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Roblox CEO Responds To Child Predator Concerns Poorly
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https://www.gamespot.com/articles/roblox-ceo-responds-to-child-predator-concerns-poorly/1100-6536445/?ftag=CAD-01-10abi2f
image
https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/screen_medium/1578/15789366/4608978-dbimage.jpg
description
Developer Roblox Corporation recently introduced a new face-scanning feature as a way to increase child safety protection on its game creation platform, Roblox. CEO David Baszucki is very excited about this initiative, giving some rather intense and questionable answers during a new podcast episode about the age-gating technology.
Baszucki sat down with The New York Times journalists Casey Newton and Kevin Roose for an episode of their Hard Fork podcast. Posted on November 21, the three engaged in a wide-ranging conversation that started with the face-scanning feature, moved to misnomers about data, and peaked at disgreements regarding the use of AI for moderation. Newtown opened with an inquiry about the problem with predators on Roblox, which Baszucki said is a good and bad dilemma.
"We think of it not necessarily just as a problem, but an opportunity as well," he said. "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? So we, you know, we’ve been, I think in a good way, working on this ever since we started. And when we were--this was almost 18 or 19 years ago--when we first launched the company and we had just four of us sitting in a room, we were literally the moderators, like we would rotate all the time."
Baszucki continued, saying that with the scale Roblox has grown to, the company decided that "the latest tech" (that is, "using facial age estimation with A.I.") is what it's looking toward to complement its moderation tools with. He mentioned text filters as one example, particularly since chatters tend to use "hashtag, hashtag, hashtag" and other keyword tricks to bypass the system.
"With A.I., these filters have gotten better and better," Baszucki said. "The state of where we are now is primarily getting into the blocking of adversarial attempts to broach the filter, and adversarial attempts to try to share PII [personally identifying information], which we're getting better and better at as well. On the age estimation, it's just--I would say--recently come of age to the point where we would complement it. But I would say our strategy is always [to] complement with whatever technology is out there to put that together."
Before long, the three were interrupting each other, interjecting statements and questions to get a leg up. Baszucki "categorically rejected" the assertion in recent lawsuits claiming predators use Roblox to find kids. He said the platform is doing "an incredible job at innovating" when compared to other online social platforms, repeating that the company is "constantly getting better" at protecting kids' ability to chat in-game.
"There's enormous benefits for having people be able to communicate, and we think we see those benefits," Baszucki explained. "There's a lot of kids who find their peeps on Roblox. There are a lot of kids when they're lonely or isolated actually--I'm not going to use it as an excuse or anything--but I get a lot of calls from famous parents who said, 'Look, my kid would be dead if it were not for finding a community on a platform like Roblox to stay connected with.' And I would also say we do take it as an enormous responsibility to design for not the sophisticated parent who goes in and says, 'Look, I'm going to turn off who you can chat to and all of that.' We have to design for all parents and think through that. But we do believe we have enormously great technology up and down the stack. We think it's part of building an experience like this. You know, if you go out there in the gaming space, I think it is very common to support communication. I'm not going to list any other games. And typically, we are way beyond in, I'd say, our innovation level, responsibility level, on both the filtering, on the image sharing, on all of these things."
After more tense exchanges around the 150 million daily active users--which Baszucki claimed is now "self-reported [to be] almost two-thirds over 13"--Roose asked about Hindenburg Research's October 2024 findings on the company allegedly disregarding child safety in the name of profits. He deflected, instead opting to focus on the fact that the activist fund "went out of business for some reason" and asked the hosts if they've researched that information themselves. He then responded by saying that AI is making everything better.
"So it's really interesting, because I think we're diving into a situation where we're getting better, better, better," Baszucki said. "But would you ask the same situation of someone who converted from maybe hypermanual labor making cars by hand to an assembly line? The assembly line might be infinitely better and at the same time not have so many people. So, I think what they're referring to is moving more and more and more and more to A.I. Arguably, is it better to have A.I. systems reviewing every image, every piece of text, all of that, or to keep doing that manually? So I think that was a misnomer. And I think if you interview anyone in our safety team or safety systems, that would be just part of making our systems better."
It's at this point that Baszucki's mood became a little flustered--though not "frustrated," as he said on multiple occasions--as he apparently went around high-fiving Newton and Roose for "aligning" with the company's decision to use AI tools for content moderation and "supporting our Roblox decision matrix."
