Ep 1183 ｜ KinderCare Cover-Up： New Report Reveals Abuse, Corruption ｜ Guest： Edwin Dorsey
Episode Stats
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Summary
Investigative reporter Edwin Dorsey details his new and damning report about KinderCare. He will also be detailing his past reports about Care.com and Roblox. Both companies have had practices endangering children. The details of what he has discovered over the years are absolutely chilling and we as parents need to know about it.
Transcript
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Kindercare operates over 1,000 daycare centers across 41 states, and it has been revealed
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that there is systemic abuse across these daycare centers, and very little, if anything, is
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What's worse, our taxpayer dollars are actually funding this abuse.
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Today, we've got investigative reporter Edwin Dorsey detailing his new and damning report
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He will also be detailing his past reports about Care.com and Roblox.
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Both of these companies have had practices endangering children.
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The details of what he has discovered over the years, they're absolutely chilling, and
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Don't just listen to and watch the entirety of this episode.
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Share it with every parent, every grandparent, every caretaker that you know.
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This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
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Edwin, thanks so much for taking the time to join us.
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I write a newsletter called The Bear Cave, which is a sub-stack publication focused on
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There's a free component where I kind of aggregate the news and finance in the short seller world.
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So I'll summarize activist short campaigns, highlight suspicious resignations, and link
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And then there's a paid tier of the newsletter where twice a month, I do some like deep dive
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kind of investigative journalism, generally looking at a $1 to $10 billion public company
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that I think is misleading investors or harming customers.
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So I've been passionate about stocks from a really young age, like second grade, I was
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In college, I interned at various hedge funds, and I thought that's the route I was going
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to take and work for hedge funds and short sellers in particular.
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However, the fund I was interning for, which was a very large short seller fund that did
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a lot of investigative research, they were in the process of shutting down my senior year.
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So I needed to get a job, and I figured that if I started writing smart stuff online, people
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So I started this newsletter mainly as a way to get a job, but it got really popular very
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fast in the pandemic, quickly became a full-time income, and it's been what I've been doing
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It's my only source of income, reader subscriptions, and it's been pretty decent.
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Yes, so I saw a headline about your research into kindercare, and I'm a mom of young kids,
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and we've got a lot of moms out there listening.
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My kids didn't go to daycare, but I'm really interested in how a company like this functions,
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and I was really disturbed by some of the things you found.
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So can you tell us, first of all, what tipped you off into looking into kindercare, and then
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So my newsletter has a pretty long history of looking at big public companies that have
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Over the last few years, I've written a lot about Roblox, pretty successfully highlighting
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safety issues before the mainstream media gets to it.
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KinderCare got on my radar for a somewhat odd reason.
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I'm always looking for new companies, and I asked it, can you look through all the recent
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IPOs of public companies and find ones with high levels of consumer complaints?
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And when I went through the list of companies with high levels of consumer complaints, KinderCare
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stood out as the one that had a lot of issues and that is kind of harming the public.
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It wasn't from a person or like any novel researchers literally just asking ChatGPT for companies
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One thing that I'm very good at is using FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act, to get copies
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So one common thing I'll do in my research is I'll go to the FTC and see what complaints
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people are submitting to the FTC and go to local state attorney general offices and see
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what complaints people are submitting to state AGs.
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And when I did that for KinderCare, I kind of got a high level of complaints about this
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daycare company, which is the largest daycare company in the U.S.
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A few hundred thousand kids go to it, over 1,500 locations.
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And the kind of one pattern that stood out to me about KinderCare is they seem to have
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like a lot of child safety issues and not the type of stuff you'd normally expect where,
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you know, maybe a kid like fights with another kid or somebody has allergies.
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There was like issues where kids were escaping from the KinderCare locations.
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Kids were getting locked in rooms, you know, with no supervisions.
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Kids were overdosing on drugs brought by the staff.
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There was just tons of these, you know, local news stories across the board of KinderCare
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And, you know, that's kind of the crux of my article and why people should pay attention.
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So there was one case where a woman, you know, dropped her kid off at KinderCare.
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Six hours later, she was told, you need to pick up your kid.
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And she took him home and she knew right away something was wrong, like the motherly instinct.
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And so she went back to KinderCare and said, like, what happened?
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And, you know, now he's very, very sick and like has all these bruises.
