That probably would be step #1, but…
Chances are pretty good you’re at least passingly familiar with Roblox. It is a game with nearly 80 million active users (and a goal to reach a billion), and makes stupid amounts of money. Mostly through somewhat questionable means.
Anyway, if you’re a parent and you’re worried about your kid being exposed to childhood gambling among other potentially unacceptable things, Roblox Corporation co-founder and CEO Dave Baszucki has some advice for you:
Just, uh, don’t let your kids play Roblox.
From an interview with BBC News:
When asked what his message is to parents who don’t want their children on the platform, Mr Baszucki said: “My first message would be, if you’re not comfortable, don’t let your kids be on Roblox.”
“That sounds a little counter-intuitive, but I would always trust parents to make their own decisions,” he told BBC News in an exclusive interview.
That said, it’s the kind of advice that’s easier said than done. And as someone who was on the “you’re not allowed to do ____” list, it doesn’t exactly feel great being left out of something all of your friends are into, whether that’s due to overly permissible parents or anything else. It also doesn’t help that Roblox is inherently free to download, meaning all but the sharper parental eyes are likely to fail in this endeavor.
That said, it’s also a bit of a hand off. Roblox Corporation is a multibillion-dollar company (currently worth ~$41 billion). So it’s not exactly surprising that people expect at least a little more effort put into curation and parental control features. And while they did implement rules for people under 13 years of age late last year, and have AI systems monitoring communications, some might argue that’s still not quite enough considering the bank they make off this game.
We don’t condone any type of image-sharing on our own platform, and you’ll see us getting more and more, I think, way beyond where the law is on this type of behaviour.
Dave Baszucki
There have been a number of incidents that certainly gave the company something of a black eye. Last year saw a considerable kerfuffle involving the potential violation of child labor laws. There was also the fact that that same years saw Turkey ban Roblox for “child exploitation”. There was also an incident in which a 15-year-old girl was abducted and sexually assaulted by a pedophile whom she met through Roblox a year and a half after the community itself had outed the offender as a predator. In relation, there’s a report by Bloomberg that shows that US police have apprehended around two-dozen people since 2018 “accused of abducting or abusing victims” met through the game.
We do in the company take the attitude that any bad, even one bad incident, is one too many. We watch for bullying, we watch for harassment, we filter all of those kinds of things, and I would say behind the scenes, the analysis goes on all the way to, if necessary, reaching out to law enforcement.
Dave Baszucki
Regardless of all of these safety concerns, Mr. Baszucki seems to have fairly lofty aim when it comes to Roblox. Later in the interview, he compares his work to that of Walt Disney:
[The job is] a little like having the opportunity he had a long time ago when he was designing the Magic Kingdom.
Dave Baszucki
When asked by the interviewer to describe Roblox in three words, he responds:
The future of communication.
Dave Baszucki
That’s… that’s four words, Dave.
Source: PC Gamer
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