"Is this a stealth interview where actually you love everything we’re doing and you’re here to stealthily support it?" He asked the hosts, later adding that he's "excited to talk."
"I thought we were going to be talking about fun, funny things in the industry and all of that," Baszucki said. "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. But I'm happy to talk about whatever you guys want."
Something fun that Baszucki started talking about was a hypothetical "prediction market inside Roblox" that Roose tossed out. A "terrible idea," Roose thought, he wondered if the company would ever consider letting children place bets with the Robux in-game currency." Baszucki called it a "brilliant idea" he loves.
"I actually think it's a brilliant idea if it can be done in an educational way that's legal," he said. "And so, imagine no free Robux, no free prizes, just a game called the Dress to Impress Predictor, where it's not like trying to get kids' money or anything like that. I would be a big fan of it."
In the end, Baszucki seemed adamant in defending the fact that Roblox's content moderation tools are ever-evolving, pointing to text filtering in the past and face-scanning in the present as ways the company cares for the safety of its user base.
Roblox Corporation has come under intense scrutiny in recent months following a June 2024 Bloomberg investigation that revealed the platform is rampant with predators. States like Florida and Texas have sued for what lawmakers say is the company not doing enough to protect kids from child exploitation and grooming.
Whether or Roblox or not, the problem with child predators is beginning to reach a fever pitch. According to the European law enforcement agency Europol, European society is seeing a sharp rise in criminal networks weaponizing children to commit violent crimes.
content_html
Developer Roblox Corporation recently introduced a new face-scanning feature as a way to increase child safety protection on its game creation platform, Roblox. CEO David Baszucki is very excited about this initiative, giving some rather intense and questionable answers during a new podcast episode about the age-gating technology.
Baszucki sat down with The New York Times journalists Casey Newton and Kevin Roose for an episode of their Hard Fork podcast. Posted on November 21, the three engaged in a wide-ranging conversation that started with the face-scanning feature, moved to misnomers about data, and peaked at disgreements regarding the use of AI for moderation. Newtown opened with an inquiry about the problem with predators on Roblox, which Baszucki said is a good and bad dilemma.
"We think of it not necessarily just as a problem, but an opportunity as well," he said. "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? So we, you know, we’ve been, I think in a good way, working on this ever since we started. And when we were--this was almost 18 or 19 years ago--when we first launched the company and we had just four of us sitting in a room, we were literally the moderators, like we would rotate all the time."
Baszucki continued, saying that with the scale Roblox has grown to, the company decided that "the latest tech" (that is, "using facial age estimation with A.I.") is what it's looking toward to complement its moderation tools with. He mentioned text filters as one example, particularly since chatters tend to use "hashtag, hashtag, hashtag" and other keyword tricks to bypass the system.
"With A.I., these filters have gotten better and better," Baszucki said. "The state of where we are now is primarily getting into the blocking of adversarial attempts to broach the filter, and adversarial attempts to try to share PII [personally identifying information], which we're getting better and better at as well. On the age estimation, it's just--I would say--recently come of age to the point where we would complement it. But I would say our strategy is always [to] complement with whatever technology is out there to put that together."
Before long, the three were interrupting each other, interjecting statements and questions to get a leg up. Baszucki "categorically rejected" the assertion in recent lawsuits claiming predators use Roblox to find kids. He said the platform is doing "an incredible job at innovating" when compared to other online social platforms, repeating that the company is "constantly getting better" at protecting kids' ability to chat in-game.
"There's enormous benefits for having people be able to communicate, and we think we see those benefits," Baszucki explained. "There's a lot of kids who find their peeps on Roblox. There are a lot of kids when they're lonely or isolated actually--I'm not going to use it as an excuse or anything--but I get a lot of calls from famous parents who said, 'Look, my kid would be dead if it were not for finding a community on a platform like Roblox to stay connected with.' And I would also say we do take it as an enormous responsibility to design for not the sophisticated parent who goes in and says, 'Look, I'm going to turn off who you can chat to and all of that.' We have to design for all parents and think through that. But we do believe we have enormously great technology up and down the stack. We think it's part of building an experience like this. You know, if you go out there in the gaming space, I think it is very common to support communication. I'm not going to list any other games. And typically, we are way beyond in, I'd say, our innovation level, responsibility level, on both the filtering, on the image sharing, on all of these things."