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And, you know, but the mother knew something was wrong.
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So she took her kid to the hospital and the hospital did a drug test.
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And this kid is like two year old tested positive for cocaine.
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And first they pointed the finger at her and are like, you must be doing cocaine in your
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So they searched the house and like drug tested her and nothing was wrong.
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And then they went to the daycare at the KinderCare daycare.
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And it turns out one of the staff members had brought cocaine to work in a bag.
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And the kid, you know, had gotten access to this worker's backpack and like ingested some
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And that's why this kid tested positive for cocaine.
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And this daycare had been cited for a lot of safety violations in the past.
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But this is the type of pattern of misconduct you'll see at KinderCare locations.
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You know, it's kind of crazy what goes on when you don't have like good corporate controls
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And the common theme I see in all these KinderCare cases is the company is never transparent with
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In this case, it only came out because the mom like took four steps to figure out what
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So that's like one of the more absurd cases that happened just a year ago.
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Yes, we have a video clip of Kimberly, the mother, expressing regret over sending her
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Like if you knew the baby before, like he was just so happy.
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His daily routine has been messed up due to unfortunately what happened at KinderCare.
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I wish I didn't send him to KinderCare that day.
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So that KinderCare, Oak Creek KinderCare, as you said, had prior safety violations that
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included staff being aggressive with infants, undocumented injuries, and access to power tools
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She posted a video of a toddler on the streets outside Milford, Connecticut, KinderCare.
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When she alerted the daycare staff, they had, quote, no idea that the child had been missing.
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The boy's father only learned of the incident after the woman's video went viral online.
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So after that happened, KinderCare didn't even inform this dad, oh, yeah, sorry, you know,
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No, this is so there's two incidences in my article where, you know, a kid literally just
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escapes the daycare, usually by opening a window and then rolling out.
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And no one knows like who this like two year old belongs to.
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So they'll bring it to like a nearby business or something.
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And KinderCare, when this happens, they don't even notice the kid's missing.
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It's just like and even though there's been two cases where this has gone viral on Facebook
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of someone taking a video of a KinderCare kid escaping, I'm really confident this is happening
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There was one complaint I saw to the Ohio Attorney General that I got through FOIA where a parent
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And I have no idea until, you know, someone told me.
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So, you know, I know of at least three cases where kids are escaping from KinderCare.
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And this is like way more than any other chain.
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It seems like a pretty simple and basic issue for a daycare.
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So, yeah, they definitely have some odd issues here.
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And it's always not being transparent with the parents.
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In every single case, the parents are like, I didn't know what happened.
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KinderCare didn't tell me, but I found out from someone else.
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And if you look just, you know, in any state, there's often databases where these daycares
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KinderCare is consistently worse than the average, which is the exact opposite of what you'd expect
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for, like, a big company that has all the resources to have, like, good internal controls.
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Because you found that they are receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies.
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And so they're not hurting for money, in addition to having so many paying families that are sending
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And it's only after several complaints where I guess the news starts reporting on something
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that happened at one of these local branches that they end up shutting down.
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Why is it that there is so much grace for these KinderCare centers that repeatedly are receiving
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And I don't know, but it definitely should change.
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And that's a great point about taxpayers paying for this.
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So KinderCare largely caters to working families.
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They also have a program to watch the children of kids whose parents are in the military.
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So service members and about 35% of their revenue comes from the U.S. taxpayer, which
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is their largest source of revenue through the Child Care Development Block Grant, which
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was started in 1990 under George H.W. Bush, with the idea being that early childhood education,
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having kids in, like, informative daycares is so beneficial to early childhood education.
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And the kids' development, that the government should be subsidizing it.
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And the reality is it's kind of like the opposite.
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Kids in KinderCare, in addition to all these safety issues and ingesting cocaine and roaming
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the streets, you know, it does not seem like it's, like, beneficial for your development
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to have 20 kids in a room supervised by someone earning $12 an hour in a corporate environment
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So it's a complete, you know, abuse of taxpayer funds.
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The government has huge ability to flex on these centers and not just shut them down or
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You know, I think there is kind of an element of regulatory capture that exists across corporate
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America where the big companies, you know, ultimately control the regulators.
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Because KinderCare is so large, they have the ability to push back harder than any other
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So if, you know, a lot of daycares are just, you know, one-offs owned by somebody or a
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nonprofit, if that gets shut down, they might not have the resources to fight back.
