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- [00:00]
Narrator
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- [00:40]
Chris Hansen
The guest who's going to have a seat with me in this episode is probably as close to a real life demon hunter as you'll find. You know her online, perhaps as bx. Her name is Becca Spinks. She has been on the cutting edge of the investigations into 764 terrorists. Really, there's no other word for them. For some time now, been helping the FBI investigate these cases as well as law enforcement around the country. You've seen here on this program the damage that these 764 terrorists can do, the lives they have taken, the families they have ruined. And so it is that I'm thrilled to have Becca Spinks join me live now to have a seat for this episode. Becca, thank you for being here.
- [01:20]
Becca Spinks
Thank you so much for having me, Chris. Honestly, this is such an honor to be invited on your show. You've been a big influence on me, so really couldn't be more grateful to be here.
- [01:29]
Chris Hansen
Well, you made my day and it's, it's an honor to have you. Mecca, tell me how you got into this. What was it that made you start to investigate members of 764?
- [01:43]
Becca Spinks
Well, it was kind of. It's kind of a long story. You know, I. I'd been investigating these online groups, harmful online groups that target children in many different ways, not just for sexual exploitation, but also for radicalization, grooming to commit terror attacks, mass shootings, and other kind of evil things that these, you know, kids were getting wrapped into online. And, you know, that's when I kind of started looking into this new concept known as accelerationism. Accelerationism is, it's basically a doctrine that believes you can accelerate the collapse of society by committing terror attacks, by exploiting and, you know, tormenting children and traumatizing our kids and just, you know, doing all these evil things to lead to the destruction of society, basically.
- [02:30]
Chris Hansen
Is this a real ideology? Are these kids just lost and looking for something to do or what's the seed of this?
- [02:38]
Becca Spinks
I don't know that the kids who are involved, who get involved with the, with these harmful groups really know what they're doing, know that they're promoting this kind of Concept that to accelerate the collapse of the West. And some of them definitely do, but. But a lot of them are being groomed in other types of harmful groups online into thinking maybe they're, you know, we, we just saw a shooting in Montreal yesterday that they're linking to the INCEL movement, this involuntary, involuntarily celibate group of dejected young men who hate women and hate society. You also see provocateurs in there trying to groom these people to commit terror attacks. So really it's kind of shadowy underbelly that we don't really know where it's coming from or who's spearheading it, or if at this point it's just a decentralized organic threat, which is kind of more along the lines of what I'm thinking.
- [03:28]
Chris Hansen
You had been investigating predators essentially going after children online. You had been involved in that space. And how was it that you crossed into and discovered 764?
- [03:42]
Becca Spinks
Yeah, so we were kind of already on the beat. We already had kind of had kind of seen this group around in discord servers. When we were tracking these extremist groups and tracking these child predator networks also we started to see a lot more violent content, a lot, a lot more self harm, animal torture, really horrific stuff, satanic imagery, things that we, we hadn't seen before. And that was shortly before the FBI announced the existence of 764. That was in September of 2023. When we saw that PSA, it kind of clicked to like, oh, this is what we're looking at now. And at that point we were kind of trying to find the pulse of this group. And it wasn't until I saw, bizarrely just saw this viral video make its rounds on the Internet. There was this, this person, this man getting shot in the ear by his stepdad. His name ended up being Kyle Spitz. And you know, it was this very bizarre viral video. Had nothing to do with the child predator stuff. But in the comments section, I saw victims trying to get people's attention about who this person was. He was a member of 764. So at that point we really started to be loud in public and really dig our, dig our nails into it and try to understand what, what this network was about. And eventually Kyle Spitz was arrested. He's pled guilty to several counts of child exploitation and he's looking at upwards of 30 years in prison at his sentencing here. That's coming up soon.
- [05:08]
Chris Hansen
That's fantastic. And you know, I was doing some research before chatting with you, Becca, and It was suggested in one of the pieces that I read that this all started with a 15 year old, maybe in the UK or maybe here in Texas, I guess it was. Who was the, the genesis of this and who got this going and ultimately got caught and he was sentenced to some eight years in prison. This Bradley Cadenhead. Is that, do I have that right? Is that who started this?
- [05:40]
Becca Spinks
Yeah, well, it is the person who started the official 764 network, Bradley Kadenhead. He was very young when he started it. I think he was 18 when he was arrested. 80 years. 15.
- [05:51]
Chris Hansen
How does it f. 15 year old even come up with the idea to do something like this? That's pretty shocking.