After more tense exchanges around the 150 million daily active users--which Baszucki claimed is now "self-reported [to be] almost two-thirds over 13"--Roose asked about Hindenburg Research's October 2024 findings on the company allegedly disregarding child safety in the name of profits. He deflected, instead opting to focus on the fact that the activist fund "went out of business for some reason" and asked the hosts if they've researched that information themselves. He then responded by saying that AI is making everything better.
"So it's really interesting, because I think we're diving into a situation where we're getting better, better, better," Baszucki said. "But would you ask the same situation of someone who converted from maybe hypermanual labor making cars by hand to an assembly line? The assembly line might be infinitely better and at the same time not have so many people. So, I think what they're referring to is moving more and more and more and more to A.I. Arguably, is it better to have A.I. systems reviewing every image, every piece of text, all of that, or to keep doing that manually? So I think that was a misnomer. And I think if you interview anyone in our safety team or safety systems, that would be just part of making our systems better."
It's at this point that Baszucki's mood became a little flustered--though not "frustrated," as he said on multiple occasions--as he apparently went around high-fiving Newton and Roose for "aligning" with the company's decision to use AI tools for content moderation and "supporting our Roblox decision matrix."
"Is this a stealth interview where actually you love everything we’re doing and you’re here to stealthily support it?" He asked the hosts, later adding that he's "excited to talk."
"I thought we were going to be talking about fun, funny things in the industry and all of that," Baszucki said. "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. But I'm happy to talk about whatever you guys want."
Something fun that Baszucki started talking about was a hypothetical "prediction market inside Roblox" that Roose tossed out. A "terrible idea," Roose thought, he wondered if the company would ever consider letting children place bets with the Robux in-game currency." Baszucki called it a "brilliant idea" he loves.
"I actually think it's a brilliant idea if it can be done in an educational way that's legal," he said. "And so, imagine no free Robux, no free prizes, just a game called the Dress to Impress Predictor, where it's not like trying to get kids' money or anything like that. I would be a big fan of it."
In the end, Baszucki seemed adamant in defending the fact that Roblox's content moderation tools are ever-evolving, pointing to text filtering in the past and face-scanning in the present as ways the company cares for the safety of its user base.
Roblox Corporation has come under intense scrutiny in recent months following a June 2024 Bloomberg investigation that revealed the platform is rampant with predators. States like Florida and Texas have sued for what lawmakers say is the company not doing enough to protect kids from child exploitation and grooming.
Whether or Roblox or not, the problem with child predators is beginning to reach a fever pitch. According to the European law enforcement agency Europol, European society is seeing a sharp rise in criminal networks weaponizing children to commit violent crimes.
content_text
Developer Roblox Corporation recently introduced a new face-scanning feature as a way to increase child safety protection on its game creation platform, Roblox. CEO David Baszucki is very excited about this initiative, giving some rather intense and questionable answers during a new podcast episode about the age-gating technology.Baszucki sat down with The New York Times journalists Casey Newton and Kevin Roose for an episode of their Hard Fork podcast. Posted on November 21, the three engaged in a wide-ranging conversation that started with the face-scanning feature, moved to misnomers about data, and peaked at disgreements regarding the use of AI for moderation. Newtown opened with an inquiry about the problem with predators on Roblox, which Baszucki said is a good and bad dilemma."We think of it not necessarily just as a problem, but an opportunity as well," he said. "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? So we, you know, we’ve been, I think in a good way, working on this ever since we started. And when we were--this was almost 18 or 19 years ago--when we first launched the company and we had just four of us sitting in a room, we were literally the moderators, like we would rotate all the time."Baszucki continued, saying that with the scale Roblox has grown to, the company decided that "the latest tech" (that is, "using facial age estimation with A.I.") is what it's looking toward to complement its moderation tools with. He mentioned text filters as one example, particularly since chatters tend to use "hashtag, hashtag, hashtag" and other keyword tricks to bypass the system."With A.I., these filters have gotten better and better," Baszucki said. "The state of where we are now is primarily getting into the blocking of adversarial attempts to broach the filter, and adversarial attempts to try to share PII [personally