Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1183 ｜ KinderCare Cover-Up： New Report Reveals Abuse, Corruption ｜ Guest： Edwin Dorsey

00:00:00.980 Kindercare operates over 1,000 daycare centers across 41 states, and it has been revealed

00:00:08.720 that there is systemic abuse across these daycare centers, and very little, if anything, is

00:00:15.480 being done about it.

00:00:16.540 What's worse, our taxpayer dollars are actually funding this abuse.

00:00:21.320 Today, we've got investigative reporter Edwin Dorsey detailing his new and damning report

00:00:27.660 about Kindercare.

00:00:28.820 He will also be detailing his past reports about Care.com and Roblox.

00:00:35.020 Both of these companies have had practices endangering children.

00:00:39.480 Oh my goodness.

00:00:40.380 The details of what he has discovered over the years, they're absolutely chilling, and

00:00:46.200 we as parents need to know about it.

00:00:48.680 Don't just listen to and watch the entirety of this episode.

00:00:52.660 Share it with every parent, every grandparent, every caretaker that you know.

00:00:58.260 This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.

00:01:01.040 Go to GoodRanchers.com.

00:01:02.260 Use code Allie. 1.00

00:01:02.980 It's GoodRanchers.com.

00:01:04.080 Code Allie. 1.00

00:01:14.420 Edwin, thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

00:01:16.980 Could you tell us who you are and what you do?

00:01:19.940 Yeah, Allie.

00:01:20.520 Thanks for having me on Relatable.

00:01:22.080 I write a newsletter called The Bear Cave, which is a sub-stack publication focused on

00:01:27.240 exposing corporate misconduct.

00:01:29.340 There's two real components to the newsletter.

00:01:31.640 There's a free component where I kind of aggregate the news and finance in the short seller world.

00:01:37.020 So I'll summarize activist short campaigns, highlight suspicious resignations, and link

00:01:41.740 to interesting articles and tweets.

00:01:43.800 And then there's a paid tier of the newsletter where twice a month, I do some like deep dive

00:01:48.540 kind of investigative journalism, generally looking at a $1 to $10 billion public company

00:01:53.660 that I think is misleading investors or harming customers.

00:01:57.380 And that's what I do with the newsletter.

00:01:59.320 Okay.

00:01:59.400 How'd you get into this?

00:02:00.560 So I've been passionate about stocks from a really young age, like second grade, I was

00:02:06.720 all about the stock market.

00:02:08.400 Wow.

00:02:08.560 In college, I interned at various hedge funds, and I thought that's the route I was going

00:02:12.580 to take and work for hedge funds and short sellers in particular.

00:02:16.440 However, the fund I was interning for, which was a very large short seller fund that did

00:02:21.520 a lot of investigative research, they were in the process of shutting down my senior year.

00:02:26.580 So I needed to get a job, and I figured that if I started writing smart stuff online, people

00:02:32.320 would want to hire me.

00:02:33.380 So I started this newsletter mainly as a way to get a job, but it got really popular very

00:02:38.180 fast in the pandemic, quickly became a full-time income, and it's been what I've been doing

00:02:42.980 for the last five years.

00:02:44.480 It's my only source of income, reader subscriptions, and it's been pretty decent.

00:02:49.060 So it's a lot of fun.

00:02:50.220 Yes, so I saw a headline about your research into kindercare, and I'm a mom of young kids,

00:03:00.080 and we've got a lot of moms out there listening. 1.00

00:03:02.920 I've never interacted with kindercare.

00:03:05.620 My kids didn't go to daycare, but I'm really interested in how a company like this functions,

00:03:11.220 and I was really disturbed by some of the things you found.

00:03:14.260 So can you tell us, first of all, what tipped you off into looking into kindercare, and then

00:03:18.880 what did you find?

00:03:19.560 So my newsletter has a pretty long history of looking at big public companies that have

00:03:26.080 some issues with child safety.

00:03:27.740 I wrote on Care.com five or six years ago.

00:03:31.280 Over the last few years, I've written a lot about Roblox, pretty successfully highlighting

00:03:35.120 safety issues before the mainstream media gets to it.

00:03:39.020 KinderCare got on my radar for a somewhat odd reason.

00:03:42.200 I was using ChatGPT Pro.

00:03:44.080 I'm always looking for new companies, and I asked it, can you look through all the recent

00:03:48.160 IPOs of public companies and find ones with high levels of consumer complaints?

00:03:52.620 And it gave me a list of 10.

00:03:54.680 KinderCare was on that list.

00:03:55.960 And when I went through the list of companies with high levels of consumer complaints, KinderCare

00:04:00.200 stood out as the one that had a lot of issues and that is kind of harming the public.

00:04:05.380 So that's how they got on my radar.

00:04:07.100 It wasn't from a person or like any novel researchers literally just asking ChatGPT for companies

00:04:12.460 with high levels of consumer complaints.

00:04:14.720 One thing that I'm very good at is using FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act, to get copies

00:04:20.340 of complaints people are sending regulators.

00:04:22.820 So one common thing I'll do in my research is I'll go to the FTC and see what complaints

00:04:27.640 people are submitting to the FTC and go to local state attorney general offices and see

00:04:32.660 what complaints people are submitting to state AGs.

00:04:35.160 And when I did that for KinderCare, I kind of got a high level of complaints about this

00:04:39.460 daycare company, which is the largest daycare company in the U.S.

00:04:42.800 A few hundred thousand kids go to it, over 1,500 locations.

00:04:48.640 And the kind of one pattern that stood out to me about KinderCare is they seem to have

00:04:52.560 like a lot of child safety issues and not the type of stuff you'd normally expect where,

00:04:57.640 you know, maybe a kid like fights with another kid or somebody has allergies.

00:05:01.360 There was like issues where kids were escaping from the KinderCare locations.

00:05:05.980 Kids were getting locked in rooms, you know, with no supervisions.

00:05:09.420 Kids were overdosing on drugs brought by the staff.

00:05:12.960 There was just tons of these, you know, local news stories across the board of KinderCare

00:05:17.620 mistreating the kids they're watching.

00:05:19.800 And, you know, that's kind of the crux of my article and why people should pay attention.

00:05:24.440 OK, kids are overdosing on drugs.

00:05:28.420 Can you tell us about that?

00:05:31.460 Yeah.

00:05:32.020 So there was one case where a woman, you know, dropped her kid off at KinderCare.

00:05:38.340 Six hours later, she was told, you need to pick up your kid.

00:05:43.780 He's throwing up.

00:05:44.900 He's feeling sick.

00:05:46.820 And she took him home and she knew right away something was wrong, like the motherly instinct.

00:05:52.440 And so she went back to KinderCare and said, like, what happened?

00:05:55.500 Like, my kid was fine this morning.

00:05:57.540 And, you know, now he's very, very sick and like has all these bruises.

00:06:01.980 And it's like clearly something's wrong.

00:06:03.940 And KinderCare denied anything was wrong.

00:06:06.160 And, you know, but the mother knew something was wrong.

00:06:08.200 So she took her kid to the hospital and the hospital did a drug test. 0.99

00:06:13.220 And this kid is like two year old tested positive for cocaine.

00:06:16.980 And the police got involved.

00:06:18.580 And first they pointed the finger at her and are like, you must be doing cocaine in your

00:06:22.120 house and your kid's overdosing on that. 0.80

00:06:24.380 So they searched the house and like drug tested her and nothing was wrong.

00:06:27.640 And then they went to the daycare at the KinderCare daycare.

00:06:31.200 And it turns out one of the staff members had brought cocaine to work in a bag.