- [05:57]
Becca Spinks
Well, you know, the truth of the matter is that this 764 wasn't the first of its kind. There were other sadistic online groups that were already doing this kind of thing at the time. I actually have an article that I wrote recently that really goes all the way back to the roots of this and how all of this started. But really the 764 network is just one, I guess, little, little circle in a bigger landscape that is known as calm. It's this big online ecosystem, they call it the calm, or CALM is short for community. And there's all kinds of cyber criminal stuff going on there. There's, you know, hacking, extortion and there's these child predator groups that, you know, that prey on kids. And so Bradley Kaden head was influenced by other bad actors that came before him. It just so happened that, that people focused on him as being the, you know, the, the origin when really that's not so. The case is that he was just another dejected, troubled youth who found himself in one of these online spaces and created something really, really awful that ended up being the most influential and the most well known group in this network.
- [07:04]
Chris Hansen
And where does the name 764 come from? Do we know?
- [07:09]
Becca Spinks
764 actually is the first three digits of Bradley Cadenhead zip code. So it has no esoteric meaning or anything really meaningful whatsoever. It's, it's pretty, you know, just, just his, his zip code. That's it.
- [07:25]
Chris Hansen
It was a way to get this started for him. And, and do these members of 764, do they derive any economic benefit from this? Are they making money? Or is this just a far flung, somewhat disconnected network of, of chaos creators?
- [07:43]
Becca Spinks
I want to say that it's mostly the latter. There have been some isolated cases of these guys making money off of something like, you know, swattings or maybe, you know, Doing some kind of work for people or bitcoin. A lot of times these guys are doing crypto scams as well. So that's also, you know, a big factor. But I think that for the most part, yeah, it's going to be the latter. It's just going to be purely a desire for notoriety within the group. A desire to move up within the ranks of the group by committing the most evil act possible. And really they are doing this for attention and validation. When you get into the nitty gritty, some of them will admit to doing it as a way to further the acceleration of the collapse of Western civilization, but. But for the most part, I think that a lot of them are just doing it for validation within the group.
- [08:33]
Chris Hansen
And is there an end game? Do they think that we're going to see the collapse of the world and they're going to end up being the heirs to the throne that rules the society after it collapses? Is there any ideological, ideological aspect to this or is it just chaos for the sake of chaos?
- [08:49]
Becca Spinks
There are multiple types of accelerationism. A lot of times, you know, the roots of accelerationism, you know, modern accelerationism really lie in the neo Nazi movement. But, but there's also a fringe satanic movement that's growing that, that does actually believe. It's a satanic cult called the Order of Nine Angles. Very well established. Although at the time that I started digging into this it was not well established and of course I sounded like a crazy person, but it's nice to have been vindicated in the years since then. This is a very well established satanic cult that believes that by traumatizing and corrupting our youth and committing other evil acts, we can accelerate the apocalypse, essentially. Not going to get into all the crazy stuff they believe, but they are a cult. And they, they did have some influence over Bradley Cadenhead in his creation of 764.
- [09:38]
Chris Hansen
You know, I sat on a panel two years ago at CrimeCon and an FBI agent who specialized in 764 out of the Denver office was given permission to talk about this along with national center for Missing Exploited Children and, and some other, you know, well known people in the field. I wish you had been on the panel and I'll get you on it for next year because you are so knowledgeable here. But I was aghast at what this FBI agent shared in terms of how widespread this network is, how dangerous it is, and how many children have taken their own lives because of this. Some of these people are preaching to vulnerable children that the best way to take control of their lives to get away from their parents. And they've convinced these kids that they need to get away from their parents is to live stream an attempted suicide. Not a suicide, but an attempted suicide, because then they can get into the mental health section of a hospital and they can take control of their lives that way. And, and, and it's amazing how susceptible some of these kids are to these suggestions. And these aren't kids who are living on the street. These are kids who, you know, while they may be vulnerable or emotional or going through, you know, the typical stuff a kid goes through at 14, 15 years old, these are kids from, you know, decent homes in many cases. I've had parents of these children on this show to talk about the heartbreak of this whole thing. What do you think makes kids so vulnerable? And you're a parent yourself, what do you think makes kids so vulnerable to these people?
- [11:18]
Becca Spinks
Well, you know, they, these people, you know, these predators, they don't just go after every single kid. They really are targeted in their search for kids who are vulnerable. So although they, although any kid could get wrapped up in this. So I don't want to make it seem like other kids are safe, but the vulnerable groups that they go after are kids that are already engaging in self harm. Maybe on the Internet, maybe they, an Instagram account where they talk about, you know, cutting themselves or, or maybe having an eating disorder. They prey on kids who have identity issues, LGBTQ kids. So, so they, they prey on kids who are already vulnerable, who are already having mental health struggles or identity struggles. Because those kinds of kids, you know, they, they, they fall really well in line to a group that validates them. They're easier to groom, they're easier to, you know, to persuade to do things after, you know, you love bomb them and make them feel very validated and safe. And so, so any kids who are struggling already, and, you know, a lot of times I've talked to parents who didn't even know their kids were struggling when they fell into these groups. So, so I definitely don't want to make it seem like, you know, kids are safe if they're not in one of these kind of camps, but that's definitely the groups that these people target.