identifying information], which we're getting better and better at as well. On the age estimation, it's just--I would say--recently come of age to the point where we would complement it. But I would say our strategy is always [to] complement with whatever technology is out there to put that together."Before long, the three were interrupting each other, interjecting statements and questions to get a leg up. Baszucki "categorically rejected" the assertion in recent lawsuits claiming predators use Roblox to find kids. He said the platform is doing "an incredible job at innovating" when compared to other online social platforms, repeating that the company is "constantly getting better" at protecting kids' ability to chat in-game."There's enormous benefits for having people be able to communicate, and we think we see those benefits," Baszucki explained. "There's a lot of kids who find their peeps on Roblox. There are a lot of kids when they're lonely or isolated actually--I'm not going to use it as an excuse or anything--but I get a lot of calls from famous parents who said, 'Look, my kid would be dead if it were not for finding a community on a platform like Roblox to stay connected with.' And I would also say we do take it as an enormous responsibility to design for not the sophisticated parent who goes in and says, 'Look, I'm going to turn off who you can chat to and all of that.' We have to design for all parents and think through that. But we do believe we have enormously great technology up and down the stack. We think it's part of building an experience like this. You know, if you go out there in the gaming space, I think it is very common to support communication. I'm not going to list any other games. And typically, we are way beyond in, I'd say, our innovation level, responsibility level, on both the filtering, on the image sharing, on all of these things."After more tense exchanges around the 150 million daily active users--which Baszucki claimed is now "self-reported [to be] almost two-thirds over 13"--Roose asked about Hindenburg Research's October 2024 findings on the company allegedly disregarding child safety in the name of profits. He deflected, instead opting to focus on the fact that the activist fund "went out of business for some reason" and asked the hosts if they've researched that information themselves. He then responded by saying that AI is making everything better."So it's really interesting, because I think we're diving into a situation where we're getting better, better, better," Baszucki said. "But would you ask the same situation of someone who converted from maybe hypermanual labor making cars by hand to an assembly line? The assembly line might be infinitely better and at the same time not have so many people. So, I think what they're referring to is moving more and more and more and more to A.I. Arguably, is it better to have A.I. systems reviewing every image, every piece of text, all of that, or to keep doing that manually? So I think that was a misnomer. And I think if you interview anyone in our safety team or safety systems, that would be just part of making our systems better."It's at this point that Baszucki's mood became a little flustered--though not "frustrated," as he said on multiple occasions--as he apparently went around high-fiving Newton and Roose for "aligning" with the company's decision to use AI tools for content moderation and "supporting our Roblox decision matrix.""Is this a stealth interview where actually you love everything we’re doing and you’re here to stealthily support it?" He asked the hosts, later adding that he's "excited to talk." "I thought we were going to be talking about fun, funny things in the industry and all of that," Baszucki said. "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. But I'm happy to talk about whatever you guys want."Something fun that Baszucki started talking about was a hypothetical "prediction market inside Roblox" that Roose tossed out. A "terrible idea," Roose thought, he wondered if the company would ever consider letting children place bets with the Robux in-game currency." Baszucki called it a "brilliant idea" he loves."I actually think it's a brilliant idea if it can be done in an educational way that's legal," he said. "And so, imagine no free Robux, no free prizes, just a game called the Dress to Impress Predictor, where it's not like trying to get kids' money or anything like that. I would be a big fan of it."In the end, Baszucki seemed adamant in defending the fact that Roblox's content moderation tools are ever-evolving, pointing to text filtering in the past and face-scanning in the present as ways the company cares for the safety of its user base.Roblox Corporation has come under intense scrutiny in recent months following a June 2024 Bloomberg investigation that revealed the platform is rampant with predators. States like Florida and Texas have sued for what lawmakers say is the company not doing enough to protect kids from child exploitation and grooming.Whether or Roblox or not, the problem with child predators is beginning to reach a fever pitch. According to the European law enforcement agency Europol, European society is seeing a sharp rise in criminal networks weaponizing children to commit violent crimes.
