Roblox boss Dave Baszucki has claimed that while the company is doing everything it can to protect users, parents should ban their children from using the platform if they are concerned.
Roblox, the hugely popular user-generated content platform, has attracted a largely young audience since exploding in popularity in recent years. However, while this popularity has led it to attract more monthly active users than all three traditional console platforms combined, it has also come with several safeguarding issues.
Last year, multiple reports emerged claiming Roblox wasn’t doing enough to protect the young people using the platform, leading the firm to implement stricter guidelines for users under 13, and more expansive parental controls.
Now, the co-founder and CEO of the platform has said that parents concerned about how their children use the platform should stay away entirely.
“My first message would be, if you’re not comfortable, don’t let your kids be on Roblox,” Baszucki told the BBC.That sounds a little counter-intuitive, but I would always trust parents to make their own decisions.”
In November, Roblox introduced new restrictions that stopped users 13 and under being able to use in-game chat features in Roblox games. It also launched remote parental controls.
“Part of our long-term vision is to give parents granular controls to monitor and limit how much time their child spends on Roblox, which is something we’ve heard is important to parents,” said chief safety officer Matt Kaufman at the time.
“In the Parental Controls dashboard, parents can now see their child’s average screen time over the past week, as well as their child’s friends list. Parents and caregivers can also set daily screen-time limits. Once the limit is reached, their child cannot access Roblox until the next day.”
Roblox has also increased the options creators have when tagging what kind of content is included in the games that are published to the platform.
The firm’s boss says that Roblox takes any safeguarding incident incredibly seriously.
“We do in the company take the attitude that any bad, even one bad incident, is one too many,” he said.
“We watch for bullying, we watch for harassment, we filter all of those kinds of things, and I would say behind the scenes, the analysis goes on all the way to, if necessary, reaching out to law enforcement.”
