Roblox has been facing a lot of criticism this year with nearly 60 lawsuits filed across the country alleging that it failed to protect children against sexual exploitation. The company countered by launching safety technology such as AI-assisted facial age estimation.
Roblox is an immersive gaming platform and a creation platform with more than 151 million people coming every day from as many as 180 different countries. A small percentage of them create the experiences that everyone else plays. One of those games this summer had more than 25 million people playing it at the same time. This makes it the equivalent of one of the biggest countries on Earth.
Two-thirds of the players are over 13. Roblox will become the first online platform to require facial age checks to access chat, establishing a new industry benchmark for safety.
A big mistake
But then Roblox’s cofounder and CEO, David Baszucki, recently appeared on the New York Times’ Hard Fork podcast. When asked by hosts Kevin Roose of the New York Times and tech journalist Casey Newton about it, Baszucki misspoke.
“What do you think of the problem of predators on Roblox?” Newton asked.
“We think of it not necessarily as a problem, but as an opportunity as well,” Baszucki replied. “How do we allow young people to build, communicate and hang out together? How do we build the future of communication at the same time?”
Sadly, Baszucki didn’t open his comment with an expression of empathy. Now the question is how much damage this statement has done to the company and how long it will last. I interviewed Alexandra Walsh, a trial attorney and shareholder at the Anapol Weiss law firm, which has filed lawsuits against Roblox. Roblox declined to comment on Walsh’s remarks. The New York Times noted its interview with Baszucki “got testy.”
Baszucki’s remarks, which showed no acknowledgement of the strong emotions around the subject of children being allegedly victimized, were widely reported as insensitive. At the very least, the publications said, he could have acknowledged sorry about anyone being potentially attacked.
The PR fallout
Media outlets like MSN, TheGamer, and NotebookCheck framed the remarks as a PR disaster for Roblox. Social media posts and YouTube commentators labeled the interview the “worst ever.” MoistCr1TiKaL, who won the award for best streamer at The Game Awards, and Schlep criticized Baszucki.
“I’ve been looking at this company for several years now, and I think it has kind of enjoyed a halo of safety,” Walsh said to me. “Because of just really relentless marketing of itself as a place online that’s safe for kids. People just went with that. And it really was the narrative around the company. I think that with the explosion and growth during COVID, with just more people on the platform, the problems that I think have existed for years became sufficiently prevalent that they started to be noticed, including by our clients.”
She added, “They came forward and said this has happened to us. We’re gratified to see that Roblox is now being challenged and critiqued concerning its approach to child safety. And I think in a lot of cases, they don’t have very good answers. And that is part of what led to the CEO’s pretty startling responses to some of the questions, and his combativeness particularly struck.”
And Walsh said, “The first thing out of his mouth is like, ‘Well, I see it as a challenge and an opportunity.’ I mean, to not have taken a moment, just a moment, to acknowledge — whether or not he thinks that Roblox is legally immune from any liability for this, and those arguments will be hashed out in court — or to not even recognize any sensitivity to suffering that these kids have gone through was pretty remarkable.”
Roblox’s response
I asked Roblox about the reaction to the criticism. A spokesperson for the company issued a lengthy statement, “We are deeply troubled by any incident that endangers any user. Roblox aims to build a platform that sets the bar for safety online, and we prioritize the safety of our community. This is why our policies are purposely stricter than those found on many other platforms.”
The spokeperson added, “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.”
The statement continued, “We also understand this is an industry-wide issue and we are working to develop industry-wide standards and solutions. For instance, Roblox is implementing an industry-leading policy to help prevent older users from communicating with children by requiring a sophisticated facial age estimation process for all Roblox users who access our communications features.”
And lastly, Roblox said, “We partner with law enforcement and leading child safety and mental health organizations worldwide to combat the sexual exploitation of children and are a founding member of the Tech Coalition’s Lantern project and the nonprofit Robust Open Online Safety Tools (ROOST).”