pub_date
21 November 2025, 7:36 pm
guid
1100-6536445
creator
Levi Winslow
processed
TRUE
id: 87138
uid: wVi0C
insdate: 2025-11-21 22:20:02
title: Roblox CEO Responds To Child Predator Concerns Poorly
additional:
category: Game Spot
md5: 99cadc28a124f87346ddca70e703f3f7
link: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/roblox-ceo-responds-to-child-predator-concerns-poorly/1100-6536445/?ftag=CAD-01-10abi2f
image: https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/screen_medium/1578/15789366/4608978-dbimage.jpg
image_imgur:
description:
Developer Roblox Corporation recently introduced a new face-scanning feature as a way to increase child safety protection on its game creation platform, Roblox. CEO David Baszucki is very excited about this initiative, giving some rather intense and questionable answers during a new podcast episode about the age-gating technology.
Baszucki sat down with The New York Times journalists Casey Newton and Kevin Roose for an episode of their Hard Fork podcast. Posted on November 21, the three engaged in a wide-ranging conversation that started with the face-scanning feature, moved to misnomers about data, and peaked at disgreements regarding the use of AI for moderation. Newtown opened with an inquiry about the problem with predators on Roblox, which Baszucki said is a good and bad dilemma.
"We think of it not necessarily just as a problem, but an opportunity as well," he said. "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? So we, you know, we’ve been, I think in a good way, working on this ever since we started. And when we were--this was almost 18 or 19 years ago--when we first launched the company and we had just four of us sitting in a room, we were literally the moderators, like we would rotate all the time."
Baszucki continued, saying that with the scale Roblox has grown to, the company decided that "the latest tech" (that is, "using facial age estimation with A.I.") is what it's looking toward to complement its moderation tools with. He mentioned text filters as one example, particularly since chatters tend to use "hashtag, hashtag, hashtag" and other keyword tricks to bypass the system.
"With A.I., these filters have gotten better and better," Baszucki said. "The state of where we are now is primarily getting into the blocking of adversarial attempts to broach the filter, and adversarial attempts to try to share PII [personally identifying information], which we're getting better and better at as well. On the age estimation, it's just--I would say--recently come of age to the point where we would complement it. But I would say our strategy is always [to] complement with whatever technology is out there to put that together."
Before long, the three were interrupting each other, interjecting statements and questions to get a leg up. Baszucki "categorically rejected" the assertion in recent lawsuits claiming predators use Roblox to find kids. He said the platform is doing "an incredible job at innovating" when compared to other online social platforms, repeating that the company is "constantly getting better" at protecting kids' ability to chat in-game.
"There's enormous benefits for having people be able to communicate, and we think we see those benefits," Baszucki explained. "There's a lot of kids who find their peeps on Roblox. There are a lot of kids when they're lonely or isolated actually--I'm not going to use it as an excuse or anything--but I get a lot of calls from famous parents who said, 'Look, my kid would be dead if it were not for finding a community on a platform like Roblox to stay connected with.' And I would also say we do take it as an enormous responsibility to design for not the sophisticated parent who goes in and says, 'Look, I'm going to turn off who you can chat to and all of that.' We have to design for all parents and think through that. But we do believe we have enormously great technology up and down the stack. We think it's part of building an experience like this. You know, if you go out there in the gaming space, I think it is very common to support communication. I'm not going to list any other games. And typically, we are way beyond in, I'd say, our innovation level, responsibility level, on both the filtering, on the image sharing, on all of these things."
After more tense exchanges around the 150 million daily active users--which Baszucki claimed is now "self-reported [to be] almost two-thirds over 13"--Roose asked about Hindenburg Research's October 2024 findings on the company allegedly disregarding child safety in the name of profits. He deflected, instead opting to focus on the fact that the activist fund "went out of business for some reason" and asked the hosts if they've researched that information themselves. He then responded by saying that AI is making everything better.
"So it's really interesting, because I think we're diving into a situation where we're getting better, better, better," Baszucki said. "But would you ask the same situation of someone who converted from maybe hypermanual labor making cars by hand to an assembly line? The assembly line might be infinitely better and at the same time not have so many people. So, I think what they're referring to is moving more and more and more and more to A.I. Arguably, is it better to have A.I. systems reviewing every image, every piece of text, all of that, or to keep doing that manually? So I think that was a misnomer. And I think if you interview anyone in our safety team or safety systems, that would be just part of making our systems better."