- [12:26]
Chris Hansen
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- [13:51]
Becca Spinks
So good, so good, so good.
- [13:53]
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- [14:17]
Chris Hansen
When we talk about sextortion, you know we know the end game is financial gain. You know, these are people posing as somebody who they aren't to get money out of vulnerable people, boys or girls in the United States. But in this case, what is the end game for these seven hundred and sixty four members? Is it to get a kid to commit suicide?
- [14:37]
Becca Spinks
The end game or the goal really is to just see who can. It's really a contest to see who can get the most horrifying content out of these kids imaginable, who can get them to do the worst things. You know, some of the stuff that I've seen in these criminal complaints I can't even talk about here. I don't, I, I can't even talk about it. So horrible. The, the abuse and the things that they've, they've extorted these, these kids into doing to themselves go beyond belief. So you know, obviously committing suicide on camera is one thing that's happened many times and you know that's, that's really one of the worst things imaginable. But we're also talking about sexual torture. We're talking about animal torture. And the goal is to get them to do this on video so that they can then distribute that content around the Internet. They can use it to extort the minors further into doing more and more sadistic things. But, but ultimately it becomes a thing of, look what I got this kid to do. And it increases their notoriety in their rank within the group.
- [15:40]
Chris Hansen
So you had already been in this world as an investigator, you know, working with other investigators in, in Texas there, and you get onto the 764, you become really one of the country's leading experts on this. Whether you, you know, set out to do that or not. That's, that's what happened. Is there any way to battle it in your mind? I mean, the FBI has made this a priority. I'm sure at some point they'll be in contact with you, if they haven't already, for your assistance and your knowledge. But how do you stop these people?
- [16:19]
Becca Spinks
Well, when we first started going after these guys, honestly, we, you know, we thought that they would be like any predator. I mean, like, you know, the predators that you guys have experience with catching, you know, on the streets and stuff, these are people who go out and abuse kids. These are people who maybe, you know, sometimes I'm sure that they're better at it, but you know, a lot of times they don't have the best, you know, privacy security. So they don't have what we call opsec. Right. They're, they're not, they're not doing a good job at hiding themselves and they weak. They can be tracked and found. But the problem with the 764 network in groups like these is that these are, these are younger, more tech savvy type of predators who are very, very good at maintaining their anonymity. They're very difficult to find in a lot of cases and very infrequent. Do they actually go out and abuse a child. Almost all of their stuff occurs there. There have been cases, but almost all of it occurs online. So when we first started tracking these guys, we realized just how hard it was to figure out who they were. And so, you know, I think that the FBI ran into the same barricades that we did, which is that it's very hard to figure out the identities and inconclusively link these people to an identity that can then be, you know, search warrant can be executed in a criminal complaint drawn up. So I think over time, though, the FBI did kind of get better at working with local law enforcement and with international law enforcement. There was a lot, you know, we saw all this happen because at the beginning, I remember Calling up a local police department when we thought we'd identified one of these guys and trying to explain to them what was going on. And they were just looking at me like I had three eyes. I mean, you know, nobody had heard of this. Even the FBI was kind of in the dark about it. So over the years, though, we watched, you know, we watched them grow. We watched them start to collaborate with local law enforcement and do training and, and make task force task forces. So I think there's still a lot, you know, there's still a lot of progress that could be made in terms of collaborating with local and training local police departments. You know, looking at it now from where it was when we started is really, it's really a sight to see. I mean, it's crazy how far it came.
- [18:25]
Chris Hansen
And how many of these people do you figure you've exposed and potentially have had prosecuted in the time you've been doing this?
- [18:36]
Becca Spinks
It's hard to say because, you know, when, when we escalate something to law enforcement, we often don't get any word back about it. You know, we don't get. They don't call us up a few days later and say, hey, we got him. Have to continuously be monitoring pacer, you know, and legal, looking for court documents, looking for court cases. I have my ear to the ground. I have a, cultivated, a pretty good sized following, so I get tips a lot of times, but a lot of times we don't find out, especially if they're juvenile offenders, we might never know. So, you know, publicly, the ones that have definitely been prosecuted based on our work, I mean, quite a few, I'm, I'm proud to say quite a few, but it's hard to give an exact number.
- [19:17]
Chris Hansen
Well, you should be proud because it's a very challenging situation. The predators we catch come to us. They choose us because they think we are a child, a boy or a girl, and they state their intent online. It's pretty straightforward. The evidence is strong, the crime is committed online. What you're dealing with is so much more complicated, complex, and it's over so many people's heads. It's really a challenge for law enforcement to even open a case like this because as you said, these guys protect themselves online and they're not coming to you in person. Like our predators come to us in person. It's a hard case to investigate.