00:06:35.240 And the kid, you know, had gotten access to this worker's backpack and like ingested some

00:06:40.580 of the cocaine.

00:06:41.300 And that's why this kid tested positive for cocaine.

00:06:43.940 And that sounds absurd.

00:06:45.780 And this daycare had been cited for a lot of safety violations in the past.

00:06:50.100 It was ultimately shut down.

00:06:51.860 But this is the type of pattern of misconduct you'll see at KinderCare locations.

00:06:55.780 There's about 70 in the state of Texas.

00:06:58.460 There's hundreds nationwide.

00:07:00.600 You know, it's kind of crazy what goes on when you don't have like good corporate controls

00:07:04.660 to prevent this stuff.

00:07:05.600 And the common theme I see in all these KinderCare cases is the company is never transparent with

00:07:10.780 the parents about what happened.

00:07:12.100 In this case, it only came out because the mom like took four steps to figure out what 1.00

00:07:16.120 happened.

00:07:17.040 So that's like one of the more absurd cases that happened just a year ago.

00:07:20.620 Yes, we have a video clip of Kimberly, the mother, expressing regret over sending her

00:07:26.300 child to KinderCare at top four.

00:07:28.300 Like at the time he was 11 months old.

00:07:30.520 He is so innocent.

00:07:32.820 Like if you knew the baby before, like he was just so happy.

00:07:36.820 His daily routine has been messed up due to unfortunately what happened at KinderCare.

00:07:43.780 He has a lot of developmental delays now.

00:07:47.380 He's a might be special needs now.

00:07:49.700 I wish I didn't send him to KinderCare that day.

00:07:52.900 I wish that day I wouldn't have.

00:07:56.120 That day just changed everything.

00:07:58.840 Ugh, poor thing. 0.65

00:07:59.860 I mean, you can just see the desperation.

00:08:02.480 So that KinderCare, Oak Creek KinderCare, as you said, had prior safety violations that

00:08:07.700 included staff being aggressive with infants, undocumented injuries, and access to power tools

00:08:14.480 and toxic chemicals.

00:08:16.340 Then there was a woman in April of 2021.

00:08:19.400 She posted a video of a toddler on the streets outside Milford, Connecticut, KinderCare.

00:08:24.320 When she alerted the daycare staff, they had, quote, no idea that the child had been missing.

00:08:29.340 The boy's father only learned of the incident after the woman's video went viral online.

00:08:34.860 So after that happened, KinderCare didn't even inform this dad, oh, yeah, sorry, you know,

00:08:40.020 your kid escaped.

00:08:42.080 Yeah.

00:08:42.660 No, this is so there's two incidences in my article where, you know, a kid literally just

00:08:47.600 escapes the daycare, usually by opening a window and then rolling out.

00:08:51.780 Somebody is like, you know, the kid gets far.

00:08:54.440 Like, he's walking down busy streets.

00:08:56.140 People are taking videos.

00:08:57.520 Ultimately, somebody like will find the kid.

00:09:00.160 And no one knows like who this like two year old belongs to.

00:09:02.780 So they'll bring it to like a nearby business or something.

00:09:05.700 And KinderCare, when this happens, they don't even notice the kid's missing.

00:09:09.900 They don't inform the parents.

00:09:11.220 It's just like and even though there's been two cases where this has gone viral on Facebook

00:09:16.260 of someone taking a video of a KinderCare kid escaping, I'm really confident this is happening

00:09:21.160 a lot more at KinderCare locations.

00:09:23.260 There was one complaint I saw to the Ohio Attorney General that I got through FOIA where a parent

00:09:28.260 was like, my kid escaped from a KinderCare.

00:09:30.240 And I have no idea until, you know, someone told me.

00:09:32.820 So, you know, I know of at least three cases where kids are escaping from KinderCare.

00:09:37.520 And this is like way more than any other chain.

00:09:40.300 It seems like a pretty simple and basic issue for a daycare.

00:09:43.120 You got to make sure the kids can't escape.

00:09:44.920 And that's going on repeatedly at KinderCare.

00:09:48.360 So, yeah, they definitely have some odd issues here.

00:09:51.000 And it's always not being transparent with the parents.

00:09:53.920 In every single case, the parents are like, I didn't know what happened.

00:09:57.320 KinderCare didn't tell me, but I found out from someone else.

00:10:00.000 So this definitely seems like a pattern here.

00:10:02.420 And if you look just, you know, in any state, there's often databases where these daycares

00:10:07.480 are ranked and evaluated.

00:10:09.280 KinderCare is consistently worse than the average, which is the exact opposite of what you'd expect

00:10:13.900 for, like, a big company that has all the resources to have, like, good internal controls.

00:10:18.560 Right.

00:10:18.760 Because you found that they are receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies.

00:10:23.780 And so they're not hurting for money, in addition to having so many paying families that are sending

00:10:29.000 their kids there.

00:10:30.160 And yet they get complaint after complaint.

00:10:32.820 You found that.

00:10:34.680 And it's only after several complaints where I guess the news starts reporting on something

00:10:39.280 that happened at one of these local branches that they end up shutting down.

00:10:43.140 Why is it that there is so much grace for these KinderCare centers that repeatedly are receiving

00:10:50.860 these kinds of very serious complaints?

00:10:54.220 Allie, that's a great question.

00:10:55.540 And I don't know, but it definitely should change.

00:10:58.300 And that's a great point about taxpayers paying for this.

00:11:00.980 So KinderCare largely caters to working families.

00:11:03.800 They also have a program to watch the children of kids whose parents are in the military.

00:11:08.540 So service members and about 35% of their revenue comes from the U.S. taxpayer, which

00:11:13.840 is their largest source of revenue through the Child Care Development Block Grant, which

00:11:18.360 was started in 1990 under George H.W. Bush, with the idea being that early childhood education,

00:11:25.900 having kids in, like, informative daycares is so beneficial to early childhood education.

00:11:30.360 And the kids' development, that the government should be subsidizing it.

00:11:34.700 And the reality is it's kind of like the opposite.

00:11:37.760 Kids in KinderCare, in addition to all these safety issues and ingesting cocaine and roaming

00:11:42.120 the streets, you know, it does not seem like it's, like, beneficial for your development

00:11:47.320 to have 20 kids in a room supervised by someone earning $12 an hour in a corporate environment

00:11:52.540 that just doesn't care about these kids. 1.00

00:11:54.800 So it's a complete, you know, abuse of taxpayer funds.

00:11:58.340 The government has huge ability to flex on these centers and not just shut them down or

00:12:02.560 withhold state subsidies for these centers.

00:12:06.020 You know, I think there is kind of an element of regulatory capture that exists across corporate

00:12:10.860 America where the big companies, you know, ultimately control the regulators.

00:12:16.080 Because KinderCare is so large, they have the ability to push back harder than any other

00:12:21.540 entity.

00:12:22.180 So if, you know, a lot of daycares are just, you know, one-offs owned by somebody or a

00:12:26.700 nonprofit, if that gets shut down, they might not have the resources to fight back.

00:12:30.880 But what you see in KinderCare is sometimes they get shut down, but then there's an appeal

00:12:35.180 process.

00:12:35.800 And KinderCare will be really good at the appeal process and have the best lawyers and fight

00:12:39.380 back.

00:12:39.780 It's something you see on Reddit threads where KinderCare employees talk is they say they're

00:12:45.560 very good at just roping everything together properly right before licensing and inspections

00:12:50.660 and then things fall apart right after.

00:12:53.280 So I think there's kind of a corporate strategy around like pulling things together just for

00:12:57.560 inspections and then laxing all the standards after.

00:13:00.400 There's a corporate strategy of fighting back aggressively on suspensions.