Roblox has said it also collaborates with law enforcement, government agencies, mental health organizations, and parental advocacy groups to create resources for parents and to keep users safe on the platform. Through vigorous global outreach, the firm has developed deep and lasting relationships with law enforcement at the international, federal, state, and local levels.
Age estimation technology
Roblox said it knows inappropriate communications with minors are a concern and that is why it is implementing an industry-leading age check policy. Users who want to communicate on Roblox will need to confirm their age via a sophisticated new system using facial age estimation, ID verification, or verified parent consent, the company said.
Roblox has said one of its key technologies it unveiled this year to protect children is facial age estimation. On November 18, Roblox said it would roll out the technology in early December as a requirement for all users who want to access communication features.
Announced September 3 during the company’s Roblox Developer Conference, the tech allows the company to implement age-based chat, where the facial age checks are designed to screen players and limit communication between minors and adults.
Under the systems, for instance, users 13- 18 can only privately chat with adults they know in real life, and users younger than 13 cannot use private text chat or voice chat at all without parental consent.
With the November announcement, Roblox said all users can now voluntarily go through the Facial Age Estimation process to secure access to communication features. Roblox is doing this as part of its ongoing safety efforts, but it also knows that parents of children who may have been harmed are holding its feet to the fire. They’re suing the company and pushing it to do better.
Matt Kaufman, chief safety officer at Roblox, said in a press briefing recently, “When we think about Roblox, our priority is safety and civility. We want to make Roblox a safe, positive, age-appropriate experience for everybody. We set extremely high standards for ourselves, and we understand that the public expects the same from us. Roblox was founded nearly 20 years ago, and it was built from the ground up, with safety in mind, and that’s because the founders of Roblox saw right away that there were kids and teens on the platform.”
He added, “Instead of shying away from that and calling it an adult only thing, they really embraced the fact that it was going to be an all-ages platform. We’ve built it knowing that from the beginning. We’re not retrofitting roadblocks today to make it work for kids. We’re building safety for kids and teens and adults in from the ground up.”
How it works
In the first week of December, Roblox will begin enforcing the age-check requirement in select markets, including Australia, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. Here’s an example of how it works.
For example:
● Elisa (estimated age 12): Elisa has access to chat with users aged 15 or younger in
Experience chat. All users 16 or older are prevented from initiating or engaging in chat
with her.
● Marcus (estimated age 18): Marcus has access to chat with users aged 16 or older and
could add a younger sibling as a Trusted Connection, as long as they are 13 or older.
To keep Roblox’s youngest users safe, chat in experiences will be turned to default off for users under nine years old, unless a parent provides consent after an age check. Chat outside of experiences remains restricted for users under 13.
Age checks are designed to be fast, easy, and secure using Facial Age Estimation technology. Users can complete an age check directly within the Roblox app by following these steps:
- You’ll see a prompt in the app asking you to verify your age.
- Grant permission for Roblox to access your device’s camera.
- Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the age check, including centering yourself on the screen and turning your face to the left and right.
Once age-checked, users are notified of their assigned age group (U9, 9–12, 13–15, 16–17,
18–20, 21+), and can now chat with others in their age group and similar ones.
In addition to using Facial Age Estimation, users can confirm their age through ID verification. The age check process varies, depending on local laws. Parents will continue to have access to their child’s linked account and can modify their child’s birthday through Parental Controls after the facial age estimation process is complete.
As mentioned, since January 2025, Roblox said it has introduced more than 145 new safety initiatives. The company wants to set a new bar for online safety and it is always working to improve. Those include updated parental controls, stricter defaults for users under 13, and new content maturity labels.
The new age-based communications settings build on Roblox’s multilayered safety approach, which includes:
● Real-time AI monitoring across all text and voice communications, combined with
thousands of trained human experts
● Default restrictions for users under age 13
● Limits on mature content and external link sharing
● Close collaboration with law enforcement and over 20 global safety organizations
● Robust Parental Controls for visibility and customization
Roblox also launched a new Safety Center, a dedicated resource for parents and
caregivers that provides clear guides and tools to help them make informed decisions, set up Parental Controls, and support their child’s online experience.
