Around that time in the video what I see is a journalist that did not do his homework, as he crumbled under the CEO's snarky "do you know this research company went out of business?" - he should just started to read the report findings and ask if they are true [1] or popped out the 16 public arrests [2] tied to Roblox in the US of A.
Both journalists were VERY agreeable and were like trying not to pick a fight. Want to talk about the fun stuff Mr CEO? There's no fun when so many kids are being systematically harassed by evil adults in the platform.
To say nothing of the Roblox situation, anyone else having a hard time reading this piece of "reporting"?
It reads, to me, as so obviously slanted and opinionated against Roblox from the outset. It's not trying to portray facts, it's clearly trying to make the reader interpret the situation in an anti-roblox light, instead of letting the reader arrive there on their own.
It must be tiring though to keep the "neutral" approach for every article. How many benefits of doubts is Roblox owed, really? Asking for a more neutral tone is almost akin to asking for Hunter S Thompson to rewrite "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" in a more neutral tone.
If a journalist does not at least attempt to present their viewpoint as neutral I will immediate presume they have irrational bias and grow skeptical of what the journalist is telling me - no matter what side of the issue their bias is on. In other words, if you talk to me like a salesman I will presume you are trying to sell me and I wont want to buy.
Talk to me like an adult. Tell me what happened. That doesn't mean sugarcoating it. When I read the quotes and combine that with my existing knowledge of Roblox I can come to my own conclusions just fine.
> If a journalist does not at least attempt to present their viewpoint as neutral I will immediate presume they have irrational bias and grow skeptical of what the journalist is telling me
So you’re saying you have an irrational bias against other people having opinions? Fascinating.
That's not what he was saying. It's not a irrational bias he has. It's a rational response for a neutal thirdparty trying to understand what the issue is.
Let the facts speak for themselves. I agree the interview sounds damning. However it reduces the quality of the article to introduce Roblox as a "pedophile hellscape" right off the bat, or tell me how it was so impressive how the interviewer "kept his cool" in response to the answers.
It's honestly the same style of writing anytime Fox news reports on any democratic action, or vice versa for other rags. Except this has a nice dose of "think of the children" that further lets them pull on heartstrings.
Again, fuck Roblox and their lack of an ability to improve on these issues, but this is just trash writing and editing.
Not at all. It reads exactly the opposite: grounded concern, and then an absolute mess of an interview that provides solid reason to question their governance.
> Polymarket, a cryptoscam-based prediction market
How is this "reporting" even real? Awful article. The interview was so bad that painting roblox in the bad light was the right and objective thing to do, yet they somehow managed to make it look biased.
I didn’t have a problem with it, given the headline I knew it was commentary on a shit show of an interview from someone who should be prepared to answer hard questions and represent a company position to the public. I’m not offended by the opinionated writing given the context.
> When asked about the “scope of the problem” of predators in the application, Baszucki came in shoulders first saying, “We think of it not necessarily just as a problem, but an opportunity as well.”
I mean… how much benefit of the doubt is one expected to give someone who runs a game for kids who sees paedophiles as an ‘opportunity’? Like, this isn’t a criminal trial, it’s a news article. There is no presumption on innocence, and the company’s past is relevant.
“Roblox CEO sees pedophiles as ‘opportunity’” would be a less biased headline that reports the actual interesting facts of the interview and would be more damaging to them in practice.
The story quotes directly from the interview. I watched the interview, and the characterization is accurate. Here's a passage:
Newton: (interjecting) You don’t think you have a problem with predators on the platform.
Baszucki: I think we’re doing an incredible job at innovating relative to the number of people on our platform and the hours, in really leaning into the future of how this is going to work.
>it's clearly trying to make the reader interpret the situation in an anti-roblox light
Yes, I would imagine the thing described as a "pedophile hellscape" should look pretty bad to the average reader. But just so I'm getting this right: the thing you're maddest about is the bad PR for Roblox?
Is Roblox now as controversial as Epstein news? Don’t mind the (Republican of course) elephant in the room. Vote for Trump. He’s our only hope. He can protect Roblox from the law.
I think this interview doesn’t require much analysis. The CEO’s own words make him look bad.
Or if you want the tl;dr, ask an LLM. I think the general sentiment is overt and simple enough that the LLM wouldn’t omit or misrepresent anything important.
I understand the justified hysteria against pedophiles grooming kids. Although it is amusing coming from a country that is reeling from the Epstein affair.
But this is not a Roblox problem it is an internet problem.
And I do not know how to solve it except more censorship and control.
The solution has been throughout the ages, content moderation and community policing. The village used to be that. We were promised the Global Village, but got the Global Content Farms.
If you can't run forums and chats because moderation is too expensive, then don't run 'em. Roblox is like the Pleasure Island in Pinocchio.
