3 hours ago
2
is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.
Roblox is promising more changes to its child safety features following testing from Australia’s online safety regulator, eSafety.
eSafety has been looking into concerns that the company hasn’t been in compliance with Australia’s Online Safety Act, including “allegedly failing to have sufficient measures in place to prevent contact between adults and children under 16. While Roblox has put some new safety measures in place, eSafety’s testing this year found that the platform “continued to put children at risk, including allowing contact between children and adult strangers.”
eSafety’s testing found that:
adults could send connection requests to young Australian children without parental or carer consent;
children and adults could view and respond to one another’s posts on forums outside game environments without parental or carer consent;
children’s connections were visible to anyone on the Roblox platform;
children’s profiles and biographies, including account names, number and names of connections, avatar images, and non-sensitive biographical information such as their interests were visible to anyone on the Roblox platform, with no option to restrict the visibility of this information.
Roblox believes it meets its Online Safety Act obligations, according to eSafety. But the company will be adding further safety measures that include:
preventing adults from contacting unknown children without parental consent
strengthening the account settings of children’s accounts so they are private by default
accessible reporting mechanisms that notify users of complaint outcomes
engaging an independent third-party auditor to assess the effectiveness of its safety measures, including the deployment of its age-estimation measures.
Roblox didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. In the US, Roblox is under investigation by a US Senate subcommittee and has been sued by multiple states over alleged child safety issues, though it has settled some state lawsuits. Earlier this year, the platform announced two new types of accounts for younger users that restrict certain games and chat features.
Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.