The next steps
In early January, requirements expand to remaining markets wherever chat is available. The company said that Facial Age Estimation is private, secure and easy. Users check their age through the privacy-protective Facial Age Estimation process in the Roblox app, using the camera on the user’s device. Images and video for age checks are processed by Persona, a Roblox vendor, and are deleted immediately after processing.
After users complete the age-check process, users will be assigned to one of six age groups – Under 9, 9–12, 13–15, 16–17, 18–20, or 21+ – and can chat only with peers in their group or similar groups, as appropriate, helping ensure safer, more age-appropriate interactions.
Roblox says this is a “safety gold standard.” The company said that, for decades, the internet has relied on self-declared ages or more recently, reactive behavior-based signals. Roblox is going further with its approach by requiring age checks before any user can chat.
Kaufman said Roblox relies as well on moderation and the company has invested heavily in it. However, he noted that in any given day, people engage with each other for 430 million hours and they send about six billion messages a day. Kaufman noted that the content changes frequently as developers make updates. And he said less than .01% of the content submitted to Roblox violates the rules.
The AI solution?
To deal with the high volume of interactions, you need AI.
“But at the same time, AI is really good and making the same decision over and over and over again, but sometimes it has challenges with things that are in a gray area, and that’s where we need our people. Our people are also helping to train the AI. And sometimes we get things wrong, and we admit that, and when we get things wrong, users appeal decisions,” Kaufman said. “Our humans are there, our safety professionals are there in order to review those appeals.”
That analysis in turn makes the AI better. Roblox is working with parental advocacy groups, mental health organizations, governments, law enforcement agencies to help shape Roblox’s policies. Kaufman said the firm monitors all comms on the platform, and there is no encryption of messages. Algorithms are constantly looking for critical harms.
“While no system is ever perfect, our goal is to constantly improve and really lead the industry when it comes to safety,” he said.
How the age checks work
As for the age checks, Roblox will use them to determine who is on the platform and how old they are.
“And all this technology that we’re building, we’re also open sourcing it we want to take our own learnings and our own investments, and we want to share them with the rest of the industry,” Kaufman said. “It’s only if the entire industry is safer can we really make kids and teens safer.”
Because there are real issues with self-declared age, Roblox has decided to roll out age estimation for all users before they can access chat.
Raj Bhatia, vice president and head of user and discovery products, said in a recent press briefing that the company is also introducing age-based chat, which is designed to help users chat with people in similar age groups. It limits contact for people outside age groups.
With the age groups, a 14-year-old can talk with an eight-year-old kid, but the 14 year old cannot chat with some who is 18.
Asked if it can protect the photos and IDs when people submit them for verification of age, Bhatia said the company does not store them and discards them after using them for verification. It’s working with a partner that is also not storing them for privacy reasons.
Kaufman said that the facial estimation is accurate when measuring people between the ages of five and 25 within one or two years of age.
“It’s important to note that we are not looking to use this algorithm to determine your birthday. We’re looking at it to determine, basically, like, what is kind of an approximate age bucket that you’re in,” Kaufman said.
Kaufman declined to say the percentage of Roblox users who have had their age verified already. But he said it was a “good number” that have done it to access restricted content for over-18 players.
If Roblox uses the results of the facial age estimation and then determines there is a discrepancy versus the self-declared age, then it will flag the matter for further review. If someone is trying to get around the system, the fraud checks should notice the anomaly.
The system isn’t perfect, as no system is perfect, Kaufman said. But that’s why there is a multi-tiered approach with other safety measures.
The company is rolling out in limited countries now to test the systems. And it will roll out more broadly in January, Kaufman said.
“Age estimation systems are not deployed equally across every application, every website,” he said. “There are a number of fraud measures that can be implemented to make these systems more robust. It is up to each company that implements face-to-age estimation on whether they want to implement those fraud checks or not. We can’t speak to how other companies are doing that. What we can say about Roblox is that we’re taking this very seriously, and we are implementing fraud checks on our side to make sure that people are being honest and accurate about who they are.”