00:13:05.160 And I think regulators also aren't doing their jobs.

00:13:08.120 So I think those three factors is why this continues to exist.

00:13:11.420 And it's kind of bizarre because it's not just a private company.

00:13:13.980 It's a private company getting hundreds of millions a year in taxpayer subsidies to do

00:13:18.480 harm.

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00:15:07.420 Okay, you said that employees getting paid $12 an hour.

00:15:11.680 I don't know if that was hyperbole or if that is literally what some of these employees are

00:15:15.880 getting paid, $12 an hour.

00:15:18.420 Yeah, no, it's very, very, very low.

00:15:20.200 Working in early childhood education is a very, very low paid field, partly because

00:15:26.800 there's not a lot of credentials required for it.

00:15:29.100 Now, it might vary by state.

00:15:30.920 But yeah, these are very low paying jobs.

00:15:33.360 They have extremely high turnover.

00:15:35.780 And one of the bigger issues here is kinder care is now publicly traded.

00:15:41.280 And for the last 10 years, I've been owned by a Swiss private equity firm.

00:15:45.420 And if you look at just kind of the private equity playbook, you know, anytime they get

00:15:50.460 in health care or childhood education is you need to increase profits.

00:15:54.740 And you can't necessarily raise the prices of watching these kids, partly because the

00:15:59.340 subsidies are capped at a certain rate, partly because it's just like a standardized thing

00:16:03.240 and you can't, you know, be priced above market.

00:16:05.700 So your profits come from cutting costs.

00:16:08.860 And the way you cut costs is you lower the wages, people are paid, and you reduce the

00:16:14.700 numbers of workers.

00:16:15.660 So kinder care has largely grown through acquisitions.

00:16:18.420 They acquire an existing facility.

00:16:19.920 And when they do, they lay people off and they typically lower the pay.

00:16:23.580 So kinder care is not a leader in compensation.

00:16:25.800 And as a result, you have the higher turnover.

00:16:29.120 So there was one study by the Women's Law Center that found these private equity backed 0.54

00:16:33.460 daycares tend to have the highest levels of turnover, way higher than independently owned

00:16:39.520 ones or nonprofit ones, which is problematic because if you've got a new person coming in

00:16:43.680 every six months, you're not going to be able to build relationships with them.

00:16:47.160 How do you know if you can trust them?

00:16:49.060 So that's kind of one issue with kinder care.

00:16:51.120 And yeah, I think that's a kind of a big factor that contributes to the low quality of

00:16:56.420 care as people are getting is these people are paid low.

00:16:59.160 They're paid lower than anyone else in the industry and there's significant turnover.

00:17:03.020 Yeah, they are, I guess, people who at times are just desperate for work.

00:17:07.760 Maybe they don't have credentials.

00:17:08.920 And since you don't have to have credentials to work in a place like KinderCare, they get

00:17:13.060 this job and they have no interest in children.

00:17:15.400 They don't even have the temperament, some of these people, for children.

00:17:19.140 And so you get the people who should at least be working with children, working with children 0.97

00:17:26.100 who obviously can't defend themselves, are in very vulnerable situations.

00:17:31.060 And it sounds like KinderCare realizes that this is a problem, but they have all of the

00:17:36.040 mechanics in place to protect themselves as much as possible.

00:17:40.200 Exactly.

00:17:40.900 And, you know, you're going to get everybody who's been fired or couldn't get jobs at the

00:17:44.840 better daycares.

00:17:45.820 There might be like some low levels of licensing and training required, but I read a lot of

00:17:50.320 the forums where these former employees talk and, you know, they talk about not being prepared.

00:17:55.220 And one kind of common thing with KinderCare is there's a lot of rules around staffing.

00:17:59.420 You need to have a certain number of staff members for kids and you can't like be out of

00:18:03.720 ratio.

00:18:04.620 And KinderCare is constantly out of ratio.

00:18:07.460 And now the government isn't going to really know unless there's like inspection exams that

00:18:11.460 KinderCare might like send an extra employee or two there for the inspection exam. 1.00

00:18:15.620 So because KinderCare is constantly out of ratio, it's like tough to hire people in any

00:18:20.300 environment.

00:18:20.780 Then you get desperate for anybody, which is how you have people bringing cocaine to a

00:18:24.440 daycare.

00:18:25.260 Right.

00:18:25.440 A two-year-old is going to overdose and then the mom is going to be blamed. 0.96

00:18:28.280 And like, you know, it's a total mess.

00:18:31.040 It's a total disgrace.

00:18:31.960 And then a lot of the people, you know, one common theme I found just looking into a lot

00:18:37.780 of companies and doing this a lot, getting consumer complaints, it's always the working

00:18:42.240 class people who are getting taken advantage of the most and who are least equipped to defend

00:18:47.080 themselves.

00:18:47.720 So, you know, if you did this with, you know, upper class families who have access to lawyers

00:18:52.660 and maybe more of an educational pedigree, this would get shut down so fast.

00:18:57.060 They'd go to reporters, they'd hire lawyers, they'd sue.

00:18:59.540 So, you know, back to your clip with the woman, Ms. 1.00

00:19:03.120 Hobson, whose son overdosed, I don't think she mentioned hiring a lawyer.

00:19:07.220 I don't think she even mentioned suing them.

00:19:09.000 She said the happiest day she'd experienced was the day the KinderCare was shut down.

00:19:13.840 So when you're taking advantage of working class people who have, you know, just less 0.60

00:19:18.220 wherewithal to defend themselves, then it's like especially abusive.

00:19:21.960 So just across the board, you know, when I look at companies that are hurting children,

00:19:25.900 it's almost always working class families who just have a ton on their plate.

00:19:30.240 They can't devote as much time to this.

00:19:31.900 They don't have as much money to, you know, devote to this.

00:19:34.560 And the most infuriating thing is this is literally being paid for by taxpayers.

00:19:39.080 And even though there's a lot of local media reporting on it, there's been no mainstream

00:19:43.800 media reporting on it.

00:19:45.120 And I know one big theme with Relatable is the failures of the mainstream media.

00:19:49.380 And I would point to this as another one.

00:19:51.540 This is very relevant.

00:19:53.100 It's national.

00:19:54.080 It's happening nationwide.

00:19:55.560 It involves taxpayer funds.

00:19:57.080 And we haven't seen a single national paper write about this, even though it's been going

00:20:02.640 on for a while.

00:20:03.920 OK, so some of the scenarios that you described, October 2021, an infant died after being sick

00:20:10.520 all day out of kinder care.

00:20:13.060 And, you know, they denied that there was any negligence.

00:20:16.100 But then the same daycare in Ohio faced two formal complaints around child injuries as

00:20:22.140 of April 16th.

00:20:23.580 That kinder care in Ohio is still operational.

00:20:27.060 And February 2022, a kinder care in Southern Florida locked a two-year-old inside alone because

00:20:34.920 the mom was 15 minutes late. 0.94

00:20:37.040 The mom had to call the police to open the door to get her two-year-old who was standing 1.00

00:20:41.860 on a chair screaming for help.

00:20:44.240 Two years old.

00:20:44.920 That's a baby.

00:20:45.720 In August of 2022, police officers arrested a Florida kinder care teacher for child abuse

00:20:51.580 after, quote, yelling at the child victim and repeatedly punching the child with an open

00:20:57.300 and closed fist to the back and side of the head.

00:20:59.620 Oh, my gosh.

00:21:00.940 April 2023, two parents in Texas sued a, sewed, OK, sewed, or I thought that was a typo, sewed

00:21:09.860 a recording device into their 20-month-old toddler's jacket.

