Parents Who Let Their Kids Use Roblox Should Be Arrested
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CE-Oh No
If you’re the parent of a young gamer there’s a high chance they’re playing Roblox – there are over 150 million daily active users (DAU) with over 20 million in the US and Canada combined (the Asia-Pacific region typically has the highest number of DAUs). And if your kid’s playing Roblox, there’s a good chance they’re talking to someone on there they shouldn’t be, despite Roblox CEO David Baszucki trying his best to convince us otherwise.
In an interview with the New York Times’ tech podcast, Hard Forked, on Nov. 21, Baszucki was asked about the documented threat of sexual predators on Roblox. A threat he’s been actively resisting talking about for a while, but one in the podcast that he called an “opportunity.”
When the host Casey Newton asked Baszucki “And how do you think of the problem of predators on Roblox?” the CEO replied with:
“We think of it not necessarily just as a problem, but an opportunity as well. 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?”
Don’t Worry, They’re Only Opportunists
You might think “That sounds bad but it’s taken out of context.” It isn’t. If anything, that’s one of the more coherent things he said, as the whole interview was filled with horrible corporate bullshit spewed by a man desperately trying to deflect blame – he thought he was being interviewed by the NYT for “fun stuff.”
“I thought we were going to be talking about fun, funny things in the industry and all of that,” Baszucki said, after Newton pointed out the questions from him and co-host Kevin Roose were making Baszucki flustered. “So I’m not frustrated, I’m just kind of figuring out how much fun time I have with you guys and how much fun time we have versus kind of this superfocus.”
If it’s not clear enough already, when asked about how predators are able to get around the apparent chat restrictions on Roblox, Baszucki said “I don’t want to comment on it.”
Let’s back up a minute. It’s true that Roblox has attempted to make great strides recently in terms of online safety, and it’s also not hyperbole when the company says it believes its policies and procedures could set an industry standard. From its recent age-estimation video software to ostensibly stricter sign-up criteria, at first glance and on the surface it looks like Roblox is ticking all the right boxes. But the important fact that Baszucki, and other high-level staff at the company, routinely elide is that these aggressive new safety measures have only been implemented because they were publicly called out by Schelp in August for allowing predators on the platform.
It’s almost as if Roblox saw an opportunity to try and look good and they took it. You know, like opportunists. Like how there are opportunists taking advantage of children on Roblox. It’s all business, baby.
Children Aren’t Idiots
I understand the importance of child safety as both a parent and sensible human being. I also used to work with kids for years in the UK, meaning I had to be aware of very strict child safety laws. For example, although I ran arts/education workshops – which involved a lot of hands-on activities – I couldn’t touch children. So if a kid wanted a pencil or scissors, I had to make sure I handed it to them so that they had to grab the object. If a child wanted help with something, I had to try and make sure I could do so without any physical contact with them.
Later, I taught pre-teens and young people, where we covered a wide variety of topics, from filmmaking to online safety. I also have two young children who like to play video games – AstroBot, mostly, but also Minecraft (offline only). I know children aren’t stupid; if they want to do something they’ll find a way to do it. For example, older kids I taught would go to their mate’s house to play forbidden video games. Maybe you did something similar when you were younger.
I do agree that parents ultimately have the responsibility to know what their children are doing. However, it’s also fair to say that, as a parent, if my child is using a platform that actively sells itself as a safe space for kids, then I should be able to trust that the people running it have taken child safety seriously.
Shame on You
In my eyes, if you’re a parent and you’re aware of the multiple cases (in the US and elsewhere) of children being groomed, exploited, and even kidnapped and almost murdered because of Roblox, but you still let your kids loose on that platform, then there is something terribly wrong with you. Would you send your child into a busy city on their own? Would you let them play with a loaded weapon? I bet you would.
But okay, maybe you’ve been wilfully ignorant of these issues, or even chalked them up to a few bad apples. You know, like the 10 year old girl in Florida who almost killed her two month old sibling by dropping them, after being instructed to do so by her mother through Roblox. Or the 15 year old in San Diego who committed suicide after being groomed and victimized on Roblox for eight years. Those bad apples.
Nothing like that could ever happen to your child, could it? Not when Roblox has parental controls that can be easily bypassed. Oh wait.
It’s okay though, because the Roblox CEO is out here asking for high-fives from reporters instead of answering their questions, as well as agreeing that gambling would be a fun thing to introduce to the platform. Predators aren’t on his platform; that’s not a fun thing and he’s all about fun. And invisible statistics.
When asked if he, as the CEO, feels comfortable with the safety of Roblox to the extent that the reporter can tell people “Bring your kids to Roblox,” Baszucki answered: “We see all of those metrics internally all the time. They’re not publicly shared.”
So there you have it. Trust the CEO who denies predators are a problem on his platform because his hidden metrics prove that everything he’s doing is a success. High five!
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