Walsh’s response
Walsh’s firm argues that, while helpful in theory, the system has significant limitations. Reports say that kids in the E.U. bypassed similar tools by uploading images of video game characters. When asked how Roblox planned to prevent this “tinkering” on the podcast, Baszucki said they rely on unspecified “other signals” that become reliable when combined.
But Anapol Weiss asked, “Which signals? Optional photo ID verification that many minors can’t use? Behavioral indicators, such as parent reports, can take weeks for Roblox to address. Or chat filters that predators routinely bypass by altering a few letters?”
Roblox said its default protections for all users include such landmark policies as no image-sharing allowed in chat, and strict filters against inappropriate language, personally identifiable information (such as email addresses or phone numbers), and attempts to move conversations off-platform. Roblox also restricts private text chat or voice chat for users younger than 13.
When asked why Roblox prioritizes open-ended communication among users, Baszucki said in the podcast that he emphasized the platform’s social benefits. “There are a lot of kids who find their peeps on Roblox. There are a lot of kids [who play] when they’re lonely or isolated.” He claimed that famous parents have told him, “My kid would be dead if it were not for finding a community on a platform like Roblox to stay connected with.”
But the mother of Ethan Dallas would strongly disagree, the law firm said. Dallas, who also felt lonely and isolated, looked for friends on Roblox and instead met a dangerous predator. Ethan tragically died by suicide after being groomed and sexually exploited by that predator, Anapol Weiss alleged.
“Safety advocates have been calling for better ways to have age-gating on these platforms for so long,” Walsh said. “One of my first responses to not just the most recent announcement — Roblox claims to have rolled out 145 new safety features this year. My first reaction to that is, ‘Where have they been for the last 20 years?’ Why did it take a bunch of lawsuits being filed, a bunch of state attorneys general launching investigations? A story on the front page of The New York Times. Why did it take that for this company to finally take action?”
I brought up some devil’s advocate arguments that I was aware of, though I can’t say I’ve heard Roblox people say them. I noted that generative AI and other AI technologies have made huge leaps in the last couple of years. So the improved AI detection of problems could be newer compared to what was available 20 years ago, when manual human review of problems was the answer. Roblox has stated that it is developing social features to keep kids on the platform, as it does a better job of protecting them.
The age for consent?
Walsh replied that Roblox has historically had smaller numbers of human staff as content moderators compared to platforms like Instagram.
“The idea that they would say all along they’ve had this robust manual review is just not borne out by the numbers. I also think that if what they’re trying to say is, ‘Look, before now, we did our best, but what were we supposed to do?’ Well, if you don’t have the technology to keep kids safe from predators on your gaming platform, then you shouldn’t let kids on, or you shouldn’t exist.”
On those points, Roblox has said it recognizes the reality and urgency of the safety challenges that confront it and continually strengthens its protections, makes significant safety investments and evolves its systems. It has also said its community standards set clear expectations for how to behave on Roblox and define restricted experiences. The moderation is multi-layered, employing thousands of trained human experts, helped by advanced AI moderation systems.
Walsh said she doesn’t abide by the concept that no system is perfect and bad things are going to slip through.
“That may be okay for you and me. We made a decision to do this. That might be okay if, for years and years, Roblox had had the strictest parental controls. But they had horrendous parental controls. They knew this was happening. I guess they knew they didn’t have the technology to stop it, and they let it go on. If they can’t keep predators away from kids on their platform, then they shouldn’t have the platform,” Walsh said.
She added, “This is not like a life-saving device. It’s a gaming platform. And if they know that predators are going after kids on the platform and they know that they don’t have the technology necessary to stop it. Then, first of all, tell the truth. Don’t hide the dangers, and second of all, shut the thing down until you figure it out. Innocent kids shouldn’t have to suffer sexual exploitation and other predation while Roblox figures out the technology to keep them safe.”
I also noted that Roblox could also claim they do a better job than the rest of the industry, and that no one has achieved 100% safety.
