The online games platform Roblox is to start blocking children from talking to adult and much older teen strangers from next month as it faces fresh lawsuits alleging it has been exploited by predators to groom children as young as seven.
Roblox has reached 150 million daily players of games including viral hits Grow a Garden and Steal a Brainrot but has been hit by legal claims alleging the system’s design has made “children easy prey for paedophiles”.
From next month it will start enforcing facial age estimation to allow children to chat with strangers only if they are in their broad age group.
Roblox said it would be the first online gaming or communication platform to require age checks for communication. Similar checks were introduced for users of pornography sites in the UK this summer under Online Safety Act measures to prevent under-18s from seeing explicit content.
Roblox compared its new system to school cohorts such as elementary, middle school and high school. It will be introduced first in Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, where children will be blocked from chatting with adults they do not know in real life from next month, and in the rest of the world in early January.
Users will be placed into the following groups: under nine, nine to 12, 13 to 15, 16 to 17, 18 to 20, or 21 and over. Children will be able to chat only with others in their age group and similar ones. For example, a child with an estimated age of 12 will be able to chat only with under-16s. Images and video used for the checks would not be stored, Roblox said.
“We see it as a way for our users to have more trust in who the other people they are talking with are in these games,” said Matt Kaufman, Roblox’s chief safety officer. “And so we see it as a real opportunity to build confidence in the platform and build confidence amongst our users.”
It comes amid allegations from lawyers for families alleging the “systemic predation of minors” on Roblox. Matt Dolman, a Florida lawyer who has filed 28 suits against the company, which boomed during the pandemic and has kept growing, said the “principal allegations concern the systemic predation of minors”.
One of the latest cases he filed in the US district court of Nevada came from the family of a 13-year-old girl alleging Roblox “recklessly and deceptively” ran its business “in a way that led to the sexual exploitation of the plaintiff”.
It is alleged the girl, an avid Roblox user from Washoe county, Nevada, was targeted by a “dangerous child predator” who posed as a child, built a false emotional connection and manipulated the child into giving him her mobile phone number, to which he sent graphic messages. He then coerced her into sending explicit pictures and videos of herself.
The claim alleges that “had [Roblox] taken any steps to screen users before allowing them on the apps [the girl] would not have been exposed to the large number of predators trolling the platform”, and that she would not have been harmed if age and identity verification had been in place.
Two other US district court cases filed in recent days in the northern district of California concerned a seven-year-old girl in Philadelphia and a 12-year-old in Texas who were allegedly groomed on Roblox by predators to send explicit images of themselves.
A spokesperson for Roblox said it was “deeply troubled by any incident that endangers any user” and that “we prioritise the safety of our community”.
“This is why our policies are purposely stricter than those found on many other platforms,” they said. “We limit chat for younger users, don’t allow user-to-user image sharing, and have filters designed to block the sharing of personal information.
“We also understand that no system is perfect and that is why we are constantly working to further improve our safety tools and platform restrictions to ensure parents can trust us to help keep their children safe online, launching 145 new initiatives this year alone.”
Kaufman said: “It’s not enough just for one platform to hold a high standard for safety. We really hope the rest of the industry follows suit with some of the things that we’re doing, to really raise the protections for kids and teens online everywhere.”
Beeban Kidron, the UK founder of the 5Rights Foundation, which campaigns for children’s digital rights, said: “It is time for gaming companies to put their responsibilities to children at the centre of their services.
“Roblox’s announcement claims that what they are introducing will set best practice for the sector – a bold assertion from a company that has been slow to address predatory behaviour and has allowed adult strangers, and older children, easy access to millions of younger users. I hope they are right.”
