them to normalise violence and undertake criminal acts within the game.
Roblox has more than 65 million users engage every day, with about half of them 12 or younger.
The platform recently hosted a series of virtual pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel gatherings and rallies where some players violently attacked others with opposing views.
When the online extremist community encourages and validates a young person, it can become socially and emotionally reinforcing, police said.
AFP assistant commissioner Krissy Barrett said many young people were likely to receive technology-based gifts this holiday season.
“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,” she said on Sunday.
“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.”
Barrett described some recent games as nothing more than a “Trojan horse to promote their worldview, blurring the reality of young users with the aim to radicalise them”.
Joint counter-terrorism teams comprising AFP, state and territory police, and Asio and the NSW Crime Commission are working to prevent and identify the extremist activity online.
Roblox community standards state that they “believe in building a safe, civil, and diverse community” and “for some behaviour that violates these standards, such as behaviour that poses a real-world risk to others, we reserve the right to contact or cooperate with the relevant authorities in order to keep everyone safe”.
Earlier this year a Roblox spokesperson told the New York Times: “We recognise that extremist groups are turning to a variety of tactics in an attempt to circumvent the rules on all platforms, and we are determined to stay one step ahead of them.”
Last year the company told Wired that it works “closely with the Middlebury Institute’s Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counter-terrorism (CTEC), a world leading counter-terrorism institute and other governments and NGOs across the world to help us prevent extremist activity on our platform”.
SockAlarmed6707 on December 4th, 2023 at 13:56 UTC »
“Others feature scenarios such as Nazi concentration camps, Chinese communist “re-education camps” of Muslims, and Islamic State-style conflict zones.” One would think moderation team of Roblox would keep an eye out for stuff like this since almost their entire playerbase is kids.