- [20:11]
Becca Spinks
Yeah, definitely. You know, at some point I kind of became bait myself. You know, I talk a little bit more about it now because I'm not really doing as much active Hunting of these guys as I was, you know, a year or two ago. But, you know, it got to the point where when I would make, I would make a tweet or make a substack article about a case and these guys would just show up in my comments threatening me, threatening my family. Really, really. It really got dangerous and nasty for a while. But at the same time, every time that they did this, every time they sent me a threaten DM on social media, every time they expose themselves a little bit, we found a little more information about them and we were sometimes able to find them and get them arrested just based on their interactions with me. So yeah, it was, I played a weird role in this whole thing. I definitely wouldn't, looking back, I wouldn't recommend anybody else do what I did. It was definitely a lot of danger, A lot of danger and a lot of really upsetting things that are going to be kind of hard to move on from.
- [21:09]
Chris Hansen
Well, that's what I was going to ask you next. Obviously you put yourself in harm's way. These people are very vindictive. So first explain to me what you would put out there to, to lure these guys in in a way. How did that work?
- [21:26]
Becca Spinks
You know, it's lots of different things, but sometimes I would bait them or you know, like troll them, I guess, and, and get, you know, or we would just, I would DM them. I would, I would, honestly, I would, I would talk to them in messages and, and they would, they would talk back and sometimes they would give me information. I know we got a juvenile, we got one juvenile arrested that way just because of repeated things he said to me in my, my messages. The things that he was saying were enough to get a subpoena for his, you know, his arrest. But it's. Unfortunately, he was very young, which, you know, as is the mother in me. You know, when I find out that I'm Talking to a 14 year old, right, I'm, you know, that's, that's just a few years older than my own daughter who's just a child. So it's hard for me sometimes to see these people as, as criminals and abusers. Obviously there are plenty of older predators in this network, like you know, full grown adults who've been arrested, but there's also a lot of younger ones too. And honestly I just, I, I don't have any ill will towards them. I just hope that they, that they get the help they need and that they could somehow return to being functional members of society because it's really tragic you know, if the goal is to traumatize and corrupt our youth, then, you know, it's definitely working and it's really sad.
- [22:39]
Chris Hansen
Give me a sense for some of the threats, Becca, that you've faced because of this, because of your work here.
- [22:46]
Becca Spinks
Well, so like, I can give a, you know, a few examples. There was a group and I'm working on writing an article about it. It's kind of a long story, but, you know, there was a splinter group. We call them splinter groups. Right? Because these groups, they like to. Nobody really calls themselves 764 anymore. They've, they've created new groups and, and they're trying to get their own notoriety in their own group. We still call it 764Network just for ease of use and also because we don't want to give them the attention. But in this case, I think, you know, it's, it's relevant to say that they had this splinter group called 1378 and they, they started harassing me. They were putting my pictures and footage of me on podcasts and they were splicing it together with images of kids self harming and you know, doing all these things to just, just really harass me. Well, one of them, I ended up, you know, finding his name and sending it to the police. I, I don't know if it was my tip or not, but he was arrested. His name is Drake Miller. He was like in his 20s. He was arrested in, in Kentucky and now he's been charged with 13 federal child exploitation charges. So I got online and I gloated to his other friends, you know, about it and you know, trying to get more of them to come out of the woodworks and reveal themselves. And they, they definitely did with lots of threats to, you know, kill me, rape me, rape my, my chop my child, to fireball my house. There, you know, one point it got to the point where this, this person, and we found out he was in the uk, but one of his, the friends of the Strait Miller guy was openly soliciting people to try to firebomb my house. He actually had the wrong house. It wasn't even my address. But we were watching it all happen live on Telegram where he was gonna live stream someone firebombing this house that he thought belonged to me. It got really out of control and crazy. He, he was actually arrested as well. He's standing trial in the uk. In fact, most of the people in that group have now been arrested. So it all's well, that ends well, I guess. But yeah, there were some times that got really crazy. You know, I had the FBI call me and say, you know, hey, just so you know, people are trying to firebomb your house tonight at 1:00am and, you know, that's just a crazy. You know, I had to have police outside my house, even though it wasn't the right address. I mean, just crazy stuff, man. Stuff that I'd never imagined happening to me in my life.