00:21:13.080 The recorded audio captured a kinder care employee threatening the children, saying,

00:21:17.880 I'm going to beat both of y'all.

00:21:19.840 That's what I'm going to do.

00:21:21.300 I'm about to throw some B-I-T-C-H swings at some of y'all right now.

00:21:26.840 Get up and move.

00:21:28.160 Sit down.

00:21:28.800 There's a baby that whimpers.

00:21:30.180 Sit your A-S-S down. 1.00

00:21:31.880 Come sit down.

00:21:33.240 Touch it and you die.

00:21:34.540 Just get away from me because I will end up in jail.

00:21:39.320 That was a teacher at a, talking to babies, talking to toddlers at a kinder care in Texas.

00:21:44.860 And not all of these facilities have been closed down, even after these things have become

00:21:49.180 public, right?

00:21:50.680 Oh, yeah.

00:21:51.000 Almost none of them have been closed down.

00:21:52.880 You know, there's a local media reporting.

00:21:55.100 There's some outrage.

00:21:56.040 They fire the person if there is like media reporting.

00:21:58.480 And then it's so like comically absurd.

00:22:02.020 There was one case in which, you know, that you didn't mention in which the, the kinder

00:22:07.200 care, like there was like nap time.

00:22:09.280 The kids were sleeping and the kid isn't doing anything.

00:22:12.660 Like the girl is completely asleep, like a two-year-old. 0.93

00:22:15.660 And one of the kinder care employees is just like pouring water on her forehead to wake 1.00

00:22:20.480 her up.

00:22:20.760 And she wakes up and falls back to sleep.

00:22:22.240 And they're just like pouring water, like statistically on these kids while they're sleeping.

00:22:26.580 And they think it's funny.

00:22:27.760 So the other kinder care employee is literally like videotaping it and uploading it to Snapchat,

00:22:32.660 them just like literally messing with the kids in their sleep.

00:22:36.080 And this is what happens when you have no like controls.

00:22:38.840 This is what happens when you don't care about kids.

00:22:40.940 This is what happens when you have like a bunch of like immature 20-year-olds, like just

00:22:44.400 watching kids messing around.

00:22:46.020 This is what happens when there's like no accountability.

00:22:48.080 And that facility isn't shut down.

00:22:49.800 And they're going to say it's a one-off and they fire their people.

00:22:52.620 But yeah, it's, it's absurd.

00:22:54.380 And it happens at a much higher rate at kinder care versus any of these other facilities.

00:22:59.860 And it's a big problem.

00:23:01.100 And, you know, I think, you know, I don't know all the rules around licensing, but it

00:23:06.480 seems to be very friendly to these daycares.

00:23:08.680 They have so many opportunities.

00:23:09.960 And to appeal and defend themselves.

00:23:13.800 And one big problem is evidence.

00:23:16.180 So, you know, in any large corporation, you generally see the corporation trying to create

00:23:20.440 a lot of documentation to protect themselves.

00:23:23.220 With kinder care, it's the opposite.

00:23:25.600 Kinder care facilities rarely have cameras internally or externally.

00:23:29.500 And, you know, the joke I've seen on forums is they don't want cameras because they don't

00:23:34.360 want like to get sued because the cameras are going to show their employees doing stuff badly.

00:23:39.240 So a lot of daycares, they want cameras. 0.95

00:23:41.460 So as things go wrong, you can say, no, look, this kid tripped or we're not negligent.

00:23:45.460 But here, a kid or care intentionally doesn't want cameras because they know they're going

00:23:48.680 to be negligent and would contribute to lawsuits.

00:23:51.120 And for a lot of parents, it's like they have an intuition something's wrong.

00:23:55.140 They have an intuition to sew a recording device on their child.

00:23:59.520 But they like, you know, absent that, how do you gather the evidence?

00:24:03.560 It's like really tough to kind of prove abuse in these closed door facilities where you can't

00:24:08.500 know what's going on and which there's no video footage to back you up, even if you went

00:24:12.240 to the police.

00:24:13.520 You know, so, you know, you'll have a lot of stories where parents are like, my kids really

00:24:17.020 didn't want to go there.

00:24:18.800 But as a mom, I just assumed that, you know, my kid didn't want to go to daycare.

00:24:23.380 And it's like that at every daycare, but she just loves being home.

00:24:26.040 But then they realize there is some abuse going on.

00:24:28.100 And they're like, actually, you know, I wish I noticed this sooner.

00:24:30.260 There is something really wrong about the kindercare facilities.

00:24:33.860 And one way you'd expect this to manifest, you'd expect a lot of online reviews and negative

00:24:39.260 stories.

00:24:40.100 And like any large corporation, kindercare is trying to play games to smooth over their

00:24:44.860 image and suppress the story.

00:24:46.820 So one thing I found looking at a lot of online complaints, especially complaints to the FTC,

00:24:53.080 is, you know, I see parents going to the FTC and saying, look, I had a bad experience

00:24:57.340 with kindercare.

00:24:58.200 The reason I went to go to kindercare is they had a ton of positive online reviews on

00:25:02.760 Google.

00:25:03.540 But I later learned that kindercare would email all the parents repeatedly offering them

00:25:07.920 $50 tuition discounts if they posted positive reviews.

00:25:11.760 So part of the reason this happens is kindercare, you know, I'm pretty sure against the law is

00:25:16.920 offering discounts and subsidies to people just to post positive reviews to deceive more

00:25:21.740 parents to coming into the kindercare ecosystem.

00:25:25.020 Yeah.

00:25:25.140 I just can't get over the fact that they are purposely targeting and manipulating, I'm guessing

00:25:30.260 in many cases, economically desperate people.

00:25:32.920 A lot of single parents who they can't, they would love, maybe they'd love to stay home, but

00:25:37.180 they can't stay home because they are the only income earner or just low income people who

00:25:41.700 have, they can't afford a nanny. 1.00

00:25:43.480 They can't afford the nicer daycare.

00:25:45.620 Maybe they don't have the option of staying home.

00:25:48.800 I don't know.

00:25:49.740 But it is taking advantage of poor or working class families.

00:25:54.520 And that is how they know they can get away with this kind of abuse.

00:25:58.280 And because they don't want to cut into profits, they continually hire people that should not

00:26:04.020 be around children.

00:26:05.400 And that is very disturbing to me.

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00:28:00.300 Do you know anything about the CEO or the CEOs of the past?

00:28:07.760 Has there ever been an effort that you know of to change the culture of what's going on

00:28:13.620 here?

00:28:13.820 I know there's been some turnover at the executive level.

00:28:17.640 They've only been public for less than a year.

00:28:19.940 They were bought by a Swiss private equity firm, 2015 Partners Group.

00:28:24.000 And that's when, as far as I can tell, things started to go much worse.

00:28:29.000 For a long time, it's always been the cheapest, lowest paying daycare.

00:28:33.140 But I think this private equity model of growing through acquisitions, cutting costs, especially

00:28:37.820 over the last 10 years at Partners Group, is where there's been an issue.

00:28:41.420 I don't think it's limited to one CEO.

00:28:43.040 I think it's like the culture of the organization.

00:28:46.340 As far as I can tell, it's like, you know, it's just about maintaining licensing.

00:28:50.580 I don't think there's been any concerted effort to really improve the quality of care there

00:28:55.200 because there's no financial incentive to do so.

00:28:57.720 Now, I want to kind of revisit the past point you made, Allie, on this is preying on working

00:29:02.340 class people.

00:29:03.040 Because that's absolutely true.

00:29:04.540 They're often the lowest cost provider in any state.