It's at this point that Baszucki's mood became a little flustered--though not "frustrated," as he said on multiple occasions--as he apparently went around high-fiving Newton and Roose for "aligning" with the company's decision to use AI tools for content moderation and "supporting our Roblox decision matrix."
"Is this a stealth interview where actually you love everything we’re doing and you’re here to stealthily support it?" He asked the hosts, later adding that he's "excited to talk."
"I thought we were going to be talking about fun, funny things in the industry and all of that," Baszucki said. "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. But I'm happy to talk about whatever you guys want."
Something fun that Baszucki started talking about was a hypothetical "prediction market inside Roblox" that Roose tossed out. A "terrible idea," Roose thought, he wondered if the company would ever consider letting children place bets with the Robux in-game currency." Baszucki called it a "brilliant idea" he loves.
"I actually think it's a brilliant idea if it can be done in an educational way that's legal," he said. "And so, imagine no free Robux, no free prizes, just a game called the Dress to Impress Predictor, where it's not like trying to get kids' money or anything like that. I would be a big fan of it."
In the end, Baszucki seemed adamant in defending the fact that Roblox's content moderation tools are ever-evolving, pointing to text filtering in the past and face-scanning in the present as ways the company cares for the safety of its user base.
Roblox Corporation has come under intense scrutiny in recent months following a June 2024 Bloomberg investigation that revealed the platform is rampant with predators. States like Florida and Texas have sued for what lawmakers say is the company not doing enough to protect kids from child exploitation and grooming.
Whether or Roblox or not, the problem with child predators is beginning to reach a fever pitch. According to the European law enforcement agency Europol, European society is seeing a sharp rise in criminal networks weaponizing children to commit violent crimes.
content_html:
Developer Roblox Corporation recently introduced a new face-scanning feature as a way to increase child safety protection on its game creation platform, Roblox. CEO David Baszucki is very excited about this initiative, giving some rather intense and questionable answers during a new podcast episode about the age-gating technology.
Baszucki sat down with The New York Times journalists Casey Newton and Kevin Roose for an episode of their Hard Fork podcast. Posted on November 21, the three engaged in a wide-ranging conversation that started with the face-scanning feature, moved to misnomers about data, and peaked at disgreements regarding the use of AI for moderation. Newtown opened with an inquiry about the problem with predators on Roblox, which Baszucki said is a good and bad dilemma.
"We think of it not necessarily just as a problem, but an opportunity as well," he said. "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? So we, you know, we’ve been, I think in a good way, working on this ever since we started. And when we were--this was almost 18 or 19 years ago--when we first launched the company and we had just four of us sitting in a room, we were literally the moderators, like we would rotate all the time."
Baszucki continued, saying that with the scale Roblox has grown to, the company decided that "the latest tech" (that is, "using facial age estimation with A.I.") is what it's looking toward to complement its moderation tools with. He mentioned text filters as one example, particularly since chatters tend to use "hashtag, hashtag, hashtag" and other keyword tricks to bypass the system.
"With A.I., these filters have gotten better and better," Baszucki said. "The state of where we are now is primarily getting into the blocking of adversarial attempts to broach the filter, and adversarial attempts to try to share PII [personally identifying information], which we're getting better and better at as well. On the age estimation, it's just--I would say--recently come of age to the point where we would complement it. But I would say our strategy is always [to] complement with whatever technology is out there to put that together."
Before long, the three were interrupting each other, interjecting statements and questions to get a leg up. Baszucki "categorically rejected" the assertion in recent lawsuits claiming predators use Roblox to find kids. He said the platform is doing "an incredible job at innovating" when compared to other online social platforms, repeating that the company is "constantly getting better" at protecting kids' ability to chat in-game.
"There's enormous benefits for having people be able to communicate, and we think we see those benefits," Baszucki explained. "There's a lot of kids who find their peeps on Roblox. There are a lot of kids when they're lonely or isolated actually--I'm not going to use it as an excuse or anything--but I get a lot of calls from famous parents who said, 'Look, my kid would be dead if it were not for finding a community on a platform like Roblox to stay connected with.' And I would also say we do take it as an enormous responsibility to design for not the sophisticated parent who goes in and says, 'Look, I'm going to turn off who you can chat to and all of that.' We have to design for all parents and think through that. But we do believe we have enormously great technology up and down the stack. We think it's part of building an experience like this. You know, if you go out there in the gaming space, I think it is very common to support communication. I'm not going to list any other games. And typically, we are way beyond in, I'd say, our innovation level, responsibility level, on both the filtering, on the image sharing, on all of these things."
