Children were sent sexual, racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic messages, a BBC investigation finds.
I did briefly go on CPO a few weeks ago when I saw someone had reopened the platform and I was disgusted with the level of abuse users were allowed to get away with. Within just an hour of playing, I reported one user for anti-Semitic messages six times, and three other users for homophobic and sexual language which is clearly inappropriate on a platform targeted at seven year-olds.
One thing that struck me as odd when I signed up to this platform was there was no age limit. On the original Disney site, you were required to put your age in and you were placed in a server with people of a similar age. Obviously this was not fool-proof, but it was enforced by strict moderation on chat logs. While the new site allowed users to report bad language, I saw no evidence of the users being taken offline for what they posted.
It's a shame Disney gave up the Club Penguin platform. I remember it as a safe website to go on when I was growing up and it's disappointing that my sisters won't get that same experience. Perhaps if they hadn't closed the website down, these malicious sites wouldn't have taken hold.
16 May 2020