00:29:07.540 I think it's even deeper than that.

00:29:09.740 So one thing I see in complaints is people will say, look, the director offered parents

00:29:16.100 to pay cash directly to the director at, you know, maybe a slightly inflated rate.

00:29:20.600 And then the director would pay electronically out of their own bank account for kids.

00:29:25.000 So because KinderCare officially will only accept checks and electronic payments.

00:29:28.420 But there's a lot of paying under the table and cash to the directors.

00:29:31.680 And to me, whenever I see that, I think they're dealing with undocumented immigrants or people 1.00

00:29:36.080 who don't have bank accounts.

00:29:37.300 And those kids are being watched in KinderCare.

00:29:39.340 So I kind of suspect that it's probably the daycare of choice for undocumented immigrants 1.00

00:29:43.260 who need to pay cash kind of under the table to KinderCare directors.

00:29:46.960 That's what you see from consumer complaints.

00:29:49.280 You know, you see a lot of complaints about billing.

00:29:52.100 So not only do they give low quality of care, they charge people after the kids have left.

00:29:57.380 They charge early termination fees or continue.

00:30:00.060 They bill you even if you don't have a kid in the system.

00:30:02.980 They promise to refund you and they won't.

00:30:05.060 You know, I saw one complaint in which it's like literally military service members and

00:30:08.940 they have a special program dealing with military families and they get deployed and they need

00:30:13.840 to like move their kids to like their new army base and KinderCare won't let them out of 1.00

00:30:17.940 their daycare contract.

00:30:19.040 I'm like, how can you like advertise yourself and promote yourself to military service members

00:30:23.840 and then not let the kids out of contracts and be like you need to move to a new military

00:30:27.680 base?

00:30:28.000 It's it's so absurd.

00:30:30.140 It appeals to, you know, working class families where both parents are working the exact type

00:30:35.420 of behavior you want in America subsidize the government to harm the exact type of working

00:30:40.080 class families you should be trying to help.

00:30:41.860 And there has been problems repeatedly 2017, 2021, 2023, multiple 2023, 2024, also 2020, where

00:30:52.500 KinderCare teachers have been accused of producing child sex abuse material and also just possessing

00:31:00.240 child sex abuse material, but endangering the children that they're actually working with

00:31:04.660 because of what they're trying to create, the kind of content that they're trying to make.

00:31:10.420 Like, yeah, if you're like, you know, a bad person and want access to young kids, like

00:31:16.460 there's no better place than a KinderCare.

00:31:18.340 And, you know, if the internal controls are really bad, like this is the exact type of

00:31:22.900 environment where it can go on for a long time and people look the other way.

00:31:26.060 One thing you see constantly in KinderCare is they never want to write formal reports.

00:31:29.840 They never want to notify parents.

00:31:31.340 They never want to like create an incident report.

00:31:33.080 And this type of world where like there's no documentation and no cameras.

00:31:37.140 And it's like the perfect breeding ground for, you know, sex offenders and demented people.

00:31:42.880 So, you know, I don't know how severe it is compared to other daycares, but like, you know,

00:31:48.480 it's just kind of obvious you don't want just and it's always been it's almost never the woman.

00:31:53.000 It's always men. 0.99

00:31:53.820 And it's like if you're a man who's taking a job at like a very low paying KinderCare with a history of

00:32:00.440 abuses, it's like, I don't know.

00:32:02.660 All the red flags, the reddest of flags, the reddest of flags on an earnings call last month.

00:32:08.840 You reported that KinderCare CEO Paul Thompson told analysts that roughly 35 percent of the

00:32:14.020 company's revenue comes from the Child Care and Development Block Grant.

00:32:18.120 That's the federal program that sends money to state subsidized child care for working families.

00:32:22.740 Thirty five percent.

00:32:24.860 That's a lot.

00:32:26.760 Yeah, it's hundreds of millions of dollars.

00:32:28.660 And yeah, and there might be changes under the Trump administration to this.

00:32:33.160 So it's been rumored Doge is going to want to look at this program and cut costs.

00:32:38.460 However, you also see the opposite in some of the things President Trump is saying, where

00:32:42.600 he wants to incentivize more babies being born and wants to give a credit if you have a kid.

00:32:47.400 And, you know, if you really want to incentivize people to have more kids, maybe you try to subsidize

00:32:52.240 child care more.

00:32:53.200 The issue to me is like large bureaucracies, federal government, state government.

00:32:58.480 It's like a kind of approach it and just subsidize child care and don't do enough to like, you 0.76

00:33:03.580 know, discriminate among the child care providers.

00:33:06.540 But you should, in theory, be giving huge subsidies to the person that's giving, you know, great

00:33:11.280 food to the kids, a great learning environment, letting the kids form friendships like that is

00:33:15.880 good for long term development.

00:33:17.260 And you should be giving practically no subsidies to private equity backed firms that are just

00:33:21.940 trying to make the most amount of money possible.

00:33:24.400 It drives me nuts that taxpayers fund this nonsense.

00:33:30.120 I'm going to do everything possible to have Elon Musk watch or listen to this episode just so

00:33:36.800 Doge can get to this one thing, because I care so much about child safety and I just hate the

00:33:42.520 thought that we are subsidizing with hundreds of millions of dollars this kind of child endangerment.

00:33:47.980 Your taxpayer dollars are going to a woman who's bringing cocaine to a daycare and where a two 1.00

00:33:53.400 year old is going to overdose on it.

00:33:54.720 And it's so wrong.

00:33:56.260 And so the way the federal grant works is I think money goes to the states and then the states can

00:34:00.560 choose how to disperse it.

00:34:02.580 And, you know, some states have gotten a little smarter where they'll like rate.

00:34:06.220 I think Ohio state rates the daycares, you know, bronze, silver and gold based on the quality of

00:34:11.920 care being delivered.

00:34:12.820 And if you're giving higher quality care, then in theory, you're going to get slightly

00:34:16.900 higher subsidies from the government.

00:34:19.000 And I think that's smart.

00:34:20.160 And in those models, kindercare gets a little less money.

00:34:23.180 But, you know, you need to aggressively tier it more.

00:34:26.020 And this is just where it's like private equity is so exploitative.

00:34:29.240 They're going to be like perfect at like doing this playbook to figure out how to get the most

00:34:33.180 amount of subsidies and just like, you know, you know, fit the check the box narrative that

00:34:37.900 some inspector is going to use to like distribute subsidies, but they're not going to actually

00:34:41.980 deliver great care.

00:34:43.180 And then the independent practitioner who actually cares about kids, but is less, you know, nuanced

00:34:47.580 in the system, they're going to get less subsidies for developing better care.

00:34:52.320 So, yeah, I would love Elon and Doge to, you know, take an ax of this, you know, get a few

00:34:57.400 hundred million dollars back from kinder care and say, like, you can't be abusing kids with

00:35:01.880 tax credit dollars.

00:35:03.100 I think that is very, very, very needed.

00:35:05.140 It would make me very happy.

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00:36:18.240 Okay, you mentioned Care.com.

00:36:25.680 And I know this was, you said five or six years ago that you were reporting on this,

00:36:29.680 but I'm curious about what you found because this is kind of the same category.

00:36:33.560 If people don't know, Care.com, you can go there and try to book a nanny or a babysitter.

00:36:37.740 It's basically like a kind of like a matching service for people who are seeking babysitters,

00:36:42.740 right?

00:36:43.760 Yeah.

00:36:44.080 So Care.com played a huge deal in my like professional development.

00:36:47.480 And I was a college student when I started talking about it.

