Gaming platform Roblox unsafe for children
Following the publication of a new research report branding the gaming platform “a pedophile hellscape for kids”, 5Rights has called for action from regulators and a thorough redesign of Roblox to comply with legal requirements for children’s safety and privacy by design.
Activist short-selling firm Hindenburg Research has recently published new research confirming once again that Roblox, a gaming platform with 79 million daily active users today – more than half of them under 13 – is designed to put profits over children’s safety, with “social media features [that] allow pedophiles to efficiently target hundreds of children”.
Roblox, which allows children to create and play games online, is the world’s largest recreation zone for children. Almost half of Roblox users are 12 or under and the core player base is 9-15 year olds. The platform offers a millions of games and allows players to socialise with each other, including in chatrooms. According to Roblox, they process more than 50,000 chat messages every second.
Reacting to the latest report published by Hindenburg Research, 5Rights Chair Baroness Beeban Kidron called on regulators to “significantly up the game” on enforcing regulation including the UK Age-Appropriate Design Code and Online Safety Act as well as the EU Digital Services Act, to ensure that tech platforms have built-in safety measures.
“Roblox is a consumer-facing product and in order to trade, it has to be safe for children and it has to have by-design mechanisms that mean it does not enable predators to convene or search for children”
– Baroness Beeban Kidron, 5Rights Chair.
“We found Roblox to be an X-rated pedophile hellscape, replete with users attempting to groom our avatars, groups openly trading child pornography, widely accessible sex games, violent content and extremely abusive speech – all of which is open to young children,” said the Hindenburg report.
Hindenburg Research concluded that Roblox has adopted the Silicon Valley approach of “growth at all costs”, whether by misleading or outright lying to investors about its key metrics or by “opening its platform to dangerous predators and illicit content unsuitable for children”, it added. Roblox aims to reach 1 billion daily users, more than 10 times the number today.
The Hindenburg report follows an in-depth investigation by Bloomberg Businessweek in July entitled “Roblox’s Pedophile Problem”. The Bloomberg investigation reported that since 2018 in the US alone, at least two dozen people had been arrested for abducting or abusing victims they’d met or groomed using Roblox. One of the moderators interviewed by Bloomberg said her team receives hundreds of escalated reports involving child safety every day, and current and former trust and safety workers say user growth at Roblox takes priority over child safety, with proposals for stronger safety settings in line with the online safety laws being ignored.
Roblox has endorsed the Age-Appropriate Design Code and in its Corporation 2024 Proxy Statement
and 2023 Annual Report stated:
“Roblox was proud to be one of the first companies to publicly support the California Age-Appropriate Design Code (“CA AADC”), following similar legislation introduced in the United Kingdom in 2021. The California Age-Appropriate Design Code required businesses that provide an online service, product, or feature for children to have certain safety and privacy protocols embedded into the design of product features. The law recognized the distinct needs of children at different age ranges and provided that businesses should take those differences into account when designing a product or feature. While enforcement of the CA AADC has been enjoined, Roblox continues to advocate for other jurisdictions to follow California’s lead and adopt similar legislation aimed at principle-based safety by design for children.”
5Rights Foundation welcomes this commitment and calls on Roblox to implement it in full and good faith. We stand ready to support Roblox in this endeavour, so that it can become the platform its millions of child fans deserve.