“First of all, I challenge the premise. I mean, they’ve not released any numbers about how many of these reports they’ve actually gotten,” Walsh said. “They have not talked. They have not addressed the fact that these things are severely underreported. So the idea that this is very rare and they can say that they have no proof that that’s actually true. I have the experience of sitting with dozens and dozens of families who, for them, this was not a rare event, and we don’t know how rare it is. So that’s the first thing.”
She added, “Second of all, again, I come back to lots of things we do in our everyday lives entail risk, but the benefit outweighs the risk. We take on that risk because of the benefit. But to apply that general principle to this, where we’re talking about children suffering life-altering trauma. And the benefit is you get to be online playing a game. One is too many. One is really too many here. If one kid is being preyed upon by a pedophile, no.”
How good a job is Roblox doing? Are others worse?
I noted to Walsh that Baszucki noted in the podcast that Roblox didn’t run away from the problem by simply “declaring that 13 and under people are banned from the platform,” and then proceeding to not do anything to protect people because of that.
“First of all, if they’re serious about wanting to prevent what’s going on, right now, there are a couple very simple things that they could do that they refuse to do or have not done, to my knowledge to this point,” Walsh said. “One, release the numbers. Tell us the full extent of the problem. I call on them to release the numbers. Two, so that people can know the truth about this right now, each of my clients who has filed a lawsuit in court, they are moving to compel them into secret arbitration. They’re trying to get them out of court and put them into top secret, confidential arbitration.”
Walsh added, “If they want to defend themselves and say that they’re a leader in the industry, they should do it where everyone can see in the light of day. The public deserves this information, especially for a platform that has the kind of aggressive growth targets that they have.”
She noted that Roblox should stop people from sharing Discord accounts.
“I don’t accept the pat on the back that they’re giving themselves, but this idea that they’re not running away from the problem — they’re running away from allowing the public to understand the full extent of the problem. And they’re running away from what I think is a very lucrative business arrangement, which is the connection with Discord,” Walsh said.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Discord said, “Discord is deeply committed to safety and we require all users to be at least 13 to use our platform. We use a combination of advanced technology and trained safety teams to proactively find and remove content that violates our policies. We maintain strong systems to prevent the spread of sexual exploitation and grooming on our platform and also work with other technology companies and safety organizations to improve online safety across the internet.”
Do games on Roblox improve mental health?
Baszucki has also said that playing games and meeting others on the platform has real benefits. Being able to communicate with others was so important during the pandemic, when people had a lot of mental health problems, I said. I noted that part of the fix for those problems was to talk to other people on a communication platform.
“I have mixed feelings about that,” Walsh said. “During a global pandemic, there’s an analysis you can do there. The pandemic is over. Kids should be communicating with each other face-to-face and playing outside and having real human interactions. That’s not to say I don’t think there’s room for gaming. There’s room for social media, but whatever benefit that electronic interaction provides does not outweigh the risks that exist right now.”
She added, “If this company is sincere that it believes it’s providing a benefit but it also cares about the well-being of kids, then it should put its money where its mouth is and take these simple steps, like getting away from the Discord connection, releasing the numbers and stopping this forced arbitration.”
Roblox said users of all ages want a safe and civil platform on the internet. And it has noted that, every day, tens of millions of people around the world use Roblox to learn STEM skills, play, and imagine and have a safe experience on the platform.
Wither Discord? Wither privacy?
Again, Walsh said she challenges the premise of the thinking. She thinks kids may spend too much time looking at screens and that face-to-face communication has its benefits.
As Walsh brought up herself several times, Roblox could also defend itself by deflecting blame and saying other platforms should improve their safety measures. Roblox can say it spends a lot of money on the problem.
“Discord needs to get its act together, too. With most of our cases, we are going after Roblox because Roblox is the gateway. Roblox is where the kids are 47-year-old pedophiles and come on to that platform and pretend to be a 12-year-old kid, Walsh said.