00:36:49.980 And this is what I would say made me a little famous or like gave me credibility where people

00:36:54.240 cared what I had to say, that hedge funds wanted to pay for my newsletter to see who

00:36:57.840 I'd criticize.

00:36:58.820 The Care.com incident in college is really what, you know, I would say put me on the map

00:37:02.920 in some ways.

00:37:03.600 So Care.com, it's a huge babysitting platform for parents to find babysitters and babysitters

00:37:09.800 to advertise their services to parents.

00:37:12.340 And a huge thing for any babysitting platform is safety.

00:37:15.080 You got to make sure the people are who they say they are.

00:37:17.940 You got to make sure they're not sex offenders.

00:37:19.720 You got to run some background check on them.

00:37:21.720 And Care.com claimed to be a very safe place to look for babysitters.

00:37:25.160 And they claim to be running background checks.

00:37:27.520 But I had a friend, and this is my, I think, sophomore year of college, who was a babysitter

00:37:32.240 on the platform and said, look, you should look into them.

00:37:34.580 And I get the sense that something is wrong.

00:37:37.580 So I decided to try to test becoming a babysitter on Care.com.

00:37:41.960 And the way I tested their process is by trying to sign up as Harvey Weinstein, who was in

00:37:46.580 the news a lot of the time.

00:37:47.760 So I used a photo of Harvey Weinstein.

00:37:49.680 I used the email HarveyTheBabysitter at gmail.com.

00:37:53.180 I made up a social security number.

00:37:55.340 I documented all this process.

00:37:57.160 I just made everything up as Harvey Weinstein.

00:37:59.120 And I consented to their background check on Care.com to be a licensed babysitter on there.

00:38:04.520 And they said they'd run the background check and get back to me in 48 hours.

00:38:08.520 And to my amazement, I was approved.

00:38:10.740 Hello, Harvey.

00:38:11.560 I got a verification badge.

00:38:13.540 And as Harvey Weinstein, as a student in college, I was like applying to babysitting

00:38:17.380 jobs on Care.com.

00:38:18.580 They said I was CPR certified.

00:38:20.360 It was clear they're not running the background checks they claim to do.

00:38:23.180 I made a different account as Daffy Duck and got approved.

00:38:26.120 It's like they're telling parents they're running background checks.

00:38:28.380 They're charging people for background checks.

00:38:30.140 And then they're not running the background checks.

00:38:31.940 And there had been like some like local news reporting around lawsuits where parents alleged

00:38:36.060 defective background checks.

00:38:37.320 But here I had like concrete evidence that they weren't doing that.

00:38:40.940 So I wrote one article as a college student, and that went a little viral.

00:38:45.540 And then the company, like they called my college to get me in trouble.

00:38:48.980 They like sent some legal letter to my parents' house.

00:38:51.980 And that made me dig in more.

00:38:53.800 So then I went to every state attorney general to get consumer complaints.

00:38:57.860 These people have filed on Care.com.

00:38:59.560 And I saw tons of safety issues.

00:39:01.420 And I kind of like noticed this pattern.

00:39:03.180 First, things will appear in, you know, complaints to state AGs.

00:39:07.520 Then there'll be local media reporting.

00:39:09.260 And then ultimately, there'll be a national story.

00:39:11.200 So I became obsessed with Care.com.

00:39:13.520 I go to every state AG for consumer complaints.

00:39:16.260 I even go to some like, you know, police departments.

00:39:19.620 And I ask for all 911 calls that had Care.com mentioned in the transcript because I want

00:39:24.460 to see like how extensive all these abuses are.

00:39:27.080 And, you know, there's a lot of people with criminal histories who are approved to babysit

00:39:30.180 on Care.com.

00:39:31.080 There's a lot of people who had their kids taken away from them who then go become babysitters

00:39:35.220 on Care.com.

00:39:36.100 There's people who've been banned from running daycares who are, you know, listing their services

00:39:40.040 on Care.com.

00:39:40.960 There's people with DUIs and battery charges advertising themselves on Care.com and all

00:39:45.760 unbeknownst to parents.

00:39:47.140 And ultimately, there were eight kids who, you know, were given to Care.com babysitters

00:39:52.860 with criminal histories where the parents didn't know.

00:39:55.260 And the kids ended up dying.

00:39:56.560 They're abused.

00:39:57.220 They're beaten up.

00:39:57.880 They're drowned in a pool.

00:39:58.920 And I got obsessed with this.

00:40:00.700 I cold emailed like 100 reporters.

00:40:02.520 And then Gregory Zuckerman at the Wall Street Journal got involved.

00:40:06.300 We talked for a while.

00:40:07.480 And nine months later, he had a front page story about Care.com babysitters not passing

00:40:12.840 background checks with criminal histories and killing like several children just because

00:40:17.120 this company wasn't doing their job.

00:40:19.180 And then that put me on the map.

00:40:20.540 That's why people kind of cared about my newsletter, even though I was really young.

00:40:24.380 The stock collapsed.

00:40:25.680 The CEO, CFO, and general counsel all resigned.

00:40:28.860 And they got new management.

00:40:30.600 And from what I can tell, the safety issues have kind of been fixed.

00:40:33.700 It's not that extreme now.

00:40:35.040 But that was another company that had a lot of issues.

00:40:38.220 And, you know, it kind of made me obsessed with this idea that literally just anybody,

00:40:43.120 if you see a lot of local news reporting in different states and cities of these issues,

00:40:47.920 it's just going to be a while before the national media catches up.

00:40:51.040 And even though it like matters a lot, there's a lot of group thinking media.

00:40:54.200 They're kind of slow to like finding these issues out themselves.

00:40:57.060 But you can really try to make a difference if you identify it early.

00:41:00.500 Absolutely.

00:41:00.900 Now, when it comes to kinder care, I know that she mentioned there's been no mainstream reporting

00:41:05.380 of this.

00:41:06.000 And it's a really big deal.

00:41:07.200 It's getting our tax dollars.

00:41:08.500 It's a huge company.

00:41:09.760 We've got military families involved in this.

00:41:12.540 Do you think it's one of those things where it's like, OK, they're just slow and they will

00:41:18.280 catch up to your reporting eventually?

00:41:20.120 Or do you think there's something else underneath that?

00:41:22.480 Do you think there's a reason they're not reporting on kinder care?

00:41:25.620 Well, I don't think it's like corruption and sinister and the media wants to see kids

00:41:29.800 abuse.

00:41:30.360 I did, you know, actually one bigger reporter reached out to me like, you know, after this,

00:41:35.180 but they were so slow and they had so many stories.

00:41:37.260 And, you know, I think they're like it's infuriating looking at the media.

00:41:41.080 There's going to be like 50 stories about some like minor Trump thing.

00:41:44.940 And there's going to be 100 stories like trying to take down Elon Musk.

00:41:48.060 And then the thing that can actually make a big societal difference, you know, highlighting

00:41:52.440 these abuses, getting Congress involved, changing the tax incentives, zero media reporting.

00:41:58.400 And I just think there's a lot of groupthink in media.

00:42:02.120 And I know one big theme with Relatable is independent thinking.

00:42:06.080 And there's just there's very little that in, I think, mainstream media.

00:42:09.740 These stories are also difficult.

00:42:11.880 It's easy to write a headline about Trump and Elon and some small thing and then get a lot

00:42:16.820 of clicks.

00:42:17.500 It's a lot, lot, lot more work to do this type of research and spend six months on it

00:42:23.000 and talk to former employees and get corporate records and really demonstrate the abuses.

00:42:27.840 So this is the type of thing that's a lot of work, not a lot of clicks.

00:42:31.500 It may, you know, drive some subscriptions that people very much value independent journalism.