Wasn't pedophilia much more widespread throughout the ages than it is now? I think the real "solution" to the problem of child abuse back in time was not to view it as a problem at all!
Whatever it was, it was highly context dependent and distributed thus more resilient to the whims of a single commercial entity. Roblox is like centralized daycare. If you are fine with that, sign your kids up.
But I didn't say anything about roblox, why do you think I'm fine with whatever they are doing? I just think you are wrong to think that anti-pedophilia guardrails thorough the ages were good and should be example for us. If you are fine with how things were done, sign your kids up for marriage and pregnancy at 13 years old.
"And I do not know how to solve it except more censorship and control."
That has (almost) always been part of raising children. The important question is, who has control and with what intentions? The intention of roblox they say out in the open, bind kids to their plattform, increase their engagement (addiction) and introduce gambling as soon as legally possible. And pretadors they don't see as a problem despite independent research very much say it is. Trusting them in any way sounds like madness or lack of care. So I am not in a position yet, that I am pressured by my toddler to allow roblox, but he is hooked on minecraft now. Just singleplayer, but also no idea how it works in that universe with public servers. I am not generally against the idea, that adults can talk with kids, but random adults from the internet? No way.
I suspect what the CEO was trying to convey was that this was a "small problem" given the number of users etc, "no need to worry share holders and investors! Not a big deal!"...
But I don't think that argument really works for paedophilia. Society does not want to allow it at any scale (zero-tolerance - and rightly so), so even if it is a "small" proportion of the entire platform, it's still bad especially if they're basically only paying lip service to any protections.
This person didn't seem to really understand that though and was trying to spin it as some sort of "business is great! We're doing great! Look at all these users and engagement! Growth growth growth!" type typical hype bullshit, but totally misread the situation.
Yup. When it comes to the "FO" part of "FAFO", there are two sweet spots... either you're so piss poor and destitute you can get away with literally robbing trains [1], or you're so large and rich that fines don't matter because it's just another line on the balance sheet. Why care for society at large when you have absolutely nothing to fear?
That part about adding a prediction market into Roblox to let kids start betting is something out of a comedy skit. Unbelievable. I hope that gets used as court evidence at some point.
The effectively silent response of the CEO in respect to seriously tackling a pedophile problem was damning, it's an understandably difficult problem with bad optics.
The fully open gleeful embrace of using Roblox to groom future gambling addicts as a path to future revenue streams is so far past damning it screams walking abyss of moral self awareness.
I don't have children, but friends and family do, and I had always heard Roblox presented as kid-friendly and kid-safe. This meant I heard about someone's child playing Roblox and, thinking it was kindof an electronic construction set, ie a great learning and play tool,[0] I felt no concerns at all.
To describe this interview as a 'car crash' is almost underselling it. I feel terrified.
Most of all, what are my friends' and relatives' kids getting access to that they don't know about?
[0] Wikipedia says, 'allows users to program and play games created by themselves or other users.' That was the extent of my knowledge. It sounds great: very happy for kids to learn how to build things! Sure, I'd prefer they used Lego, but if they have to use mobiles then something where things are built and created is about as healthy as using mobile apps at a young age can be, right?
Interesting thought experiment - making a Nintendo approved version would put the finger on exactly all problems of "real" Roblox. (But strictly speaking, the logic only works in one direction "If Nintendo, then Safe". But "if not on Nintendo, then unsafe" is not strictly true but maybe good shorthand.)
The interview makes me think of Dupont and Tǝflon. "You are giving thousands of people cancer in your community."
"That's alright, think of the millions who love our products."
They kinda tried with game builder garage a few years back, It keeps the whole game making and sharing aspect while limiting the damage user generated content can do such as limiting custom assets and needing to get the games number to download it to your system
It may be a good enough simple test, especially for huge titles like Roblox, but I’ve worked with game developers whose titles would have been allowed by Nintendo but who decided it wasn’t worth the investment to create a port to publish for Nintendo devices - lots of games don’t release on all possible platforms for business reasons.
Yeah, it's obviously just a crude razor. What I meant is that if it's not on Nintendo, it's a sign you should be more diligent as a parent. Obviously you should always monitor and ideally play the games your kids play yourself, but I can imagine not all parents do that. The Nintendo test is a reasonable alternative, my mom did it in the 90s and I had enough fun games even if I missed out on a bunch of cool PC and Sony titles.
Agreed, just thought worth pointing out to anyone reading your comment that a game not being on Nintendo doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not child-friendly (lots of people don’t realise that making a game work on different platforms involves actual dev work rather than just an equivalent of “file -> save as -> choose platform”)
There are several documentaries on how Roblox explores children, relatively easy to find.
Especially the whole virtual economy where they profit from children work, without giving anything back, due to how virtual money converts back to real currencies.
"People Make Games" on YouTube made some videos about it. Recommended watching for any parent who is trying to figure out if they should allow their child on Roblox. (Spoilers, the answer is "no".)
