Roblox CEO insists platform is safe for children despite lawsuits over online predators
Roblox CEO and co-founder, Dave Baszucki, says "safety is a top priority," despite a civil lawsuit and a Middle Eastern country's banishment of the online gaming platform.
During an interview with FOX Business, Baszucki said he has "four kids who grew up on Roblox off and on," and the business with "thousands of employees" helped children learn science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills while helping them stay connected to "friends when they're sick."
He compared the game's safety features to that of a smartphone.
"We want parents to know Roblox is very, very different," he said.
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"We don't allow image sharing. We filter all text. We have policies against sharing really personal information. We monitor in real time for critical harms, and we work very closely with law enforcement so that when we do find bad actors, we together get them off the internet," he continued.
Late on Sunday, the Iraqi government banned the U.S. user-generated videogame due to concerns over child safety, joining other countries in cracking down on virtual worlds.
The ban was motivated by concerns that the game allowed direct communication between users in ways that exposed children and adolescents to attempts of exploitation or cyber-extortion, and that its content was "incompatible with social values and traditions," Reuters reported.
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Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier recently launched a criminal probe into Roblox, He said earlier this week on "Fox & Friends First" that the platform is a "breeding ground" for predators.
Weeks ago, Kentucky brought a civil lawsuit against Roblox alleging the massive gaming platform is not safe for children, joining a growing list of entities who have sued over similar allegations.
Attorney General Russell Coleman alleged in the lawsuit, filed in Kentucky Circuit Court, that Roblox has insufficient guardrails for children and therefore exposes them to child predators, violence and sexually explicit material.
"Defendants do not require users to verify their age upon sign-up," Kentucky attorneys wrote in the complaint. "As such, child predators can — and do — establish accounts to pose as children."
Children can sign up to use Roblox and access its millions of games, also known as "experiences," by entering their birthdate, username and password. Kentucky attorneys claim that the signup process needs more barriers to entry and a form of parental consent for minors.
"We are establishing what we believe will become the gold standard for safety and communication for all apps," Baszucki told FOX Business.
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"Which is knowing the age of every person on our platform. We're gonna do this using AI on the selfie camera to estimate the age everyone. And we're gonna, in addition to filtering text on Roblox, control what and who can chat with who unless they happen to know each other in real life."
FOX Business' Ashley Oliver and Reuters contributed to this report.