00:42:36.980 But it's like for whatever reason, I think the media has a tougher time putting it together.

00:42:42.340 The media is very like tips based.

00:42:45.000 And if one parent just says, oh, I've had a bad experience at this, I don't know if it'll

00:42:49.040 click to them that it's actually systemic because it's tough for an outsider to really

00:42:53.300 say, like, is this systemic or is this a one off when it is systemic for kinder care?

00:42:57.920 So, yeah, I would love to see more mainstream media write about kinder care.

00:43:02.900 But for now, I'm happy to go on your podcast and talk about it.

00:43:06.340 Yeah, me too.

00:43:08.300 OK, another story that involves kids is Roblox.

00:43:11.000 Roblox.

00:43:11.780 And we've talked a little bit about Roblox and just the capabilities that it has, the

00:43:15.720 vulnerabilities that it has.

00:43:17.200 We've talked about how predators use Roblox.

00:43:19.540 But you found a lot of disturbing stuff that's going on.

00:43:24.080 Yeah.

00:43:24.440 So Roblox is, I think, the absolute worst.

00:43:28.120 Let me put it this way.

00:43:29.940 Roblox is the best way for sex offenders and abusers to meet kids just across the board.

00:43:35.620 Like you can literally look at interviews with like, you know, pedophiles and stuff.

00:43:39.460 They say they like meeting kids through Roblox.

00:43:42.200 And now the reason Roblox is so dangerous, it's a game where young kids play online 6 to

00:43:47.640 14, is that, you know, there's a few things.

00:43:52.760 One, there's a lot of open messaging.

00:43:54.300 You can easily message people back and forth.

00:43:56.720 It's easy to like fake being young.

00:43:59.140 So anybody can go on Roblox.

00:44:01.460 You can be 40.

00:44:02.360 You can say you're 12.

00:44:03.500 You make a little avatar.

00:44:04.860 You can make three different avatars.

00:44:06.300 And then you can start talking to kids and manipulating them.

00:44:09.160 It's easy to get their contact info and move off platform.

00:44:12.740 Parents kind of assume it's safe, even though it's not.

00:44:15.780 And then just over and over and over and over again, you see like a registered sex offender.

00:44:21.460 They go on Roblox.

00:44:22.540 They typically make a few accounts.

00:44:24.300 They pretend to be multiple different people, but it's all the same person.

00:44:27.440 And they start talking to like a seven-year-old or something, convince them that they're their

00:44:31.680 friend, convince them to like, you know, get out of the house and like go down the block

00:44:35.740 and then like essentially kidnap them and like drive like 500 miles across state lines.

00:44:40.540 And, you know, I think I've seen like two dozen incidences like this.

00:44:44.360 And, you know, again, everyone kind of writes it off as a one-off, but it's like systemic within

00:44:49.120 Roblox.

00:44:50.220 And there's a few other issues that make it really bad on Roblox because the kids are so young

00:44:55.520 to sign up to make a Roblox account.

00:44:58.000 All you need to do is give a username and password.

00:45:00.260 You often don't need an email and you're not required to give a phone number.

00:45:03.760 And just that distinction versus most of social media is actually a huge issue because there's

00:45:09.360 no limit to the number of usernames and passwords you can make.

00:45:12.960 You can make a Roblox account, get caught inappropriately messaging kids, get banned, make a second

00:45:18.000 Roblox account, make a third Roblox account, make a hundredth Roblox account.

00:45:21.360 There's nothing Roblox can really do to shut you down versus if you require a phone number

00:45:26.040 at sign up, there's only so many phone numbers you can have.

00:45:28.960 You can only get banned so many times before it becomes a nuisance to keep obtaining new

00:45:32.340 phone numbers.

00:45:33.520 So that's like one very simple thing that makes Roblox so much more dangerous than other

00:45:38.120 platforms.

00:45:39.600 Yeah, I think parents really underestimate the dangers of Roblox.

00:45:43.500 I think the kindercare stuff is slightly worse.

00:45:46.520 People know like kids online, you need to be wary of things.

00:45:52.040 But yeah, Roblox is a ton of these issues of just young kids being manipulated by these

00:45:57.300 older adults and being kidnapped.

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00:47:04.240 How is it mentioning the, or hosting the school shooting games?

00:47:09.560 I don't really know, like, what Roblox even is as a game.

00:47:13.020 I've never seen the app before.

00:47:14.680 So how is that working?

00:47:16.820 So Roblox is, unlike many games where there's a lot of user-generated content.

00:47:21.320 So users can create games that other people play, and there's this long tale of, like,

00:47:26.260 hundreds of thousands or millions of games on Roblox.

00:47:29.600 And Roblox has historically claimed they care a ton about content moderation.

00:47:34.440 Every item, every game is going to be reviewed by a human before it's uploaded, but that's

00:47:39.300 clearly not the case.

00:47:40.560 And, like, what I found, just, like, looking into it a little bit and, like, kind of going

00:47:44.600 down the Reddit rabbit holes and stuff, is there's a lot of games that are totally inappropriate.

00:47:48.540 There's, like, Holocaust reenactment games.

00:47:51.040 There's literally, like, school shooting games where you can play as a school shooter in,

00:47:55.820 like, a replica of a school and, like, see how many kids you can kill, like, you know,

00:48:00.020 within Roblox.

00:48:01.340 It's super, super, super messed up.

00:48:03.500 And it's just a sign that they're not doing moderation.

00:48:05.660 And what happens is the games go viral.

00:48:07.960 You know, kids are being immature and bad and, like, playing the games.

00:48:11.460 And then once it gets a lot of traction, Roblox will ultimately shut it down.

00:48:15.280 But then someone will just make another account and re-upload it.

00:48:18.160 And it's, like, absurd that this platform, like, if you want to play, like, school shooting

00:48:22.860 games, the way it's, like, most accessible is on the platform for, like, really young

00:48:27.160 kids.

00:48:27.780 And it's not just, like, you know, hypothetical.

00:48:31.220 Like, real school shooters have, like, mentioned their, like, you know, love of Roblox and playing

00:48:36.400 on Roblox.

00:48:37.280 So, you know, I, you know, it's a very sensitive topic.

00:48:42.520 And I'm not the most informed on it.

00:48:44.720 But it's kind of absurd that you have a game playing play thousands of times on Roblox,

00:48:49.520 being re-uploaded constantly, where, like, you can, you know, role play as a school shooter.

00:48:53.920 It's like that is.

00:48:54.640 Yeah.

00:48:55.020 And nothing happens to the company.

00:48:57.180 Right.

00:48:57.620 And kids can access that.

00:48:59.060 So, you've got a six-year-old boy who can access that.

00:49:02.080 They can access all kinds of pornographic material.

00:49:05.760 They can be talking to a predator who might pose as, you know, another seven-year-old boy,

00:49:11.280 but is really an adult.

00:49:12.620 And as you said, there's really no safety mechanism in place to make sure you are who

00:49:16.020 you say you are, that you're the age that you say you are.

00:49:19.060 There was this 87-page whistleblower document that was shared with you from employees saying,

00:49:26.480 yeah, the company knows that these issues exist.

00:49:30.520 Yeah.

00:49:31.180 So, I've been writing about Roblox for the last three years.

00:49:34.840 I kind of get obsessed with these companies.

00:49:36.900 And sometimes what happens when you write on them a lot and start publishing information

00:49:40.920 is former employees will reach out to you and say, actually, it's really bad.

00:49:45.440 And here's more evidence.

00:49:46.840 So, there is these kind of internal messages, kind of like in a splat, but like internal

00:49:51.960 message boards where, you know, Roblox employees say, I wouldn't let my kids play these games.

