A senior Roblox executive has defended safety measures on the gaming platform insisting “no single tool is enough to keep kids safe online”.
Roblox has said that new age-based accounts will be rolled out in Ireland in June in a bid to address safety concerns.
The gaming platform is extremely popular with younger children but the company is facing mounting criticism, and lawsuits, for failing to protect minors from inappropriate contact from strangers, and from harmful content in its games.
There have been court cases in several countries, including Ireland, that involved sexual predators contacting children on Roblox.
Eliza Jacobs, the company’s Vice President of Safety Product Policy, told RTÉ News that new facial age estimation has been rolled out to ensure that children can only access age-appropriate communications features.
“Users will be placed in an age bucket and you are only able to chat with folks that are your peers, that are around your same age, and that’s really to prevent that adult to child contact,” Ms Jacobs said.
“It just won’t be possible anymore on the platform, because you’ll be in these age buckets, and you’ll only be able to chat with the kids that you’d be in school with,” she added.
But with people constantly finding ways around age verification systems, is there still a danger that an adult could make inappropriate contact with a child on Roblox?
“No system is perfect, and no single tool is enough to keep kids safe online. So, in addition to the facial age estimation technology, we also have ongoing text filtering, so all communication is filtered on the platform.
“We also don’t encrypt any communication, so we’re monitoring all communication as it goes.
“We have an industry leading classifier for any kind of grooming activity on the platform called Sentinel, so we’re running that at all times on all communication.
“We also have deep relationships with law enforcement, both domestically and internationally,” she said.
Roblox is an online platform that allows users to create and play games.
It is free to play and there are in-game purchases available through a virtual currency called ‘Robux’.
The platform is extremely popular among younger children in Ireland and around the world. It currently has around 130 million global users.
Age-based accounts
New age-based Roblox accounts will be rolled out in Ireland in June.
“We’ll be rolling out Roblox Kids accounts and Roblox Select accounts.
“Kids accounts are for users 5 to 8, and ‘select accounts’ are for users 9 to 15, all underpinned by the facial age estimation technology, so that we’re providing an age-appropriate experience for our users,” Ms Jacobs said.
Roblox has also faced criticism over inappropriate content, violence and racism in some of the games on the platform.
“We have a system that reviews the content as it happens, in live time, to detect any kind of inappropriate behaviour or content within the games,” Ms Jacobs said.
She added: “In addition to the text filter system that’s looking at the communication, and with Roblox kids accounts and Roblox select accounts, all games that are allowed in those kinds of accounts will go through a three-step review process.
“So, we’ll be reviewing the developer, we’ll be reviewing the game content, and we’ll make sure that their content rating for that game is appropriate for those ages.”
Read more: Senior cyber crime garda warns of ‘alarming’ scale of child grooming within games
