Online extremists, sextortion and child exploitation: Protecting children in the digital age

An online Nihilistic Violent Extremist network group known as 764 has been discovered targeting children and teens on popular gaming sites like Roblox to begin grooming them, with perpetrators connecting with children on online gaming platforms made for kids and putting feelers out to see how comfortable a child is with seeing violent or sexualized material. Even though one of the group's leaders pleaded guilty in 2025 to child exploitation charges, 764 and other NVE groups are still targeting vulnerable people including children, teens and the elderly, with what is potentially most disturbing being the way these groups are structured where there is internal clout or status developed from successful grooming.

The 764 network operates by targeting children on gaming platforms and escalating contact from casual conversation to violent or sexualized material, a grooming trajectory Guardii's detection module is designed to intercept by identifying sustained targeting, escalation and coercion patterns in direct-message conversations in real time. Operating across platforms including Roblox, Discord, Instagram and Snapchat, Guardii blocks or flags hostile contact before it reaches the target, surfaces a child in crisis to a parent, school or professional, and enables rapid escalation to the right authority in an emergency, detecting threat patterns rather than reading every message and addressing the cross-platform coordination that allows extremist groups like 764 to groom children across multiple services simultaneously.