Discord Disables Popular Anti-Predator Bot Citing User Profiling Violations

Discord has disabled Ro-Cleaner, a bot created to automatically ban suspected child predators from servers, after determining it violated the platform’s rules against profiling users. Ro-Cleaner was built by YouTuber Ruben Sim to scan for members of explicit or malicious Roblox communities and block them from entering Discord servers aimed at younger audiences.

In a notice to the developer and in posts on X, Discord explained that the bot’s method of identifying individuals based on their membership in certain groups amounted to profiling “protected characteristics.” Ruben Sim disputed this interpretation, arguing that joining a server known for explicit or rule-breaking content—especially those involving minors—should not qualify as a protected status.

Ro-Cleaner kept a database of users who had appeared in “condo servers” on Roblox, which are notorious for adult or illicit content. Whenever one of those flagged users tried to join any of the more than 23,000 servers running Ro-Cleaner, the bot would issue an automatic ban. Sim claimed the system had identified over 600,000 potentially harmful accounts during its four months of operation, though it can no longer screen new members.

News of the shutdown stirred debate on Reddit, where a post on the topic garnered over 1,600 upvotes and nearly 200 comments. Some users slammed Discord’s decision as obstructing child-protection efforts, with one commenter asserting, “So it’s confirmed, predators are pretty much considered a protected class by Roblox and Discord.” Others raised red flags about Ro-Cleaner’s opaque processes—a secret ban list, undisclosed criteria for flagging users, and worries about the developer’s own biases. One Redditor warned that the lack of oversight risked innocent members being unfairly targeted.

Despite the setback, Ruben Sim says he plans to build a new bot that lets server owners curate their own ban lists, and he intends to make the existing Ro-Cleaner database publicly available. Users interested in safer communities will soon have more tools at their disposal, but the rules around profiling on Discord remain firmly in place.

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