- [25:07]
Chris Hansen
Yeah. And you think that, you want to think that, well, nobody would actually ever come after you, you know, but you. But you don't know. And sometimes it's the stupid people who are the most dangerous, you know, the most unattached people, the people who have nothing going on in their lives, who want to become famous. They want to be the ones who did this to that person. And so, you know, sometimes intelligence agencies are looking up here and the real threat is down here. It's more organic and close to the ground. You're an investigator, Professionally, you're a parent. Right. And so you view all this through those lenses. What do you tell parents, other parents, Becca, about protecting their children online from this threat? We go through this conversation every six months in Washington. All the heads of the. The platforms, Meta and Snapchat and, you know, you name them, they are called in front to talk about what they're going to do for safety. They promise and swear up and down they're going to do something. Six months later, the lobbyists get involved. All the legislation is watered down. We're pretty much back from where we started. So in my opinion, at least the best defense is the fence you build around your yard. It's the relationship you have with your kids. What do you tell parents to help them protect their children from 764 and groups like it online?
- [26:35]
Becca Spinks
Well, yeah, I mean, you're right on the money. You know, my big thing has always been educating parents is the number one way to target this network. When I first started doing this, you know, I started to talk about it publicly because as a mom, as a parent, I was horrified to see that these guys were operating on games like Roblox, you know, the places that everyone thinks is a safe place for kids. I was horrified that I didn't know about this and that even when I searched for it, no information existed. So I kind of made it my mission to be this loud public voice, this mom who was just constantly complaining about it until someone paid attention to me. And of course, at first it sounded crazy, but over time, you know, it's become, you know, obviously a almost A household term at this point, which has been incredible to witness. But, you know, even then I knew that there's only so many things that platforms can do to make things safer for kids, even though, you know, there's only so many things that law enforcement can do to arrest these guys. The number one way that we protect kids is by raising awareness to, you know, and educating parents on the threat, making sure that they know what the warning signs are, what to look out for, and make sure that they know how to talk to their kids about sextortion and online exploitation at an age appropriate level so that we can basically prevent kids from becoming victims in the first place. If there's no victims, then these guys can't do any harm. So the more people we can prevent from becoming victims, the better. I really strongly believe that that's the best approach. Um, you know, I have, I've written a lot of free articles and stuff about warning signs, how to talk to your kids about this kind of thing. Um, I know that you can find resources out there, like you said, from pretty much every country now has come out with their own announcements about these groups. But I think the biggest thing is just knowing, you know, making, having that, having that relationship with your kid that you know, that they, they know that they can come to you if anything happens to them and that, you know, you're their advocate and they trust you in that way. Because I can't tell you how many times I've talked to victims, child victims. It's really the worst part of all this is talking to child victims and hearing how scared they are to go to the police because they're afraid their parents will find out almost every time you ask them. They're not afraid of going to the police. They're afraid of their parents finding out. And that's really tragic, you know. So as the mom and me starts to try to talk to them about how I would feel if my kid came to me and how, honestly, what they're doing is very brave because the more kids that come forward, the more arrests they make. It's really hard to arrest these guys without a victim. So every victim that is brave enough to come forward can save hundreds of more lives just by. Just by knowing that they're safe. So I think that it's important not just to keep kids offline. I think that that's, you know, that that's less, less desirable. Right. Because kids are sneaky. Kids have. Find ways to get online and do these things, no matter how controlling you are of them. I Think it's way more important that your kid knows what to look out for, what to avoid and what to do if anything ever happens to them. So that's really what I kind of try to pound into parents heads is having that trust and that open communication with your Kid.
- [29:53]
Chris Hansen
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- [29:58]
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- [30:35]
Chris Hansen
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- [30:37]
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- [30:53]
Chris Hansen
You know, we did an investigation into Roblox, a big documentary a couple months ago. It came out on True Blue and it was shocking to me that in one county in Florida alone there was a case where a man was arrested on multiple counts of exploiting children on Roblox around the country. And another victim in the same county in Florida, Marion County, Florida, a 10 year old girl who is homeschooled, who is not allowed on Roblox was able to sneak on and she was exploited or a predator from the UK attempted to exploit her. They arrested him. But if this is going on, these two unconnected cases in one county in Florida, what's going on in the rest of the world on Roblox? Because predators know where to find their prey and one of the places is Roblox and they can scoop a kid up there, induce them in many different ways and suddenly they're in discord or they're on, you know, texting on a phone someplace. It's, it's really frightening how quickly this can take place, right?
- [32:03]
Becca Spinks
Yeah, it is. It's scary. You know, although I do say trust and communication is most important, more important maybe than keeping your kids offline at all. That said, I would never let my child play Roblox ever in a million years. There's just, you know, I think that they're the worst of all the companies because, you know, and this is what, why they're being sued in a lot of states right now is because that they've marketed their product as being safe for kids. And in reality it's not safe for kids. We know that objectively. So it really is a case of, you know, in my opinion, false advertising and telling parents this is a safe product and it's not. I tell every parent I know to keep their kids off roadblocks. I send them, I don't send them my stuff because I don't want them to really know, know who I am necessarily. But I send them articles about, you know, how bad roblox is and you know, I try to scare them away from letting their kids on it. I just don't think that there's any reason for your kids to be on that particular game at all.
