SpaceHey's Predator Problem - an Essay

Hello, my name is Azriel, I've been a member of Spacehey for around a year and have been on the internet since the age of 9, playing games on Barbie.com, Nick.com and Poptropica as well as many other games, as I grew older, I've been entering more social spaces, starting with forums in Woozworld and Movie Star planet, then moving on to sites like Amino and Discord. 

As I have grown to be more educated in internet safety and how to safely traverse the internet as a Minor throughout my preteen to teen years (soon turning 18 in July) I have noticed the issue with this site. A huge rise in predators, creeps, and Groomers. 

Problem #1 – A Minor heavy site is sure to lead to a large predator traffic 

Now I am not saying that Spacehey needs to bump up the age restrictions on the site, let us be honest, no one ever listens to that and if you say you are, you are lying, or your parents were heavy on those restrictions. The problem is the fact that with such a large minor space they might not be so quick to get caught, I know from experience that you can be terrified to come out about these kinds of things and stay quiet about it, leading to others falling into the same danger you have fell into. I want to put out this disclaimer now, I am not blaming victims, I would never blame a victim, I just feel as if social sites like spacehey need to be regulated more due to the fact Spacehey can be considered a “Predator Playground”, This place can be seen as unsafe for minors just like how twitter and sometimes Discord can be deemed unsafe, it might become a site where parents will restrict their kids from joining until they are older due to the Predator problem. 

Even though this site isn’t very popular like Twitter or Discord, it still has large traffic with almost hundreds of users logging in every day. I feel like we need better ways to keep minors safe in this website to keep spacehey in the green when it comes to Parents and social media. 

Problem #2 – Predators making new accounts on spacehey 

With a site like spacehey you’d expect a lot more IP bans to happen, that’s not the case, especially with a user that I had a run in with named Shyquon. 

Shyquon was your run of the mill creep you’d see on the subreddit r/creepyastriks, a subreddit known to putting creeps who like to do weird erotic roleplays in DMs, when I first met Shyquon he seemed nice and asked me a lot of questions trying to get to know me, I should’ve known he was a creep from the one question he asked me that started this all, “Do you like Roleplay?” I of course thought he meant multi-lined plot driven roleplays that you mainly see on like discord with roleplay-based discord servers, I answered truthfully saying I did like roleplay, after that we talked more and that’s when he really started to get creepy. He started to get “handsy” with me in roleplay and even start calling me hot, I ultimately blocked him and got into contact with another one of his victims, we compiled evidence and got him banned, he then later came back a day later on an alternative account, which me and my friend caught quickly and reported it, getting it taken down again, we suspected after there were no new alts he got scared and left. 

Predators making new accounts to stalk innocent minors isn’t a rare thing on spacehey, many blogs that have outed these creeps have to had updates due to the same guy coming back for more, which is creepy to be honest, I feel as if we need to start implementing IP bans into Spacehey like most social sites to keep this site safer from those creeps so they are unable to come back and cause more harm. 

Might I also add the fact that most can change personalities and mannerisms in an instant, thinking they can trick their same victims into their trap, or getting to know them before they will start their creepy behavior. 

Problem #3 – Not Enough people putting them on blast or they wait too long 

This is just a possible solution; we need to put them on blast more, there’s a “To Catch a Predator” Group that I Co-Own with my friend along with the possible fact we’ll be making a discord server to even spread to discord and other social sites. 

We've compiled a list of things that predators look for as well as a case study of a predator on their behaviors and how they act towards people in Direct messages, we feel as if this group gets bigger and larger, we will be able to protect the users of spacehey and as well be able to show An, that we need a lot more mods to protect the Minors of spacehey, as this site grows to nearly 1 million members we need more moderation, we need to be able to better protect the users of spacehey from creeps, groomers and Predators. 

I hope this essay will better help people notice the problems with the large Predator traffic and rid them off this site asap, Spacehey should be a fun, safe place for anyone and shouldn’t be ruined by some 40-year-old man who wants to Rizz up some 14-year-old kid on a Saturday