The Row Cleaner controversy raises serious questions about Discord’s priorities, user safety, and potential conflicts of interest.
Discord is facing growing backlash after banning a popular community-made security bot named Row Cleaner, developed by YouTuber Ruben Sim, which was designed to protect children from online predators in the Roblox community. The bot, which operated across over 23,000 servers and prevented more than 600,000 users associated with inappropriate “condo” servers from accessing child-friendly communities, was abruptly taken down by Discord’s Trust and Safety team.
Instead of cracking down on the exploitative communities Row Cleaner was designed to flag, Discord’s decision appears to have left those very communities untouched—some of which have been active for over four years and are still discoverable through Discord’s own public server feature.
The Problem: Roblox Condo Servers
Roblox “condos” refer to unofficial games within Roblox that allow or encourage inappropriate, often sexually suggestive behavior in a game intended for children. Predators and older teens lure younger users into these games and then use Discord to organize, communicate, and spread links to them.
Entire Discord servers have been built around sharing access to these condos—effectively becoming meeting hubs for individuals engaging in dangerous behavior. Despite this, many of these servers remain active, publicly listed, and in some cases, heavily boosted through Discord’s Nitro subscription system, generating significant revenue for the platform.
What Row Cleaner Did
Row Cleaner was a community safety tool. It monitored users joining known Roblox condo-related Discord servers and compiled a list of these accounts. Any server running the bot could automatically ban members on that list, effectively quarantining users associated with inappropriate communities. This made it harder for predators and repeat offenders to infiltrate safer spaces, especially those geared toward children.
The bot also served as a deterrent: teens tempted to explore such communities knew joining would get them blacklisted from thousands of other servers. For many, that was enough to stay away.
Discord’s Justification
Discord removed Row Cleaner for multiple reasons:
- Violation of API terms: The bot used Discord’s API to compile data used for server-wide bans, which Discord equated to profiling based on “protected characteristics.”
- Potential harassment: Ruben Sim’s public appeal process, which included users sending videos and written pleas to be removed from the ban list, was deemed problematic.
- Failure to honor data deletion requests: Discord claims Row Cleaner violated GDPR-like privacy standards by refusing to delete user data upon request.
Yet many in the community argue that these claims are a smokescreen—especially since Discord failed to act on the actual servers where grooming and predatory behavior continues to take place.
The Hypocrisy
Users and server owners are pointing out glaring inconsistencies:
- MI6, another popular bot, previously ran unauthorized advertising campaigns, sent unsolicited DMs, and was involved in an NFT-related scandal. Discord did not ban it.
- Predatory condo servers remain operational, publicly listed, and sometimes boosted with hundreds of dollars per month, generating revenue for Discord.
- Discord allegedly told users that certain controversial content—such as “cub content” (the furry equivalent of NSFW material involving underage animal-like characters)—does not violate its guidelines, while aggressively banning anime-related equivalents like loli or shota content.
This has led to accusations of selective enforcement, bias toward niche communities, and even profit-driven inaction.
Fur Cleaner – The Final Trigger?
Discord’s action appears to have intensified following the announcement of a second bot called Fur Cleaner, which used similar methods to remove users from explicit furry servers. Though this bot was created to help clean up NSFW spaces within the furry community itself, Ruben Sim’s controversial tweets about furries likely contributed to Discord’s final decision to act.
While Row Cleaner had quietly operated for over two months before the ban, both bots were removed within days of Fur Cleaner’s announcement—raising further suspicions about Discord’s motivations and internal biases.
Moving Forward: A New Bot on the Horizon
Ruben Sim has announced plans to release a new version of the tool that will not store any ban data itself. Instead, it will allow server owners to link to external GitHub banlists and manage their own enforcement systems independently. Whether this version will escape Discord’s enforcement remains to be seen, but given Discord’s current stance, a follow-up ban seems likely.
Final Thoughts
This situation has shone a harsh light on Discord’s priorities. At a time when online safety—particularly for children—is more critical than ever, the decision to ban a bot designed to protect users, while still allowing communities that exploit them to remain online, is deeply troubling.
If Discord genuinely values safety, it must act consistently. That means removing the actual predators and the platforms that enable them—not silencing those who are working to keep vulnerable users safe.
Until that happens, trust in Discord’s commitment to community protection will continue to erode.