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But what you see in KinderCare is sometimes they get shut down, but then there's an appeal
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And KinderCare will be really good at the appeal process and have the best lawyers and fight
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It's something you see on Reddit threads where KinderCare employees talk is they say they're
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very good at just roping everything together properly right before licensing and inspections
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So I think there's kind of a corporate strategy around like pulling things together just for
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inspections and then laxing all the standards after.
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There's a corporate strategy of fighting back aggressively on suspensions.
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And I think regulators also aren't doing their jobs.
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So I think those three factors is why this continues to exist.
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And it's kind of bizarre because it's not just a private company.
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It's a private company getting hundreds of millions a year in taxpayer subsidies to do
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00:13:37.460
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Okay, you said that employees getting paid $12 an hour.
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I don't know if that was hyperbole or if that is literally what some of these employees are
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Working in early childhood education is a very, very low paid field, partly because
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there's not a lot of credentials required for it.
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And one of the bigger issues here is kinder care is now publicly traded.
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And for the last 10 years, I've been owned by a Swiss private equity firm.
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And if you look at just kind of the private equity playbook, you know, anytime they get
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in health care or childhood education is you need to increase profits.
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And you can't necessarily raise the prices of watching these kids, partly because the
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subsidies are capped at a certain rate, partly because it's just like a standardized thing
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and you can't, you know, be priced above market.
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And the way you cut costs is you lower the wages, people are paid, and you reduce the
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So kinder care has largely grown through acquisitions.
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And when they do, they lay people off and they typically lower the pay.
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So kinder care is not a leader in compensation.
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So there was one study by the Women's Law Center that found these private equity backed
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daycares tend to have the highest levels of turnover, way higher than independently owned
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ones or nonprofit ones, which is problematic because if you've got a new person coming in
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every six months, you're not going to be able to build relationships with them.
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And yeah, I think that's a kind of a big factor that contributes to the low quality of
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care as people are getting is these people are paid low.
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They're paid lower than anyone else in the industry and there's significant turnover.
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Yeah, they are, I guess, people who at times are just desperate for work.
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And since you don't have to have credentials to work in a place like KinderCare, they get
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this job and they have no interest in children.
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They don't even have the temperament, some of these people, for children.
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And so you get the people who should at least be working with children, working with children
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who obviously can't defend themselves, are in very vulnerable situations.
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And it sounds like KinderCare realizes that this is a problem, but they have all of the
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mechanics in place to protect themselves as much as possible.
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And, you know, you're going to get everybody who's been fired or couldn't get jobs at the
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There might be like some low levels of licensing and training required, but I read a lot of
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the forums where these former employees talk and, you know, they talk about not being prepared.
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And one kind of common thing with KinderCare is there's a lot of rules around staffing.
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You need to have a certain number of staff members for kids and you can't like be out of
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And now the government isn't going to really know unless there's like inspection exams that
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KinderCare might like send an extra employee or two there for the inspection exam.
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So because KinderCare is constantly out of ratio, it's like tough to hire people in any
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Then you get desperate for anybody, which is how you have people bringing cocaine to a
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A two-year-old is going to overdose and then the mom is going to be blamed.
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And then a lot of the people, you know, one common theme I found just looking into a lot
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of companies and doing this a lot, getting consumer complaints, it's always the working
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class people who are getting taken advantage of the most and who are least equipped to defend
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So, you know, if you did this with, you know, upper class families who have access to lawyers
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and maybe more of an educational pedigree, this would get shut down so fast.
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They'd go to reporters, they'd hire lawyers, they'd sue.
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So, you know, back to your clip with the woman, Ms.
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Hobson, whose son overdosed, I don't think she mentioned hiring a lawyer.
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She said the happiest day she'd experienced was the day the KinderCare was shut down.
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So when you're taking advantage of working class people who have, you know, just less
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wherewithal to defend themselves, then it's like especially abusive.
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So just across the board, you know, when I look at companies that are hurting children,
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it's almost always working class families who just have a ton on their plate.
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They don't have as much money to, you know, devote to this.
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And the most infuriating thing is this is literally being paid for by taxpayers.
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And even though there's a lot of local media reporting on it, there's been no mainstream
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And I know one big theme with Relatable is the failures of the mainstream media.