- [33:02]
Chris Hansen
And we're talking about a platform that is wildly popular, publicly traded, multi billion dollar company and they won't let law enforcement on the platform to conduct investigations. They won't allow it. And even when they catch somebody and they go through the procedure of mandatory reporting to NCMEC national center for Missing and Exploited Children and they refer to the case to law enforcement, they don't take the extra step to prevent that predator from going back on the platform using a different id. And it's shocking to me that they think that that's okay. As a corporate citizen, knowing what we know, knowing what you know, having seen the things we uncovered in our investigation and 764 is very much alive on Roblox. I'm going to sit down in the next week with two parents of victims who were terrorized, absolutely terrorized by 7, 6, 4 activists who were using Roblox. And they've got the receipts, they've got the goods, they've got everything. And in one case, law enforcement's doing something about it. In another case, well, it's, it's not quite as clear, but we're going to make sure they do. But it's, it's, it's really stunning. And in spite of the fact that, that attorneys general from across the country, I mean I think we're up to like 20 different attorneys general who are taking legal action in the United States, they don't seem to want to make effective change. They talk about facial recognition and Age verification. But kids get around that, predators get around that.
- [34:35]
Becca Spinks
Yeah.
- [34:35]
Chris Hansen
And until they decide to make meaningful change, it continues to be a playground for predators.
- [34:41]
Becca Spinks
Right. Yeah. You know, I've always kind of been an outspoke, outspoken against these, you know, age verification features, especially the ones that are maybe being legislated by countries and governments. I don't personally like, like, you know, that, that's not my thing. I, I first of all, like you said, there's always ways around it. So it's not going to, I don't think that it's going to provide any meaningful change in the number of predators, a number of victims. And I also worry about, you know, you know, the, the online privacy of normal non criminal citizens. Right. I worry about, you know, my privacy and stuff. I don't want to have to give my ID to, to Google and to all these other companies. So yeah, I'm generally opposed to those measures. Like I said, I think that if there were one thing the social media platforms could do better, it's basically like you already said, it's, it's moderating the platform and turning these guys over to law enforcement when they find them. I'm not talking about, you know, just like giving free reign to their, their back end access to their data. What I'm talking about is, you know, for example, the platform X, which is probably my, my biggest platform is X slash Twitter. And you know, that's where I initially found all these 764 members. That's where I initially found Kyle Spitz and all of his friends operating in plain sight posting child abuse content, networking, advertising, their telegram groups. I mean it was insane. I couldn't believe that all this stuff was just so out in the open. And it's, it's been for years, it's been like pulling teeth to get X to moderate these accounts. Whereas I know that they have the AI moderation technology theoretically that could just immediately automatically ban these types of bad actors for posting this content. And yet it continues to proliferate. So I think the bigger questions to ask these platforms are, you know, why are your moderation, why is your moderation so ineffective? And you know, why aren't you able to better moderate this? Because you know, they, they search for victims on Twitter as well. In fact, one way I ended up stumbling upon a huge community of children who were self harming on X slash Twitter and posting videos of them cutting themselves and harming themselves. And in the comments section of all these posts were these predators trying to get them to DM them because they want to try to groom and exploit that kid. So the, the fact that this, this goes on so prolifically on social media without any kind of real progress made over the last couple of years, that's what causes me to raise an eyebrow. Like what are you doing already that you aren't, you know, what could you be doing already that you aren't doing before you start enacting all of these kind of overreaching privacy, you know, measures like ID verification?
- [37:22]
Chris Hansen
Well, it seems to me, and I think we're in agreement here that the technology exists, AI for instance, to monitor these people and to report them or to take action or to ban them. I mean you can get banned from X for a lot of stuff. YouTube the same. I mean you can be limited monetization just for using words that we've used in this interview.
- [37:46]
Narrator
You.
- [37:46]
Chris Hansen
Right. And yet a group like this can operate freely, which is shocking to me. It seems like the priorities aren't in the right place.
- [37:56]
Becca Spinks
Right, yeah, it's, it's mind blowing. You know, I can't tell you how many times that I've, you know, even not just the predators, but also these victim pools. Why are you allowing these giant large communities of kids, self harming them, posting videos of them cutting themselves to the bone? I mean it's, it's horrible. Any person I've ever showed this to had their jaw basically on the floor thinking this is not okay. This isn't free speech. This isn't, you know, this is, this needs to be taken down and moderated. This is child abuse content. And I guess they don't see it that way because you know, they haven't taken any measures to, you know, prevent these groups of, of potential victims from forming active communities. And they haven't stopped these, these predators from the 764 network from collecting, you know, distributing child abuse content and advertising their groups there. So yeah, it's really, it's, it's mind blowing to me. Obviously I have a bone to pick with X because like I said, that's my biggest platform. But it's also one of the biggest platforms that these predators use not just to find kids, but to advertise. So yeah, really, really they need to answer for it at some point. You know, why aren't they doing more to stop it?