00:49:56.320 These games are not safe.

00:49:57.500 They're so much worse than other places on the internet.

00:50:00.120 So, I got a copy of that and it's like pretty bad.

00:50:03.220 It's like they know it's bad.

00:50:05.260 And the thing with Roblox is it would be so easy to improve the safety.

00:50:09.660 It's not like this is a complicated issue.

00:50:12.020 You require phone numbers at signups.

00:50:14.160 Maybe you require people to verify IDs or in order to have the ability to chat with

00:50:19.200 other people, you need to verify your ID first.

00:50:22.240 So, anybody can play.

00:50:23.660 But if you want the chat functionality, which is really like the stepping stone for abuse,

00:50:27.700 you need to verify your ID.

00:50:29.580 Doing those little steps of friction, you know, hurt the company.

00:50:33.100 It's maybe a little less likely people will sign up.

00:50:35.500 But it would totally transform safety because then you could permanently ban people.

00:50:40.000 Then you could cross-reference with the sex offenders list.

00:50:42.720 You could make sure people like are an appropriate age.

00:50:45.540 You don't have a 40-year-old talking to an eight-year-old.

00:50:48.080 Very, very like low-hanging fruit to just transform the safety of the platform.

00:50:53.540 It just comes with cost and, you know, lower user growth.

00:50:57.760 And so, easy transformation.

00:50:59.620 They're just not going to do it.

00:51:00.620 And I kind of hope if there's more media reporting on it, the company will be shamed into doing it.

00:51:05.040 The other thing they could do is just invest more in moderation.

00:51:07.900 It should be that every game uploaded to Roblox is reviewed by a human.

00:51:11.880 So, you don't have like school shooting reenactment games.

00:51:14.900 But that's just not the case right now.

00:51:17.120 And I know over the years they kind of – they used to advertise we look at every item,

00:51:21.780 we look at every game.

00:51:22.840 And they kind of softened the language around that because I can tell they're afraid of getting sued

00:51:26.940 and they don't want like to have as strong of a language.

00:51:29.460 But they still present themselves in a very safe platform when they're not.

00:51:32.860 Yeah.

00:51:33.560 Edwin, I'm just sitting here listening to you and wondering if you have ever received any threats over your reporting.

00:51:41.100 Yeah.

00:51:41.760 So, ironically, the worst one was probably Care.com.

00:51:46.000 So, I was the student at Stanford and they literally somehow –

00:51:50.700 I think like some donors were on Care.com's board.

00:51:53.400 They like got a hold of the Dean of Students and were complaining about me.

00:51:57.200 And as like a sophomore, the Dean of Students calls me in and I'd never really been in trouble before.

00:52:02.580 And they're like, you're violating our, you know, Wi-Fi policy and you're impersonating other people.

00:52:08.340 And oh, like you can't do this using Stanford Wi-Fi.

00:52:11.760 Will you take the article down?

00:52:13.180 And it's like that's the first time I got a taste of like how the world works, the backdoor shenanigans.

00:52:18.240 And I was like kind of floored that they weren't supporting me.

00:52:21.240 And then Care.com also sent a private investigator to my house where my dad, you know, calls me one day.

00:52:27.620 And he's like, yeah, some guy with like a body cam showed up to our house and was asking questions about you.

00:52:33.800 You know, I typically have – I've done this a while.

00:52:37.880 So, I kind of know which guys are like the really bad actors who are going to like really go after you.

00:52:42.860 Versus when you go after large corporations, the kind of standard thing is they might mess around.

00:52:47.360 They might send you a cease and desist.

00:52:48.800 They might sue you.

00:52:49.660 But they're not going to like kill you.

00:52:51.540 You know, where if you go after international companies, the standards there are a lot different where it's very less tolerant of criticism.

00:52:58.940 But if you're going after large U.S. listed companies and you're not saying anything incorrect and you're backing it up with information and I'm not trading the stock, you know, I think I'm somewhat protected.

00:53:10.900 You know, one issue is when the companies actually have issues, there's going to be discovery and litigation.

00:53:15.660 So, if they sued me, they might end up exposing more about themselves.

00:53:19.400 I think I have an advantage kind of being young and having a little bit of an internet following where if I did get sued, it's going to be a lot of bad headlines for them.

00:53:26.560 And again, draw more attention to the issues.

00:53:29.800 One thing I try to do to mitigate like legal risk is I really try to be understated.

00:53:34.520 You see this trend in the media and, you know, sometimes in finance where people want to be sensationalistic and, you know, just like fraud, scam, red letters, exclamation point.

00:53:44.600 It's going to zero.

00:53:45.360 I do none of that.

00:53:46.480 I really try to let the evidence speak for itself and just kind of lay out the facts and let people draw their own conclusions.

00:53:52.760 Doing that kind of protects me a little.

00:53:54.800 But you still get nonsense from time to time.

00:53:57.200 You know, I don't know if I would say death threats, but I get occasional emails being like, dead Edwin walking.

00:54:02.700 And it's like, that's not, you know, pleasant to receive.

00:54:05.740 Right.

00:54:06.040 You get, you get, I got an assist or two over the years, but I've never been sued.

00:54:11.900 I'm not too worried because it's, again, large U.S. companies where the most they're going to do, I think, is sue me.

00:54:17.940 And I think as long as I'm saying stuff that's truthful and understated and have evidence, I don't think they're going to do that.

00:54:23.980 And fortunately, the Bear Cave Newsletter has been kind of successful where I could probably afford one lawsuit.

00:54:29.240 Not that I'd want to spend a lot of money on it, but I could probably afford like one fake fight.

00:54:33.800 Yeah.

00:54:34.160 OK, well, just in case you have lawsuits coming your way, everyone needs to subscribe.

00:54:39.360 So you could maybe afford two lawsuits if needed.

00:54:42.340 Hopefully that will never be necessary, but everyone should subscribe to your sub stack anyway, just because I mean, you're the only one I know that's giving this kind of information.

00:54:51.600 Maybe there are other independent journalists out there that are also doing it.

00:54:55.240 But I appreciate you, especially that you also focus on companies that are endangering children.

00:55:02.000 That's relevant to people, no matter your political persuasion, but especially as parents out there, like we just really need to know what's going on.

00:55:08.980 So thank you so much, Edwin.

00:55:10.420 I really appreciate it.

00:55:12.340 Yeah.

00:55:12.680 And Allie, thanks so much for having me on your show.

00:55:14.880 I think independent media like yours is so, so, so important.

00:55:18.440 It's the way these stories can get told.

00:55:20.240 So I think you deserve a lot of credit, too, for having me on and letting me share some of these issues.

00:55:24.680 So thank you.

00:55:25.400 Thank you, Edwin.

00:55:26.120 I appreciate it.

00:55:31.760 Quick reminder to sign up for Share the Arrows.

00:55:34.520 Get your tickets at sharethearrows.com.

00:55:36.340 If you are a Christian woman, this is the conference for you. 0.99

00:55:38.900 So hard-hitting, solid theology, apologetics training, encouragement, and edification as moms, as any woman in any stage of life.

00:55:50.000 We'll even be talking about how to live biblically healthy lives.

00:55:54.580 So go to sharethearrows.com.

00:55:57.840 That's sharethearrows.com.

00:55:59.400 October 11th, Dallas, Texas.

00:56:01.540 That's where you can get your tickets.

00:56:03.000 That's sharethearrows.com.

00:56:04.700 We'll see you next time.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - May 05, 2025

Ep 1183 ｜ KinderCare Cover-Up： New Report Reveals Abuse, Corruption ｜ Guest： Edwin Dorsey

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