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And we haven't seen a single national paper write about this, even though it's been going
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OK, so some of the scenarios that you described, October 2021, an infant died after being sick
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And, you know, they denied that there was any negligence.
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But then the same daycare in Ohio faced two formal complaints around child injuries as
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And February 2022, a kinder care in Southern Florida locked a two-year-old inside alone because
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The mom had to call the police to open the door to get her two-year-old who was standing
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In August of 2022, police officers arrested a Florida kinder care teacher for child abuse
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after, quote, yelling at the child victim and repeatedly punching the child with an open
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and closed fist to the back and side of the head.
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April 2023, two parents in Texas sued a, sewed, OK, sewed, or I thought that was a typo, sewed
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a recording device into their 20-month-old toddler's jacket.
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The recorded audio captured a kinder care employee threatening the children, saying,
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I'm about to throw some B-I-T-C-H swings at some of y'all right now.
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Just get away from me because I will end up in jail.
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That was a teacher at a, talking to babies, talking to toddlers at a kinder care in Texas.
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And not all of these facilities have been closed down, even after these things have become
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They fire the person if there is like media reporting.
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There was one case in which, you know, that you didn't mention in which the, the kinder
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The kids were sleeping and the kid isn't doing anything.
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Like the girl is completely asleep, like a two-year-old.
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And one of the kinder care employees is just like pouring water on her forehead to wake
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And they're just like pouring water, like statistically on these kids while they're sleeping.
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So the other kinder care employee is literally like videotaping it and uploading it to Snapchat,
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them just like literally messing with the kids in their sleep.
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And this is what happens when you have no like controls.
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This is what happens when you don't care about kids.
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This is what happens when you have like a bunch of like immature 20-year-olds, like just
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This is what happens when there's like no accountability.
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And they're going to say it's a one-off and they fire their people.
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And it happens at a much higher rate at kinder care versus any of these other facilities.
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And, you know, I think, you know, I don't know all the rules around licensing, but it
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So, you know, in any large corporation, you generally see the corporation trying to create
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Kinder care facilities rarely have cameras internally or externally.
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And, you know, the joke I've seen on forums is they don't want cameras because they don't
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want like to get sued because the cameras are going to show their employees doing stuff badly.
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So as things go wrong, you can say, no, look, this kid tripped or we're not negligent.
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But here, a kid or care intentionally doesn't want cameras because they know they're going
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to be negligent and would contribute to lawsuits.
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And for a lot of parents, it's like they have an intuition something's wrong.
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They have an intuition to sew a recording device on their child.
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But they like, you know, absent that, how do you gather the evidence?
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It's like really tough to kind of prove abuse in these closed door facilities where you can't
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know what's going on and which there's no video footage to back you up, even if you went
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You know, so, you know, you'll have a lot of stories where parents are like, my kids really
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But as a mom, I just assumed that, you know, my kid didn't want to go to daycare.
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And it's like that at every daycare, but she just loves being home.
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But then they realize there is some abuse going on.
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And they're like, actually, you know, I wish I noticed this sooner.
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There is something really wrong about the kindercare facilities.
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And one way you'd expect this to manifest, you'd expect a lot of online reviews and negative
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And like any large corporation, kindercare is trying to play games to smooth over their
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So one thing I found looking at a lot of online complaints, especially complaints to the FTC,
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is, you know, I see parents going to the FTC and saying, look, I had a bad experience
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The reason I went to go to kindercare is they had a ton of positive online reviews on
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But I later learned that kindercare would email all the parents repeatedly offering them
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$50 tuition discounts if they posted positive reviews.
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So part of the reason this happens is kindercare, you know, I'm pretty sure against the law is
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offering discounts and subsidies to people just to post positive reviews to deceive more
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parents to coming into the kindercare ecosystem.
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I just can't get over the fact that they are purposely targeting and manipulating, I'm guessing
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A lot of single parents who they can't, they would love, maybe they'd love to stay home, but
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they can't stay home because they are the only income earner or just low income people who
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Maybe they don't have the option of staying home.
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But it is taking advantage of poor or working class families.
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And that is how they know they can get away with this kind of abuse.
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And because they don't want to cut into profits, they continually hire people that should not
00:26:14.960
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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
00:28:13.820
I know there's been some turnover at the executive level.
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.