After more tense exchanges around the 150 million daily active users--which Baszucki claimed is now "self-reported [to be] almost two-thirds over 13"--Roose asked about Hindenburg Research's October 2024 findings on the company allegedly disregarding child safety in the name of profits. He deflected, instead opting to focus on the fact that the activist fund "went out of business for some reason" and asked the hosts if they've researched that information themselves. He then responded by saying that AI is making everything better.
"So it's really interesting, because I think we're diving into a situation where we're getting better, better, better," Baszucki said. "But would you ask the same situation of someone who converted from maybe hypermanual labor making cars by hand to an assembly line? The assembly line might be infinitely better and at the same time not have so many people. So, I think what they're referring to is moving more and more and more and more to A.I. Arguably, is it better to have A.I. systems reviewing every image, every piece of text, all of that, or to keep doing that manually? So I think that was a misnomer. And I think if you interview anyone in our safety team or safety systems, that would be just part of making our systems better."
It's at this point that Baszucki's mood became a little flustered--though not "frustrated," as he said on multiple occasions--as he apparently went around high-fiving Newton and Roose for "aligning" with the company's decision to use AI tools for content moderation and "supporting our Roblox decision matrix."
"Is this a stealth interview where actually you love everything we’re doing and you’re here to stealthily support it?" He asked the hosts, later adding that he's "excited to talk."
"I thought we were going to be talking about fun, funny things in the industry and all of that," Baszucki said. "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. But I'm happy to talk about whatever you guys want."
Something fun that Baszucki started talking about was a hypothetical "prediction market inside Roblox" that Roose tossed out. A "terrible idea," Roose thought, he wondered if the company would ever consider letting children place bets with the Robux in-game currency." Baszucki called it a "brilliant idea" he loves.
"I actually think it's a brilliant idea if it can be done in an educational way that's legal," he said. "And so, imagine no free Robux, no free prizes, just a game called the Dress to Impress Predictor, where it's not like trying to get kids' money or anything like that. I would be a big fan of it."
In the end, Baszucki seemed adamant in defending the fact that Roblox's content moderation tools are ever-evolving, pointing to text filtering in the past and face-scanning in the present as ways the company cares for the safety of its user base.
Roblox Corporation has come under intense scrutiny in recent months following a June 2024 Bloomberg investigation that revealed the platform is rampant with predators. States like Florida and Texas have sued for what lawmakers say is the company not doing enough to protect kids from child exploitation and grooming.
Whether or Roblox or not, the problem with child predators is beginning to reach a fever pitch. According to the European law enforcement agency Europol, European society is seeing a sharp rise in criminal networks weaponizing children to commit violent crimes.
content_text: Developer Roblox Corporation recently introduced a new face-scanning feature as a way to increase child safety protection on its game creation platform, Roblox. CEO David Baszucki is very excited about this initiative, giving some rather intense and questionable answers during a new podcast episode about the age-gating technology.Baszucki sat down with The New York Times journalists Casey Newton and Kevin Roose for an episode of their Hard Fork podcast. Posted on November 21, the three engaged in a wide-ranging conversation that started with the face-scanning feature, moved to misnomers about data, and peaked at disgreements regarding the use of AI for moderation. Newtown opened with an inquiry about the problem with predators on Roblox, which Baszucki said is a good and bad dilemma."We think of it not necessarily just as a problem, but an opportunity as well," he said. "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? So we, you know, we’ve been, I think in a good way, working on this ever since we started. And when we were--this was almost 18 or 19 years ago--when we first launched the company and we had just four of us sitting in a room, we were literally the moderators, like we would rotate all the time."Baszucki continued, saying that with the scale Roblox has grown to, the company decided that "the latest tech" (that is, "using facial age estimation with A.I.") is what it's looking toward to complement its moderation tools with. He mentioned text filters as one example, particularly since chatters tend to use "hashtag, hashtag, hashtag" and other keyword tricks to bypass the system."With A.I., these filters have gotten better and better," Baszucki said. "The state of where we are now is primarily getting into the blocking of adversarial attempts to broach the filter, and adversarial attempts to try to share PII [personally identifying information], which we're getting better and