She acknowledged that platforms like Discord, Snapchat and Instagram play their own role in the problem as they allow for encrypted messaging.
I noted that privacy arguments suggest that encryption can protect rights and freedoms, and restricting them could make it easier for authoritarian governments to spy on people through their social platforms.
“I am definitely very aware of the privacy arguments that are made in this regard,” Walsh said. “And again, I think when you’re talking about adults, people who have developed the ability to, theoretically, make good judgments, that’s one thing. But in where you are offering your platforms to kids, which Instagram and Snapchat and Discord do, where you’re marketing into kids, where you’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year trying to grow your user base and hook people early by marketing into kids, then there needs to be more invested in and more thought given to how you protect kids.”
Walsh thinks the move to better age estimation is good, but she noted there are problems with the rollout. You need to actively enforce age limits and actively kick people off, she said.
“You need to figure out a way that parental approval is actually confirmed and verified. I mean, these are all things that these companies are finally starting to do, but it has taken, sadly, a wave of litigation to spur them to do it. And the reason is pretty obvious when you look at Roblox. In the last earnings report, they said we’re going to be off our earnings target because we’re going to be spending more money on safety than we had predicted, and their stock price went down,” she said. “The more money they spend on safety, the less margin they report, and the more that affects the stock price. That’s why it’s taken them so long to do this.”
Open sourcing and GuardianGamer
I noted that Roblox has been open-sourcing and giving away a lot of safety technology, rather than hoarding it for itself.
For that, Walsh said, “Good for them. That’s great. I’m not going to say that’s a terrible thing to do. I’ll just come back to ‘It’s way too late, and it’s too little.'”
I noted that a small company called GuardianGamer has come up with a cloud-based overlay technology to protect kids better on platforms like Roblox. It works on a variety of platforms and the overlay allows parents to have more control. It can capture videos of what their children did on Roblox during the day and show highlights to the parent. That’s good for communication between a parent and child, but it’s also good for safety as it shows which people are trying to send messages to a child on Roblox. The parent also has to use GuardianGamer to approve friends in advance before they communicate with a child. GuardianGamer, a small startup, made this announcement before Roblox did so this fall.
“We are at early stages in these cases. We haven’t seen their internal documents about what drives some of their decision-making. Other technology companies, like a bunch of internal documents that Meta, for example, had, were recently made public,” Walsh said.
And she noted that platforms are obsessed with removing friction to communication.
Roblox has said it knows safety is as critically important to families as it is to itself, and its aims to be a strong partner to parents to support their child’s online experiences. It noted that parents can block or limit specific experiences based on content maturity ratings; block or report people on their child’s friends list; see which experiences their child is spending the most time in; and set daily screen time and spending limits.
It also said families and caregivers can find resources detailing safety measures here. (And there are blog posts from November 2024 and April 2025, and new safety tools for teens.)
Suggestions for fixes
To fix the problems that still happen, Walsh said, “Roblox should talk to parents on the ground, including the parents of these kids, about the ways in which their parental controls don’t work. I’ve got a 14-year-old. Thankfully, she has never used Roblox, but we did recently let her get a phone using those parental controls. They’re very hard to use effectively. And so these companies should be sitting down with parents.”
She said the Roblox interviewers should say, “Okay, what exactly happened? How did your kid get around it? That’s one thing. Another thing is, there’s the overall chat feature and then there’s the ability to communicate, including through voice chatting within the games.”
She said she thinks Rolox is intentionally or otherwise obscuring what functions are covered by the new technologies. She wondered if it applies to the general chat feature or to the chats that happen within games.
“With some of these kids, their parents were watching their general chat feature to make sure they weren’t talking to strangers. But it turns out the predators were coming after them through the “Whisper Chat” within the games,” she said. “It’s not enough to just address the general chat feature.”
And she also said that Roblox should shut down any connection with Discord, which is aimed at adult communications. Walsh said Roblox should improve the filter that detects whether people are trying to reach a child on Roblox by directing them to Discord.
“Those are some topics that I think would be worth their while to explore,” Walsh said.