00:28:43.040
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
00:29:04.540
They're often the lowest cost provider in any state.
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
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
00:29:43.260
who need to pay cash kind of under the table to KinderCare directors.
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.
00:30:05.060
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
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
00:30:30.140
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
00:30:41.860
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
00:31:18.340
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.
00:31:31.340
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.
00:31:53.820
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
00:32:02.660
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.
00:32:28.660
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
00:32:53.200
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
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
00:33:17.260
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
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
00:34:02.580
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
00:34:12.820
And if you're giving higher quality care, then in theory, you're going to get slightly
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
00:34:43.180
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
00:35:13.240
So we're talking about the importance of protecting children.
00:35:16.020
That doesn't start when they're outside of the womb.
00:35:20.040
Those smallest babies are made in the image of God, even when they're not earthside yet.
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Go to preborn.com slash Allie to make that donation.
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,
00:36:44.080
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
00:36:58.820
The Care.com incident in college is really what, you know, I would say put me on the map
00:37:03.600
So Care.com, it's a huge babysitting platform for parents to find babysitters and babysitters
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.
00:37:21.720
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.
00:37:37.580
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
00:37:49.680
I used the email HarveyTheBabysitter at gmail.com.
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.
00:38:13.540
And as Harvey Weinstein, as a student in college, I was like applying to babysitting
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.
00:38:30.140
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
00:38:37.320
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.
00:38:53.800
So then I went to every state attorney general to get consumer complaints.
00:39:03.180
First, things will appear in, you know, complaints to state AGs.
00:39:09.260
And then ultimately, there'll be a national story.
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
00:39:31.080
There's a lot of people who had their kids taken away from them who then go become babysitters
00:39:36.100
There's people who've been banned from running daycares who are, you know, listing their services
00:39:40.960
There's people with DUIs and battery charges advertising themselves on Care.com and all
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.
00:40:02.520
And then Gregory Zuckerman at the Wall Street Journal got involved.
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
00:40:20.540
That's why people kind of cared about my newsletter, even though I was really young.
00:40:25.680
The CEO, CFO, and general counsel all resigned.
00:40:30.600
And from what I can tell, the safety issues have kind of been fixed.
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.
00:41:00.900
Now, when it comes to kinder care, I know that she mentioned there's been no mainstream reporting
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
00:41:20.120
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
00:41:30.360
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.
00:42:11.880
It's easy to write a headline about Trump and Elon and some small thing and then get a lot
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.
00:42:45.000
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.
00:43:08.300
OK, another story that involves kids is Roblox.
00:43:11.780
And we've talked a little bit about Roblox and just the capabilities that it has, the
00:43:19.540
But you found a lot of disturbing stuff that's going on.
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
00:44:06.300
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.
00:44:24.300
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
00:44:50.220
And there's a few other issues that make it really bad on Roblox because the kids are so young
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
00:45:33.520
So that's like one very simple thing that makes Roblox so much more dangerous than other
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
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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.
00:47:16.820
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
00:47:40.560
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.
00:47:51.040
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,
00:48:03.500
And it's just a sign that they're not doing moderation.
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
00:48:27.780
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
00:48:37.280
So, you know, I, you know, it's a very sensitive topic.
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.
00:48:59.060
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,
00:49:12.620
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.
00:49:31.180
So, I've been writing about Roblox for the last three years.
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.
00:49:46.840
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.
00:49:57.500
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.
00:50:05.260
And the thing with Roblox is it would be so easy to improve the safety.
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.
00:50:23.660
But if you want the chat functionality, which is really like the stepping stone for abuse,
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.
00:51:00.620
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.
00:51:17.120
And I know over the years they kind of – they used to advertise we look at every item,
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.
00:51:33.560
Edwin, I'm just sitting here listening to you and wondering if you have ever received any threats over your reporting.
00:51:41.760
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.
00:52:13.180
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.
00:52:51.540
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.
00:53:29.800
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.
00:53:46.480
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.
00:53:57.200
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.
00:54:06.040
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.
00:54:34.160
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.
00:55:12.680
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.
00:55:20.240
So I think you deserve a lot of credit, too, for having me on and letting me share some of these issues.
00:55:31.760
Quick reminder to sign up for Share the Arrows.
00:55:36.340
If you are a Christian woman, this is the conference for you.
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.