- [39:06]
Chris Hansen
So you're telling me that right now on X, somebody who decided to go search for it could find communities of children who self harm? They show videos of this self harm and the predators, including those who are affiliated with 764 know this. And they go to, to harvest these kids as victims.
- [39:32]
Becca Spinks
Yes, it's right out in the open. Anyone could find it. It's, it's truly horrifying. You know, the BBC actually did, did a, an article and a video about it not too long ago after I sent them all the information. I mean, I'll send stuff to media. I'll try my best to get this out in front of people. Really, the only time that social media platforms like X and Roblox will answer is when you give them so much negative PR that they're forced to. So, you know, maybe that's, you know, just the loud mouth mom in me, but I, I'd like to make a fuss and make sure that these guys feel the pressure when it comes to, you know, because I, I don't think that they really care. I don't think that they'll be inclined to fix a problem unless it gets to the point where they can't ignore it because of public pressure. So I feel like it's our duty to provide that pressure.
- [40:19]
Chris Hansen
Well, Roblox wouldn't even sit down for an interview for our documentary, for my investigation. I mean, we had several conversations, zoom calls with their chief security officer who claimed that, you know, none of this could happen, that there was no inappropriate material being exchanged on Roblox in spite of the fact that we know this has happened. They want to slough everything off on Discord even though that they, they have a very close business relationship there and have a server on Discord. We know a lot of this conversation ends up being on Discord after the initial meeting. And some stuff happens on Roblox, but I just find it shocking that a corporate citizen would not at least sit down and discuss these issues. Now they're happy to go on camera when it's a two minute morning show to talk about their latest game or their, this technology where they know that they're not going to be questioned and face scrutiny but, but they don't want to sit down and face the music when it comes to the serious allegations there.
- [41:21]
Becca Spinks
Yeah, they're scared because I think at this point it's getting to a level where they can't ignore it. You know, what with all the legal cases and everything. I think that they're, they're in way over their head. And yeah, they're right to be scared because we're not going to stop talking about it. You know, Roblox has been one of my biggest talking points here for the last couple of years. You know, early on in the 764 investigation, we had, we had a term like me and the people that I investigated with would always say all roads lead to roadblocks. Every single time there was a Roblox account. You know, it's not one of the, just like I said, that they, they, they search for victims in these ex communities. Roblox is probably even more favored by them because they can just walk up and literally start talking to a kid. And so, yeah, you know, we've known about the Roblox problem for a while. We're not going to quiet down about it. We're going to keep being noisy about it because I think that it's working.
- [42:21]
Chris Hansen
So even with the safety initiatives Roblox has implemented, you're saying right now it's still the primary place for predators to approach children.
- [42:34]
Becca Spinks
I could go on to Roblox right now and find you 10, 764 profiles, like just within five minutes of looking. Yeah, it, they're everywhere like you said, you know, they, they get banned and then they just join with a new user id. So it becomes, you know, just, it's just, it's a big problem. One of the biggest ways that they advertise their Roblox stuff, it's on TikTok. There's a huge TikTok community where they post themselves grooming kids and extorting kids on Roblox. So all the social media platforms are kind of involved, but Roblox is one of the ways that they can directly communicate with your child. I tell parents this all the time and I tell, I say this all the time. Every time I go on a podcast. There's no difference if your kid's talking to a stranger online anywhere, whether it's X, Snapchat, Instagram or Roblox or anywhere else. Discord. It's no different than them being in a crowded downtown area talking to a stranger in a creepy van. There's no difference. Your kids shouldn't be talking to strangers online, period. So in general, at the younger ages, you know, I wouldn't allow my kid to be on any kind of platform where they could communicate with strangers. That's just, I feel like that's obvious, but it's not because this isn't how we're seeing these kids go on Roblox.
- [43:51]
Chris Hansen
But I think the average parent sees it and sees these Lego like characters and they have no idea that there are bathroom games and meetup games and all kinds of other creepy things, including Sandy Hook shooting replications. They Roblox, where you could be the shooter, Adam Lanza. In the Sandy hook massacre where 20 people were killed, 26 people were.
