Video Transcript

Hello Chargers, and welcome to Pin Oak Press.
My name is Mark Longerot, and today we’re jumping into an ongoing district battle over access to gaming websites.

The creators of these sites are adapting fast—finding loopholes in the district’s restrictions. One well-known example is a site called Red’s Exploit Corner, which gives students access to dozens of games, ensuring they never get bored.

The district has been banning sites like this because they violate the Technology Acceptable Use Policy, which states that school computers should only be used for educational purposes.

Red’s Exploit Corner has been especially popular at Pin Oak over the past year. Students use it to play games, access proxies, and even run AI chatbots. The site duplicates itself faster than the district can block it—creating identical versions with new URLs, making it difficult to keep up.

Students are staying one step ahead by sharing these links with each other, building what’s essentially a district-wide web of information. Their common goal: get around school restrictions.

For example, on December 16, 2024, a student shared a slideshow that listed 23 gaming websites—20 of which were from 55Games. Eight of those sites still worked, and six of those were also 55Games. The slideshow also revealed a URL trick that allowed users to create an infinite number of working sites, just by changing the characters in front of a specific domain.

On average, HISD bans two to three gaming websites per month. Teachers are tightening restrictions, and students are finding new loopholes.

Whether we’ll see the end of this digital tug-of-war remains to be seen.

This has been Mark Longerot for Pin Oak Press, keeping you updated on the latest trends at Pin Oak. Have a great day, Chargers.