Yeah, no. Nintendo, as the other poster said. Random stranger interaction == bad. Can’t verify age == bad.
Can only add your friends for chat? Is fine.
I feel like this same strategy is sane for adults also. Before the internet, we did fine making friends and playing games with people we actually know. So much of the awfulness of the modern online space comes from anonymous interactions with strangers. I don’t think human social connections are able to scale in the way the internet enables.
It's not even that stranger interaction is inherently bad, Nintendos Splatoon series is very multiplayer with strangers centric but it manages to stay safe for kids because of the lack of chat and user generated content for the most part
As the parent, I have complete control over who my children can connect with on Nintendo (not so with Roblox and others). That makes it safe, because I can double check with parent of said friend. It’s completely fine.
nope, in many games there's no chat and any interaction between players is only within the rules of the game. it's very safe. you cannot stalk a kid or even know its a kid.
somebody mentioned nintendo platform, see that for example
Fair enough, but I think creativity can usually escape the box and make it possible to communicate within the limitations imposed by the game.
And if not, then what even is the value of playing online as opposed to locally with AIs?
If children want to play together with their friends, isn't it much better to spin them a Minecraft server or such for friends they know from real life instead of playing games limiting them by "very narrowly specific interactions" anyway?
No, there is no way. Yes it is hard to tell if it's ai. But humans play different. And also this is why anticheats exist.
> If children want to play together with their friends, isn't it much better to spin them a Minecraft server or such for friends they know from real life instead of playing games limiting them by "very narrowly specific interactions" anyway?
compared to roblox, sure. who would even argue against that?
but there are many games where it really don't matter. it's probably most games... car racing sim... football sim... strategy like civilization...
But most games have unrestricted chat, aside from maybe wordlist filters ...
Wow, runescape, call of duty, battlefield, ... Didn't and don't they still all have basically unrestricted chat? Sure they might not be expressly marketed to kids, but everyone I knew was playing wow and runescape in elementary school with no issues.
> I had always heard Roblox presented as kid-friendly and kid-safe.
I have a 12-year-old playing Roblox right now, couldn’t agree less.
Roblox is the 2025 equivalent of AOL chat rooms circa 1998. You should assume that a child playing it will encounter the worst of humanity, and if you aren’t aware of that you’re not paying attention.
> I had always heard Roblox presented as kid-friendly and kid-safe.
Yeah, no. I have kids and have walked this path over the last few years. Roblox is, as a company, your standard big org. That is, completely amoral, extracting cash in whatever ways are possible, protecting users (kids) only to the minimal extent required by law or perception that might harm business.
Very very little of their user-base are actually making games, and of those, 99.99% are getting nothing for the work they put in. That whole side of things is one part of the scam (exploit the labour of kids with the idea of making it big, but ensure the reward tier is high enough to avoid needing to cash out for nearly everyone). This is the least problematic part though.
Essentially, Roblox is the wild west internet I grew up on in the early 90’s. Sure, your friends are there, but it’s chock full of pedophiles offering candy if you just sign up to this discord channel. Free Robux might be the common lure, but they can be far more sophisticated. The sad fact that most parents don’t like to think about is that the pedo networks are large, sophisticated, and constantly, actively, hunting for any opportunity. Roblox is a platform of choice. The moderation and level of care from this company may as well be non-existent. It’s just enough to convince the public that they are doing the right thing.
Then there is the never ending stream of gambling games. The currency is Roblox, and that can be converted to cold hard cash, so there are infinite games just built around trying to addict kids and use that to extract the almighty Robux. It’s every evil trick you see with mobile game trash, just sometimes more transparent.
All in all, it’s a terrible place, but at first glance, fine. Your kid playing the popular games with their friends; it’s just like Nintendo. But wander off the happy path, just a little, and the monsters are waiting.
Because you doubt my comments or because you are genuinely interested? I can go get them, as there have been some great investigative journalists working on this in recent times. However, I have very little interest in providing references you could very easily find for yourself, if you are merely skeptical.
It's very simple: if it's a company run service that's free to access it's because it's one massive commercial break. (So is news.ycombinator.com of course).
How anyone on here does not immediately see Roblox for what it is is beyond me. They have to be one of the clearest cases around, and yet their PR apparently is strong enough you believed it was kid-friendly and kid-safe.
Kids use roblox to play the kind of games kids love, but adults hate. They are basic, repetitive and adults dont find them educational or artistic enough.
But kids love playing them.
Note that whole your comment was about assumption it is education hidden in toy, which is what you want. But, kids often just want a toy.
When I was a kid, I loved BBSs and the technicality of building a computer and the wild west that was the internet. Now that I have kids of my own, I won’t let them go near some of this stuff. It’s not because I’m worried they will do something dumb on their own but because I think tech has become predatory of all users and society in general.