- [44:15]
Becca Spinks
There's a lot of those, There's a lot of those games in communities. There's communities. We knew of one called the Church. And on, you know, the outside it looked like just a normal community, but inside it was a church where all these people were just going in and planning mass shootings and terrorist attacks, you know, you know, like neo Nazi type of terror attacks. In fact, there was one person arrested in Round Rock, Texas for, you know, being on that Roblox game and conspiring to shoot up. I don't know if it was a mosque or a synagogue or something. I don't want to say, say the wrong information. But, you know, there's been arrests made based on. Yeah, there's been arrests made based on these groups of people who are in there planning terror attacks or trying to groom kids. You know, a big thing that they'll do is they'll try to get a kid to join a Discord server. And in that Discord server they're spamming them with all this propaganda, extremist propaganda and neo Nazi type of stuff. And you know, this kids, kids can get rattle radicalized. They're very prone to that. They're very susceptible to radicalization. And so, you know, suddenly your kid might find themselves surrounded by that kind of thing in a community where people make them feel cool and validated. And that's a really dangerous place for young boys to be. You know, a lot of times mass shooters were able to link them directly back to these harmful communities, these Discord servers, these Roblox groups. So yeah, kids are very vulnerable. They're very susceptible to that kind of rhetoric.
- [45:45]
Chris Hansen
How protective has this made you of your child?
- [45:50]
Becca Spinks
She's, See, she was six, five or six when I started down this road. She just turned nine. She's too young really to, you know, to have social media, in my opinion. But I noticed that a lot of her friends are starting to get phones. A lot of her friends are playing Roblox. And I've explained to her, I've told her why she doesn't have those things and why she can't have those things because it's dangerous. And I've explained to her already about stranger danger existing on the Internet, how anybody can pretend to be anybody online, you know, in the age appropriate sense that I can at eight or nine years old. Right. But she knows and she knows, she's told her friends, I can't play Roblox. Because my mommy hates Roblox and you know, my mommy's like working to fight against them and like, so she knows a little bit about what's going on. But you know, ultimately I hope to really just foster that communication with her so that, you know, when she does get older, old enough to talk about these, these really, you know, troubling topics that, that I can make sure that she knows that I'm there to help her if anything ever happens. And I hope to help her learn to protect herself. You know, it's the same thing with self defense. We can only be there to physically protect our kids for so long. That's why we teach them what to do if someone tries to grab them on the street. Right. In the same way you have to teach your kids at age appropriate levels how to protect themselves online. And so yeah, I definitely look at things from a different lens as probably most of her friends, parents, but like I said, I just really hope to build a resilient child who has that open communication with me and who's smart enough to be able to protect herself online when she does get to that age. Because at some age it's unavoidable. You can't keep them offline forever. That's unrealistic.
- [47:33]
Chris Hansen
I understand you're quite the marksman. Is that for relaxation, competition, self protection?
- [47:39]
Becca Spinks
Yeah, all of the above, Yes. I started out doing self defense training and handgun training for women for 15 years probably. I became a competitive shooter, so. So yeah, I can shoot a little bit. Yeah.
- [47:55]
Chris Hansen
All right, good. Well, if I ever make it down
- [47:57]
Becca Spinks
so we're sitting pretty.
- [47:58]
Chris Hansen
We'll have to, we'll have to go to the range sometime together.
- [48:01]
Becca Spinks
Absolutely. I love taking people to the range. It's like the funnest thing, especially people who don't shoot often. It's really good.
- [48:07]
Chris Hansen
I appreciate that. Well, listen, I, I can't thank you enough for being on the program. Let's agree that we're going to keep this conversation going and that we'll find ways to collaborate. Where can people find you, Becca? Tell me everything. Every place you are, where people can find you.
- [48:22]
Becca Spinks
So my, my biggest platform for talking about this kind of stuff is substack. I write articles bx rights like rights.substack.com. i have a lot of free resources there for parents, a lot of free articles and I post pretty much all of my research that I do on these groups there. You, I'm sure you'll find some interesting stuff that we didn't even get a chance to cover And I'm also on X at bx Underscore on X, probably my biggest platform. But yeah, there's a lot more information on Substack for parents and for, you know, just anybody. I really encourage people to share this information, share this podcast with other parents, make sure that they know these groups exist. Because, you know, getting, getting to parents has definitely been my biggest goal in all of this.
- [49:07]
Chris Hansen
Becca Spinks, thank you very much for joining us, bx. I appreciate it. Stay safe and we'll stay in contact, I promise.
- [49:16]
Becca Spinks
Awesome. Thank you so much for having me.
- [49:18]
Chris Hansen
You should check out Becca's substack. I've recently subscribed in preparation for this particular episode, but there's some great information there. And you talk about somebody who's really done their work here, who's investigated things. She's been on the cutting edge of this. And it's. It's Becca Spanx, bx. So check it out. Thank you for having a seat with me. We'll see you next Wednesday for another episode. Mondays is when Predators I've caught drops. And every Thursday, an episode of Takedown with Chris Hansen comes out on my streaming network, True Blue. Watch trueblue.com for details. As always, I'll be watching and listening.