better at as well. On the age estimation, it's just--I would say--recently come of age to the point where we would complement it. But I would say our strategy is always [to] complement with whatever technology is out there to put that together."Before long, the three were interrupting each other, interjecting statements and questions to get a leg up. Baszucki "categorically rejected" the assertion in recent lawsuits claiming predators use Roblox to find kids. He said the platform is doing "an incredible job at innovating" when compared to other online social platforms, repeating that the company is "constantly getting better" at protecting kids' ability to chat in-game."There's enormous benefits for having people be able to communicate, and we think we see those benefits," Baszucki explained. "There's a lot of kids who find their peeps on Roblox. There are a lot of kids when they're lonely or isolated actually--I'm not going to use it as an excuse or anything--but I get a lot of calls from famous parents who said, 'Look, my kid would be dead if it were not for finding a community on a platform like Roblox to stay connected with.' And I would also say we do take it as an enormous responsibility to design for not the sophisticated parent who goes in and says, 'Look, I'm going to turn off who you can chat to and all of that.' We have to design for all parents and think through that. But we do believe we have enormously great technology up and down the stack. We think it's part of building an experience like this. You know, if you go out there in the gaming space, I think it is very common to support communication. I'm not going to list any other games. And typically, we are way beyond in, I'd say, our innovation level, responsibility level, on both the filtering, on the image sharing, on all of these things."After more tense exchanges around the 150 million daily active users--which Baszucki claimed is now "self-reported [to be] almost two-thirds over 13"--Roose asked about Hindenburg Research's October 2024 findings on the company allegedly disregarding child safety in the name of profits. He deflected, instead opting to focus on the fact that the activist fund "went out of business for some reason" and asked the hosts if they've researched that information themselves. He then responded by saying that AI is making everything better."So it's really interesting, because I think we're diving into a situation where we're getting better, better, better," Baszucki said. "But would you ask the same situation of someone who converted from maybe hypermanual labor making cars by hand to an assembly line? The assembly line might be infinitely better and at the same time not have so many people. So, I think what they're referring to is moving more and more and more and more to A.I. Arguably, is it better to have A.I. systems reviewing every image, every piece of text, all of that, or to keep doing that manually? So I think that was a misnomer. And I think if you interview anyone in our safety team or safety systems, that would be just part of making our systems better."It's at this point that Baszucki's mood became a little flustered--though not "frustrated," as he said on multiple occasions--as he apparently went around high-fiving Newton and Roose for "aligning" with the company's decision to use AI tools for content moderation and "supporting our Roblox decision matrix.""Is this a stealth interview where actually you love everything we’re doing and you’re here to stealthily support it?" He asked the hosts, later adding that he's "excited to talk." "I thought we were going to be talking about fun, funny things in the industry and all of that," Baszucki said. "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. But I'm happy to talk about whatever you guys want."Something fun that Baszucki started talking about was a hypothetical "prediction market inside Roblox" that Roose tossed out. A "terrible idea," Roose thought, he wondered if the company would ever consider letting children place bets with the Robux in-game currency." Baszucki called it a "brilliant idea" he loves."I actually think it's a brilliant idea if it can be done in an educational way that's legal," he said. "And so, imagine no free Robux, no free prizes, just a game called the Dress to Impress Predictor, where it's not like trying to get kids' money or anything like that. I would be a big fan of it."In the end, Baszucki seemed adamant in defending the fact that Roblox's content moderation tools are ever-evolving, pointing to text filtering in the past and face-scanning in the present as ways the company cares for the safety of its user base.Roblox Corporation has come under intense scrutiny in recent months following a June 2024 Bloomberg investigation that revealed the platform is rampant with predators. States like Florida and Texas have sued for what lawmakers say is the company not doing enough to protect kids from child exploitation and grooming.Whether or Roblox or not, the problem with child predators is beginning to reach a fever pitch. According to the European law enforcement agency Europol, European society is seeing a sharp rise in criminal networks weaponizing children to commit violent crimes.
pub_date: 21 November 2025, 7:36 pm
guid: 1100-6536445
creator: Levi Winslow
related_games:
processed: TRUE