The BBS scene was much more accountable. I mean, I met some weird dudes on there and consumed some weird stuff, but at the end of the day it was a local community, and everything was traced back to real people.
I tried to sign up as “Roger Rabbit”, who was 21, and therefore gain some access to a particular mov that was popular at the time. It was then that I learned two things:
- The sysop can talk to you directly!
- The sysop can see your phone number and knows Roger is that kid that signed up ages ago…
Met the sysop in real life some years later and he had thought the whole thing was pretty funny.
The point is that this was a local community; and the internet just doesn’t work like that.
1. I really wish Dreams had kept going, expanded beyond PlayStation, and tried to take the market from Roblox. They were infinitely more safety-minded with their content. It would be great to see a Roblox competitor.
2. Kotaku on mobile is a horrid experience. There’s like 20% of the screen allocated to content, the rest are ads. My god.
> The only thing that stopped this tantrum was allowing the CEO to talk about Polymarket, a cryptoscam-based prediction market, letting people place bets on things as ridiculous as awards ceremonies and future weather patterns.
I'm a fan of prediction markets. This makes me think the article is rather biased.
Kotaku and their parent company are in the dogmatic "silicon valley bad " camp. Not to defend Roblox or Polymarket, but if they were doing a pretty good job, I would expect the presentation to be the same.
The answer IMO is to have a whitelist mentality toward online safety rather than a blacklist.
Parenting is essentially a form of mega censorship. So much that censoring is the default state of the child's interaction with the world, and a parent chooses to selectively and gradually uncensored certain things.
The open web is antithetical to raising children because it is, well, open. Before the Internet, there was no way for a child to interface with the entire world. It was a few tv channels, books at a library, kids in the neighborhood, and within these "platforms" it is quite easy for a parent to "blacklist" unwanted "content", e.g. "Don't hang out with Billy because he smokes pot, and if I see you with him, you're grounded."
The unpopular opinion but correct approach for kids on the Internet is to have everything blocked until explicitly approved--by the parent preferably, not by some curation algorithms a la YouTube Kids etc.
In terms of Roblox:
- mandatory age verification for any platform that is deemed to target children
- mandatory parental account for any child
- a parent account must whitelist all the individual games the child plays on Roblox
- communication transcripts saved for parents to view
- comms off by default for children
Source: parent of 3 kids dealing with this on a daily basis and seeing the obvious trainwrecks that occur when kids are left with free access.
It bizarre only from our world. This CEO gives a nice insight into his day to day. He lives in a completely different world. This pedo stuff has nothing to do with his priorities.
To protect the capita... I mean, the delicate HN readers from the horrors of... I'm not sure what horrors are they protected against, but by God they will be protected, willingly or not
Rethinking the problem? Engaging with the questions like a human being and not a snake oil salesman? Falling back on the Scunthorpe Problem and how easy it is for people to move chat to another platform comes across as not actually concerned at all. You could just make up stuff on the spot and sound more reassuring and human. For example: “one thing we track is users who predominantly engage in chat, which is common enough, but we then filter for people constantly contacting new strangers and then focus on the kinds of conversations”, blah blah blah.
Once he gets to the high five stuff, it’s clear the person is a twelve year old themself. Skibidi toilet.
I've not got kids yet, but I do wonder if the best way to prepare them for the internet is by teaching them the many dangers by navigating it with them (scams, grooming, bullying, hacking)?
As a parent I can’t stand Roblox. A while back Bedwars game on it was all the kids would talk about, then it was Grow a garden, now the worst of them all, Steal a brainrot.
Friends turn on friends and steal their items. Lots of crying and yelling. My child starts having tantrum if they can’t play. A friend’s child started hitting them with fists because they weren’t allowed to play.
The problem is that all the kids play this game and it’s their form of communication so I don’t want to completely ban it. Right now I block it on the router during the week and only allow it on weekends or when friends come over.
My other complaint is the currency they use, Robux. After 10, all kids want for their birthday is that. Some kids spend it on the stupidest things. When they run out of currency they go into a game called please donate and beg for more money. They also trade rare items for currency and some make items and sell them in the store to make money.
If the kid is banned by parents they find creative ways to play, they hide the app from Home Screen and play when studying, or wake up really early to play on their device, they play on school laptop using websites that run android emularors, etc.
I guess I’ll mention something positive as well. One child I know actually enjoys building their own games and publishing them. It rare thought and I haven’t seen many kids do that. They usually load up Roblox studio, play around with it for a bit and never ouch it again.
I miss the days of creative fun with Minecraft and wish the kids would have played that instead of Roblox.
The CEO was NOT prepared for the questions in this interview, quote: `I was hoping to come here and talk about fun stuff`.
It's insightful how a genuine question about hindenburg's research into Roblox's decrease in safety immediately pushed the CEO to fury starting 23:29.